I figured I’d share my latest endeavor, the 1/48 SB2C-1C in the Accurate Miniatures boxing of the Pro-Modeler kit. Truthfully I don’t know too much about it other than it was a pig and it was dubbed a funny nickname by the pilots…“Son of a b#$tch second class”…lol. All you need to know I suppose.
The person I’m building it for provided the kit and a ton of aftermarket stuff was included inside the box. I’m guessing he wanted to build it himself at one point. He told me to pick and choose what I wanted to use. I started with the pit which was average, but I suppose ok for 1997. I used the color Eduard PE for the instrument panel. I did improve the pilot seat by thinning it a bit and adding the braces with styrene rod. I also scraped off the molded on seatbelts and replaced them with PE.
I found the fit surprisingly nice. No issues at the wingroot. The one issue I had was the windscreen which was badly deformed.
In no time I was painting the tri-colored scheme. After painting on the star and bars with spare Montex masks, I used AK Real Colors. These were then faded and weathered a bit.
The kit came with a PE fret that included the flaps. I decided I would keep the top closed and drop the lowers.
Gonna go ahead and deem this turkey finished. To recap, it’s the Accurate Miniatures boxing of the Pro Modeler kit in the early SB2C-1C form from VB-17. I thought it was a decent kit detail wise and the main frame fit pretty well. I did have issues with deformed clear parts particularly the windscreen. I had to make due as these are very pricey kits and there’s zero chance I would ever use vaccuform. I hate that stuff.
Reference the Accurate Miniatures boxing, welp, all I know is that the more AM kits I build, the more I understand why they probably went under (fondly recalling my Dauntless issues with mixed dash 3 and 5 front ends). With this particular kit, their instruction book is comical at best. It’s very poorly drawn and I pretty much had to guess where things go. Furthermore, AM provides kit specific decals, but tell you to buy the stenciling decals separately…wtf? So they can provide decals for writing on the bombs, but not these? They give you wing pylons but no bombs? Perhaps -1C variants did no have wing bombs. I had little interest in researching this. In my opinion overall, these kits are (and probably originally were) too expensive for them to cut such corners. Needless to say, their kits can be a frustrating experience, at least for me. Perhaps the Pro Modeler version would have been the better option?
Anyways, I decided to forego finding a stencil sheet and make due. The aftermarket I added were some PE in the cockpit and I used most of the PE fret that came with the kit, probably left over from it’s Pro Modeler days. It has -1C flaps, an engine wiring harness, and some other stuff. I decided to only drop the lower flaps, as I had a spare PE set that had the inner surface detail. I hate large photo etch too, as it’s a pain to work with. Perhaps I’m just a lazy modeler…lol. Paint is AK Real Colors and their weathering enamels. All markings are painted on with the use of spare Montex masks.
As I said before, not unlike it’s pilots, I’m not really a Helldiver fan. With that said, correct or not, I’m fairly happy with how it turned out.
I thought The bomb writing decals were a nice touch. I wish more companies would include these.
