**** DONE: 1/48 Tamiya Heinkel He-219 WNr 290123 of 1/NJG 1 Nightfighter GB

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The switches / buttons look fairly small, but can still be reasonably replicated. The way i did them for the MiG 21 and Buchon, was to build-up the panel using plastic card, and then drill the line of holes, or, if too small for a drill, use a pin or knife point to create a tiny hole or depression. The hard part is keeping the line straight!
Once that's done, insert pieces of very fine stretched sprue, glued in with poly cement if it'll do it without melting the thin sprue, or a pin prick of CA. Only fit a few at a time, so that these can be trimmed equally, using nail clippers, then continue the line, trimming the next batch once set, and so on, that way, they can all be cut to an equal length - ish !
If this doesn't work, and it should, then do the holes and, using a pin or needle, place a teeny weeny drop of PVA into each hole, pulling back to extrude the PVA, which, when dry, will shrink back slightly and create a small 'blob', which should look acceptable once painted.
 
Terry hit the nail on the head though having glued the thin sprue, I'd have used plastic rod I'd file them all back very gently to an even height. However Andy, I eagerly await your solution.
 
Patience guys! Need to go to work today before posting but, In the meantime, if any of you have radiators from old model cars in your spares box, don't throw them out....
 
Nope, but but maybe a 1967 Ford J Car.

OK, so below is a sequence of pics on how I represented the R/O's starboard side wall using the picture of the resin part shown in post 134 as a reference.

First off, we start with the bare wall as provided with the kit. The hose and wiring details in the pilot's position were added and described some time ago in earlier posts and are essentially complete. There's a cockpit light yet to go in though. With the cockpit tub dry-fitted, I traced a pencil line along the floor and bulkheads of the rear tub. Note all the ejector pin marks two of which I had to sand down. These, along with the lack of detail in this area are less than the usual quality I'd expect from Tamiya.



Next, using plastic card, I began building up the rear tub components, seen here partly painted:



To make the switch box, I was tossing ideas about in my mind when I hit upon starting with this piece of radiator that I had in my spares box from what I think was the above car I had build and destroyed many moons ago.



The radiator vanes, if cut correctly with a razor saw could easily simulate a row of switches. Seen here is the radiator cut to size and dry fitted into the allocated space. After this shot was taken, saw cuts were made longitudinally to cut the vanes down to the required size of the switches. Then, rows of switches were removed as required using a round X-Acto blade and a little more detail was added with thinly sliced plastic card.



Unfortunately, I neglected to take a photo of the interim step showing the above-described saw cuts but you can see the result below which is close to finished. Some wires and a few other details have also been added and a light dry-brush with silver has been applied to pick out the details



The paint is stil wet in this shot and there's some final touching up and a bit more highlighting to do but you get the idea.

Just goes to show that seemingly useless spares can be gold with a bit of imagination. I'm glad this piece survived my several purgings over the years.

Hope you like it. I'll continue with some more details and post pics as siginificant progress is made. Thanks for your interest
 

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