Revell 1/72 B17F Advise

[Aidan.H]

Hi All,

 

Does anyone have any experience of building this kit.  I acquired this from Ebay at a decent price so thought it was worth a go.

 

 

its lacking in some interior detail which I can live with as not much is visible once the fuselage is closed up,  however there are no waste guns nor radio room gun position and the radio room glass is a complete piece.

 

It looks like I'm going to have to buy some third party 50 cal guns and make some kind of mount for the waste positions and then cut the radio room glass to create the opening for the radio room gun position.  Does anyone have any advise on the best approach to take with this kind of work.

 

Also I've dry fitted the two fuselage halves and the fit isn't great so I think its going to require a fair bit of filling and sanding.

[RC Boater Bill]

FWIW, that kit was first released back in 1962!   

An all new kit was released in 2012.   Any dedicated aftermarket for the “1/72 Revell B-17” is likely intended for the new kit, and may not fit the old one without some work.

 

You asked for advice on how to approach this build, so here goes….

 

If I was in your shoes, I would look at the instructions for the many newer kits to get an idea on what is missing, and just scratch build some basic shapes to fill the voids- as you said, you won’t be able to see much anyways.   I would probably just leave the radio room closed- I think the gun wasn’t visible when stowed?   I would have fun adding various bits of styrene to the inside of the waist area to dress it up.   Aftermarket guns are fairly inexpensive- those are worth buying, IMO.  (Assuming you don’t have spares leftover from some other kit.)

 

 You will likely have some issues with fit- but so what?  I wouldn’t drive myself crazy trying to make a perfect B-17 magazine-cover-worthy replica from that kit-  I’d just have fun applying my adult skills to improve a kit I last built when I was in my early teens!

 

Good luck, and have fun!

 

 

[David H]

Aidan, what we're looking at is a re-box of the 1962 original Revell B-17.

 

Because it's so old, the kit placed an emphasis more on working features/ functionality and not so much on scale fidelity. The Airfix B-17G of 1963 was better in that department.

 

If it were me, i would build this mainly from the box and use it as a tool to practice and master the most basic assembly skills of gluing, filling, sanding, alignment, painting and decaling. Personally think the model will look better if all the rivets are either sanded off completely, or almost sanded away so that only traces are visible through the paint.

 

Not to be the bearer of bad news. It was one of the first models i ever built as a kit and it provides significant nostalgic value for me. I don't think there's a kid in America that wanted to be a pilot that did *not* build this kit, sometime in their lives.

 

-d-

[Aidan.H]

Well it’s the first time I’ve ever done this but it’s gone in the Bin, awful kit.  With all the pieces which had to line up in order to get the fuselage anywhere near aligned it was impossible without windows and the bomb bay and turrets falling out.  Live and learn, research what you buy off eBay 😂😂

Edited January 7 by Aidan.H