I finished off the shoulder belts today and primed the cowl area to check the seam work. First, the belts. I fashioned two triangular attachment points from lead wire and pinched them into the loops on the shelf.
The belts themselves were stuck together from bits of masking tape on my cutting mat. They look rough in this close-up but will do fine looking through the closed Erla hood.
And, stuck in place:
Here's where I was at as of yesterday on the seam work. The cavity on the nose cowl has been filled and the misalignment at the front has been addressed.
After rescribing and riveting, I primed the area to check my work and show this as I saw it before addressing some issues. The rescribed seam needs to be cleaned up and my riveting wheel slid into the old seam under the soft paint so I'll need to redo this.
Good choice and good start Andy. I will be following along on this one as I got my first K-4 the Trumpeter kit in 1.32 scale and would like to see how this one goes.
While waiting for small bits of primer to dry at the seams, I launched into modifying the wheel wells before my better sense could intervene. It seems that gone with these late war 109s were the leather closures and so the back of the wells would have been open to view. At left below can be seen the kit representation, with two saw cuts already made. At right is the modified well with bits of card added and the lightening holes drilled out on the strut tunnel.
A closer view shows that I also thinned the plastic at the open edge to make it look a bit more realistic.
According to my Japo book on the 109K, wheel wells would have been painted in RLM 66 or possibly 76, though it's possible that they might have also been unpainted. So, at least I know now that the 02 that I had on there is probably not right.
Cutouts added to the wheel wells using very thin plastic card. I traced the outline of the cutouts with a circle template then cut it out with a punch and circle cutter. With the wing uppers dry-fitted, the cutouts were moved around until properly aligned and then glued. The one on the right was a bit narrow so I had to add thin stripes to the outsides. The added strips will be mostly hidden but the gaps were noticeable.