@Oliver - that is coming along nice.

Here is the interior of my Assault Glider, looking to be a nice kit.

Kevin: Yes, but the fit issues of the Ju52 truly jangled my nerves.

The Assault glider really has a fine interior. Is it 1/172 scale?

Oliver

Yes, 1/72 scale. It is the Bronco kit, so far very nice.

Hi Oliver!
Good work on Tante Ju! Looking closely to pic 1 one can see your hard work... cheers for that

And after the paint is on (as well as on the parts in the background) it turns out pretty nice!


...

... I wonder if someone on aeroscale ever managed that ?

keep on, Thomas

Hi Oliver!

I think that for almost all of us, sanding corrugated areas are an almost impossible challenge! You did a great job on your Ju 52 so far!

"After a longer operation with putty and sand-paper most of the fitting-issues on my Ju 52 disappeared. But sanding corrugated sheet seems nearly impossible for me"

Have fun modeling!
Mike

Well an update on my little Hastings and it also has involved a fair amount of filling and sanding, albeit on a small scale.
I got the body together and you can see the mismatch between the halves. I outlined the detailed for a photo because I knew I would lose a bit of it in the shaping process.

Post the sanding

I filled in the large dents that represented the cockpit windows

and then decided to do the fuselage windows since that were some what erratic as well.

I will use decals for the glass.
Note the wing stump. It bears no relation to the wing that is to be fixed to it.
But on a good note the tail wings fitted very well, just a metal pin and glue with almost no filler.

The wings after a lot of filling, sanding and repeating I got some semblance of a join.




I will give it a coat of primer and see what is left to tidy up.

cheers
Michael

Michael, I see you are a master of filling and fairing resin castings!

Ive no doubt this will be a Hastings before this is all over.

Michael

Wow, that is a lot of puttying and sanding on your Hastings! It is looking good so far and you should end up with a great looking model.
Have fun modeling!
Mike

It is time to start putting some weight in the front end of my Cessna 172 to lessen the chance that it will be a tail sitter. As a start, I added the engine mount and epoxied a small lead wight in place of the engine.



Next step is to add the bottom and front have of the fuselage and build some more weights in the remaining space where the engine would have been.

Have fun modeling!
Mike

Great work going on here guys.
Time for a quick update - the Dakota's navigator/radio operator's mid section is mostly complete and I've made a good start on the internal stuff in the main cargo area too

Thanks Jonathan and Mike. Unfortunately that's only the first round since after priming I have decided I don't like the overly deep panel lines. They will be next to go.

At least I don't have to do an interior. Paul, yours is brilliantly done. Very tidy work on the framing.

cheers
Michael

Paul, your interior is fantastic! It would almost be a shame to hide this within a fuselage. Well done!
Have fun modeling
Mike

While I am working on the front end of the Cessna 172, I decided to add some details. The front intake appears to have a screen in most of the photos I have seen. So with a little cutting of a wire screen, I now have a proper look to the this opening under the prop.





Have fun modeling!
Mike

Here's a little modeling diversion as I work on adding more nose weight. I detailed the two openings in the front of the cowl with scrap PE. These are for the carb heat intake and the cabin heat intake and are not open holes in the real aircraft. They are hard to see but look more like radiator type devices. With a little paint, these will nicely prevent any see through of the nose weights!



Have fun modeling!
Mike

Nice use of screens in the openings. Adding little details like that makes all the difference.

Continuing my slow roll to completion, I now have the front engine compartment just about closed up and full of nose weight. I brush painted everything in the nose flat black shortly after I took this photo.



Next step is to close this off and start working on the fuselage seams.
Have fun modeling!
Mike

MONOGRAM 1/48 C-47

Hi Everyone!

There’s lots of good stuff going on here, and talk about a wide variety of subjects! Paul, I’ve been following your build with lots of interest for obvious reasons. My kit was purchased for a song, but no instructions. At first, I thought my kit was incomplete looking at your work on the radio room. You’ve done a bang-up job on it!

My focus on this build will be seam work, and working on painting stripes. I began by test fitting the parts, and for the most part they were pretty good, so I made an attempt at making some interior green. My first attempts were less than banner, and test fitting showed that not too much will be seen of the inside. In fact, very little. So instead of fighting to get the proper color I went with Tamiya’s cockpit color (Mitsubishi interior green, a light version of US interior green), my first attempt was a lovely RAF interior green, while the color was spot on, it just looked wrong for this aircraft. I then did the instrument panel black, with some thin white for the instruments, it turned out ok, but one won’t see much of it.

The real work began with the windows. The kit molded one’s are clear, but each as an ejector pin mark smack dab in the middle. So, there was a sanding session using mean Mr Sanding stick (250 grit), this ground out the pin marks. This was followed by sanding with finer grits, and then a coat of future (found at Ace hardware! Thanks Swanny for the info!). With the clarity restored, test fitting found that some of the windows would be sitting too far inside the panes. So began the process of separating them from each other to get a flush fit. This was a bit more work than anticipated, but the outcome seems to look nice following test fitting.

In between sanding sessions, I constructed the front office, not putting too much effort into it. I did add some thin white to the radios and did a little dry brushing, though this was mainly for my wife’s cousin’s son (no idea what kind of relation that makes him!) who at 12 is keen to learn some more on modelling. For Scott it has been Gundum (sp?) snap kits so far. I’ve given him Monogram’s P-47, so he can take a stab at gluing and seams and basic skills. This has been truly rewarding for me, as I never had a modeler take time to show me different techniques when I was his age. Then watching him go at it, a big side benefit to the hobby!

So, at about this time, trial fitting of the fuselage started in earnest. This revealed that my suspicions about two halves was correct. The halves were warped, the right side being about 1 cm bowed with a twist at the cockpit area. The left was just bowed. Thankfully, my sister-law knew where there was the largest stock pot I’ve ever seen was in the house. Following a long hot boiling, dipping and straightening session, I had two halves that would mate up. I sanded both sides flush to enhance fit, and the removal of the locator pins allowed the panel lines to align.





Next up will be the rest of the interior, attachment of the glass and closing up this beast’s fuselage! Having a blast with the hobby, hope you are too! Till next time.

Hi John, good to see your progress over coming the vintage issues of that kit! I am impressed with how you refinished the windows, that worked a treat.

Great to hear you are encouraging a kid. My dad was a model builder all his life and helped me along when i was that age.

Michael: Your filling and sanding operation on this small scale is really great! Looking forward to Your second round!

Mike: Your model looks good! How do You fix the weigth? White glue?

Paul: Outstanding work framing Your Dakota. This will be truly a gem!

John: Good to see one more Dakota. And great to hear of Your "scholar". I built a MiG-25 with my seven year old daughter and she made a polka dot painting on it, finally.

Thomas and Mike: Thank You very much for Your kind words. Actually it was more avoiding sanding, than doing it .
I painted some areas in a darker metal tone and applied a very slight weathering
The old decals did not get on well. I tortured them 4 hours with micro sol and stopped it after some cracks appeared. But the setting of some decals was not nice. So I learned my lesson and next time I will paint them on corrugated surfaces.
Finally, here it is:





Hope You like it!

Oliver

Fantastic work Oliver with a difficult kit. Decals over corrugation must be a bit of nightmare but they seem to have turned out pretty well from your pictures.

cheers
Michael

Michael: Thank You very much! Looking at the "B" onto the upper wing reveals the problems with the decals.

Oliver

If you look deeply into the history of the C-47, you'll discover that those 'ejector pin marks' are in fact removable discs set into the windows. They were designed to allow the self-loading cargo to poke their rifles through the windows and shoot at passing aircraft (hopefully the bad guys). There's an unconfirmed and probably mythical report that a Zero was shot down this way during the Aleutian campaign.

Wartime Daks had them, but they were quickly replaced with solid windows after the war.

Thank you John, that's very kind




I dread to say this after the amount of work you've gone to but the small circles on the windows are meant to represent grommets where small arms could be attached. I'm sorry to tell you that they were not ejector marks.
On the plus side, it won't detract from the look of the aircraft and I'm looking forward to seeing your paint scheme !

Also you are a braver man than I to try to straighten a whole fuselage section with heat - Well done on realigning the halves !

Oliver, what a great looking Junkers ! The metallic scheme turned out lovely and the corrugated effect looks awesome. You make we want to try my hand at one of these in the future as it's always an iconic aircraft I remember from the movie "where eagles dare"

I see that everyone is really turning out some good looking airplanes.

Bob

Agreed, some excellent work going on here! Sorry for my silence lately...combo of personal obligations, USPS losing a package of model supplies, and struggling with another build (shameless plug for my Bulgarian Yak-9 build log...trust me, it'll make you feel better about your own builds ) I feel bad that everyone is having so much progress and success while my Zep sits on the floor by my desk, but here's what I've been up to.

Many pictures of Zeppelins show a somewhat fragmented paint "scheme" rather than one single shade of silvery-gray. This is likely due to the numerous sheets of doping skin that had to be individually attached to the skeleton, like in
this picture.

It looks nice and orderly, but for some reason all the pictures seem to show somewhat haphazard rectangles and step-shapes all across the balloon. I can't figure out why, but it does make for a more varied and visually interesting sight. So while I wasn't building, I was learning Photoshop basics to plan out my model's skin. Here are the (VERY) rough plans I have so far:




The second picture is a closer representation...I tried two different PS techniques, and the latter turned out to be easier and a better result. Ideally, the starboard picture shouldn't be as patchy...that technique made it easier for me to lose track of where my layers were on the master drawing.