B-17 G 1:48 scale, 351st Bomb Group, 510th Squadron, AC# 43-37862, Fearless Fosdick

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You know, hindsight is roughly 20 / 20. I've been busy with last minute honey do's and don't's before my wife returned to Russia for awhile. Looking over these oxygen bottles I suddenly realized a simple, slap me up the side of the head, solution to making them. As noted above, I've tried to round both ends of the same piece after cutting them off the styrene rod. Not exactly easy but doable. Then it hit me. Cut off the already rounded end, make another rounded end and cut it off. Sand the unrounded ends untill the two pieces are half the needed length. Place the two flat ends together and wick the liquid glue in. Done, no worries. I should have thought of this earlier...
 
Would certainly be easier than trying to round-off the end of a very short length of rod. Now why didn't I think of that ?!!!
I can now do the single bottle needed for the 1/32nd scale Hurricane wheelbay - thanks for the tip.
 
Perpendicular cuts or sanding is actually easy depending upon how you go about it. Mitre saw? Rotating the rod with a stationary knife? Thsnks guys for the kind words. Yeah, I like tictacs to.
 
All oxygen bottles are cut and sanded. Here is a final word on making these things. I've had to broaden my scope of possible ways of making these things. After a bit of experimentation, I've come up with the following method that takes roughly two minutes to do. First of all I used a variable speed drill.
I inserted the rod I'm making these from like a drill bit into the drill.

Run the drill with rod end into rough sandpaper until the end is rounded properly. Then I measure from the end to the correct length. After marking, I then used insulation foam with a trough and a razor saw for cutting. Holding the saw in place over the mark, I ran the drill and got a perfect even cut.

The part that was cut off was then installed as a drill bit into the drill. Finger tight.


Then I just ran the drill on sandpaper until the other end resembled the first.


Within two minutes I was done.
 
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Continuing on, for the ribs I'm using ez-line. I stretch out the line and use liquid solvent to glue the line to the "tic tac".

Then I used Tamiya tape, cut into thin strips and wrapped around what I have done so far...

 
Ok, so I've put these lines on the side and the first thing that might go through your mind is those lines are way too large for the sides of the oxygen bottles and you would be right. But there is method to my madness. Once I have all the string attached to the sides and the end tape bands on, I will paint them with primer for a few coats. To build the paint up a bit. Once that paint has dried those lines are going to get pulled off. If everything works right there will be very fine paint ridges where the lines and tape use to be. These line outlines should be to scale and the bands I plan to carefully paint on.


Outside of that, I didn't like the way the fire extinguisher looked... too 2 dimensional. So I carefully cut it off and made a new one from the parts sprue.




Hope you like... back to work...
 
Here are some of the oxygen bottles as I remove the tape and line. The side ridges look more to scale now.

I also started working on the side wall where some of the plumbing goes. In photos, I found the side walls flat not concave. This took some doing as I had to get the measurements perfect for it to fit alone.



 
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