1/72 Hasegawa Mosquito (FINISHED!)

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Fuselage ready for a bit of slap. Fit as expected very good, just a bit of a join line along the spine to deal with. Where the two halves of the tailfin are glued together there was a pronounced groove which I filled with Tipp-Ex, then sanded back the leading edge of the tail fin as it looked less than aerodynamic.

 
Canopy fun. The Mozzie canopy was fiendishly complex, with an internal and an external frame. To try to give a reasonable representation of this at 1/72, the inside bits are on the outside in interior green but will be under a couple of coats of Klear to try to give the impression they're under the canopy. The rest of the frame will match the grey/green camo scheme and will be finished matt. Well, it might work.

Thanks to Crimea_River for the heads up on all this.

 
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Crimea_River said:
Oh no, nothing major I hope. Good solution on the canopy BTW.
Click to expand...

Great joy! Part found! I was just about to give up when I had a brainwave...

When I started I gave the kit a wash in our utility room sink. Must have come off the sprue, there it was, still in the plug hole after nearly two weeks. Miraculous it didn't disappear down the hole, especially as we've been painting all our fences and have been cleaning big paintbrushes in there!

The modelling gods must be in a good mood...
 
Stuff drying. The underwings were a little bit of a tussle. The instructions say to put the engine housings on first then drop the landing gear assemblies in, but it seemed a very tight (and potentially damaging) squeeze, so I did it the other way round and assembled the wings around the landing gears. It's not a case of it not being a good fit exactly, but there is some flex in the wings and you have to bend them to fit. I couldn't find a way to hold everything in the right place while the glue dried so I just sat there with them in my hands, still didn't get it quite right, there was a tiny misfit at the joins but I was able to sort it out with a little filling and sanding. Apparently there weren't any aft pilot lights on TE711 so I'll have to delete them once I put the two halves of the wings together.

 
Got a pair of wings, though I'm not happy with them yet. Every time I've done wings in the past I've whacked on a load of glue then sanded back excess ooze after it's dried to get clean edges. Here I've prepainted the upper and lower halves and have been very sparing with the glue so as to avoid the ooze, so there are quite visible join lines along the leading edges and around the engine housings. I think I get away with it where green meets grey, but where grey meets grey I'm going to have to do a bit of light filling, sanding and touching up.

 
Crimea_River said:
Precisely the reason that I never paint until after assembly unless there's no option.
Click to expand...

The wing/fuselage fit on this kit is so good I thought I'd give it a shot this way and stick the wings on last thing, the idea being I'd get a very clean line to the paint demarcation on the leading edge of the wings. Didn't quite go to plan! Should look OK after a bit of work.
 
I agree with Andy.
Run some liquid cement along the joints, and clamp until set - shouldn't take long. Then re-touch or re-paint if required.
Although I prefer to assemble the main airframe before painting, there's nothing wrong with painting sub-structures first, such as the wings. But it's always best to assemble these first, and then paint. That way, the only painted area that might be affected by cement will be the joint between wing and fuselage, if it's just a but-joint.
 
I've decided to do it proper and fill the lines on the whole of the leading edges and touch up, possibly also trailing edges (very, very slight join!). It's a bit of a b*llache but I wont to make a decent job of this one. All part of the learning curve...
 
Airframes said:
I agree with Andy.
Run some liquid cement along the joints, and clamp until set - shouldn't take long. Then re-touch or re-paint if required.
Click to expand...

I used liquid cement per your suggestion, thanks, did the trick. Didn't need to clamp. It just filled in the groove nicely and I sanded it back to give a smooth finish when set. Bit of touching up and Robert's your mother's brother. I also did the trailing edges and indeed the wingtips the same way. Might as well do it right.
 
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