1/48 Wellington Mk. III of 425 Squadron - "Starting to Finish"

It looks much better wich thise details, maybe, in the end you see them barely, but still

Lots of good info and great work.

Thanks everyone. Grant, for sure the wing hollows will be closed off! I want to install the ribs first so that there will be something to glue against. This will require a lot of trial fitting with paper templates first and will definitely be a challenge.

So far, I've kept the port wing assembly intact for reference and so I'll get to repeat all this again there. At this point I'm not 100% sure how I will secure the main gear struts as these will need to be vertical whereas there is a slight wing dihedral to deal with. That's one of the reasons why I want to keep the port side intact for now, so I can look at the angles.

Crimea_River said:

I'm not 100% sure how I will secure the main gear struts as these will need to be vertical whereas there is a slight wing dihedral to deal with.

Click to expand...

Yup, I can see that being a challenge and it's evident in the photographs how the leg is mounted in the nacelle, which will help a little, but you'll come up with something.

wow Andy, nice work

Thanks again friends.

Work continues on the starboard wheel well with the addition of the rear ribs, curved gussets along the lower edge, and other detail bits. As you can see, I've been using the inside of this wing for paint mix tests for earlier projects.



Note the sink marks in the wing surface near the back of the nacelle in the next pic. I'm debating whether or not I will do something about the stark geodesic designs. The issue isn't so much filling these with paint, but rather that the subsequent sanding will affect the many other raised details which may then need to be replaced.



The details in front of the spar still need to be deciphered and added.



Now comes the fun part: adding the curved walls. I started by cutting a section of very thin styrene to follow the contour of the lower edge of the opening and test fitting that. The tops of the ribs, which match exactly with the upper edge of the openings, have been marked in pencil.



Next, I found a section of my French Curve that matched the upper profile between the spar marks and the trailing edge and cut the upper edge of the styrene sheet.


I then secured the lower edge in place with CA and bent the sheet up to the ribs and glued it there. This was not as easy at it sounds as my suspicions became reality at this point. The double curvature meant that the sheet tried to wrinkle as I glued it to the ribs and so I had to cut "darts" into the part to make it conform. This now resulted in a pretty ugly final product. As you can see below, I didn't quite get the depth right at the front and the darts are pretty unsightly.



This wasn't entirely unexpected for a first try and I've since removed the skin for another go. There are two other options that I will try. The next one will be to use smaller pieces of styrene that span between the ribs. This will reduce the tendency for wrinkling but will also result in straight runs between the ribs, which may or may not be a big deal. If that doesn't work, the other option I'm considering is to squash some Milliput in the spaces and sculpt it to the required shape. That might be rather messy.

Despite all this, I'm enjoying the challenge (so far) and am not giving up yet. We'll see how things go next and I'll report back after try #2.

Why don't you make a plug from wood, warm up the plastic en put it on the plug, continues warming with a hairdryer of something like that. Use the plastic of a PET bottle. Maybe you don't get in the correct shape, because you have no vacuüm installation, but the trick can help you to get it in shape

That's a lot of great work Andy. I'm as always impressed with your work.

Some great scratch work there Andy, and I'm sure you'll get it sorted to your satisfaction.

Lovely work so far Andy!

great added details

Thanks guys. Bert, that's also not a bad option but I would have to make 4 different pieces of wood to do that. (inner, outer, left and right). It may yet come to that.

Excellent, Andy; a testament to your patience and skill.

Kind words Grant, thanks.

Well, plan B worked well enough to pass muster. This method of making the sidewalls consisted of cutting sections of thin styrene sheet to span between the ribs rather than trying to make all one piece. This allowed for a lot of fine tuning and was much easier to accomplish. Looking at the back side, which won't be seen after the wing is closed, it looks like crap!



However, flip it around and the results aren't too bad. I've added some stiffeners using rod, sprue and styrene sheet and once everything is coated in flat black, it should look fine. There is a section just behind the spar that has yet to receive some sprue stiffeners but the trouble is that these need to extend beyond the wall and up into the upper wing half and so these can only be stuck in once the halves are glued together.



On the upper wing half, I made an oil tank, glued that in and then installed some more structural ribs.



That's it for today gents. Thanks again for following and have a wonderful Christmas!

Well, it looks great, Andy, just paint it

Merry Christmas, Andy.

Looks the biz !
Have a great Christmas.

Thanks all. Paint is some way off yet as the forward half of the well where the struts go needs to be done first.