Forging on with the G.55S. Still feel a little uneasy without a canopy solution in place but I'm trusting something will come through soon. In the meantime, I worked a little on the torpedo.
The fins are thin and fragile and broke during sanding even though I had taken the precaution of reinforcing the thin connection points with tape.
The torpedo comes with a neat P.E. propeller. Notice how little material connects the blades to the shaft! I have to be VERY careful with this!
The fin assembly is cobbled together and the prop is attached to the end of the torpedo.
The fin assembly gains a little bit of rigidity once it is glued onto the torpedo body. It also acts as a guard around the delicate prop.
Two vertical tail strakes complete the torpedo. This is stashed away in a safe location far from my clumsy fingers. The less I touch it, the better!
Moving on to the modular front fuselage. Here are the pieces...
Before I put the pieces together, I want to fill in the cowl gun troughs since this looks to have been done on the photos of the Silurante I've seen. I picked up some Milliput White from my local hobby shop. The main thing one has to remember about Milliput is that it does not react(bond) with plastic and that it can be sculpted like modeling clay using water. It can get a little messy but this the excess will be easy to clean with a damp towel.
After initial application and shaping using water, fingers and pieces of wetted paper towel, I get this...
After three hours, the Milliput is hard enough to sand. The Milliput sands nicely but to to help blend in the underfilled edges, I applied some Mr Surfacer 1000 as a sealer...
After a bit of sanding using progressively finer sheets of sandpaper, the work on the troughs is finished until the primer coat.
The four forward fuselage pieces are glued together.
I add the various little bulges to the front fuselage. The sprue connections are on the attachment side of the small pieces, which are quite difficult to clean given how small the pieces are.
Dry fitting reveals some fit issues, most notably on the lower edge so I fabricated a shim using sheet styrene. It seems to help but there will still be some delicate putty work after it attaches to the fuselage.
Once the little scoops and bumps are added, the front piece is ready to be attached to the fuselage. As dry fitting indicated, the fit isn't perfect.
While I go through a process of sanding/puttying/sanding/puttying on the fuselage, I'm thinking about how to do the mottled finish. Light spots on a dark background? Or dark mottling on a light background? I do a test run using both techniques and I'm not completely happy with either. I'll have to refine one of these techniques before I start painting.