Here's some shots of the work I've done assembling the wings and flaps. I've merged some of the photos to save on upload space. I thought I'd take you through my working methods. I suspect that you more experienced builders have your own techniques for mounting cut flaps, which are probably much more sophisticated than mine, but I was tackling this for the first time.
My only other experience of cutting flaps was on my last 109E build. Whilst that worked out OK in the end, I wasn't happy with my technique. In that case I re-attached the flaps to the completed wings. I basically 'spot-welded' the flaps to the wing tailing edge with cyanoacrylate. This looked alright but resulted in very fragile flaps, which were accidentally knocked off on several occasions as I completed the build. This time I wanted to achieve something a lot more robust. This initial work was done before the wing halves were put together.
Pictures 1 2. First I measured out 30º degrees, with my kids' old geometry protractor, as I knew that this was about the max I could drop the flaps, from the dry-fits. Then I needed some material that was rigid, yet flexible, to adjust angles as necessary. After some experimentation, I settled for some metal from the neck of screw-cap wine bottles. This is a lot firmer than the soft metal collars you find on real-cork wine bottles. Cut into strips, these were bent to the correct angle, using the edge of a steel rule. They were rigid enough to hold their shape but with a little pressure, the angle could still be adjusted.
The strips were then inserted into the flap interior and firmly attached with cyanoacrylate (super glue). Then the flaps were carefully positioned to the tailing edge of the lower wing-half, making sure the flap angle was correct, there were no gaps and the bend in the metal was sitting exactly over the join. When I was happy with the fit, the hinges were superglued to the wing interior and left to set. When set, a bead of liquid poly was run along the wing/flap join, for extra strength.
The arrowed part, in photo 2, is the scratch-built hydraulic line to the wheelwell. The vertical pipe will be added later, from below, when I figure out how the undercarriage fits. The parts used were from an old, broken, 1/48 Alouette Helicopter.
Pictures 3 4. Before the flaps could be attached, the ends had to be enclosed as these will be visible. The arrowed part is a piece of plastic tube to hold the two sections of the flap at the correct angle to get a sharp tailing edge, when they're cemented together. The flap ends were placed on to plastic card and a pencil run around them. These were cut to shape and attached to the flap with liquid poly. When dry, it was trimmed and sanded to fit.
The back for the flap was measured and cut from thin plastic card then adjusted to fit. When happy with the fit, I tacked it into position with spots of super glue then cemented along the join with liquid poly. When dry, it got a light sanding to clean up any melted poly/plastic. Finally, it got a spray of grey plastic primer.
Picture 5. The starboard wing top was slid into position, and with hardly any effort, was cemented into position with liquid poly, pegged and left to dry. Up to this point, I'm very impressed with the fit of this kit.
Pictures 6 7. The port wing came together in the same way, with the exception of the port top nacelle where there was a small gap (arrowed). A bit of pressure and some liquid has since closed up this gap even more, although a small amount of fill is probably still required. Otherwise the shots just show the wing tops and bottoms from front and back, with the flaps now positioned.
Pictures 8, 9 10. When dry, the wings were ready for attaching to the fuselage. The fuselage bottom, to cover the floor-cannon bay, comes pre-attached to the starboard wing. It needed some careful sanding, where arrowed, to get it to fit. When in position, the wing was carefully tensioned with masking tape to get both a good fit and the correct dihedral, and left to dry, overnight.
Today, I added the port wing. Again, careful positioning with tensioned masking tape was employed for fit and dihedral, which was carefully measured. I was very careful to get the underwing join tight, as I have seen a gap there in other builds of this kit. Anyhow I think I was distracted by this, because when I checked on it later, I found a step between the upper wing root and wing. This was caused by lack of support at the tailing edge, where the flaps should have been. This meant the curve didn't quite follow the wing root, all the way.
I think I've managed to fix this by reapplying liquid poly along the joint, which softened the seam and allowed me to put pressure on it from inside the wing, with a thin circular file, so it now follows the correct curve. It was still drying when I took these last photos, so we'll have to wait and see if I was successful.
The final two shots (9 10), are where I am up to now on the build. The next job is to build and add the tail section.
Sláinte, 'till next time.