**** DONE: GB-45 1/48 Gloster Gladiator - BoB/Foreign Service

[Crimea_River]

Yes. You mentioned it as many times as the cabane struts broke loose. Thanks for the compliments though.

 

[rochie]

Great result Andy, despite the trials and tribulations

 

[Gnomey]

Lovely work so far Andy!

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks friends

 

[nsmekanik]

Tis a thing of beauty, gotta say you are an artist with that airbrush to say the least

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks Tim. Unfortunately I broke my relatively new tip after trying to unscrew it for cleaning. The threaded end stayed in the body and the nozzle twisted off. I did manage to get the threaded part out after soaking the end of the body in lacquer thinner and am glad that I kept the old tip.

 

[simonj]

The struts on this kit are breaking my heart - wish I had read this article first

 

[simonj]

Thanks guys. The jig isn't helping me so far, except in that it's showing me how poorly things fit. I had hoped that I could simply assemble the struts and upper wing with the model propped into the jig but this turned out to be impossible. But, I'm getting ahead of myself.

My plan was to have the interplane and cabane struts glued to the lower wings/fuselage at the proper angles so that I can paint everything with the upper wing off. First, I had to deal with the interplane strut cross section as they were moulded blunt on both the fore and aft edges. In fact, they should taper toward the back so that the cross section resembles a tear drop so I took each one and scraped them down with my chisel bit:

View attachment 577063

Given that the cabane struts are messed up and require either replacement or added plastic, I decided that I would not try to incorporate them but to add them after the upper wing is secured.

Now, my jig was a bit randomly made in terms of width and now that I dry-fitted the assembly into place, I discovered that I set the supports at exactly the same width as the protruding navigation lights on the upper wing. Damn! Talk about a bad coincidence! Fortunately, the supports are just made out of masonite and are flexible enough to splay them a bit to miss the lights (see second pic below).

View attachment 577064View attachment 577065

Now, here's where the fun begins. Roden made all of the struts identical, except for the one that has the moulded-in pitot tube. So, what they would have you do is to use one in the front and then flip the aft one over so that it's upside down relative to the front one. Well this would be OK if the wings were FLAT and parallel but, guess what Roden people, THEY'RE NOT!!!!! You see, Roden people, airplane wings have a funny characteristic - they are CURVED on the top and more or less FLAT on the bottom so, we have a fundamental problem here. The parts should not be identical or reversible. So after about a half and hour a dicking around trying to get things to fit properly in my jig, I decided to glue the struts to the lower wing so that they sit flat on the surface and to bend them later so that they meet the upper wing properly. In the pics below, note how the lower parts of the struts sit flush with the wing curvature and how this results in the angles being way off.

View attachment 577066View attachment 577067

This is going to be a major agony in the a-hole when I get around to fitting the upper wing but, in the meantime, I'm making the lower, more visible joints look like they're supposed to so I can get on with painting. Hrrrumph....

I wiah I had read this before - the struts have broken my heart, broke one and need to figure out how to repair it