1/32 Hasegawa Fw 190D-9 "Black One"

[JKim]

Thank you kindly for stopping by.
I'm taking it nice and slow on the Dora build, concentrating on just a few things at a time. The ejector pin marks on the wheel well have been puttied and sanded.

After one round of puttying and sanding, the gun cowling is ready to receive its first coat of primer. I like to use Mr Surfacer 1000 thinned with Tamiya Lacquer Thinner.

The primer coat reveals some subtle flat spots and edges that need to be smoothed out. I'll do some light filling with Mr Surfacer 1000 and then give it another rub with finer sandpaper. You'll notice that some of the panel lines on the cowling have been ground away by the sanding. These will be rescribed.

After another iteration of putty/sanding, I'm pretty satisfied with the contours of the cowling. Using a scale drawing as reference, I trace lines on the gun cowling with a soft lead pencil. These are guide lines for rivets. I use a rotary ponce wheel-type tool from RB Productions called the Rivet-R Mini to trace the rivets onto the gun cowling.

I've become fairly comfortable tracing the rivets along the pencilled lines without a straight edge but sometimes I lose control over curved surfaces. Being in such a high visibility area, a few errant rows of rivets are going to be filled and riveted again.

The riveting on the cowling is finished. The three small circles between the gun openings were made using a leather beading tool. One of them was slightly misplaced, so I filled with it with putty so that I can redo it. Once the small repairs are done, I'll give the cowling a final coat of primer.

There is a small scoop on the starboard side of the gun cowling. I've hollowed out the end of the scoop with a sharp x-acto blade.

 

[Robert Porter]

Awesome! Tracing the lines is a great tip. I have been eyeballing applying Dymo tape. Will have to try that!

 

[SANCER]

Verry nice work in the cowling John .
It's good to see your progress and learn from.
Saludos

 

[Wurger]

 

[Wayne Little]

Good stuff!

 

[JKim]

Thanks guys! Watch the Dymo tape on puttied surfaces, Robert. It's very sticky and can pull up putty that's been already applied.

 

[Robert Porter]

True! I usually detack it considerably before using it. But I like the raised edge and being able to cut it to size beats using a template or a ruler for most needs.

 

[JKim]

Yeah, I love using Dymo for scribing.

 

[JKim]

I continued work on the gun cowling after work today. I had forgotten panel line along the front edge of the gun cover so I scribed it using a piece of Dymo tape as a guide.

Another shot of primer to check my work. It's hard to tell from the photos but there are still some very subtle flat spots and edges that need fine sanding.

After sanding and polishing, I'm going to set the gun cowling aside for now.

The rest of the evening is spent dealing with these little buggers. The Dora exhaust pipes are broken up into three sections for each side. They are well-shaped but the ends are not hollowed out. Aftermarket resin exhaust pipes are available but this is one upgrade I've decided to skip and will do the hollowing out myself.

Over multiple builds, I've done this a number of times now so I have my little system. First step is to put three holes into the end of each exhaust stub. This is done with a new x-acto blade. Placement of the holes is very important so I take my time here because if the hole is not centered, you run the risk of the knife blade blowing out the whole side of an exhaust pipe.

Once the holes are done, I use the same x-acto knife to connect the holes and ream out an oval-shaped opening. Invariably, the tip of a sharp blade will break during this step so I've learned to do all of the holes FIRST.

Gouging out the ends of these small pipes is tedious work but the result is well worth it, at least to me. I am stickler for hollow exhaust pipes and gun barrels that look like they mean business. At the halfway point, I take my dinner break, which is timely because my fingers start cramping from holding the small pieces.

At the end of the evening, I have a nice set of hollowed exhaust pipes.

I hope I'm not boring anyone with these mundane steps but the devil is in the details, as they say. I can't think of a hobby where this saying holds more true.

 

[Wayne Little]

Excellent John, all good as long as you don't stick the knife in your finger......been there done that....

 

[Wurger]

 

[turbo]

Nice work John. It's attention to these little details that makes a great model.

 

[Robert Porter]

Please feel free to share all such details. I find them educational and very useful. Excellent work! Honestly can not see the flat spots on the gun cover you referred to but will take your word for it. Pictures have a tough time with that type of detail. Have you noticed a difference in the plastic between Hasegawa and other manufacturers? I find the plastic in say Airfix to be very brittle while that used by Tamiya seems much softer.

 

[JKim]

Thanks everyone! I should have a little more time to spend on the workbench now that I've finished my slideshow from my Kazakhstan/Kyrgyzstan trip.

Excellent John, all good as long as you don't stick the knife in your finger......been there done that....

Too late! As you know Wayne, given the small surface area on these little exhaust stubs, it's very possible for the knife tip to slip off of the plastic piece and into your finger. Luckily, it only happened once with this set and without much force so it only bled if I squeezed my finger tip.

Please feel free to share all such details. I find them educational and very useful. Excellent work! Honestly can not see the flat spots on the gun cover you referred to but will take your word for it. Pictures have a tough time with that type of detail. Have you noticed a difference in the plastic between Hasegawa and other manufacturers? I find the plastic in say Airfix to be very brittle while that used by Tamiya seems much softer.

I have not made any comparative evaluations of the plastic but I've never had a problem with the plastic that Hasegawa. I'd rather have plastic a little on the softer side than the hard side as I find softer plastic easier to work with. Interestingly, I noted in my Spitfire 24 build that the plastic was softer than what I was used to. That kit was an Eduard Limited Edition of an Airfix mold.

 

[Robert Porter]

That is interesting as of course each manufacturer uses their own mix for the plastic even if using someone else's molds. I like you prefer the softer ones as the really hard plastic tends to snap or shear easily. Especially fiddly bits like pitot tubes and landing gear.

 

[Crimea_River]

Great work John. You should get yourself a mini vice to hold those things so you don't prick yourself all the time

 

[JKim]

Thanks for checking in! I'm getting closer to the critical cutting of the fuselage to make room for the Eagle resin cockpit. Since the engine plug occupies the fuselage just forward of the cockpit, I thought any dry-fitting of the cockpit parks should include the engine plug too. It's a simple matter of assembling the pieces using Blu Tack when the parts aren't held together by friction alone. This is also a good time to start thinking about additions to the engine plug, if any. Please note that I have cleaned up all of the pieces of any molding ridges. It's more tedious work but nothing says, "hey I'm a plastic model" more than a molding line down the middle of a pipe or tube.

I can now pop in the engine plug into the fuselage halves. The wing section between the wheel wells is put into place too. I'm also looking at the shell ejector chutes and how they relate to the chute openings in the wing section... do I want to do something here? Ideally, I should punch out the chute openings in the wing bottom, cut the solid chutes off and replace them with rectangular tubing all the way through.

I want to check what will actually be visible from the outside so I've fitted the bottom wing as part of this dry-fit exercise. Again, no glue involved... just tape and bits of Blu Tack to hold things together.

Trimming the sprue gates on the snail-like supercharger left some damage. The dry-fitting showed that this might be visible so I elected to repair the damage using stretched sprue. I'll sand this down once the glue dries.

Alright... I think it is time to do some plastic surgery. I'm going to take the leap and remove the instrument panel hood from the fuselage. I've read the instructions from the Eagle Editions cockpit set over and over and have noted the removal details.

The instructions say to remove the hood exactly at the panel line. Using Tamiya sprue cutters as scissors, I cut away some of the hood so that I have good access to do a razor saw cut.

Being a chicken and very cautious by nature, I elect to saw the hood right above the panel line and then trim the excess back to the panel line. This will minimize the chance of damage due to an errant saw cut.

The excess is removed all to the panel line scraping a sharp x-acto blade at 90 degrees and then using a sanding stick to finish the job. At some point during this step, the knife slipped and punctured my right ring finger tip. Nothing serious but I had to take break to stop the bleeding and apply a band-aid.

With my finger repaired, I do the same to the other side and then check the fit of the resin hood. Not perfect but pretty damn good for resin. I'm just happy there is no indication of the dreaded "resin shrinkage" that I'm usually cursed with. That little kink in the bottom edge of the starboard side of the resin hood bothers me but it should be easy to fix.

The raised details on the interior sides of the fuselage halves need to be removed. I use a curved x-acto blade to slice off the raised features.

Coarse sandpaper is used to completely remove the raised stuff. The Eagle instructions say to thin the fuselage sides to 0.040 inches. My caliper is in mm so I quickly run upstairs and google 0.040 inches = about 1 mm. The thickness measures about 1.3mm - 1.4mm. Using the curved x-acto blade, I scrape off plastic from the interior and then coarse sandpaper to even everything out.

When the edges hit about 1.1mm to 1.2mm, I dry-fit the cockpit tub into the fuselage to check fit.

Dry-fitting shows me where to concentrate my fuselage thinning efforts. The resin sidewalls should be flush with the sills on the fuselage so I have to thin a bit more. I have to keep in mind that I have some tape holding the cockpit tub together that is getting in the way of the fit.

Tomorrow is a day off for me so I'll get to do more work on the Dora. Until then!

 

[turbo]

Great work John, the patient is doing well!

 

[Wurger]

 

[Robert Porter]

Looking fantastic! Great work. Probably already know this but I take cheap water based marker pens and heavily cover the contact points on cockpits then on a test fit the contact points on the fuselage will have some of the marker color where it is touching. Helps me narrow down where to shave. Water based so it just wipes away after.