**** DONE: 1/48 Fw190 A-4 - Winter War / Eastern Front WWII

[JKim]

Plodding along... like I said above, I am approaching the main component assembly (wings to fuselage... cowling to fuselage) very deliberately. So in the meantime, I am working on the little bits and pieces.

Some aftermarket items have arrived in the post. First off... decals for Nowotny's White 8 from a company called Print Scale. I have never used decals from this company before but they look ok. Some uneven registry (tail swastikas have uneven white borders) but I have the Hase decals to use as a backup for all of the national markings.

Eduard masks for the canopy and wheels.

Here are clear parts with the masks applied. The Eduard masks are very good and follow the frame lines very well, even on curved surfaces. There were some parts of the mask that were not completely cut through (usually inside corners) which results in a "tuft" of excess material... need to be careful and either remove that excess or push it away with a toothpick.

The BMW801 rendition is pretty basic... one piece molding of the cylinder banks and a separate crankcase cover.

Landing gear covers... I've not gone through the trouble of removing the ejector pin marks because they will be hidden behind the struts (I hope!).

Landing gear struts... covers and struts have been given two different washes (browns and blacks) to weather and bring out details. I notice from this picture that I'll have to give the wash a little "scrubbing" to remove the obvious signs of application that I can see here. Luckily, I have not flat coated these yet.

Spoked wheels and tail wheel assembly.... again, looking at the pictures, I can see some flash that I missed and will need to be trimmed.

 

[Wurger]

 

[JKim]

Dry-fitting of the fuselage to the wings showed a decent but not great fit. A small gap at the wing root on both sides. In the past, I would just accept the gap as something to address with putty but learning from some of the more experienced builders here, I decided to try and achieve a better fit and reduce the need to putty/sand. I used small sections of sprue to shim the fuselage a tiny bit wider. It took a while to get the right size and I figured out that angling the ends of the sprue like \......./ negated the need to get the size exact... the deeper I pushed this piece in, the more pronounced the widening.

Test fitting showed a much tighter fit!

I left off the gun cowling because I thought the flexing might affect the bond so once the shims are in place, I attached the cowling. Now it's time to glue the wings on!

Here are the wing roots after the wings have been glued onto the fuselage. Wow... I really like the results of thinking ahead and addressing fit problems BEFORE gluing!

Now I turned my attention to the engine cowling assembly. Since the engine was too big to fit into the assembled cowling, I decided to build the cowling around the detached engine. Using masking tape, I dry-fit it all together and use liquid cement one seam at a time. Where accessible from the inside of the cowling, I reinforced the bond with more liquid cement.

Here is the engine cowling assembled.

View from the rear showing the exhaust stacks in place. The engine block is just sandwiched inside but not secured.

 

[fubar57]

Nice fix with the fuse/wing join.

Geo

 

[Crimea_River]

Agree with Geo. Hopefully the dihedral is correct though.

 

[Wurger]

Looking good.

 

[le_steph40]

8)

 

[JKim]

Agree with Geo. Hopefully the dihedral is correct though.

Hmmm... haven't checked that but it "looks" ok. If the bottom wing piece has a correct dihedral, then I've preserved it because the shims force the fuselage to fit the wings as opposed to my old way of doing it: trying to bend the wings up to close the wing root gap.

 

[JKim]

More detail work before tackling the engine cowling to fuselage attachment. The prop painted and lightly weathered...

My next step was attaching the engine+cowling to the fuselage. According to my dry-fitting, I was pretty optimistic about this going well. Using Testor's tube glue, I attached the engine block to the fuselage, which is a solid slot/peg arrangement that affords a nice positive attachment point. Before allowing the glue to completely dry (in case I had to perform an emergency separation) I attached the cowling to the fuselage using Tamiya liquid cement and lots of constant pressure. I did the top half first. After I was happy with the fit/alignment of the top and the glue had set, I fused the bottom half together. Hmmm... not bad, not bad at all! I was really fearful of some awkward and hard to reach gaps but this looks very manageable.

After I attach the canopy and tail stabilizers, I can start painting!

 

[Wurger]

 

[Wayne Little]

Excellent! well done on the fit a bit of fill and sanding and you will be looking good!

 

[JKim]

Canopy attached with white glue and tail fins glued on...

Based on pictures, I am assuming that the inner gear doors are usually in the closed position so I glued them shut. Took some trimming to get the doors to fit.

An attempted peak inside the front of the engine cowling. Not much visible and will be less so when the cooling fan and prop go on.

The canopy is first sprayed RLM Grey to match the interior and then black to ensure that the canopy frames are opaque.

The whole plane is carefully wiped with a soft, damp cloth and then primer (Mr Surfacer 1000 thinned with Tamiya Lacquer thinner) is applied.

I've temporarily tacked the main landing gear doors into the wells using masking tape.

I'm going to let the primer cure for a full day before I handle it. Final inspection and minor sanding will be done before I start pre-shading. Via eyeball, I didn't see many imperfections but the digital pictures reveal lots of flaws. Do any of you purposefully use digital pictures to inspect your work? I'm almost afraid to!

 

[Crimea_River]

I don't intentionally use the pictures to check my work but they do often reveal things that I did not see. I hate when that happens....

Regarding the inner gear doors, it was more likely that they were removed completely on the actual aircraft. I believe they interfered with the drop tank.

 

[JKim]

I don't intentionally use the pictures to check my work but they do often reveal things that I did not see. I hate when that happens....

Regarding the inner gear doors, it was more likely that they were removed completely on the actual aircraft. I believe they interfered with the drop tank.

Darn... went through the trouble of fitting them in! At least they'll serve to mask the wheel wells!

 

[Jeff Hunt]

Looking good.

Jeff

 

[Wurger]

Agreed.

 

[mikewint]

Excellent progress and looking good

 

[Wayne Little]

Looking good mate!

 

[JKim]

After a little bit of final filling/sanding, I applied preshading along the panel lines.

Light blue is applied to the bottom and a green/dark green camo is applied on top. I eyeballed a mixture of Tamiya and Gunze paints and purposefully tried to use lighter than normal greens for the top colors to help ease the final coat of white. I masked a couple of panels on the bottom and sprayed them in a slightly lighter shade of light blue... just an attempt to give the paint job a little more texture.

Never having attempted a paint job like this, I don't know if it was worth the trouble of doing the green/green camo on top. Perhaps applying white straight onto the pre-shaded primer coat would give me non-distinguishable results? Hopefully it makes a visible difference!

Looking at the shapes of the yellow ID markings, I decided it would be easier to apply the yellow after the camo as opposed to painting the yellow first, masking it and painting the camo over that.

I preshaded the panel lines up top one more time in preparation for the white-wash.

I will have to let this sit for a couple of days as an offshore fishing trip tomorrow will keep me out of my hobby garage for a while. Stay tuned...

 

[Crimea_River]

That's looking pretty sharp John. I suppose the amount of green you apply depends on how much of the white you intend to depict. A newly applied and little worn white finish could possibly be applied over grey primer but pictures of actual aircraft almost never look perfectly white. I think you took the right path in allowing some of the underlying factory applied finish to show a bit.