I received the reissued Williams Brothers the Lost Electra kit for Christmas. I have started working on it but like other older kits, it does have problems like parts which don’t fit correctly and lots of flash. Has anyone else have this kit and is working on it yet? I was wondering about sanding off the raised rivets. I have photos of her Electra and the rivers are very visible but the ones on the kit seem to be raised too much. ANy help would be appreciated.
Sand away. The rivets are wayyyyyyyy overscale. The hardest thing for me was fitting the clear windshield/cockpit piece on, it was not fun making that seam disappear. Maybe that’s why I bought another one …
Gordon,
I built this one a few years back. It’s definitely not a wonder-kit. The odd scale didn’t mean much to me. Very little detail in the interior - and what is there is kinda crude. The decals were good, but I had to touch up with some red paint in small spots. Filler putty is needed, and I sanded down the rivets a little to make them stand out less. With the seam filling and sanding, I then had to add some recessed rivet detail to make it look a little more uniform around the seams. The side/rear door didn’t fit very well.
I agree with the last post about the clear parts. They required quite a bit of sanding to conform to the main fuselage. It required some creativity in painting too, the lines were not well defined.
I bet it will be quite a job to get the surface to the point where it will look good under a metallizer/Alclad finish. I painted mine in testors rattle can aluminum - which was probably not as nice a finish - but definitely more forgiving.
It’s a nice kit of Amelia’s A/C when finished, and it’s the only one I have ever been able to get my hands on. If I had taken the time to research it more - I might have been inclined to add some interior detail, but I wound up building it OOB.
Chris
I am still in he process of building the Amelia Earhart kit. I think I have used more putty of this kit than any other model I have ever built. Making the canopy fit is going to be a major task. I also bought the Special Hobby version too. Maybe it will make a better looking model. The major difference other than the scale is that the Special Hobby version has openings for many windows which will have to be filled, and no window in the door.