**** DONE: P-47M Thunderbolt - Lt. Russ Kyler - Aircraft of the Aces GB

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Andy, your mentioning the cockpit reminded me.
Tamiya omitted to include the oxygen hose in the P-47M kit. However, its very easy to fabricate one and the little detail makes a big difference.
Just take a thin piece of wire to use as a core, and then tightly wrap thinner gauge wire around it. Just like a guitar string is made but you don't have to worry about tuning it!
A couple of photos from my HV-J build of the cockpit showing the scratch built oxygen hose.

"blocking out" the cockpit side.


And the finished cockpit before final assembly.



Have fun

Nige

Editor
P47 Heaven :: AeroScale's Special Interest Group for the P47 Thunderbolt

Owner
56th Fighter Group in World War II
 
Thanks for the heads up, Nige. I might just use a piece of a guitar string since you mentioned it. I have a few laying around as I play bass in an old time rock band. If that doesn't work, I'll use your technique!

BTW, your belts look great. Are they hand-made or aftermarket?
 
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A guitar string will be both too thick and too stiff as well. It's because of the steel wire of the string or the core of the bass string. It is better to use a thin copper wire and follow Lampie's way. The copper wire you will find in many cables (feeders). It's enough to remove some of their insulation.
 
I have rarely found copper wire that is small enough to do that in 1/48. Maybe it's the style here but the finest I can easily get is 30ga which is good for brake lines and such. I have used a guitar string (but not bass). It does bend if you try hard enough and use needle nose pliers.
 
I use wire from a company called Little Cars.
Its a UK based modelling supplier but will ship anywhere.
Wire starts at 0.1mm ( not sure what you'd gauge that at in the USA but its extremely thin). If memory serves me correct I used a piece of thin fuse wire with 0.2mm black wire around it, maybe 0.3mm.
Owner has a thread on Britmodeller.
Britmodeller.com -> little-cars.com

All the best,
Nige
Editor
P47 Heaven :: AeroScale's Special Interest Group for the P47 Thunderbolt

Owner
56th Fighter Group in World War II
 
Yep. Bass strings are WAY too big. Though I have an electric 6 string as well, I have no extra strings to experiment. I'll dig through some of my excess wires laying around. The individual wires inside CAT5 network cable may be the ticket, but I'll have to check it out first. Otherwise, I'll just strip the insulation off of some of the wiring left over from the re-wire of my '55 Chevy and use individual strands that are appropriate size.

Thanks for all the input, guys! I hope that my end result won't make you feel like you're "casting pearls before swine."
 
Wish I could take credit for the pit in the photos earlier in this thread, Bruce, but that one belongs to Nigel, who has done a stunning build of this same aircraft and provided photos for my reference. I've been working on my pit and will post pics soon!
 
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Hey, Nige, the kit instructions call for the rectangular shaped headrest, but it looks like you used the rounded top headrest in your cockpit photos. I assume that's the one I should use.
 
Andy70 said:
Hey, Nige, the kit instructions call for the rectangular shaped headrest, but it looks like you used the rounded top headrest in your cockpit photos. I assume that's the one I should use.
Click to expand...

Hi Andy,
Just checked my builds and noticed I used the rounded headrest on the HV-J build but on the other M's I've built I used the squarer one.
HV-J was the first M I built if I remember correctly, and since then I've gathered a much greater amount of reference material.
Heres an enlargement of the photo of Russ being strapped into HV-J by his crew chief which appears to show the headrest to be the square type.


I'm not going to be changing mine though
The important thing for me is to have fun and enjoy what little time I seem to have for the hobby these days I'm just coming to the end of a Tamiya P-47 build that I starting a year ago!

All the best,
Nige

Editor
P47 Heaven :: AeroScale's Special Interest Group for the P47 Thunderbolt

Owner
56th Fighter Group in World War II
 
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I'm trying to take Nige's advice and quit worrying so much about dead on accuracy and just try to have fun with the build. To that end, I found some wire that was just the right size for the oxygen tube and already black but without the ribbing. I decided to skip wrapping extra wire around to represent the ribbing on the hose. I think it still adds a little to the look of the cockpit as a whole.

Here are some photos of the finished product minus the sight, which I'll add later.













Thanks for looking!
 
Thanks guys! I was pleased with how it turned out. Seeing the work you guys put out has inspired me to higher standards, so I feel like this is my best effort to date on a cockpit. Hope the rest of the plane turns out well.

TBolt - it's a kit decal. I put it on, then put flat clear coat over it, then came back after that dried and put a drop of future in each gauge to simulate glass. Learned that technique reading on this forum!
 
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