Airplane jokes never grow old, surely.
Engine painting is finished, though I may spray a thin matte coat to knock down the glossy black.
So it's on to the cowl, which I've been working on periodically for some time. The issue was, as I mentioned earlier, the three part construction, varying parts thicknesses, and the attendant seams on the inside. Though the seams will be partly hidden, I didn't want to leave them like that as they are quite ugly and there are some ejector pin marks as well. Fixing them involved several passes of putty, primer, and sanding using the below tool. The dowel I had laying around was the perfect diameter and, with some sandpaper glued to it, performed brilliantly.
With the inner surfaces smooth, my analness took over again and I added a rim to the cowl which is very much evident on the real airplane. I curled some styrene rod by drawing my finger nail along it then began gluing it to the edge with CA.
Work progressed slowly until the circle was closed. Below you can see the effect with the inner edge standing proud of the exhaust ring.
After a bit of filling and sanding, I dry fit the cowl to the fuselage to line up the gun trough locations and found that they coincide exactly with two of the three seams in the cowl. This enabled me to file in the cutouts in the ring for the guns.
With that done, I rescribed lost detail, filed down overdone detail, and added some rivets and circular panels.
I've now primed all this to see how it fares and, once it's good, I'll paint the interior and install the engine.