Too ambitious for me.LOL Good luck!
When I did mine I primed around all the cuts how you mention. Then used an xacto blade and carefully cut around all the pieces to seperate them. Was not fun at all because I had to do alot of trimming afterwards to get the halves to lines up.
Also, I built the forward section and the vac tail seperate, then joined them before doing ALOT of fill and sand.
My interior prior to joining the front and rear.
It helps if you add small strips of sheet at the joins, help line it up like locator pins.
That whole tail assembly is a major pain, the horizontal tail is not fun either. I still havent finished my kit. Gotta dd the fiddly bits including the clear cone on the tail.
Message me if you have questions, there are alot of modifications to make a D model that are not in the revell box.
Props are differant, wings need to modified as well as the cowls
Pretty much where I’m at.
Thank you B-17 Guy. Yours looks awesome so far! I can only dream about getting that far with mine and have it look that good. I think I am already suffering from PRE-traumatic Stress Syndrome just thinking about the next steps [:XX] I think Hans has the right idea about the valium [:D]That horizontal tail really scares me. I have a 1/72 “C” already built and a “B” in the stash. Maybe I should have stuck with those [proplr]
Thanks for that link! It’s great to see the projects underway and the progress made.
I’ll be following this build with interest!
Let the cutting begin! Wish me luck[whstl]
Well, that actually went much easier and qucker than I thought it would! I still have most of the fingers i started out with and didn’t mess up on any of the pieces. Now the next challenge will be uniformly sanding off the white edge into a nice straight joining surface.
Good progress so far, keep going!
I’m guessing you have to open up the rear window blisters & slot where the tail-planes go through the rear fuselage?
Do a squazillion dry fits though, & work on both halves of each sub assembly at once… as you might sand down one half of the tailplanes more than the other, & leave a stepped mis-match, (don’t ask how I know… [:#])
Check the thicknesses of the fuselage parts, the kit part is likely to be thicker than the vacform tail, & you don’t want a step between the fuse & tail…
I’m wrestling with a FM kit at the moment, & I chose to match the port fuselage with the port tail, then the same with the starboard bits.
This helped (me at least,) to get the tailplane at least a bit more vertical!
This meant I had 2 long port & starboard bits to match, & there was a huge V shaped slot almost to the tailfin to fill, but this was preferable than having 2 tubes of differing diameter at the join.
Thank you for the advice Jon_a_its, I greatly appreciate it!
Well, I’ve made some progress in the past couple days. I completed the horizontal stabilizer and have the rear fuselage dry fitted together. Next steps are to open up the windows, tail wheel well and horizontal stabilizer slots. also filling in the intakes between the engines and add the air scoops to the engine nacelles. This is going better than I thought it would!
Be very careful with that last sentence you said. " This is going better than I thought it would!"
Those words can come back and bite ya!
Words of caution, the horizontal tail is not fun to fit into the fuselage, I used a lot of 4letter words when doing that part. Plus I figured out that the join on the upper and lower tail pieces will come apart easily when handling it, if you squeeze just a bit too hard, “snap”…4-letter word. I took it apart and added bracing to keep that from happeneing.
I still havent figured out what I’m gonna do with the crew entry door, it is so conviently placed right on the main join for the front and rear halves…
I see that you know about the intakes between the engines, do you know to modify the engine cowls?
D models had 4 seperate pieces for the cowl as well as a ring you need to scribe in, more towards the front opening.
These are the swooses engines…
I put the panel lines on the cowls at 12, 3, 6 and 9 o’clock. So keep the bottom line, fill the other 2, then scribe in the other three, plus the ring around the front.
What are you planning on for propellers?
Thank you for the advice B-17 Guy. No, I didn’t know about the cowl mods. Luckily I am using the cowlings from a Monogram G so I don’t have to mess with the extended cowl flaps that come with the Revell F. I am really bad at scribing so this part will be a challenge. I am just finishing up the wings. I tried filling the air scoops with putty but didn’t like how it looked, so I cut out a piece if sheet plastic and wrapped it around the leading edge. Once painted it should look like the de-icer boot. As far as the props, I have some spares from the parts bin. I am hoping of 8 I have on hand, that I can trim at least 4 to look like they are supposed to, per the KAE instructions. The crew door, well I have the window in, I think (know) I will be taking some artistic license on that.
Originally I was going to do it as the NMF “Swoose Goose”. After seeing picture of Swoose Goose in it’s original Olive Drab over neutral gray, I think I am going to go that route. I think it will be a lot more forgiving than the silver in hiding any imperfections.
Here is my wing modification:
And my attempt to install the windows. I think I would have been better off catching a beaver down by the mill pond and let him chew the holes for me [:$] I guess there is a good reason i normally build OOB [whstl] Hopefully once I do a little putty work and paint they will look better:
The revell AC-47 comes with 2 sets of props, the paddle and needle props. I took the set that came in mine, then got another set from another modeler. So they at least match. I’d recomend going that route, there is already enough modifying to do.
Thanks again B-17 Guy, I just happen to have an AC-47 that I haven’t opened in my stash! Anybody out there have another set of the needle props they don’t need? PM me if you do.
First, I want to introduce my little friend that helped me do all the cutting on this project:
And here are some shots of the assembled tail feathers and wings dry-fitted in place:
Nice work! She’s starting to look like the “Swoose”! At least I think the “Swoose” was a “D” model. However, your modeling buddy could benefit from some Crest White strips[:D]
That modeling buddy has better looking teeth than some members of a certain species that knows that a dentist is, lol
Great work, looking forward to seeing the results
please bear in mind that my advice is based on only 2 wingy-thingy bashes, & i’m still working on the second one… [:^)]