Welcome to another episode of Ken’s Chop Shop! In tonight’s episode we are going to chop off one of the main wheel bays on the wing to replace it with an Aires resin piece. Sounds like fun doesn’t it! Let’s get started!
Here is the original wing with the Aires replacements:
Here is what the backside looks like:
Now I know what you are thinking, “Ken, how are you going to cut that irregular shape out and still keep the surrounding plastic intact?” Good question. First we are going to cut out the biggest chunk of plastic with a Dremel using a cutting bit. Then we are going to spend about 3 hours using both a flat file and a half round file finishing the hole, constantly taking fitting calculations, and looking at pictures for reference. Here is the result:
Here is with the Aires piece in place (not glued of course):
And so ends another episode of Ken’s Chop Shop! Come back tomorrow when we start on the other side!
Thank you Russ! I thought I had taken a picture after I got done with the Dremel before I started with the files, but apparently I didn’t. I will try to remember on the other side.
That is significant, heck, if it wasn’t for nuclear power,
we’d be burning all the trees up here, or be stuck burning coal.
No one wants the gas fired pants near a population center, and we just lost $240 million to the ‘do-gooders’ that had them moved.
I wonder if you know the name of the last Russian freighter that passed through
Canada’s lock system and dumped a million litre ballast full of Baltic Zebra mussles into our Great Lakes?
The permanent environmental destruction is in the 10’s and 10’s of billions of dollars, much worse than a few rad from a ship in harbour, or insulting the ‘do-gooders’ with a ‘proximity to nukes allergy’. Rather significant I’ld say. But hey, to each his own.
As for low-level radiation levels, check out what is happening to the North African countries trying to tap aquifer ground water…they are eating nuked dates…and loving it.
I’m close to finishing the wings and right now I’m tackling the spoilers. The kit has a slot for the spoiler but the whole spoiler assembly (including the “feathers”) fits into the slot when actually, the feathers overlapped the wing as shown below:
I filled in the lower part of the slot with a 7 mm strip of plastic.
I then had to sand the strip, the wing along the edge of the strip, and the back side of the spoiler behind the feathers to get the spoiler to lay flat. I also sanded the feathers from the top to make them thinner (the spoiler is just tacked on in the picture below to see how it fits).
I can only imagine what it will cost to disassemble her, given the radiation levels are deemed to be dangerous. You can’t just take that scrap steel away and put it in a blast furnace. That scrap is permanently contaminated and needs to be disposed of ‘safely’.
What is the half life of that radiation, a half of next-to-forever?..lol…Just read the Log scale for 2 backwards until you hit an acceptable number of years or radiation level…lol
It’ll cost just as much to bury that steel in a hole somewhere as to build a new Nimitz, if you can drive the scrap trucks or tains through a town without the local turn-out carrying pickets and blocking the highway…what a waste of taxpayer’s money.
Are you ready for another episode from Ken’s Chop Shop? As promised, tonight we are doing the other main wheel bay. Here is a shot of the original wheel bay along with the Aires resin update piece:
Here is the view from the other side:
Once again I started off with cutting the majority of the plastic out with the Dremel using the cutting bit:
Here is the view from the other side:
And once again from this point I used a flat file and a lot of test fitting to remove the remaining plastic until I got the piece to fit:
And here is the view from the other side:
Here is the what the hole looked like when I was finished:
And once again the view from the other side:
That is all for tonight’s episode! Stay tuned for more from Ken’s Chop Shop!
Dom brought up a good point - thanks Dom! The B-52D spoiler feathers were actually flat, as you can see in the photo below, just like they were rendered in the kit. On the other hand, the spoiler body was really tapered but the kit rendered it flat.
To compensate and keep the spoiler even with the top of the wing, I ended up tapering the feathers.
The other alternative would be to keep the spoiler assembly and feathers flat as they are (but you would still need to thin the feathers) and not add the piece at the bottom of the spoiler slot - but then you would then need to add a piece to the top of the spoiler to fill the slot, then re-scribe the whole thing. I decided not to do that.
Since the picture above, I further thinned the feathers so it’s hard now to see that they are slightly tapered. You have to be careful not to get them too thin or they’ll break off. Being tapered slightly makes them a little stronger.
Hi all, in between work and sleep managed to get some of the front office done. Used the MM Russian interior color and am relatively happy with it. Also, I got a little something in the mail today which made me very happy[:D] Included is a pic of that and what I had been using. I’ll still use the cheap one as needed or at least till I get somewhat proficient with my beloved Badger Patriot. I’m looking forward to doing so many schemes that I was unable to before. Time for me to catch up on my reading; enjoy the pics!
Nice work on the cockpit! Good detail work! [Y] [Y]
Cool air brush! Dual action! That is all I have ever used, so I know no different. With a little practice you will get used to it. Congratulations on the purchase! I am sure you can’t wait to try it out!
