A few minutes at a time were spent over the last several days doing nothing but dealing with poor fits in the wing roots and at the cowling. t eh cowling, there were steps that had to be dealt with and I chose to build up low areas with plastic card rather than putty. In this first pic, some card had already been applied and sanded down but more has been built up, especially around the MG17 openings because I plan to cut out the moulded-in gun muzzles and replace them with brass tubing. Filing alone at the back of the gun cowl near the pit was sufficient to being these surfaces into alignment and the cooling air exit fairing was allowed to stay proud. The little bulges need to be worked around, which makes these operations tricky and you'll see in the following sequences that I do manage to lose some of this detail but this is easily replaced with drops of CA.
Here the muzzles have been drilled out and the troughs were deepened a bit with a file. The sanded areas have received a thin coat of primer to inspect of further imperfections and build-up and feathering-in of the low areas continues with the addition of old Tamiya primer which is nice and thick. Here you can also see that the engine cooling exit louvres got some nicks from the file.
Same thing going on in the wing roots.
After the primer has dried, another pass with micro-mesh pads. I'm now losing the tops of the smaller blisters.
The front edges of the wheel well openings received about 1 to 2mm of card as they were too wide and revealed the wall of the well. Filling is also necessary here.
After today's round of sanding and priming, things are starting to come together but there is still a low spot in the port wing root that needs attention. Of course, it's right opposite the cannon blister which needs to stay intact.
The cowl is close to being done though no rescribing has been done as yet. The fastener outlines that we discussed earlier have been filled in as they will be rescribed on the top of the cowl for this A-5.
The complex curves at the underside wing roots still need work.
I anticipate 2 or three more sessions like those above until I see these areas to be finished to an acceptable level. I won't bore you with further nonsense like this but will update when I get it to the final stage, including the rescribing.
Thanks for stopping by. Take some cookies with you on the way out. I'm eating too many....