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F14A Tomcat - PART ONE

With the cockpit position finalized, I could turn my attention to the next items in the assembly. For me, these were the side walls. These are molded with the slag running down a very thin edge. The method I use for removing this type of slag is the scribe, bend, and break method. I use a Squadron scribing tool to score a line down the edge of the piece. Depending on the thickness of the slag, I may retrace the scribed line repeatedly to make a deep groove. In the case of these side wall pieces, repeated passes of the scribing tool was not needed. The scribed line acts as a weak point in the resin and by gently bending the slag back from the scribed line, it snaps. This is generally a pretty clean break, but I will use an X-acto knife and/or file to finish off the resin part and make the edge smooth and regular.

I then assembled the fuselage with the cockpit in place and rubber banded the fuselage together. Verifying the cockpit was positioned correctly, I tacked the side wall pieces into the fuselage interior with a small dot of super glue. Some of the side walls are a bit large for the cockpit areas they fill. I needed to trim them down a little on their ends to make them properly fit in place. When all the side walls were in place and I was certain they were correctly located, I carefully disassembled the fuselage and applied more super glue to firmly attach the side walls.

With all the side walls installed into the fuselage, I started work on the detail pieces that needed to be added into the cockpit tub. There are quite a few details to be trimmed off of their slag and added inside the cockpit tub. A few of these left me scratching my head and wondering. They could easily have been part of the main tub when it was cast. That would have eliminated my need to add them (and potentially mess them up).