Thank you Thomas !
I've made a few other small details today, maybe I'll get the chance to post photos later.

As promised !

Paul,
With the paint on the details, it looks just great!

Gaz

This is really looking nice.

Thanks guys, we're getting there!
I'm slowly ticking items off the list of interior details i want to add. It's getting to be a small list and I'm excited to get towards exterior paintwork.

Hi Paul

This is an amazing build! A question at a rather mundane level - does the weight of the wings risk twisting the fuselage halves with so much material cut away?

All the best

Rowan

This really is fantastic. I love how clean the build looks: pristine.

Thank you Rowan
As soon as i decided to perform the surgery on the wing roots and remove all the good supporting plastic that Tamiya supplied I knew I'd have to replace that lost strength and stability somehow and the obvious answer was to replicate real life and build in the wing spars since you'd see a small section of them anyway.
This has proved remarkably successful and the model is rock solid when the halves are joined.

Why is it the smallest details seem to take the longest ? !

Paul,
as usual your updates never disappoint. Those seatbelts do indeed look more like fabric then PE. Well done.
Joel

Paul,
The seatbelts look great! I''ll try the cotton bud too.

Gaz

Just be careful not to get wispy bits of cotton stuck in the glue!

Progress stopped for a while as we had a small housewarming party for the new place and my 'desk' resumed it's former function as a dining table.
I'm currently making a new desk from an old flat-pack style wardrobe that the old owners left behind when they moved out.
Hopefully get it finished up today at least to the point where i can unpack the basics again and get modelling!

Paul,
I had to surrender my control of the dining table. I've built a mobile modelling bench. It's made from square aluminium tubing, steel brackets, and a plywood top. All held together by rivets. Even the castors are riveted to the frame. The drawers are stackable plastic affairs. It is 900mm wide (36 inch-ish), 500mm deep (19 inch-ish), and 900mm tall. That puts the top closer to my eyes than the dining room table. It probably doesn't weigh 10kg's empty. But once I filled the drawers with gear, that changed.

Cost me an entire weekend of model building.

Cheers,

Gaz

I sympathize with both of you. Way back in my younger days (1970s), my modeling workbench was our dinning room table.
Tools, paints, and what evers were kept in two small fishing tackle boxes. What a pain in the neck to drag everything out from the hall closet for a building session, then pack it all back up when done.

Painting back then was 100% Testors enamels, so I'm sure that my wife wasn't thrilled about the smells, nor the constant noise of a small hobby compressor that ran constantly. But I'll give her credit, she never once complained, nor said one word about any of it.

Now we own a fairly large house, and I have a bedroom that I turned into my modeling/computer room. Heat, Air Conditioning, all the light I need, and everything in the room is for my two hobbies. One of the best parts is that one of the bathrooms is right across the hall. At my age believe me it's a real plus.

Joel

, Joel ; We all envy you I'm sure. It's difficult to justify assigning a whole room to a hobby so I imagine a lot of us are relegated to a corner

Here's my corner in the new house with the re-purposed wardrobe-turned-desk that the old owners so helpfully left behind in the bedroom.



*edit* Yeah, I need to build smaller models in future.......

Paul,
Your work space looks just fine to me. It's permanent which is something I never had in our apt/condo days. Now that's a royal pain to have to setup and tear down for every work session.

We have a 3 bedroom house, and a finished basement. Our son decided that his room was just to small measuring 10 x 10 ft, so he moved into the basement which we quickly renamed the dungeon. He does the washes, so we really don't have to go through his "Kingdom" other then to the boiler room twice per year. Now we have two spare bedrooms, one of which is a quest room that is very rarely ever used, and has become one very large storage pantry for the kitchen, like there aren't enough cabinets in there.

So there is now one bedroom that isn't used at all, and I mean ever! I worked a deal with my wife that she can control the big screen TV in the den, as I rarely watch tv other then sports, as I either stream the games, or watch them in the master bedroom. She hates computers and doesn't even know how to turn one on. I on the other hand became addicted to them, so I needed to relocate the computer desk and all the equipment once jr. moved downstairs, as that's where the computer was. The spare never used bedroom became the computer room with the necessary lines to the basement for our son's computer, PlayStation, etc (this is before wireless made life even simpler). The next logical step was just working that deal to have it as my man cave. Since the basement was out, and the garage housing two cars, freezer, storage, and my workshop, it was negotiate for the rights to the spare bedroom, or model in the kitchen. For once I lucked out. Go figure.

Joel

Great story Joel.

And in today's news:

Happy to see the bomb doors installed. That was one gutsy mod you undertook.

Paul,
Your scratch bomb bay doors look dead on. Impressive to say the least.
Joel

Thank you both!
Once painted it'll be hard to spot that there's anything different about the doors but it's an important modification to the model that I knew I had to do to properly represent the Lanc carrying a Tallboy bomb.

Somehow finishing this part has seemed like overcoming a big hurdle in the build and it's spurred me on to make some great progress today as i'll now show.

I'm really pleased how this rear area has turned out - I think that the new details sit in space above all the ribbing and give a nice depth to everything.

In hindsight I think I should have made a new flight engineers seat from scratch. The kit part is way too thick. It looks ok but I may revisit this at some point.

Paul,
Over all, the total interior effect is quite stunning, and certainly an attention getter for any viewer. Gluing up the fuselage halves is always a milestone for me as well.
Joel