Hasegawa 1/32 Fw190D-9

John that "duct" is probably the brake line. It should connect to the line on the strut and head toward the pedals in the cockpit.

Great work so far John!

Damn good work John.....good to see you back at it...

Wonderful craftsmanship, always such a treat to see what you are up to. Glad to see all is well and you are building away again. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with next, especially the paintwork.
Dan

Thank you for the comments! It's good to modeling again! I'm hoping I have this build with some downhill momentum and am thinking about re-starting the Me262 build at SOME point in time.

But back to the Dora. The wiring work on the engine plug is slow going. I am adding the wiring as I go, painting each wire, letting it dry, and giving it a wash before the next wire is added.


To keep me occupied as paint dries, I've added small bits of brass tubing to the landing gear legs to hold the brake line, which will be represented by a strand of lead wire. On previous builds, I glued the brake line before painting and the soft lead wire got all bent out of shape through the paint/weathering process. So for this build, I'll add the brake line after painting.

Beauty.

Nice additions John. Had a look at the "riveting" tool on eBay and noticed a sharpener as well. Would you need that if just working in plastic I wonder

Eggggsellent work!

Looks great so far John!

Thanks guys!

fubar57 said:

Nice additions John. Had a look at the "riveting" tool on eBay and noticed a sharpener as well. Would you need that if just working in plastic I wonder

Click to expand...

Never thought about a sharpener. I wouldn't think it would ever need sharpening since you are just pushing imprints on plastic. Good to know though... maybe a sharpened tool could be used to punch out circular shapes?

Passed a milestone of the build with the completion of the engine plug today. Probably the biggest mental hurdle of the entire build for me and now that it is behind me, this build SHOULD pick up some momentum now. But first... the multiple dry-fitting of the radiator cowling resulted in a broken mounting pin that I replaced with a piece of brass tubing.


And here is the completed engine plug. I've added a lot of wiring (lead wire, electrical wire, some guitar string and pieces of brass tubing) to mimic the maze of pipes and wires exposed in the Dora wheel well.






It's not accurate. Some things mimic what I've seen in reference photos such as the wiring harness on the port side of the ammo box but most of it is fictional. I'll probably give it another wash and maybe hit it with some dilute paint from the airbrush to knock back the clean look but for the most part... it is done.

When inserted into the engine and covered by the wheel well and bottom wing, much of the assembly gets hidden from view. I just want to give the impression of something busy going on around the back of the engine.

Beauty

Well done.

Very nice.

Great work so far John!

very much looks the part John, well done !

I kept looking at the engine plug photos and tried to figure out what was bothering me. I finally settled on the observation that there were two many thick wires. I wanted to tone down the plumbing so I removed one of the thicker wire components and decided to replace it with thinner wires. Since I knew where it was going to go and how it was going to be positioned, it was easy to fashion another one.


The three-wire assembly was painted black to further de-emphasize it. After painting, it was gently guided into place and secured with CA glue.


I decided to salvage the removed piece and place it on the other side. It's further back into the engine plug so it doesn't stand out as much. Okay... I think the engine plug is done.


I started to draw the rivet lines on the wing bottom but kept messing up. As evening was turning into night, I figured I best attack this when I'm fresh instead of tired from work. I rubbed off the pencil marks and put the wing away for later. With the engine plug done, I could work towards getting the fuselage sides glued together. First, I glued the painted tail wheel assembly into starboard tail side.


A quick check to make sure the tail wheel is correctly positioned and aligned.


The last Dora I built came back with the tail broken off during shipping and I wanted to make sure that this joint was strong this time. According to the instructions, the separate tail assembly is supposed to attached after the fuselage sides have been glued together. Based on how the parts connect, it was hard to get a good glue connection if you follow this order so I decided to change it up.

I'm going to glue the right tail into the right fuselage half and then the left tail into the left fuselage half. You can see there are gaps in the two walls that accept the plug from the tail. I used good ole Testors tube glue on the gaps to serve as an anchor.


Once tail was positioned in place, I used Tamiya Extra Thin cement on the exterior joint. The two parts were pushed together to eliminate any gaps. A little too much Extra Thin here caused some glue goo to get pushed out from the joint. I'll let that fully cure before I clean the joint.


I avoided the excess glue problem on the port side so cleanup will be easier on that one.