**** DONE: 1/48 Potez 631 - Night War of WWII (1 Viewer)

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Heck ! Sorry to hear about the loss of life, and good to know you and yours are safe.
We've had high winds and sever flooding in parts of the north of England, but not as serious as a tornado.
 
To start with I have to believe that the oxygen bottles were white. with that in mind I made up two more bottles so that each of the flight crew would have one. I also wanted to add gauges since they would have to have a pre-flight pressure check and I didn't see anything like that on this plane. I attached two of the bottles and the aileron cables along with a couple of other things.
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To make the gauges for the bottles I stretched some sprue, cut it, then flattened the ends with a hot knife a few times until I had a round looking dial with a small body.
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Attached what was made to the top of the oxygen bottles.
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I then went on to make what looked like some kind of accumulator for part of the hydraulic system. I cut a round part of the stretched sprue I had and attached a couple of wires as attachment points. This was attached behind the pilots station on a board. There were a couple of other components I wasn't sure of that were also attached. Hydraulic lines I will attach later.
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Moving on I started working more on the control panel. After a bit of trial and error, I finally stumbled on a way to make a descent control panel.

I started by cutting the basic shape of the panel I was given on a sheet of styrene. I then used a needle to mark each gauge location using photos as a guide. I then used the hobby knife to start the basic hole and cleaned it up with the tip of a pointed file. I tried using a drill before but the cutting edges would tear into the material and ruin the efforts. The second picture has an experiment I had to make the rings around the dials. Needed to use thinner wire for that or something else.
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In the end I used the drill to check clearances make the edges crisper. Then I sanded the back to the panel to thin it up a bit. Next, I cut some aluminum from a Coors can and burnished it flat. I colored the metal with permanent black marker over most of the dial surfaces and light blue over the section where the HSI or artificial horizon would be. I found that the black scratches off with the tip of a very sharp needle and I could draw up any gauge I wanted.
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I'll post more on this when I get closer to finishing this panel.
 
After a little more study, I discovered that the placement of the second seat was wrong or rather turned around. So were a couple of the ammunition drums. Had to cut them off and put them in the correct place.

Now for some painting. I used enamels first to get the basic under color. The seats were leather so after the initial color, I used oil pastels to play with the color a little bit and try for the right texture. Looked like they came out nicely. On the floor I wanted to show some wear from the crews feet constantly shuffling around and wearing the paint. For this I used a little pastel for slight color differences in the paint. I then use a little green zinc and aluminum to show were the paint was worn away. Finally I used pencil to give it a kind of metallic sheen.
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The kit came with some PE seat belts but they were unpainted. Got them painted and added on. I also added bands to the oxygen bottles.
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I think the effects came out alright.
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Great work on the interior. I like what you are doing with the instrument panel and look forward to seeing what the dials look like!
 

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