Airfix 1/24 scale Bf109E.....or a bed of thorns

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Come, come Jan. Some of Polish excellent beer is waiting for you.

As Terry said the kit is old and it is seen. Theere are cavities at areas where the plastic is really thick. There are overflows as well. Many parts have their edges ragged and there is a lack of styrene at a couple of them. But the major problem, I have encountered, was the bended starboard wing halves. Especially the bottom one.The curvature of these is clearly seen at the trailing edge.
 

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Wow! Your example is much worse than the one I got around six or seven years ago. It looks like the moulds might have been 'skimmed' to get more life out of them. At least on mine, the main parts are ok, and just some of the fittings were 'soft', especially the undercart legs and locating points (hence mine being belly-landed) and the forward cockpit area locating points.
 
I have thought it was caused by too early taking out the part of its mould.

Here a view at the fuselage. There are cavities on the fin as well. These might be mperceptible in these pics.But these are at areas where there are locating points like you mentioned above.
 

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Wojtek and I have been discussing this build for a couple of weeks, via PM. It has not been an easy build, even OOB.
To add to all this, there was a delivery date established, i.e. a dead-line, which had to be met.

BTW, that Coolpix takes some good pictures !

I'll let him continue....

Charles
 
You are right Pal.

A few more shots....
 

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I have the same kit bought a looooong time ago. Different decal sheet though, one scheme being Wick's and the other one escapes me. I remember being very impressed with it and it's still sitting in the box, partly assembled. It still looks pretty damned good except for a few glaring things like the leading edge slats needing to be cut and opened if the plane is to be displayed in anything but high speed flight. Also, the exhaust stubs suck and should be drilled out or, more preferably, completely rebuilt to look convincing in this scale.

There's also a book that I have that has step by step instuction on how to improve the kit to add more realism.

Hmm, maybe I'll take this out of mothballs for the BoB build. Scratching whiskery chin....
 
Coincidentally, after a long wait, I'm just finishing the final touches to mine. It's in Meyerweissflog's markings, belly landed. I was going to post it as an intro to the BoB GB.
 
All is true guys.The kit is a good base for making a very nice replic of Bf109E.Of course there is a lot of work we have to put into that.But it is a build for a year I think. But being limited by the deadline I decided against correcting all of these inaccuracies. The assembling has been started by removing all cavities , overflows etc....The first part was the engine top cowling.There was a lack of some plastic at one side of it all edges were ragged. So I made them smooth by sanding on a sandpaper sheet put on flat surface.
 

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As you can notice there is a lack of plastic at the edge of the cowling.For fixing that I used a thin styrene plate.The one was taken from a sprue of the kit.It was with a part number that was snanded down. Then I made edges of these shortages more regular with a file. I cut two styrene triangles and sticked with the Gunze glue for styrene.When the joints were hardened I sanded the areas and polished a little bit.The effect in pics below.
 

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Another wonderful bit of surgery Wurger without the before and after pics. you wouldn't know anything had been done.
Looking forward as always to your progress on this one.
 
I biult that bird some years back not a bad kit but i would leave the engine out cos the cowlings don,t fit with it in still looks good tho when its finished good luck mate.BB
 
THX Magnu. And you are right BB.

The next step was to compare the diameter of the rear part of the model spinner and the front area of the cowling.Unfortunately the cowling one is too big.The cowling should have been much narrow at the bottom. I got an idea I could add a semi-cross-section of the correct diameter like it was done for the real cowling. So I added the part made of thine styrene plate drilling a couple of holes to make it similar to the real one at its top area.The cowling was squeezed with a rubber band in order to get the correct dimension.When the glue joint got a proper hardness I removed some plastic from its inside and sanded down to a correct shape.
At the end I remeoved some plastic from the cowling interior.To tell you the truth I have done it four times and scraped out about 1mm of plastic in the thickness from the area.It is important if you want to close the engine department with the cowling. For removing I used the scalpel blade.
 

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