I kit-bashed a Revell B-17F Nose to a Monogram B-17G Fuselage

[Linebacker]

In 2009 I posted this at Finescale Modeler: “I am thinking of taking the nose of a Revell 1/48 B-17F and grafting it to the front of a Monogram B-17G fuselage to make an F model. The Revell is nice but has no interior to speak of and there is a wealth of aftermarket material for the Monogram G. From just fore of the cockpit to the tail they seem the same. The engines in both models are the Wright R-1820-97. The flaps seem the same. So, other than the nose, are there any differences between the two models?” Well, I decided to go through with it but I decided, since the last model I had built was in 1974 when I was in the army, that a lot of techniques were available now that hadn’t been available back in the day and I decided to use it as a test-bed to try all that stuff I had read about over the years. I had won a couple of 1st place prizes at the Columbus, Ohio, IPMS, in 1969, so I was not without skill but my skills were somewhat rudimentary and rusty. I finally finished and will describe the process. Subsequently, I put that old plastic through the wringer; doing things to it that would probably be considered a war crime in several countries.

First, I cut the nose off the F and attached it to the G. I cut out the waist gun windows from the F and added them to the G. I also cut the rudder out of the tail. I filled in the cracks with putty and the work did not look too bad so I decided to continue (I did ruin an F and a G on a first attempt but the advantages of having a spare kit on hand would soon become evident). Here is the work up to this point.

I knew that the radio room gun was wrong on the Revell F so I knew that I would have to make one. I took the destroyed first attempt B-17F/G and cut the fuselage down so that only the section from just aft of the radio room gun pit to just forward of the cockpit was all that was left. I taped off the windows and the ends of the section so that it looked like this:

I turned it over and filled the roof channel which runs between the radio room bun and the cockpit full of plaster. When it hardened I had a plaster rendition of the opening and the roof channel over the radio room. I sanded off all of the plaster but the radio room roof and cut away enough to make a mold master. I made a mold using rubber and then made several resin copies. The copy on the far right in this photo I lined with aluminum cut from a Pepsi can.

Before I go any further I must note that I found, at Hobbylobby, in the jewelry department, these small wires with a loop on the end called eyepins. I also found some brass tubes in the model department that the eyepins slid right into. I would rely on the eyeypin throughout the build (there are probably 50 eyepins in the model) and several times with the brass tubes. Here are the two products:

Here is the eyepin inserted in the brass rod:

I needed a machine gun ring to hold the radio room machine gun so I went to the ruined F/G boxes, found a ring from the top turret assembly, filed it down and made a passible ring.

I made a resin copy of it in case I screwed one up, drilled small holes in each side of the ring and in each side of the radio room gun position and used an eyepin as an axle for the gun ring and gun:

Here is the radio room gun position in the fuselage:

This is how it looked in the final product:

More later!

[mrb865]

Looking good so far! Nice work. Can’t for the next update.

[the_Baron]

Not to take away from your effort, but I’m not surprised you can do this. Revell’s -F was a copy of Monogram’s -G, with modifications to make it the -F. When the kit was issued, Monogram’s board studied the kit and sent a letter to Revell’s leadership. They said they wouldn’t sue, but warned Revell not to do it again.

I have a Revell -F to serve as the basis for a back-date to a B-17E flying from Midway during the battle.

Yours is a great project, and I look forward to your next updates!

Best regards,
Brad

[cbaltrin]

Great effort. The nose looks good!

[Linebacker]

Half way through this project HK came out with the B-17F which is basically everything I am doing here. I had to decide whether to trash the whole thing or keep going. Since the idea was to use it as a test bed of different materials and techniques, I decided to keep going unless I encountered a project ending disaster of some sort but then I found there wasn’t a problem I could not overcome somehow. I soldiered on.

[Linebacker]

Very early in the build I decided that, since I had never scribed and riveted a plane, I’d try that. The Revell/Monogram F/G had raised panel lines (common in the 60’s and 70’s) and no rivets so this seemed like a necessity. I sanded all the raised panel lines off and, thanks to the silver plastic used by Monogram, it left a shadow white line which I could use as my scribing guide. I scribed back on ever seam on the plane (wings, fuselage, everything). Using a riveting wheel, I then riveted the entire plane. Do you have any idea how many rivets were on a B-17? I don’t know if I would do it again but here is the result in a few pictures:

My scribing and riveting tools; please note the yellow tape. It has millimeter markings along one edge and inch markings along the other. I put a piece at one end of the scribing area, a piece at the other and used my straight edge between the two pieces to make my rivets. It is like masking tape and I found it at Amazon. It is extremely handy. The package in the back is my Rosie the Riveter rivet tools.

More later!

[Linebacker]

I decided to do the wings first. I had an Eduard set for the exterior which included inserts to fill the front wing light and vent ports. They would not stay in place with superglue so I braced them with plastic square tubes and used massive amounts of epoxy glue to keep them in place; it was crude but it worked:

I had four things yet to do with the wing systems: superchargers and their wells, a detailed resin wheel well interior and a revised landing gear attachment point. I cut out the superchargers that came with the kit and glued in the resin replacement turbocharger wells, constantly checking the fit of the wells with the superchargers in them.

Then one of those pesky engineering problems popped up. The outboard superchargers were no problem but the inboard nacelles had to contain the supercharger wells, the landing gear attachment point and the resin wheel well, three large pieces and not much room. The resin wheel well had a set of landing gear with it but I didn’t like the look of it, it looked weak, and I decided to use the kit attachment piece. So, to keep the landing gear properly aligned, I took the Monogram landing gear attachment piece, cut it at an angle and glued some L plastic braces to hold it in its original configuration. Then I glued the the piece that holds the landing gear post into the nacelle and let it dry that way. Here is the landing gear post attachment piece in place with the supercharger well underneath:

I checked the fit of the landing gear and it was sturdy and in its original configuration:

I cut out the front part of the Monogram piece which left me with this (note that little piece of square tube on the front of the wheel well hole which marks where the front of the resin wheel well will go) :

Now I painted and assembled the resin wheel well and cut it down to fit the space I left in the front of the nacelle. I glued it in place. Here you can see the drum that is the exterior of the wheel well:

I painted the superchargers and the exhausts that would go on the outside of the nacelles and test fit:

Here are the resin wheel wells in place:

That left the wing flaps. I first tried a set from Eduard but decided not to use them. I bought a set of flaps which had been 3D printed (another new thing) and cut the wings to accept them:

The resin flaps had these little posts which broke every time I touched them so I replaced them with those metal eyepins I mentioned earlier:

I glued in the base flaps into the wings and shimmed them up with sheet plastic to plug up the gaps
(I also opened the wing ventilator openings and you can see that here):

Here is what the flaps looked like in the plane:

More later!

[Linebacker]

I decided to use some Eduard upgrade engines and got a quick lesson in how to use tiny amounts of superglue. Each engine had more parts than the original B-17 and this became a project all by itself. I got them all together and painted. Here they are when finished:

And here they are on the plane:

More later!

[mrb865]

I applaud your efforts and the patience it took to do all those rivets. Solid work!

[Linebacker]

Thanks, that took more time than any other modification!

[Linebacker]

I live in Ohio and have made several trips to see the Memphis Belle at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Museum in Dayton. I knew that the fore and aft bulkheads needed to be flush with the bomb bay opening. That meant that the kit bulkheads would not do and the change would require those bulkheads plus the aft radio room bulkhead would need to be changed. I cut up (sectioned) the glued together ruined fuselage from my first nose grafting attempt and traced the inside of the fuselage to get the right dimensions. Using the those, I made my own bulkheads from sheet styrene, added the detail that was needed and transferred as much detail from the originals as I could get to my new bulkheads. Not wanting all those glued pieces to keep falling off over time, I made molds of each and made several copies so I could ruin a few with no harm, no fowl. Here are my originals with resin copies turned so you can see both the front and the back of each bulkhead:

Of course, all this meant that the radio room floor which extends to the ball gun mount would have to be adjusted by and 8th of an inch. I resized the kit piece by filing off the front side where it attaches to the aft bomb bay bulkhead and adjusted those tabs accordingly. I removed that huge radio room table stump and patched it. Then I made a couple of resin copies for emergencies. Here is that floor piece and copies:

I cut out the door on each kit bulkhead and later attached each to its appropriate bulkhead. Then I found the mysterious unknown bulkhead. Looking at the internet 3D walkthrough of the Boise Bee (Boeing Museum in Seattle), I discovered a bulkhead just forward of the tail gun position that I did not know existed. So I made one. There is a door on that bulkhead used by the tail gunner to get to his position and I had to add that. I made a door and, as I did with the other doors, I attached the door to the bulkhead with two or three aluminum tabs I cut from a Pepsi can. Here is my rendering of the mysterious bulkhead:

Since I adjusted the bulkheads of the bomb bay, the kit supplied catwalk, side rails and bomb racks would not fit (and I didn’t like them anyway) so I built those to the new dimensions and, of course, made copies from resin:

More later!

[Linebacker]

The main part of the project was the bomb bay. I used various vendors for the instruments and bulkhead decorations, primarily Eduard. This is the forward radio room bulkhead which abuts the bomb bay.

The radio room forward and aft bulkheads had batting which had that diamond shape so I took the diamond finger grips on a hobby knife and made an impression on a slab of clay, then spread a little resin on it and let it harden. Here is a picture of the knife and the resulting piece which I painted, cut to fit and glued on the radio room bulkhead:

If you look under the desk in the next picture, you’ll see an A-4 oxygen tank. I researched these and found that there was at least one for each crew member in the bomber. Some B-17’s had as many as thirteen. If you do a virtual walk through of Boeing’s Boise Bee you’ll find them. I couldn’t find a decent representation and, in frustration, I sent an e-mail to Eduard. Three weeks later Eduard announced it was releasing a set of the A-4 and A-8 oxygen tanks. That, my friends, is service. I scratch built the mounts for the tank and used the Eduard A-4 when it came out. This is also a good view of the batting in position.

Here is the rear cockpit bulkhead which also abuts the bomb bay:

The ribs of the fuselage needed to be visible. So I found a bud vase at Walmart that was exactly the interior diameter of the inside of the model. I took a thin piece of styrene and glued the ribs onto it. Then I carefully wrapped the piece around the bud vase and soaked it in hot water for several minutes. When I pulled it out, the whole piece had assumed the shape I wanted. Then I glued the few rib pieces that had fallen off during the process and made a mold and then a resin copy. I subsequently decided just to use my original. Here is the result:

I used the kit bombs and painted them. I ran an eyepin through each bomb and then drilled a hole in each of the brackets where a bomb would be attached.

I assembled the bomb bay, gluing the fore and aft bulkheads together with the catwalk and used styrene strips to hold it together until it dried (and to protect the fragile joints). Here are the prepared bombs, the glued together bomb bay and the bomb bay’s ribbed walls and roof:

I glued on the roof part which allowed me to remove the strip styrene supports that temporarily secured the pieces. I glued in the bombs and then I bent two eyepins, passed them through the catwalk at either end and attached and eyepin to each to act as bomb bay door actuators. Here is this mess all together:

Here (though its fuzzy) you can see my bomb bay door actuators in place:

The side walls of the bomb bay support the side brace and bomb bay rack. This is how the kit showed this area:

I used sheet styrene to cover this area and hold the side rails and bomb rack (also the ribbed bomb bay roof piece fit behind this piece).

Here are those pieces in place:

More later!

[Linebacker]

Next comes the cockpit nose area. I decided that the Monogram nose/cockpit floor would suffice but it would take major alterations. I had to file off a sixteen of an inch so that it would fit. I filled in the stumps where the kit seats for the two crewmen in the nose were supposed to go. the actual chairs in the F were those spider-leg chairs you would find in an office. Also, I didn’t like the pilot and co-pilot seats, decided to make my own chair frame and find a pilot seat that was more suitable so the these attachment points were filled in. In keeping with my “open-door” policy, I opened both ends of the tunnel that goes under the flight deck. Here is the result:

I painted the floors wood grain and glued in the open doors of the rear end of the access tunnel. Here is the result:

I made frames for the pilot and copilot seats from styrene and made copies in resin so they wouldn’t fall apart. Here are the frames and the copies installed in the flight deck:

The pilot and co-pilot seats were from Resin2Detail. The actual chairs were really quite simple and the others I found were much more modern looking than the Resin2Detail ones. I got the yellow seat covers from Eduard.

The crew seats in the nose, the spider-leg versions, were built using several different chairs. I made the legs which were very fragile so I drilled a small hole in the bottom of the seat and the floor of the nose and used the eyepins again to make a secure connection. Here is one of the chairs (please note another of my scratch built A-4 oxygen tank holders and the Eduard A-4 tank with regulator):

Here is the nose area after I got it tricked out with everything I could find:

In the following two pictures you can see the front tunnel access opening. I soaked some tissue in OD paint, cut it out and crinkled it up to represent the drape that hung over that opening:

Here are pictures of the cockpit. The instrument panel is Eduard. There is a thermos of coffee behind the pilot seat and a dispenser of paper cups behind the co-pilot seat. Under the pilot seat is another A-4 oxygen bottle:

The final step was to add the floor of the access tunnel and the oxygen tanks below the flight deck, both of which could be seen from the open crew door in the fuselage:

More later!

[PropDuster]

Very comprehensive rework to achieve your goals and -uh-WOW ! Comes immediately to mind.

[MR_TOM_SCHRY]

This project is amazing and very ambitious and I wish you Good Luck with it.

[Linebacker]

Now it’s time to do the radio room which attaches to the rear bulkhead of the bomb bay. Remember that piece I had to fashion because of the changed dimensions of the bomb bay? I had to make certain that the ball turret mount stayed lined up with the ball turret bay. I accomplished that and everything looked good on the test fits. So I painted the floor of the radio room aluminum and then looked around for something to use for an anti-skid surface common on B-17’s. I found that fine grit black sandpaper had the look I wanted. Here it is pictured:

I do not know the configuration the seating in my particular bomber, “Knock-out Dropper,” and I couldn’t find any pictures. The three seat configuration was common in the F. The radio operator took the single seat at the desk on the port side while the two chairs on the starboard side would be utilized by the waist gunners when they weren’t busy. It was likely warmer in the radio room. The pictures I could find were of the pedestal type rotating seat so that’s what I installed. The pedestals are held in place by more eyepins drilled into the deck. Here is the radio room. The door, ajar, is held on by tabs made of Pepsi can aluminum. The radios and racks are Eduard. On the other side of the aft radio room wall is the mount for the ball turret post (one of the few pieces I used of the original kit). Here are those photos:

Here is the other side of the aft radio room bulkhead and the ball turret mount. The yellow thing is the oxygen tank (sorry for the fuzzy pictures):

More later!

[Linebacker]

Now that the nose, cockpit, bomb bay, and radio room were done and test fitted, I went back to the fuselage. I fashioned ribbing from styrene to replace that destroyed when I fitted the F windows and nose onto the G fuselage. I cut out all the door openings and primed it. Here is what that looked like:

On many of the B-17F’s the outer material was ripped off the insulation (some crews thought it was a fire hazard) but they left the diamond batting between the ribs in an attempt to keep out the cold. So I fitted little pieces of the diamond resin pieces I made from the impression of the grip portion of the X-acto knife. A real problem was the ancient clear window parts which were ill-fitting and too thick. I tried to come up with an alternative but failed and had to use the kit windows. I’m not particularly happy with it but it is what it is. Here are pictures of that:

I added the cheek guns on either side of the fuselage. The kit had holes in the plastic windows to hold the guns but this was incorrect; there was a mounting bracket that held each gun before it passed through the window. Here are the two cheek guns with ammo boxes added:

I needed racks for the oxygen bottles hanging on both walls of the area behind the flight deck. True Details had a good set with a curve that matched the fuselage really well but I didn’t need the whole piece (there just wasn’t room for it). I made several resin copies and cut off everything but the oxygen bottle racks which I cut down so that they just fit. I added the oxygen bottles and racks to the fuselage and the other items needed there.

Then, a little further back came my side bomb rack supports and the short side bomb racks:

Moving back along the fuselage I finished the radio room walls. While the insulation in some B-17’s was removed leaving that diamond batting in place as I did with the bulkheads of my radio room, I found many pictures showing the full insulation in place on the fuselage walls of several radio rooms and did my radio room that way. I flattened some clay so there were ridges as there would have been with the material of the full insulation, spread some resin on it and let it dry. I glued it in place. then I added the ammo box and ammo for the radio room roof gun and more of the Eduard A-4 walk-around oxygen bottles with my scratch built racks. Here that is:

At the ball turret position, I added the two roof supports for that gun mount.

Then came the waist gun positions which seemed like an absolute vacation comparatively. I had already added the ribbing to match what was there. I scratch built the firing steps and covered those and the floor with the anti-skid fine grain sandpaper. The ammo boxes are Eduard. Here is the end result of that work:

For the machine guns I used some excellent Resin2Detail versions with some of those fancy metal barrels. Using eyepins, I made a post at the bottom of the waist guns, like this:

I cut a piece of brass tube (described earlier), drilled a hole in the top firing step, made a little bracket with a hole in it for the top holding piece and then just inserted the gun in the brass tube. This is the result:

The windows on the F didn’t just disappear. They were held in brackets and were slid out of the way on rails. Cold was a real threat in these bombers and every attempt was made to keep out the wind. So the windows were necessary to keep out as much of the wind and cold as possible. So I took the window pieces out of the ruined first-attempt F, built frames for them from L shaped styrene and you can see the result here:

Once I finished this part and added the rear bulkhead (described later), I added the Eduard chemical toilet at the rear of the waist compartment, and a small generator that was located there:

More later!

[Strongeagle]

Ahoy Linebacker. It’s a gift to be able to look at a model and see all the possibilities so clearly. Your detail leaves me staggering. When is your mission scheduled to bomb the ball-bearing factory in Schweinfurt? I’m working on an old Airfix 1/72 B-17 and slapped myself on the back when I got the canopy on right. Thank you for this great building lesson. Looking forward to seeing more of this project.

[Linebacker]

Thanks, my goal was to improve my rusty skills and learn to use all the things that have come around in the past fifty years. I have always loved the B-17; my uncle (who flew B-17’s in WWII) bought me a 1/72 Revell B-17F when I was thirteen. I got to fly in “Aluminum Overcast” a few years ago and that was an adventure. I know things about B-17’s that other people would never know like where the Oxygen tanks are located, what the different types of fire extinguishers are located and what the A-4 walk-around was for. When you build a model in detail you constantly think of the men who flew the real plane and what they had to contend with in close quarters, in freezing cold with enemy planes shooting at them.

[Linebacker]

No for what was one of the two most challenging things in this build: the tailwheel assembly. The Revell/Monogram B-17’s had a very simple tailwheel strut and a hole in the bulkhead in which to stick it. I knew I would have to scratch-build one if I wanted it to be accurate. I started by scraping the post off where the Monogram tailwheel assembly was supposed to go and covering the front of it with an upgrade of the front surface of the bulkhead:

From one of the upgrade vendors I found a suitable tailwheel structure that was a good representation of the real one:

The eyepins that I used throughout this build had a loop on the end so I drilled a couple of holes, glued the eyepins in so the loops were on the aft side of the bulkhead and widened the loops slightly to hold a styrene tube with a hole running through it. Then I drilled two holes in the new tailwheel assembly so that more eyepins could hold the whole thing together. It looked like this:

There was a shock absorber and a rod which connected the bulkhead and the tailwheel assembly. I used another eyepin and some scrap screw to make one. Here is the tailwheel assembly so far:

Here the assembly is in the fuselage:

There is an aluminum shield and shroud to keep mud out of the aircraft when landing (and also keep out the wind and cold. There was also a slight walkway around it for the tailgunner to move around the tailwheel assembly on his way to and from his station. I made the walkway out of sheet styrene and put some fine grit black sandpaper on it to simulate the anti-skid surface. At Lowes I found a lightbulb package with the right shape and size for the shield cut it down to fit and glued the floor frame to it. It looked like this:

I installed it in the fueslage, then I soaked some tissue in interior green paint and formed the shroud with it. I attached it to the tailwheel assembly and it looked like this:

Then I added that mysterious bulkhead to the fuselage. In the next photo, picture the tailgunner working his way through the first bulkhead, climbing over the shroud and shield and through that little door to his position.

It was time for the tailgunner position. I scratch built the narrow crawlway that also held the tailgunner’s seat. Here it is:

I covered it with my anti-skid surface (fine grit black sandpaper), installed it in the fuselage half, added an ammo box and other things and it looked like this:

I added the ammo box to the other fuselage half and added a few other things. It looked like this:

It was finally time to put the interior into the two fuselage halves and close it up. I decided to leave the interior “free-floating” by not gluing it in place but by adding square pieces of styrene tubing as guides. There were perhaps ten of these in each fuselage half. Like this:

For the better part of a day I tried over and over again to get everything lined up and finally succeeded. With everything enclosed in the fuselage, I rubber-banded it and used Tamiya fine liquid glue all along the seams.

Remember when I decided to keep going with the project unless a crisis I could not overcome occurred? It happened! when I checked the fuselage the next morning there was a crack, about and eighth of an inch from the seam line (the Tamiya glue held just fine). This was a stress fracture due to something being out of place. I was about to trash the whole thing but gave it a second thought. I needed to fill the gap with something that would be easy to sand and re-scribe, something that would fill the gap, and then remembered a tip I learned about in FSM once about lacquer thinner and scrap sprue. I dropped several cut up pieces of sprue to some lacquer thinner, the thinner melted the sprue into a paste which I forced into the gap.

It did the job, project saved!

More later!