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Thank you for the tip, Dave! I'll keep that in mind for next time. I'm sorry to say that I have since cancelled my conversion plans for this kit, opting instead to paint it as a B-26B-2 training ship due to its simplicity and my current skill level.Not sure if anyone makes spinners for the B-26, but if you have a scale drawing you can use a wooden dowl chucked in a drill and use a file and sanding stick to shape your own spinner, and heat form a small piece of plastic over it. Takes a little practice but fairly simple to do.
Dave
Would be great to see. I'd recommend keeping an eye on ebay, there were two on auction last week. The Squadron tail conversion is also available there, though it will require extra parts to connect the canopy to the horizontal stabilizers correctly (not sure why Squadron omitted that, their canopy has the extension to reach the vertical stabilizer). Now, getting the decals and torpedoes is another matter of course.Sounds good! If I was able to find one of the short wing B-26 kits I would do the Midway bombers!
Nah, everybody does Midway. Do 69th or 70th BS at Guadalcanal.Sounds good! If I was able to find one of the short wing B-26 kits I would do the Midway bombers!
I'm attempting to procure just the spinners from Valom kits on ebay (Valom's B-26B-2 includes the spinners but tells the builder not to use them anyway), but if this fails I'm unsure how I will go about procuring/scratch-building new ones. Buying an entire kit for spinners feels like a waste of a perfectly good kit, not to mention the Valom Kit is very expensive due to its resin parts.
I cannot brush-paint mission complete/bomb markings or kill markings at this size either.
Thanks for the tips, Wurger.There is no need to purchase the another kit in order to "borrow" these spinners only. The way you have to follow depends on the kind of spinner you want to get.
1. If the spinner is going to be of the solid type, I mean made of one full piece of plastic or resin ...
- the resin :
a - use a piece of wood ( the balsa , for instance ) and shape the spinner.
b - get a cube of plasticine and press the wooden model of the spinner into that twice
c - fill the imprinted shapes with the resin.
d - when the resin got hardened take both parts out of the plasticine mould and clean their bottoms at the flat surface with a sheet of sandpaper. Drill slots for shafts that you may make either of plastic or wire rods and glue into the holes there.
- the solid plastic
a - get a couple of plastic plates/squares/ discs and drill a hole at the centre. Their diameter should be slightly bigger than the spinner one.
b - glue them together keeping the central holes inline.
c - when the glue is hardened , put a sheet metal screw in the holes and fasten it in a driller.
d - using a sandpaper , shape the plastic block while rotating.
2 - If the spinner is going to be of the plastic vacuforma type ... you may make it consisted of two parts I mean the radome and the bottom. The radome is vacuformed while the bottom is just a plastic disc.
a - make the former as depicted in "a" for the resin. The shape dimensions have to be downgraded about the plastic sheet you want to use for the spinner or so.
b - the rest steps for the way you may see in my thread for making the pilot seat. It is exactly the same way I would follow if I were you.
How to make your own pilot's seat for models.
c - drill the slot for the shaft in the bottom disc only .
It is possible .... my own painted decal with a name for my old 1/72 Matchbox P-51D model. Its dimensions 8mm/3mm.
Thanks for the tips, Wurger.
I have heard back about the spinners and the seller has agreed to a reasonable price, so I'd rather take that avenue. The Valom spinners have cutouts and simply clip onto the existing prop assembly, meaning the most I will have to do is enlarge said holes and clip off my current prop's domes. It's not the perfect shape (the real spinners have some bumps that taper into the blades) but is far better than I'd be able to make myself with zero experience, not to mention I'd then have to cut out the blades from my current propellers and glue them at the correct angles to a newly made spinner. I appreciate your faith in me but I'm very aware of my current skill limits. It might be cheaper to make my own spinner but it would require me to pick up a new skill first, which would take weeks, and would then take hours of work. With the cost of supplies (I do not have any wood, plasticine, resin or any equipment to print or vacuform parts) on top of that it's just a lot of effort and risk to save only around 6 dollars.
The markings on your Mustang look good! What did you use to draw that noseart? The only method that got me any results with writing that small was carving out the noseart with a cocktail stick, which is quite
crude and does not allow for sharp points or corners. I found that even my smallest brush or a cocktail stick with paint just made large blobs.
Interesting approach, I'll see what I can do. Will be a few weeks before the parts arrive and that gives me more time to pick which aircraft to paint.Just in my opinion a such part of a model can be made from scratch and there is no need to buy it. But as I have mentioned that's just an option. You was interested in so there is my suggestion. Certainly the choice is yours. I hope you can get it sorted out in any way. Looking forward to the final effect.
Regarding the decal for the P-51D ... the writing was done using a fine brush with removed almost all bristles leaving two not too long hairs there. I took a piece of a decal sheet with the clear part that was the remants of other decal markings that I had cut out. I sketched the name letter with a pencil softly. And then I wrote it with the brush following the sketched characters. The paint was thinned with the soaked brush dipping at the edge of the colour drop I put on a piece of white cardboard.
Actually I made the marking three times. As memo serves the second one was the best one and I applied it on the model.
Thank you! I'll go ahead and rename the thread real quick so that it follows the site's normal formatGood luck.
Thanks! I have others, but not this oneGood stuff. You probably already have this