I’m a beginner building my first model in decades, a Tamiya 1/72 scale F/A-18. The kit has the gear doors as a single piece for wheels up and you have to cut them into pieces for wheels down. I’ve done that but getting these very thin, slightly curved door parts to stick edge on to a rounded fuselage with no guides or pin holes is giving me no end of trouble.
I’ve finally managed to get them to stick at the cost of some ugly looking glue puddles. I used Mr. Hobby regular cement along the edge of each door and held them in place long enough to stick then ran some Tamiya extra thin along the join but it was difficult keeping the piece steady as they tended to slip against the rounded fuselage. I’m also pretty sure they’ll wind up falling off at some point. Can anyone can give me some tips on how to handle this kind of thing for future reference?
You could always make some gear door arms with some evergreen styrene strips. Just have to figure out approximately what dimensions you need your arms to be and find the appropriate size of evergreen strips…they definitely make them small enough for such an application. Then all you have to do is glue them to either the door or the gear well before the paint goes on, and then scrape the paint away from the opposite surfaces before doing the final attachment. You can use Tamiya cement with the orange cap and a sharpened toothpick to get just the right amount where you want it, and the slower evaporation time will give you a little more time to work. Tamiya cement will give you the most permanent bond.
I had the same problem attaching the main landing gear doors on a B-52 model. It was a larger model but maybe the way I solved it will work for you. I drilled small holes in the landing gear doors and inserted cut-off staples so there were about 1/4 inch protruding. Then I cut small slots in the fuselage and laid the staples in the slots, as shown below. The staples are very strong and hold the doors flush with the fuselage with a minimum of glue.
In your case, you may need to use smaller staples or maybe cut off sewing pins. You will likely need to adapt the method of attaching them to your fuselage and gear doors depending on the angle of attachment.
Similar to Striker I sometimes use a short piece of soft wire, two per door.
Cut a short piece and glue it to the inside of the door at points where there are raised ribs if any. That’d probably be where the hinges are. Then paint to match inside of door.
When dry, bend hook in protruding ends and get it to hook inside of edge of well. Put a drop of CA at each point where it attaches inside. Hold till dry. bend a little until it looks right.
An advantage is that if you bump it it will bend but not break off and can be straightened.
If plane is already painted, and doors painted, itis important to remove paint in both areas that will touch. Without hinges, this means two very narrow touching areas, both on plane and door edge. Difficult but it can be done. Look very carefully at where the joint is on both sides.
As someone else already said, small (very small) amounts of thick “gap filling” super glue on one piece (whichver is easier). If you are confident you can get them in the right spot right away, and don’t want to wait to get it set, then spray a little bit of accelertor on the opposite piece. Touch together and they are bonded.
You have gotton some excellent advise. What I use works as well. I use Thin Copper or Brass , ( prefferably Brass)wire Flattened with a craft hammer and used where needed.Sometimes you will have to twist it to get the effect you want. Oh! this is a great place to use Bondic Ultra-Violet setting glue. Just a teensy bit on each end, Hit the light on the end you are working on and Viola’ job done!
Thanks all for the great advice. I tried some thick CA glue and it worked great. First door I used too much glue but the rest went fine; no visible puddles. A little really goes a long way. When I start doing some larger scale kits I’ll give hinges a try.
Started working on my Tamiya P-38 and thought of this topic,look how easy they made it to attach the landing gear doors by sliding that big tab into the opening on the the side of the bay,real nice engineering there.
Same as a couple of the responders above, I go with some variation of what is used on the ‘real thing’ – wire, staples, thin-dimension rod or whatever…usually attached with ‘super’-type glue – to mimic both hinges and the struts or actuators on the full-scale models.
Twist-tie wire is particularly useful for this: it’s thin and easy to shape, yet strong and stiff enough to hold its position pretty firmly. (One of the best all-round modeling materials.)
I guess that’s why I bought anothr bundle of that wrapped floral wire today at H.L. It does work great and allows it to flex, if the model is accidentally handled wrong!
