This kit just arrived in the mail fresh from JackFlash's in-box review. I've promised to do a build of it so here goes. First, the kit as it arrived.
The box with the smiling JAL flight attendant to welcome you aboard:

(This is a little sexist! Where's the handsome Steward to welcome us ladies?)

The decal sheet and paint guide:


The sprues:


Disaster! The Postman crushed the canopy by jamming the kit into my mailbox
Luckily I had intended to paint the cockpit windws to match the decal anyway so I should be able to salvage this with no troubles.

First I worked on the wing fit issues. I sanded back the areas where the wing parts are too thick and marked them with a Sharpie so they'd show up in the pictures. The two arrows mark where the wing joins the rear fuselage wing fairing. I had to notch them pretty severely in order to make the trailing edge fit with a nice sharp edge. The wingtip area that Stephen noted in his review needed some very careful shaving down to avoid a step. Then it needed shimming to close the gap that remained after the blobbiness was sanded down. This area is a definite issue for anyone building this kit.


While the wings were gluing, I worked on preparing the fuselage halves. I sanded each as though it was a vacuform kit, and just like a vac kit I added tabs cut from plastic card to help keep the fuselage tgether and increase the gluing surface. Once again the black Sharpie marks where I sanded to improve the fit. I goofed with that strip at the front of the wing cutout. I forgot that Roden moulded a bulkhead into the front of the lower wing half to maintain the dihedral angle. Look, you can see it in the pictures above and below this one. When it came time to test fit the wing to the fuselage, I had to rip that strip out. Note to self: Don't bother with that next time.


Back at the wing, we can see that the #4 nacelle is slightly out of round. I'll have to add a shim to the outside and then carefully sand it back to circular.


There's something missing! Top is the Roden fuselage, bottom is a Minicraft DC-6. Note that Minicraft remembered that the nosewheel leg needs something to glue into. There's nothing there in the Roden kit and if one were to simply glue the nose leg onto the top of the wheel well, the finished kit would sit extremely nose down. I'll have to come up with a scratchbuilt mount.


And here it is. I used a section of a cotton swap with a hollow plastic handle which was sitting on my workbench. I suppose I could have just as easily used a piece of styrene tube and avoided all the messing about with superglue and accelerator but if it's stupid and it works, it's not stupid anymore. I will have to extend the retraction strut because if I glue it on the way it is, the upper end will be floating in midair inside the nosewheel bay.


I don't like my kits to tailsit so I mixed up a nice big lump of Milput and stuck in a handful of finishing mails that I had kicking about in my desk drawer. This one's never going to tip back.


Now the fuselage is closed. I will leave these two subassemblies on the workbench to cure overnight.

Here's JA6301 in its glory days in the Autumn of 1960, preparing to take another load of passengers to distant shores.

Keep going Jessie. You can beat the evil Roden kit..

The fuselage halves have really inconsistent cross-sections. The seams are quite evident, even though I glued slowly. The worst shape problem is the left fuselage half behind the nosewheel well. (This was the side I did not pack with Miliput, so I know that I didin't do anything to distort the shape). It's nearly 1/2mm proud of the right side. I'd done a little preliminary sanding prior to taking the pictures, and it's quite evident that I'll need to do a lot more.


The lower rear fuselage seam shows how inconsistent the shapes are. The edges of the fuselage are not nearly as straight as they could be. They waver up and down where they should be dead straight. When I mated the wings it was immediately apparent that the fuselage cross section does not match that of the part moulded into the wing. I'll need a couple of good filling and sanding sessions to make everything match the way it should.


The cockpit cover gave me a little trouble as well. The edges are a little ragged and need some sanding to true them up, especially at the rear where it joins the upper fuselage. I also needed to refine the fit at the bottom front corners of the side windows, more on the right side than the left; the corners of the fuselage cutout are a little soft where they should be square. The cracked parts lined up well, and it should be easy to polish out the join line. The upper fuselage fit problmems can also be seen.


The wings are now glued and waiting to dry. Then it's a serious filling session to come.

I sound like I'm being overly harsh, but none of these problems are insurmountable. They're really par for the course when doing a Roden kit. They're not "shake the box" kits. You're expected to know how to solve modelling problems like these before you start. The only other DC-7s in this scale pose even more modelling challenges than this kit does, so it's really not all that bad.

After all, are we modellers or are we mice?









Well, squeak up!

It's beginning to look like a DC-7
The horizontal stabilisers fit well enough that they don't need glue. You have to be careful to refine the fit of the tailplane roots to ensure that they'll be symmetrical, and not have gaps.







The fit of the wings to the lower fuselage is definitely not as precise as it could be. There's room for lots of putty here.





The upper wing roots also need some attention.





And lo, it came to pass that the putty fairy visited the DC-7





This will set overnight, then I'm going to get a workout

Beautiful aircraft, worth so much sanding

Go Jessica go!

The first coat of primer is applied to the upper surfaces. It reveals that a lot of work still remains to be done.

It's looking like one piece now, instead of a collection of pieces.



But the wing roots need a lot of refining.





And so does the nose.





I'll let this coat dry and then see what horrors are revealed when I do the underside.

Looking good.

José César

Work begins on the engines.

Install the engine face into one half of the nacelle.



Close the two halves togethe...uh, oh. This is going to take a little fixing. The engine faces are clearly much larger than the interior diameter of the nacelle. I'll have to sand them down until they fit. I want the centreline of the engine to match the nacele's centreline which means that I'll have to pry the engines out and sand carefully all around the circumference. Note to self: Next time test fit ONE engine first before you glue them all in place.



The spinners are equally rough. I think I'm going to have to mount them on toothpicks and then give them a little spin in the Dremel to smooth them out enough to be useable. Or maybe I'll rob the metal props out of my Welsh kit, just to get this finished.

Operation Engine Rescue commences. First I sanded down the engine faces by a considerable amount. Compare the modified engine on the left with a still-to-be-modified engine on the right.



The nacelles close properly, but still unevenly. I'll need to do some careful shaping and then polish them so they can look properly gleaming in their silver finish.









The Roden nacelles have 4 exhaust pipes, 2 per side. I do not believe that this is correct given that the Wright 3350 Turbo Compound engine was equipped with 3 power recovery turbines in the exhaust pipes, which were arranged with 2 on the left side and one on the right. Every picture I could find of a DC-7C from the right side shows that there is only one exhaust pipe, centred on the nacelle side. I'm going to have to do a little surgery on all 4 nacelles. So much for an out of the box build

This isn't a large update compared to the amount of work it took to get here. All 4 nacelles have had their exhaustectomy completed, seams filled and are now ready to be polished. The propellers are glued together (Please, Roden next time give us one piece props, okay?) Gluing 6 tiny pieces together is an exercise in frustration. Getting all 16 blades in the very same allignment is a real bear and that's not counting the two part spinners which were their own adventure. The propeller blades are fairly thick. Next time I may be tempted to sand them down a little, but their small size makes sanding without ruining them a real chore.



I filled in the redundant exhaust troughs on the right-hand side of each cowling and let the putty dry. Once dry, I sanded it and the associated bulges down to a circular cross-section. Then I drilled out the exhaust trough by starting a pilot hole, then gradually (and carefully) leaning the drill back to form the trough. Once I had broken through into the cowling, I used a rat-tail needle file to ream the hole larger and smooth out the drill marks. I made the exhaust pipe from stretched styrene tube cut on an angle so the new pipe matched the ones on the other side of the cowling. While I was in a surgery mood, I filed out the horribly moulded oil cooler vent flaps and made new ones from plastic strip. They'll look much better. The work was complicated by each nacelle being barely 1 cm long and perhaps 5 or 6 mm wide. Even holding them steady without obscuring the work area with my fingertips was a challenge.

Getting back to the rest of the model, the second coat of primer has been applied after the round of filling and sanding that the first primer revealed the need for. Let's take a look around.
















It's better, but some work still needs to be done to the lower fuselage/wing joints





The photos don't show that the wing roots are still not as good as I'd like them to get either. More filling and sanding are called for. I'll also need to square off the firewalls. As it is, the lower wing parts don't match with their upper counterparts, resulting in either huge gaps, or engines that point at the runway instead of straight ahead the way they should. Shims will be needed here.

Blimey. Jess you are doing a great job on that kit keep up the good work. The kit is not exactly helping is it
All the best.
tim

Engines are on now. Truing up the firewalls required only sanding, which is reassuring
Let's have another look at the beast, shall we? I noticed that the left horizontal stabiliser was out of allighment, so I did a little gentle bending to get it to where it was supposed to be.









I definitely need to work on the cowling to firewal joints on all 4 eangines (some more than others).These pictures show the cowlings as built and glued on without any filler yet. Here are engines #1&2 from below


#3&4 from below


#1&2 from above


#3&4 from above


The lower wing joints are better, but still needing a little more cleanup.





At this point, the major construction is complete. All that's left is finishing, which will entail landing gear, antennae and props. Oh, and of course puttying and sanding all those imperfections I just showed you. Then it's off to the paint shop

Rant: Do you know how hard it is to find royal blue decal stripes in this city? They're just impossible. Nobody wants to carry stripes anymore, because "They don't sell". Bum.

Now I'm going to have to come up with an alternative way to do the prop tip striping (miniscule 1/2mm strips of red/white/blue) that doesn't involve masking and painting all 16 of those fragile little propeller blades.

Roden instructs us to install a pair of ARN7 radio compass loop antennae (part 13U) on the lower left fuselage. Photos show that JAL used the ARN6 on their DC-7s. This mistake appears to have arisen from Roden's use of generic assembly instructions. Use part 10U instead.





10U and 13U as found on the sprue.


The engine nacelles have received their first coat of putty

Another session of sanding, making sure all the joints are cleaned up and smoothed out. I'll have more to do after the next coat of primer dries, I'm sure of it.

Hi Jessie – beautiful build – I'm impressed with your stammina for sanding and putty – looking forward to the continuation.

Best Regards

Mikael

The detail work begins. First paint the windscreen dark grey to match the decal windows. I'll mask each pane once the paint cures.



Then attach the antennae. First the ARN6 loops. Remember that's part 10U, not 13U.



Next the cabin roof antennae. I used the rather substantial sprue gates as locating pins and drilled out sizable holes to mount them in so they should not come adrift during painting. I had to fabricate the horn antenna because Roden didn't provide it. I'll attach the "horns" of the VOR antenna after painting to keep it from being damaged.



Then I drilled two holes in the leading edge of the vertical fin, into which I'll glue the HF antennae wires that will attach to each triangular mount behind the cockpit.



I should be able to get some white on the model soon.

Hello Jessica:

You are certainly putting a lot of effort into this kit and it is really looking nice as your effort is paying off. Sadly it is too bad, that with the state of technology today, the airline modeler has to continue to struggle with ill fitting kits. I would really like to add this to my 1/144 collection, but I just don't have the patience anymore to deal with the issues that you are overcoming.

The latest issue of the Welsh DC-7 (SL 170P) is vac and resin, very similar to the Comet 3 I reviewed last month. It will likely give you fewer problems than this one does.

The trouble with this kit is not that it's an airliner, but that it comes from Roden, who are not a mainstream producer. Roden kits are not "shake the box" kits, and need some modelling skills to complete. They're really great for building confidence.

It's white! Now it's beginning to look like an airliner
Okay, it's only white primer, but that counts as white





I drilled out the spinners (an incredibly fiddly job; I only knocked all the blades off of one spinner, so I figure that's a win) and mounted them on plastic rod. This will serve as the support while I paint them, and then I'll trim them and use them to mount the propellers into the engines.



Of course, to do that I had to drill out the engines.

The first coat of gloss white is on.





I'll do another coat to even things up, then mask and paint the grey anti-exhaust finish on the wings and tailplanes