**** DONE: GB-58 1/48 F6F-5N Nightfighter - Night Fighters all Eras

[Vic Balshaw]

Lot of detail to choose from in that pic Bill. Just pick the easy bits that one may be able to see Ralph and off you go.

 

[Ralph Haus]

Finally ready to close up the fuselage with the pit finished. Loads of fun cutting out the small round dials from the decal sheet to fit the existing molded detail! The top instrument decal was pasted on as is, close enough on the molded stuff. After canopy, who will be able to tell?

 

[Wurger]

 

[Crimea_River]

Looks good.

 

[Vic Balshaw]

Lots of good detailing there Ralph.

 

[Ralph Haus]

Thanks all. Now a couple days eliminating the top and bottom fusalage joint seams and still maintaining the panel lines.

 

[Wayne Little]

Looks real good Ralph...

 

[Gnomey]

Looks good so far!

 

[Ralph Haus]

Fuselage is a go and looks good. Now on to the wing assemblies The kit comes with resin gun parts, the only option for the long ones, but I'm either missing something big time or I just don't understand. The parts:

The instructed placement:

The fit??:

Other than the obvious, the gun centers don't align with the molded holes, the wing halves will not close. It's not obvious that the 'base' holding the gun barrels is supposed to be shaped to fit? I have seen his kit in GB builds but not this detail shown. Help, whoever has tackled these before. Or maybe AM parts were used?

And yes, the long barrels are twisted and curved. Attempts at straightening has resulted in them snapping off at various length (see glue joints). I may just try an use the kit plastic molded, shorter, guns and abandon authenticity. I did lose the 1-2 reference for the parts when I removed from the resin tree, I'm fairly certain I have them correctly placed, but swapping makes no difference.

 

[Wurger]

The protruding barrels looked like that. The long one could be without the muzzle. . The outher one didn't protrude because it was moved back the most comparing to the two others. The protruding piece was the gun barrel jacket as memo serves. The problem you found seems to be caused by the way you want to attach the part to the wing. Either the barrels have to be separated from the recatangular piece before gluing or you have to scratch the inner side of the wing leading edge of the both wing halves in order to move the whole part forward.

 

[Wurger]

The correction should be something like that. You have to remove some of the plastic from the leading edge under the part to move it forward. Personally I would cut out the barrels and made them separate. In the way the fitting of the parts to the holes in the wing would be fine without any correction to the spacing.

 

[Ralph Haus]

The correction should be something like that. You have to remove some of the plastic from the leading edge under the part to move it forward. Personally I would cut out the barrels and made them separate. In the way the fitting of the parts to the holes in the wing would be fine without any correction to the spacing.

View attachment 721447

I'll look at a hybrid, using the plastic molded small guns and then cutting the long gun off and attaching to the outside. Or may cut the gun mounting block away completely and attach the small ones from the outside also? Just surprised at this coming from Eduard!

Now If I can just straighten those resin ones up without having them being glued in numerous places!

 

[Wurger]

The resin parts can be made straight with quite warm water. Secondly the Eduard may be the final firm offered the resin parts. But the set could be made by their co-manufacturer.

BTW I edited my post above and attached a shot with the second solution.

 

[Crimea_River]

I'm sure you'll make it work Ralph.

 

[Ralph Haus]

I'm sure you'll make it work Ralph.

Oh, no doubt I'll make something work. That was never the concern. I was just reaching out to see if anyone else had built this same configuration and had the same issue and how they resolved. Your Hellcat build used the plastic molded ones, and appears to have not been a problem. So, perhaps major surgery on the resin ones and or a hybrid of the plasic/resin. I will be fine. Never having used any resin parts (add on's) I would have thought they would have been as good as or better than. But I still believe in Santa!

 

[Ralph Haus]

The resin parts can be made straight with quite warm water. Secondly the Eduard may be the final firm offered the resin parts. But the set could be made by their co-manufacturer.

BTW I edited my post above and attached a shot with the second solution.

Thanks for the time to do that. It will most likely wind up as you have shown, but with the plastic tree small ones?

 

[N4521U]

Sometimes these things fight you all the way......
You do what you gotta do.

I have sometimes drilled out the base of that barrel,
insert a piece of round Styrene and glued that muzzle
to the end of the styrene to get a straight barrel.

You'll find a way.

 

[Wayne Little]

with you on that Bill...

 

[Ralph Haus]

Resin/plastic hybrid it is. I don't have a drill small enough to bore out the shorter barrels but even if I did I probably couldn't keep it centered. A dot of black will have to do when doing the finals. And the hot water did allow straightening. Thanks for that.

Dry fitted and some minor edge flash cleanup before the glue. But I am pleased that it worked out this well.

 

[Wurger]