<> 1/48 Arado Ar196A - WW1 / WW2 over Water.

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I like the look of that lot Andy - nicely done.
I reckon that side cable could be a real paint to remove neatly. I think it'll look more than acceptable when the fuselage and cable are painted, and some darker wash applied to create shadow and depth around the cable, giving more of a '3D' look.
 
Thanks Kirby. The moulded cable will live.

My last session was devoted to getting the wings on so here's the process. I always look to get everything symmetrical and the dihedral right and some kits make it easy. This one doesn't. I started by cementing the wing assemble at the front and rear intersections with the fuselage the night before leaving the wing roots open. The model is then securely clamped to a flat granite tile with a bevel square lined up on the seam of the fuselage and the vertical stab. A close look shows small pen marks at the nose, just behind the pit opening, and at the base of the tail and white background helps the Mk I eyeball line things up.



At this point, the $120 retail model reveals itself to have a warped vertical stab which leans to starboard enough to be noticeable. Fortunately, I was able to straighten it with careful but firm manual pressure. At this point, the wing dihedral is checked and properly set using 0.5 inch spacer blocks near the wing tips. A look at the wing root reveals a fairly good fit on the port side....



...but the starboard side on this $120 retail kit not so much.



Oh, and by the way, the headrest was painted.



With the same set up, I ran some Tamiya Extra Thin into the port wing root as it was. On the right side however, I cut bits of styrene card and stuffed them into the gap and ran the glue in when the gap was filled.



And with that done, I installed the horizontal stab, checking that the distance from each tip to the tile was exactly the same. A block of wood with my tweezers on top acted as a wedge that allowed for fine adjustments.



After a few hours, I ran some thin CA into the wing roots for added strength and levelling and let the model sit over night. Late today, I released it from the jig and no noises were heard, which is a good thing. Next up will be sanding, filling, and scribing in the wing roots and in the fore and aft joints with the fuselage. Did I mention this kit costs $120 retail?
 
Nicely done Andy. I use a similar method, but employ an old cutting mat, set vertically and checked for 'square', to align the vertical and horizontal planes against the printed squares on the cutting mat, with the fuselage sitting on my 'main' cutting mat, again aligned against the printed lines.
And $120 - that's 70 quid - they must have been smoking some weird stuff to come up with that price !!!
 
Thanks guys. A couple of hours spent sanding those nasty seams on the floats. Lots of sticky-outy things prevent this from being an easy job and the moulded rivets are all gone. I will apply a coat of primer and post pics later.
 
The pics that follow don't reflect the hours that went into filling and smoothing seams several times over. The floats are now acceptable for the next step of tying them together on the struts. The wing roots still need a bit of attention, though it's difficult to see with the grey primer applied. The seams on the floats took 4 passes of filling with primer and filing/sanding to get to this point. It was made difficult by the seam placement that, with a bit more forethought from Italeri, could have been much easier to deal with, if not completely hidden. As it was, in the process of dealing with the large step in an awkward spot, I obliterated all the raised rivets which I'm not going to replace.

Note also the putty applied to the vertical faces of the flap cutouts. This was to fill a large step at each of the 4 faces. Onward and upward.....

 
Thanks guys. Yeah Wayne, I often hit a wall in my builds at this point so things slow down a bit. Pushing through though and hopefully will get it done before we head off to Dux in a month.
 

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