Scratch build Boeing F4B-4

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Preserving history, one gauge at a time.
 
I'm not sure what this is, but from the looks of the long slot coupled with a clasp handle, I took it to mean an old fashion parking brake on the left side just under the throttle . Those brakes were of the kind where we pull back the clasp handle & as it's being pulled, one could hear rattling sounds until it reaches the end.
 

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I employed the same technique here as I did with the fuel gauge. Only this time, instead of cutting short slots, I continued the cut all the way through to the end.

From there, I fashioned a clasp handle & threaded some silver colored thread through the tube & some of the pulleys. I think it came pretty close to mimicking the full sized aircraft.
 

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From the photos taken from both the P-12E at Planes of Fame air museum & from the Nat'l Museum of Naval Aviation, the pilot's seat was of the bucket type, similar to one of the Mustang's.

I noted that the back of the pilot's seat was attached directly to the bulkhead.
 

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Last edited:
Just as with my Guillow's P-51 Mustang, I fashioned the seat using various gauges of wire & cardstock.
 

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The seat belts were made from an old canvas bag. I felt this texture came closer to mimicking the real seat belts than masking tape.
 

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Wire was used to fashion the adjusting clasps & locking clips.
 

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One of the major issues facing me was how to fabricate all those fairings on the wing struts & landing gears. I must've wracked my brains out for several weeks during the build on other projects.

Adding confusion to the whole matter, I discovered there were slight variations between them. Facing that, I decided a compromise consisting of a mix of several generic struts.

I believe I've come up with a workable solution.
At least it seems to work for me. I admit it's labor intensive but the results seem to speak positively for themselves.
 

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This ended up becoming multiple steps:

Knowing the fairings had to conform to the exact curvature of the rib/s at that particular location, I first laid down some wax paper over the wing. This gave me a platform to work on that follows those curves. Wax paper (or parchment paper) was used because it's generally non-stick & I needed to be able to remove my work from the wing to finish off the final details.

I then cut out the bullet-shaped fairings that met the surface of the wing & mimicked the approx size for that set of struts.

These cutouts were then transferred to two separate masking tapes laid side-by-side over another separate piece of wax paper on top of a table.

The images were then traced onto the tapes, making sure that the pattern was exactly in the middle between the two tapes. This was important.

I needed to be able to peel off the tapes that surrounded the struts. This should explain the use of nonstick wax paper & the use of two separate tapes making it possible to remove away from the ends of an N shaped strut.

Yep, lots of thinking went into this stage.
 

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Next, a strip of glossy cardstock was wrapped around the base of the strut. The gloss has moisture resistant properties.

The strip will also help serve as the final end of that fairing to the strut without having to resort to using more filler being masked off the strut. This alone should save me a few moments of trying to figure out how I could sand around the join between two struts to an N strut. I also wanted to avoid the risk of accidentally sanding off the finish from the strut.
 

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