**** DONE: GB-36 1/32 Bf109G-10 Erla - Axis Manufactured Aircraft of WWII

lovely work

Black 7 thats the mount of Italian Ace Capt. Ugo Drago.

Nice work all round John.
I'll admit, it took me some time to see the differences in the canopies.

Thanks for the comments!

Crimea_River said:

Great work again John. I like that Erla canopy evolution link you posted - filed for future!

I'm curious how you manage to get the flattened tires to sit properly at the end as the 109's legs and tires were splayed. I always do this as a step after I've glued the wheels and legs on whereby I drag the whole model on sand paper fastened to my table.

I love the pit. Maybe some paint chipping on the seat pan?

Click to expand...

Great point Andy! I've modeled my 109s without splayed tires. The angle between the wheel axel and landing gear leg on the kits that I've built always seem to encourage the wheels to sit perpendicular to the ground and not splayed with the landing gear.





There is usually a lot of play in this joint so the wheels will naturally sit into wherever I've made the flat spots, which was for the wheel standing straight up. Now that you've pointed it out, I'll re-sand the flat spot at an angle. I've got a bunch of spare tires with two G-10 kits and one G-6 kit. I don't feel comfortable dragging my model across sandpaper... sounds like an invitation to break something!

The reversed HGW harnesses have been put into place on the seat. I've added just a bit of pigment weathering on the floor.





One last look at the finished cockpit before I start gluing it together.



After gluing in the starboard sidewall to the cockpit floor, I realized I forgot the fuel line!





The instrument panel is wedged in between the two sidewalls and secured using CA glue.



Now that the cockpit tub is glued together, another round of dry-fitting ensues. I've added some tabs to the gun breech cover to help align the parts when the time comes.



Some small adjustments are made every time I go through a dry-fitting run. This time, I had thin the bottom of the cockpit floor and the top of the wing spar as the whole cockpit was riding just a little too high.





Finished up this session with a couple of small details. The kit instructions show the tail wheel incorrectly placed. The long tail wheel needs to placed in the forward set of locating pins and requires the hole on the bottom of the fuselage to be opened up.



I've added a small rod in the front center of the oil cooler intake as indicated by photos of the G-10. It will be trimmed to fit once I install the oil cooler mesh piece.

I agree with the thumb

Very nice. John, I should have clarified the dragging the model across sandpaper comment. This actually works quite well if it's done by holding the model by the tires with the thumb and index finger on the front and rear treaded portion. This places no stress on any other components with the exception of the tail wheel but usually it doesn't support much weight. The long tail wheel in your case could be a consideration though. This method guarantees a perfectly flat sit with splayed tires.

bloody marvellous whatever method is used

Ok... we're just about caught up in real time now. This work was done during the past few days and involved riveting of the outer surfaces. First, I gathered all of the wing and tail components together.



I like to start small and then work my way up to the larger, more complicated areas. Using a set of detailed plans, I draw the rivet lines using a soft leaded pencil. I then run my scribing wheel (RB Rivet-R and Rivet-R Mini) over the lines. The surface is then given a fine sanding to remove the raised plastic around each rivet. If you are not careful, the wheel can damage the plastic as it gets to a thin edge of a part as happened to me.





The bottom of the wings are not heavily riveted so my work here is limited.





The meat of the riveting work comes with the top of the wings. I am using a drawing of a G-6 as reference since I am building a G-10 with the small wing bulges, similar to the G-6. I like to work in pairs. If I do a wing, I will do both of them at the same time to help maintain consistency and symmetry when I'm drawing the rivet lines. The upper wings are actually two parts on each side so after drawing the rivet lines, I separate the pieces and rivet them individually.



Here are the outer upper wings with the rivets scribed over the pencil lines. I don't use a guide when running the rivet wheel over the model... it tracks pretty straight on its own.



The upper wings after sanding. This step not only cleans off the raised plastic around the rivets but it's also helping to smooth out the slightly pebbly texture of the main exterior parts, which I don't care for.



I thought I was going to have to rivet the circle manually, one-by-one but found that the Rivet-R Mini was able to trace the circle if I went slowly.



You can choose to leave the finish unsanded. The raised plastic around the rivet holes sort of accentuates the rivets, which might be desirable in some cases. I want a very subtle rivet pattern so I've chosen to sand it down.



Here are the upper wing surfaces after riveting. I think this gives a lot of visual interest to the wing surfaces but is subtle enough not to stand out like a sore thumb.

Looks mighty fine. I agree they look better sanded down in this case.

The riveting on the G-10 continues with the fuselage.







The metal legs from Eduard came in the mail today. They are made of bronze.



I bought them for insurance against possible weakness in the kit landing gear. The legs are nicely cast with some additional details lacking in the kit legs. On the minus side... there is a cast seam that is tough to deal with.



The landing gear covers have some nice detail too, including the brake line molded on the inside of the cover. Saves some work but I think I prefer a free-floating brake line personally.



I've re-sanded the flat spot on the tires so that they are splayed out instead of perpendicular to the ground. Ironically, the Eduard instructions show the wheels perpendicular to the ground, which is how I would have don it, if not for Andy's comment and my subsequent review of Bf109 photos.



I've elected to glue the top wing parts together first before attaching them to the wing bottoms, which is a deviation from the kit instructions. This will allow me to address the seam easier.

Really nice John

I agree, nice work, and those gear legs look well detailed.

The riveting concludes with the AMUR Reaver resin cowling. Most of the mark-ups are done free-hand. It doesn't really matter if they are crooked since the Rivet-R will usually track straight once I get it going.







Some pre-fitting of the cowling onto the kit fuselage. Due to the photos, I've notice at least one obviously errant rivet line. I am going to perform a CA glue repair and re-do it.

The seam on the upper wings is on-going. Another advantage of putting the upper wings together now is that you can ensure that the joint butts up evenly with no step, which might be difficult to do otherwise.



The fuselage halves are ready to be put together. But instead of trying to trap the cockpit tub in place WHILE gluing the fuselage halves together, I thought it would be better to FIRST secure the cockpit tub to the fuselage sides using epoxy glue and clamping the fuselage halves together with tape. That way, I can make final adjustments to the fit of the cockpit within the fuselage. Once the cockpit is fused into place, I can easily weld the fuselage seams together with Tamiya Extra Thin cement.



While the epoxy glue is drying, I do other detail work. The clear port for the wing antenna is glued into place.



Having finished riveting all of the exterior surfaces, I noticed that the canopy frames also have rivets. I was hesitant to do this at first because clear plastic is more brittle than colored styrene. But I have a few extra canopy parts so I thought, why not? I used the leftover canopy from my previous G-10 build as a guinea pig.



After success on the spare canopy, I started riveting canopy part #59, which has the curved junction between the bottom and rear canopy frames. I put a crack in it on the first rivet run! That one goes in the trash.



I now have two canopies left. Both with the straight junction but I figure I can simply use a curved mask to correct either canopy pretty easily. I already put rivets on the canopy without the notch fix so weighing the two options, I figured it was easier to rivet than to fill the notch. Whew... finished without mishap.



Time to mask the clear parts. I don't particularly like Montex canopy masks. I've found that the adhesive has a hard time holding on to curved surfaces. I was planning to use the Montex masks on the flat glass sections but to cut my own masks for any masks on curved surfaces. While I was positioning one of the masks on the windscreen, I noticed that it left a smear of adhesive on the plastic which was very difficult to remove. Strange.. I've never experienced this before with Montex masks. I didn't relish the prospect of trying to scrub my clear parts while attached to the model so I elected to cut all of the masks from yellow kabuki tape. I used the Montex masks as templates.





I had a hard time cutting the little corner curves of the smaller masks so I had to do some touch-up masking.





The Eduard metal legs have been primed with Mr Surfacer 1000, given a base coat of gloss black and then sprayed Alclad Chrome for the shiny metal bits. I'l let that dry overnight and then mask the chrome parts before giving the legs a final coat of RLM 02.

Doin' a great job there John...