Hi everyone. I've been concentrating on getting the skinning up to date and that's taken me longer than I thought and has thrown up some unexpected problems. The first major piece of skinning is on the port outer wing. I should also say that the days are now so short that most of my building and all photography is done with artificial light or flash.
Here three skins are supplied to cover the wing area between the two main spars, as marked. I would have thought that it would have been easier to supply this as one piece. It is also important to get the orientation right, otherwise they won't fit properly. Also, I'm not sure that these follow the panel lines of the actual aircraft.
The three pieces were carefully taped together for marking as riveted panels. This was really difficult to get right, as some of the stringers don't span the full wing and it took a couple of attempts to get it right. It's not helped by the fact that the inner panel joins don't follow the stringers but cut across some of them. The other problem is attaching them firmly to the reduced surface area of the ribs and stringers. I used contact adhesive for this, as superglue would dry before half the wing was coated.
This is the result. It certainly shows stressed metal, but still shows the panel line joins. It was particularly hard to get a good contact when the joins were between stringers. As this wing is going to be fully skinned, I'm not too fussy about painting it all in interior green.
Had some problems with the contact adhesive as it is very viscous, strings almost immediately and lifts enamel paint off the inner surfaces. This is going to be a problem when the inner surfaces are visible on the finished model. Just wondering if anyone can recommend a thinner, non-stringing contact adhesive?
Still following the build sequence, the port and starboard inner wing trailing edge sections were skinned on top and the port, on the underside. No major concerns here except to leave a 1mm overhang on one side. You'll note that the flap interiors are now finished in interior green.
Next, the port inner flap was painted interior green and skinned, as in this montage of top and bottom.
Having confirmed that the elevators were fabric covered, I set about finding a good reference. The best I came up with is this diagram from the Lancaster Manual. This is marked Crown copyright, so there's a chance I'll end my days in the Tower of London! The skeleton for the elevator was assembled in post 754, page 51.
The drawings indicate that the fabric panels were joined and anchored to the ribs by strengthening strips of tape, so I thought I'd try to simulate that look.
I used the two metal shaped skins supplied for top and bottom because they were pre-shaped to curve around the leading edge. Then I added 0.7mm masking strips to mark the strips. This I felt would blend in after a couple of coats of primer and after surface painting, should almost disappear.
That's the skinning up to date and I could now add the pieces I had assembled in the last couple of posts.
First I added the two stowage bags in the rear fuselage, next to the crew door. I decided to add the canvas bag covers, made from masking tape, as I wasn't sure what these bags would contain.
In the crew rest section, between the wings, a second escape axe and an oxygen bottle holder were added and, further along, the torch and screwdriver are just visible.
A further parachute was added near the flap screw…
and a shelf and storage box added to the rear section, by the rear turret. The crawl board was given a surface of non-slip material (fine wet dry).
That's the build right up to date. Don't know that I'm going to get much more done now until after Christmas. Will post again as soon as I have something to show.
Gerry