Well, at last I feel I have made enough progress to post some updates. Not as much done as I had hoped, but hopefully you'll see why I've taken so long. The first two shots, below, were my key references for the undercarriage.
Photo 1 is the BBMF Lanc from the Haynes Lancaster manual and shows the colour difference quite well, particularly the contrast between the matt aluminium of the oleos and the polished chrome of the piston legs.
Photo 2 is a wartime photo showing the correct tyre and some nice weathering on the oleos and hubs.
The instructions give the colours as the undercarriage on S-Sugar at Hendon Museum but I'm pretty sure that was post war, for reasons I'll explain later.
Photo 3.
Back to basics first.
Photos 4 5. The support brackets were given a coat of primer then sprayed in interior grey-green. Then they were positioned, using the oleos as a guide, and superglued into their final position. This was really difficult but after much persuasion and a lot of profanity, I finally got them fixed in position but not without some breakages on the inner wing section. This was mainly because there are so few clear points to apply pressure. However, everything broken off is repairable with a bit of time and superglue!
(A) shows the forward wall panel which had to be trimmed to fit the new position of the support backs. This is just for position and needs to be removed, riveted and painted. The yet-to-be-scratch-built fire extinguishers will be positioned on this, eventually. I should also point out that because of poor light conditions, all of the photos were taken using direct flash, so they're all a little bright.
I felt that I should spray-paint rather than hand-paint, because I feel that I can never get as smooth a result painting by hand and I wanted these to look well. All the components for the undercarriage are supplied as cast metal and I wanted to achieve a finish close to the real thing. This approach required a lot of time-consuming masking,
Photo 6.
I used and old piece of fret with some double-sided tape as a support, so as to paint as much as possible in one go. The colour scheme for all these pieces was black with some unpainted metal, masked. First, everything got a coat of automotive grey metal primer, then a coat of automotive matt black, which has a slight satin sheen off it.
Photo 7.
Next was the turn of the oleos and hubs. After priming and a spray of matt black, the oleos were masked to preserve the black areas before the exposed areas were to be given a coat of aluminium. The hubs were just rubbed down with wet dry paper to show some wear. However, I changed my mind about the hub colours and I'll explain why later. The hubs were drilled to receive the brake lines. Something I only found out, is that the centre of the hub on the Lancaster doesn't rotate, it's only the outer section with the holes, that rotates around the centre.
Photo 8.
After the oleos were unmasked, this was the result. I was pleased with how they turned out and I think that the result justified the time spent in masking and painting.
Photo 9.
I hope that you can see the contrast between the matt aluminium and the shiny piston legs. The aluminium finish was achieved with Revell Aluminium 66 which then had a spray of matt varnish applied which flattened it down. After various experiments with the piston legs, the result was achieved with burnishing and polishing the bare metal. I experimented with adding a coat of Klear to a spare piece of polished metal, but I couldn't see any appreciable difference, so I've decided to leave them as polished metal and just hope they don't tarnish in the future.
Now to why I decided to change the hubs.
Photos 10 11 below are shots I found only in the last week or so. They're wartime shots of S-Sugar and show that the hubs were not painted black on the rotating outer section, but seem to be metal finish. In the colour shot, you can just about see that the oleos follow the pattern of the oleos as I painted them.
Back to the other components. Next is a shot of all the undercarriage bits with the masking removed. You can see I've made an initial attempt to remove the paint from the outer hubs. Rather than delay this post, I'll complete the the job in the next few days, when I have more time. They're a little scratched from the sanding but I hope to be able to polish them back up a bit more.
Photo 12.
The next couple of shots show the dry fits for the oleos.
Photos 13 14.
Finally (Whew!) a shot of how the rear supports should assemble,
Photo 15. The brackets
(A) are attached to the rear wall of the wheel well. The lugs on the top of the oleos
(B) will be attached to the green support legs (seen at the top of this post). The bolts are to show how all of the elements of the undercarriage will be attached to each other. The bolts are threaded through and retained by a small nut. The excess should then be snipped off.
I had hoped to get more of the assembly done before I posted but there is a load of bolt head detail to be added first and also lots of brake and hydraulic lines which are easier to add before the undercarriage is assembled. As well as that, the wheel wells need detailing before the gear is installed. I hope that all this detail isn't too longwinded but I suppose I'm trying to justify why it took so long to post and I've also had to concentrate on getting some entries together for the IPMS Irish Nationals, which take place this weekend.
Now that all the painting is done, progress on the assembly should go reasonably quickly, unless I hit some unexpected snags. I also hope that installing the undercarriage at this stage doesn't cause me major problems when it comes to painting the finished aircraft. Once this weekend is out of the way, I should be able to crack on.
Till then, cheers,
Gerry