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

Looking good, i love all the additional details you are adding

Doing good there Andy....certainly not for the faint hearted....!

Nicely accomplished there sir. That is one of the many issues with the acrylic paints. I do love working with them, I just wish they could have the sticking power of enamels and lacquers.

Thanks for your interest guys.

Here's the finished instrument panel. Mike Grant instrument decals for jets have many different modern instrument faces and I selected those that appeared to be close to the RAF WW2 instruments. They were cut out individually, placed into the bezels and several drops of Future were added over time. The throttle assembly is the kit part with an extra control rod and knob added. Edges of the panel were traced with a silver pencil and placards were simulated using white paint.



The cockpit floor was modified and then painted. The floor panels next to the seat were cut out as this area was open. Straps were added to the rudder pedals using aluminum foil tape. There's also an extra strut that was added just in front of the seat using round rod.



After all this was done. I trial fitted the floor into the fuselage and found that the area forward of the pedals was visible. There was a large fuel tank there so I went ahead and added that using rod and card.



Here are the finished sides:



Fitting the instrument panel involves some fussing and fighting but, after a lot of trial and error, I found out that the key is to allow the side panels to sit on the horizontal framing on the walls and forget about trying to line up the upper edge of the panel with the coaming. This is the only way that it will fit properly. One reviewer had trouble here and ended up trimming the panel to fit but I don't think it's necessary. That said, I did cut off the extreme lower corners of the IP, not because they caused fit issues but rather because they weren't there on the real aircraft according to reference that I used.



In the above pic, there's one more detail to add just above the throttle. There is some kind switch that needs to go there and it's an easy add.

Because of the gap that's created at the top of the panel, I made sure to paint the exposed face of the locating ridge on the other fuselage half black as this will be impossible to get at when the fuselage is buttoned up. I painted the one in the above pic after I took the picture.



Back to the bulkhead behind the seat, closer looks at the reference pics revealed that what I did there wasn't quite kosher. The lower portion of this bulkhead is actually open to the rear. Rather than tear it all out, I made some additional framing and painted the in-betweens black. This is a decent compromise I think as, once everything is buttoned up, this should look just fine.



For the seat belts, I once again decided to make my own rather than wait 2 weeks for Eduard ones to get here so that will be covered in my next instalment. Thanks for looking.

Darn nice work!

I agree - nicely done there Andy.
EDIT :- forgot to add - you've inspired me, so I've ordered an original 'Inpact' Gladiator kit, to see if it's as I remember it from 50 years ago, and compare it to the Roden kit in my stash.

Very nice additions

Great improvements to the base kit. Nice work

A very good choice and and a very beautiful start Andy

Lovely work so far Andy!

Thanks once again everyone.

The last thing to attend to before I could get the fuselage halves together was the Sutton harness. I made the belts from scratch using Tamiya tape. The buckles were made with lead wire bent around a toothpick that I carved to the proper shape and I threaded the tape through the buckles and folded it back on itself to give a somewhat realistic look. The belts were then glued in place and given a brushed-on coat of Tamiya Deck Tan. I have not found a good way to replicate the grommets and, in this case, I simply twirled a lead pencil on the belt at each location. These can't be seen in the below pic and aren't worth showing anyway! Once I finish the shoulder straps after the fuselage is together I'll need to make these look better as they will be quite visible on those straps. The shoulder straps will hopefully also drape into the seat bucket to hide the fact that I didn't hollow out the bottom.



The floor is now glued in place with CA. One thing I didn't point out earlier was the scratch-built "trough" above the radio. This feature supported the cables for the Sutton harness shoulder straps, which I'll add later.



Almost forgot to add the switch on the port side of the instrument panel coaming. The black object, which turns out to be the control for the cockpit heat, was easily made of styrene card and rod.



And now the fun begins! The absence of locating pins on the mating surfaces of the fuselage halves demands patience and a staged approach to gluing the halves together. I realized after I started that I perhaps should have made some tabs on the inner surfaces to help with alignment but so far things seem to be working. I started at the vertical stab, making sure that the parts aligned well and that the rest of the fuselage was more or less aligned before gluing and clamping the fin area. I then progressed along the bottom seam, aligning, gluing and clamping about 2 inches at a time. I'm using Tamiya Extra Thin cement for this.



The picture below shows how far I progressed before setting things aside to cure overnight. The fuselage bottom seam has been aligned and glued up to the nearest Berna Clamp and yet look at the misalignment that still exits at the front. Yes things are a bit twisty here so I will be using some internal tabs to help stregthen this area.



Once again, thanks for following along and for the positive waves.

Nicely done Andy.
For the harness grommets, I usually pierce the 'belts', using a compass point, and then either outline the holes with a dark pencil, or paint the surrounds, by juts putting the tip of the fine paintbrush into each hole. Not brilliant, put passable in this scale.
BTW, don't know if it's of interest, but Rob Taurus now do 1/48th scale canopies for the Gladiator, I believe two in a pack, which may be one of each, open and closed.

Thanks Terry. Yes that is one way I've tried the grommets before. As you say it's passable and likely what I will do on the shoulder straps.

I'll need to see whether it's worth getting the vac formed canopy. At this stage I have no idea if the kit parts fit well or not.

Very nice work. I'll have to try working with the lead wire for my seat harness

Nice steady progress Andy.