Hi All,
I usually hang out with the ship guys, but my brother gave me this kit and asked me to build it for him. Does anyone have any pointers? I haven’t built a plane kit in probably thirty years!
I’d be happy to and I think others would too. You should do a new post with a more descriptive subject, like" wingnut in training seeks help with Mini…" or some such.
Start with the interiors and paint the basics zinc green and black. You’ll find plenty of info in these forums, plus on the www. Paint the insides of the halves, trap everything inside and glue them together. Test fit the wings, sometimes trimming off all the little pins helps things align better. Your big problem is going to be where the upper wings attach to the body (fuselage). Or it may fit fine. Dip the clear parts in Future floor wax. Paint the frames, some people use decals painted the right color which is pretty easy if you have some spares around. I paint them one at a time with a pair of pieces of tape. It takes awhile but I find other things to do.
Build it wheels down. If it has working parts like flaps and elevators I glue them solid. Look at some pictures of these on the ground and see whats what.
Paint the engines dark gray and drybrush the kins w/ metallic gray. Paint the crankcase silver.
I don’t do the bit with the props spinning with little caps, but better people do. I keep them off, get them painted up the way I like, and tack them in with white glue.
Leave off the little sticking out stuff till last. Its sometimes hard, sometimes no biggy to leave off the gear and legs until later. See if you can figure that . Stuff all the holes with wet toilet paper, mask the clear stuff and paint.
Decals need a gloss finish- it can be Glosscote, or Future floor wax. Then matte finish over.
Glue the finicky stuff, stretch an antenna and you’re off to the races.
The C is probably bare metal, right. Testors makes good silver enamels in both airbrush and rattle cans. Or you can get more esoteric if you look at posts- the key word is NMF.
Many of them appe3ared in OD green just like the ones that flew into Pearl after 7:55 AM Dec. 7th.
True. Then you’ll have to shag out the decals. Better to stick with what comes in the box.
Just take things slowly. Over the years I’ve built plastic models of planes (my favorite), ships, tanks, cars, RR equipment & rolling stock and assorted models of other items and discovered that the basic skills used on one type of model work just as well on another type of model. Read the instructions very carefully before you start (Instructions? We don’t need no steenking instructions!)
Couple of additional comments:
If you go OOB and do a Natural Metal Finish, don’t try to brush paint it - plan on using an air brush or spray can to apply the silver - brush painting silver over a large area just doesn’t seem to look right - apparently because of the way the silver particules are suspended in the carrier, they streak very easily when brushed.
And be aware that there is a problem with the dihedral on the Academy B-17 kits - there’s too much and the model ends up looking toy like - but with a little work, it can be corrected. Other than that, it’s a pretty good kit.
Just take your time, ask questions when you have a problem and have fun!
Thanks for the suggestions. I am sure to have more questions after I get into it a little. I will paint it silver with rattle cans. I like the olive drab, but will stick with the kit decals.
Oh, and you’d better post it up as you go so that we can toss in our 1 cents, often. Looking forward to it, keep this thread so we can see! If you like, look at the Pearl Harbor GB; its bound to have a bunch of stuff in the air and on the water that starts your engines/ floats your boat.
I’ve come up with a few questions as I have started to build.
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Everything I’ve seen about gluing the fuselage halves together says to start at one end and work your way down. Does this mean glue a little bit and let it dry before moving on? I assume use lots of rubber bands for clamping?
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Almost all of the small windows have dimples in them. Should I try to sand them out or replace them with something else?
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The box art shows a gun sticking out the nose window. The directions don’t call for one, but there are extras on the sprues. I can’t tell from the pictures I have found online if one should be there. There are three holes in the nose window.
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Painting may be tricky. There are a lot of sticky out things. Should I paint the fuselage halves, assemble then repaint to catch the seams, or just carefully mask the windows etc. and leave off the ones with the guns and install later? I don’t know if I am making any sense. I just want the best results possible.
Thanks
I’ll answer a few of your ??? with this. I always glue the halves together before I paint them. Otherwise hiding the seam is REALLY hard, and most a/c do not have a panel line there.
I’ve tried glazing windows, assembling halves and masking windows before or glazing after painting and the lowest common denominator seems to me to be whether or not the windows can be masked easily; ie a few rectangles, or are complicated or many and should be glazed with something like Krystal Klear afterwards’ At 1/72, the a/c which get glazed first and masked are the stuff like the cockpit, otherwise the cabin windows if they’re big; the only one that comes to mind is the Curtiss C-46. Then the rest get glazed at the end with KK; a type of white glue that turns clear when it dries. Min though, it never dries flat.
For your Fortress, there are only going to be a few you can glaze w/ Krystal Klear. For the rest, careful masking is required.
I personally would never recommend prepainting halves, except on really smaller a/c like I did on my 1/72 Dragon Rapide. Pics soon…
Gluing from one end to the other is a good idea. I’d shave off all of the little pins: they are no help at all. Then glue and clamp by eye. There’s a technique I learned which is to get the end, usually the tail started and then the next day to stick a single edged razor blade- my FAVORITE tool in the seam and slowly wiggle it along a you add liquid cement and clamp.
Clamp a lot.
One last clue. Joint problems seem to be most obvious at the seam where the wing meets the fuselage (body), seen from the top. Putty/ sanding/ filler is much less successful than it should be. A good plan is to grab a large supply of clamps; closepins will do; then with your glued together body (fuselage) trial fit all of the parts- usually a single bottom wing ang two top parts. Remember you’ve shaved off all of the little pins meant to go in the little holes. Move it around until it all seems pretty square- then glue the top halves of the wings ONLY to the body.
Later you’ll glue the middle underside up to the wing/ fuselage. Misalignment will be all around the edges of the wings, which is not too much trouble to fix with a sanding stick.
Go for it!!!
As far as gluing sequence is concerned,