Crimea_River
Marshal
Time well spent Grant as the finished product will look much better with the attention. Good work.
1/48 Dora Wings Messerschmitt Bf-109B
- Thread starter Grant Barr
- Start date
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Lovely work so far!
- Thread starter
- #83
Grant Barr
Senior Airman
Mid week update.
Managed to get the front section of the engine cowl painted inside and attached to the chin section protruding out from under the engine. It's not a great fit and some filling and jiggery-pokery will be required to make it look good and to make the rest of the engine cowl sit properly. I mentioned earlier that I thought the fuselage ended up with a slight twist and I think that the poor fit up front here is further evidence of that.
I've also been working on the tail feathers, with the top rear section of the vertical stabiliser having a very thin piece of plastic card added to every so slightly close the gap to the rudder. The rudder is now attached, slightly offset just enough to trigger my OCD'ness. Additionally, based on some very helpful feedback from Andy (
Crimea_River
), Terry (
Airframes
) and Geo (
fubar57
) I've added some brass rod to simulate both the horizontal stabiliser adjuster bar and the elevator pivot. Once attached to the vertical stabiliser I am hoping they will look the biz.
Also need to thank Andy and Terry for photography advice - think that I am getting the hang of it now. Gone away from macro settings on the camera and shooting from further back to get better depth of field. Then just crop and resize the photo to get nice and close in.
That's all I have time for tonight- thanks for taking an interest in my ramblings.
Managed to get the front section of the engine cowl painted inside and attached to the chin section protruding out from under the engine. It's not a great fit and some filling and jiggery-pokery will be required to make it look good and to make the rest of the engine cowl sit properly. I mentioned earlier that I thought the fuselage ended up with a slight twist and I think that the poor fit up front here is further evidence of that.
I've also been working on the tail feathers, with the top rear section of the vertical stabiliser having a very thin piece of plastic card added to every so slightly close the gap to the rudder. The rudder is now attached, slightly offset just enough to trigger my OCD'ness. Additionally, based on some very helpful feedback from Andy (
Crimea_River
), Terry (
Airframes
) and Geo (
fubar57
) I've added some brass rod to simulate both the horizontal stabiliser adjuster bar and the elevator pivot. Once attached to the vertical stabiliser I am hoping they will look the biz.Also need to thank Andy and Terry for photography advice - think that I am getting the hang of it now. Gone away from macro settings on the camera and shooting from further back to get better depth of field. Then just crop and resize the photo to get nice and close in.
That's all I have time for tonight- thanks for taking an interest in my ramblings.
Crimea_River
Marshal
Good work Grant and the photos and descriptions are very effective.
Airframes
Benevolens Magister
I agree, and glad I was able to help a bit.
Nicely done so far!
fubar57
General
Good stuff. Photography level greatly elevated 
- Thread starter
- #89
Grant Barr
Senior Airman
Thanks gents - as always feedback is really appreciated!
Soooooo - update.
Last night I thought I might just re-scribe the two panel lines into the radiator shroud. Simple plan right? Plan was solid - execution sucked!! Placed some thick tape where the panel line was, arranged myself to hold the shroud whilst scribing and squeezed a tiny bit too hard. Boom - broke right down the centre join - sh*t!!!
So - I got busy today. In between work and systems failures I made a reinforcement piece that goes across the bottom inside of the shroud and fits in between the front and back radiator panels. Thinned a cut piece of sprue to fit in the 1.5 mm gap and glued it solidly to the shroud. Used a decent amount of glue and made sure it melted the join to be sure it sticks. Doesn't look great but it won't be seen. Let's hope it holds the two pieces together better than the simple butt join has done until now.
So I did re-scribe the panel lines and promptly forgot to take a photo...
I've also attached the horizontal stabilisers and their support arms. I realised after attaching them I still had some small gaps that needed to be fixed on the bottom side - those with sharp eyes will pick that I have yet to smooth back the filler. Once cleaned up I think the next job will be to attached the elevators.
One of the issues I am undecided about is whether to attach the wing slats, flaps and ailerons before or after I paint the aircraft. Looking at the paint plan if I do them separately it will require some careful matching of colour changes on all 8 surfaces. Probably easier to attach before paint
, but if anyone has any advice I am more than happy to take it.
That's all for now - think I need a drink...
Soooooo - update.
Last night I thought I might just re-scribe the two panel lines into the radiator shroud. Simple plan right? Plan was solid - execution sucked!! Placed some thick tape where the panel line was, arranged myself to hold the shroud whilst scribing and squeezed a tiny bit too hard. Boom - broke right down the centre join - sh*t!!!
So - I got busy today. In between work and systems failures I made a reinforcement piece that goes across the bottom inside of the shroud and fits in between the front and back radiator panels. Thinned a cut piece of sprue to fit in the 1.5 mm gap and glued it solidly to the shroud. Used a decent amount of glue and made sure it melted the join to be sure it sticks. Doesn't look great but it won't be seen. Let's hope it holds the two pieces together better than the simple butt join has done until now.
So I did re-scribe the panel lines and promptly forgot to take a photo...
I've also attached the horizontal stabilisers and their support arms. I realised after attaching them I still had some small gaps that needed to be fixed on the bottom side - those with sharp eyes will pick that I have yet to smooth back the filler. Once cleaned up I think the next job will be to attached the elevators.
One of the issues I am undecided about is whether to attach the wing slats, flaps and ailerons before or after I paint the aircraft. Looking at the paint plan if I do them separately it will require some careful matching of colour changes on all 8 surfaces. Probably easier to attach before paint
, but if anyone has any advice I am more than happy to take it.That's all for now - think I need a drink...
Crimea_River
Marshal
No problem leaving them off if you're confident that they will fit and that you can glue cleanly. I almost always have everything together before I paint as I use very runny glue and have little faith that it won't mess up the paint.
Lovely work so far!
- Thread starter
- #93
Grant Barr
Senior Airman
Thanks all.
The work continues - most of this weekend has been focused on getting the engine cowl together an fitted to the fuselage. My biggest worry was getting the cowl glued together without botching up it's final fit to the fuselage. I had the option to glue and fit later; or glue in-situ on the fuselage - I opted for the first.
Getting the right shape with the two panels was a problem. No guides and just a simple butt joint for the two sides meant that the panels could easily end up at the wrong width. I ended up cutting a Styrofoam wedge and setting the correct outside width with a slide clamp to keep it all lined up - see below...
I did suspect a bit earlier that the fit was not going to be good, and this proved to be the case once I started test fitting. As you can see it ended up being a bit too short and a bit low at the front.
I got busy with fixing the cowl, adding a plastic card strip inside down the butt joint, making sure I used plenty of liquid cement all along. This really added some strength and gave me the confidence to work with the part without fear of breaking it. I then added some card to the front edge and started trimming it back in preparation for cleanup and test fitting. I also added some thin card to the bottom edge to help lift the height of the cowl at the front.
The final photo shows the cowl almost fully cleaned up in preparation for fitting. Not quite perfect at the back but nearly there. As noted will need some surface filler to make sure the new seam is not visible and maybe some more trimming adjustment at the rear.
I decided to adopt Andy's approach to all the panels for this one. I've started removing the flaps, ailerons and slats from the sprues and cleaning them up to fit. Perhaps more pics for these later next week - I'll see how I get on for time.
Thanks again for all the encouragement and for taking an interest.
The work continues - most of this weekend has been focused on getting the engine cowl together an fitted to the fuselage. My biggest worry was getting the cowl glued together without botching up it's final fit to the fuselage. I had the option to glue and fit later; or glue in-situ on the fuselage - I opted for the first.
Getting the right shape with the two panels was a problem. No guides and just a simple butt joint for the two sides meant that the panels could easily end up at the wrong width. I ended up cutting a Styrofoam wedge and setting the correct outside width with a slide clamp to keep it all lined up - see below...
I did suspect a bit earlier that the fit was not going to be good, and this proved to be the case once I started test fitting. As you can see it ended up being a bit too short and a bit low at the front.
I got busy with fixing the cowl, adding a plastic card strip inside down the butt joint, making sure I used plenty of liquid cement all along. This really added some strength and gave me the confidence to work with the part without fear of breaking it. I then added some card to the front edge and started trimming it back in preparation for cleanup and test fitting. I also added some thin card to the bottom edge to help lift the height of the cowl at the front.
The final photo shows the cowl almost fully cleaned up in preparation for fitting. Not quite perfect at the back but nearly there. As noted will need some surface filler to make sure the new seam is not visible and maybe some more trimming adjustment at the rear.
I decided to adopt Andy's approach to all the panels for this one. I've started removing the flaps, ailerons and slats from the sprues and cleaning them up to fit. Perhaps more pics for these later next week - I'll see how I get on for time.
Thanks again for all the encouragement and for taking an interest.
Great fix, looks great now
Crimea_River
Marshal
Doing a great job Grant.
fubar57
General
Great fix
Airframes
Benevolens Magister
Yep, nicely sorted !
- Thread starter
- #99
Grant Barr
Senior Airman
Thanks again for all the encouragement gents. I have been a bit busy over the past 5 weeks with SWMBO asking for a higher privacy fence to be built between us and our next door neighbours. Sadly, in the middle of setting up for all the work, Melbourne has been placed into a strict (Stage 4) lock-down combined with a night time curfew to help bring the number of COVID infections back under control. Luckily our numbers are very low still (compared to most other countries around the world), but higher than we are prepared to accept. As you might image this has created a fair amount of chaos both at home and at work.
Anyway, I have been able to spend a small amount of time at the bench, but have not taken many shots or had time to update this thread. The model looks as follows:
I took Andy's advice and fitted all surfaces in preparation for painting. Unfortunately the fit of some of these surfaces was pretty ordinary, I spent a lot of time getting these panels to fit such that they look acceptable.
The elevators were the best fit of all the control surfaces and I took the option of fitting them with a very small amount of droop. I looked at a lot of Spanish Civil War photos and it seems that if any droop was evident it was only very slight, so I went with that.
As I noted on the photo, the control rods for elevators and horiz stabs are very hard to see. I'm a bit disappointed they are so hard to see, but given the scale I probably should have expected this to be the case.
The ailerons and flaps were a very different story. The end of the flaps adjacent to the ailerons (on both sides) were rounded and had a corresponding front/rear gap with the aileron. It looks like the plastic was too hot when it dropped from the mold and sort of slumped as it cooled (only conjecture - my knowledge of plastic molds is based on PET and polypropylene plastics). Anyway, the result was that I needed to spend a lot of time sanding back the outside edges of the flaps and then filling the resulting gaps with plastic card to try and get the ends to be straight and square. Again photos from the time period indicated that flaps were very rarely left lowered when aircraft were parked - so that's the way I've set them.
In this kit Dora Wings have provided photo etched metal strips that are to be inserted in the wheel wells to represent the zipper in the leather shroud around the well perimeter in the wing. After trying repeatedly across one full week, I finally decided that this method of representing the zipper was totally unworkable. First, to get the photo etch metal to conform to a surface which requires a "twist" in the metal strip and to get CA glue to hold metal that kept wanting to spring back to a flat shape was, at least for me, mission impossible.
So my alternative approach was to use a very fine piece of stretched sprue and glue this around the wheel well as shown in the shots below.
I am pretty pleased with how this has turned out. I will likely sand this down just a little so that it ends up just being a little raised strip around the wheel well that I can highlight when painting the wells.
Finally, I have also fitted the front engine plate PE panel just behind the prop. It's not perfectly aligned, but it will have to do. I don't think it will be too noticeable once the prop is fitted.
I have also done some more work on the undercarriage oleo legs. I have inserted some brass rods at the top to help hold them into the wing panels a bit better. I remember the last 109 I built nearly 30 years ago was a real pain to keep the legs straight and not keep breaking off - this should help. I've not taken any photos of this as yet - but will provide more details in the next update.
As always - thanks for looking in!
Anyway, I have been able to spend a small amount of time at the bench, but have not taken many shots or had time to update this thread. The model looks as follows:
I took Andy's advice and fitted all surfaces in preparation for painting. Unfortunately the fit of some of these surfaces was pretty ordinary, I spent a lot of time getting these panels to fit such that they look acceptable.
The elevators were the best fit of all the control surfaces and I took the option of fitting them with a very small amount of droop. I looked at a lot of Spanish Civil War photos and it seems that if any droop was evident it was only very slight, so I went with that.
As I noted on the photo, the control rods for elevators and horiz stabs are very hard to see. I'm a bit disappointed they are so hard to see, but given the scale I probably should have expected this to be the case.
The ailerons and flaps were a very different story. The end of the flaps adjacent to the ailerons (on both sides) were rounded and had a corresponding front/rear gap with the aileron. It looks like the plastic was too hot when it dropped from the mold and sort of slumped as it cooled (only conjecture - my knowledge of plastic molds is based on PET and polypropylene plastics). Anyway, the result was that I needed to spend a lot of time sanding back the outside edges of the flaps and then filling the resulting gaps with plastic card to try and get the ends to be straight and square. Again photos from the time period indicated that flaps were very rarely left lowered when aircraft were parked - so that's the way I've set them.
In this kit Dora Wings have provided photo etched metal strips that are to be inserted in the wheel wells to represent the zipper in the leather shroud around the well perimeter in the wing. After trying repeatedly across one full week, I finally decided that this method of representing the zipper was totally unworkable. First, to get the photo etch metal to conform to a surface which requires a "twist" in the metal strip and to get CA glue to hold metal that kept wanting to spring back to a flat shape was, at least for me, mission impossible.
So my alternative approach was to use a very fine piece of stretched sprue and glue this around the wheel well as shown in the shots below.
I am pretty pleased with how this has turned out. I will likely sand this down just a little so that it ends up just being a little raised strip around the wheel well that I can highlight when painting the wells.
Finally, I have also fitted the front engine plate PE panel just behind the prop. It's not perfectly aligned, but it will have to do. I don't think it will be too noticeable once the prop is fitted.
I have also done some more work on the undercarriage oleo legs. I have inserted some brass rods at the top to help hold them into the wing panels a bit better. I remember the last 109 I built nearly 30 years ago was a real pain to keep the legs straight and not keep breaking off - this should help. I've not taken any photos of this as yet - but will provide more details in the next update.
As always - thanks for looking in!
