Hey, Guys,
Well, I dbl checked the wheel well gap issue from my prior post thoroughly. I sanded down ANYTHING that looked out of place and verified everything I could see or think of. I still had a significant gap in both wells. So, I applied a tiny dollop of tamiya putty and cleaned it all up with some fingernail polish remover. Things looked much better and the overall fit with the wing was good. So, I resprayed the wells and assembled the center wing section. I then put the center section on the fuse and added the cowl/engine assembly. The fit of this kit is damned nice.
Andy, I will be curious what you see with your kit.
Pics:
Looking very nice Dale, was going to suggest some putty. I've also had good luck just with paint. Capillary action will draw it into fine seams. Then an over coat
Dale, you're right that the fit is not the greatest and no matter how well you line up the parts, the gap on the forward side is quite noticeable. However, with a little work, the gap could be minimized. I found that I had to remove a molded ridge on the L-shaped parts and knock down some ejector pin marks on the wing upper to make them fit. Here's what I ended up with and, like you, I'll apply some putty to fix this up since it is a visible detail.
Hey, Cory,
Thanks for the heads up on the radiators. I appreciate that. Andy, thanks for confirming it was not an issue with either me or the kit I have. I wound up getting a couple of medium, fine, and very fine ladies emory boards and cut them down to fit into the wells to sand down the putty. After painting them, things look good.
Hey, Guys,
Thank you for stopping by. Well, I was trying to get the extended wing seam to fit. No matter how I sliced and diced and test fitted and sanded and tweaked and swore, I just could not get the top and bottom seams to align. I had a significant step from the inner wing to outer wing along the bottom of the extended wing. I finally stepped back and forgot about the damned thing for a day or two. Talking this over with a friend (Phantom II on here), he suggested tossing the ribs at the fold and try to get the inner and outer wings to align with some kind of a little jig and just directly gluing that way. I pulled down my other F4U kit and got that wing assembly out. Turns out, Don had a great idea! Thanks, Don. Just be sure to use the inner wing rib as it create the side of the wheel well. Glad I caught that. I did have to go back and fiddle with the reinforcing sheet strip. I reinforced each lower joint with a strip of sheet over the seam:
I then tacked the upper, inner wings into place and wiggled and jiggled the outer, upper wings into place taking my time to dbl check everything on the upper wing fold seam. This was looking very promising. I then checked the fit of this whole thing with the fuse and I must say, it looked damned good. I have not had to deal with the not so good fit of my 1st attempt using the Tamiya parts and guide.
Ok, I am waiting for the sea blue coat to dry so I can handle the bird to snap a couple of pics for you all. However, as I starting to think about just how to dirty up such a dark finish. The wearing away of paint to bare metal is the easy one...... but, dirtying up the finish; this one leaves in a bit of a confused state. I am thinking of sand colored pastels, some fading (however, I did NOT do any "under" painting). Any ideas would be really appreciated. It has been at least 20 yrs since I did a PTO bird.
Sounds good to me. I used grey pastels on my black Beaufighter. Ground in in hard on the flat coat and then flat sprayed it. Lost a lot of pastel though when the wet flat spray hit it. I was told by someone in the forum to go overboard with the pastels and it would tone down once the spray hit it. You might experiment a bit first.