I made a new year’s resolution that I’d try and actually document a build this year. I figured I’d share this WIP, first build of the year for me…Hasegawa’s 1/48 Ju-87B. Here’s some pix of the office. I used Tamiya XF-20 medium grey for the interior (which I thought looked close to RLM 02) and the Eduard photoetch set. The magazines for the MG 15 are from the Aires resin gun. I did a light wash using thinned sepia water colors.
Hot-Pb
Good progress so far! That kit is a very good one, and I look forward to following your build progress. Any ideas yet on the markings you plan to use?
Thanks Daywalker. I decided to do this up in a desert scheme. I actually have the Tally Ho sheet that has the infamous snake markings, but I think I’ll hold off on doing that particular scheme for now. I’m not feeling in that garish a mood this time around.
Don’t see many Stukas built. Loking forward to this one.
Wow nice 'pit. THat is a beautiful kit. I built one OOB about 5 years ago.
Very nice work on the pit. Keep us posted as you progress.
Regards, Rick
Nice work so far. I especially like the seat belts. That second seat looks to be really uncomfortable, even with a cushion.
Darwin, O.F. [alien]
Hi all. So I’ve made some additional progress on this build, with the office painted I was able to move on to some issues on the frame and gluing the fuselage together. First I tackled the wing control surface actuators, which others have noted are just molded onto the wings as solid triangles. I cut these off with a hobby knife, sanded this down, and then glued 0.8 mm styrene rod as a replacement. I’m pretty happy with the look of this.
I also decided to replace the kit MG17’s in the wings with hypodermic tubing. I ended up drilling out the machine gun holes and crimping off a bit of tubing from a syringe. I then put the lopped off piece in a pin vice and ground off the crimped portion on a grinding wheel. I then glued these into the wing using CA adhesive.
Also, since I’d like to eventually put in an MV lens for the leading edge landing light, I glued a scrap piece of sprue just behind the hole. Otherwise there will be nothing to secure the lens to, it’s just empty space. I then moved on to assembling the nose. This is a typical Hasegawa modular design to allow for future variants. While putting this together was pretty painless, aligning it straight with the fuselage was a little tricky. Also, they supply a poly cap to use with the propeller. As far as I could tell, this means that if you actually want to use the poly cap so the prop rotates, you’re best to paint the prop at this stage and attach it, otherwise you’ll have to glue it in place fixed later on. I decided to give this a shot and try masking the prop off when I get to painting the body. We’ll see how that goes. So I airbrushed the prop with Pollyscale RLM 70 black-green. After that I put the body parts together, I had to tape the wing tips pretty tightly to keep the wings against the body to avoid big gaps and keep the dihedral looking somewhat reasonable.
That’s it for now. Thanks for looking folks.
Great job PB. Nice job on the wing guns. The prop blades look pretty sharp as well.
…Guy
That is a sharp looking pit. Nice job on the actuator rods too They look much better than the triangle that were there before. Can’t wait to see what she looks like with some paint on her.
Soulcrusher[oX)]
Excellent work! It’s those little details like the guns, actuators, and such that really make a difference. Looking forward to the next round of pics! [:D]
Just a small update folks, for those interested. So I masked up the canopy, airbrushed it the interior medium gray and attached to the kit. I pre-shaded the panel lines and the walkways flat black and masked the walkwasy off. I also got started on the True Details resin wheels. Just a note that the kit wheels have the axels molded on, so for the resin wheels I drilled them out and attached brass rods for axels. I’m now airbrushing the kit in the standard Stuka splinter camo scheme, which I then plan to paint over in desert yellow.
Tony
Very nice work so far Tony. Keep us posted.
Regards, Rick
Really great progress there Tony!
As mentioned those actuators came out nice! They look like “fiddly bits” but were probably easier to deal with than “fiddly bits”. Also, I must agree about the ‘comfort’ of that rear gunner seat. Sheesh! What the heck did they do wrong???[(-D]
Two Questions:
Your canopy mask looks FAB! Is it your own or a masking set?
Then, I recall when (I think) Revell came out with their 1/32 Stuka almost 40 years ago, a review I read mentioned how the intake cowl was skewed slightly off-center. Was that accurate and did the Hase kitrepresent that?
Just trying to learn something…nice job!
Thanks namrednef, one nice thing about replacing the actuators with styrene rods is that when I lose those in the carpet I just make another rather than getting on my hands and knees!
The masks are from Eduards, they were very easy to use except for where the rear gunner’s MG-15 pokes through the canopy. You basically have to mask this and airbrush the interior color twice to get the circular framing around the gun right. Not too bad, though.
I didn’t notice any issues with the intake cowl being off center, but it takes some careful alignment to glue the completed nose assembly to the rest of the body. I taped it in place to keep it from moving. Also, from the rear of the intake cowl you can actually see right into the aircraft nose from the bottom of the plane if you purposely look. I didn’t add anything to spruce that up at all, but the REALLY AMS among us might want to consider that before gluing the nose in place.
Great work so far PB. I love stukas and this one is shaping up into a cracker. Looking forward to seeing some colour on her.
…Guy
Oh! The ugly plane is looking so good! [;)]
Keep-A-goin’ it’s shaping up nicely.
Finally got some paint on this bird. I masked off the prop and the underbelly was airbrushed with Pollyscale RLM 78 blue.
After masking off the bottom I then airbrushed the underlying stuka splinter camo, again Pollyscale paints, RLM 70/71 black-green/dark-green. Since I’m going for a desert stuka camo I then used blue tack (well, white tack too…ran out of blue) to mask off the splinter camo and give the desert yellow a slight soft edge.
Then blasts of RLM 79 sand-brown and a coating of Future and we’re pretty much ready for decals!
Thanks for looking, I hope it’s enjoyable.
Tony
Very nice work Tony. Some of those desert schemes were pretty colourfull in a sandy way and youve captured this one superbly. Top marks.
…Guy
Tony WOW. I like the how the camo shows the 70/71 under the 79