THE FINAL HURDLE!... 1:20 scale scratch built B17G

Modeling Subjects Scratchbuilding
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Good morning chaps!

How are you all getting along?..still staying safe in this bl##dy pandemic I hope!

Long time no modelling!..I’m back from UK now and back in Bulgaria to start once again on this mammoth task I have given my self!..after a such a long period away from scratch building it seems to have taken me a few weeks to get my act together!

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That’s me trying to get my act together!!

How ever… I decided to start off again with something simple…although I still had problems with super glue not setting (Bulgarian!)…and the white glue hardened in the tub (Bulgarian!) I thought I would get the walkways done.

Here is a photo of the main walkway that runs through the rear of the fuselage down to the rear entrance door. I used a thin sheet of balsa wood and covered it with simulated wood courtesy of Mr B+Q (paper wood examples!) and then glued a sheet of wet and dry emery paper to that!

Here it is in the base of the bottom half of the rear fuselage…

A crawl way was then placed at the rear to allow the rear gunner to access the rear turret and a another floor was placed near where the tail wheel housing will eventually be…

With the two halves together this is what it all looks like…

OK…so now that I have re started this B17G…I better buckle down and get as much done before the Xmas break!

Thanks for having a look guys

Cheers

Fozzy

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Brilliant, true scratchbuilding at it’s finest.

No such rubbish as to start with a kit here, just go for it, with whatever is on hand.

Will be waiting for the finished item, even if that takes another seven years, it will be worth the wait.

[:D[[:D[

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Thanks a lot Graham!..I am also looking forward to the finish!!!

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Good Gosh FOZ!

And I thought I was a glutton for punishment with my ship-" Shipping " LOL. You have definitely stunned me with this very articulate and detail oriented build of a famous Aircraft in an unusual scale. Looking Good!

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Thanks a lot![:)]

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Wow! That is impressive! I’m looking forward to seeing it in person at the Joe Martin Museum in Carlsbad.

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Thank you!..I am trying to get it finished up this year if posible… then take it with me on a flight to the States…of course that all depends on the Pandemic!..The Joe Martin Museum is a wonderful museum and I am so pleased that I can donate my B17G project there![:)]

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Hi there guys

My Mojo has returned!

I’m in the middle of scratch building a auxiliary DC generator for the rear section. I have seen photos with the generator in the rear and I’m defo going to put it in mine as it looks fun to build and will make the rear section look more busy! This afternoon I sprayed it with my new airbrush (Paasche H… as my old Badger gave up the ghost before my summer break)…and will post it on my next update!

As for now I will give you a quick update on the trailing antenna mechanism that I have made for the rear section.

It was a bit fiddly due to the size but here are some photos…

This next photo shows the tube that the line feeds to the outside of the aircraft…made from a Biro pen…

…and here are the two parts attached…

…and just to show you the scale…

Here is the electrical box that operates how much cable leaves the aircraft…

All finished and all wired up…

OK…that was a short post!

So the next post I will show the DC generator!

Until then…thanks for looking in![:D]

Cheers

Fozzy

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***…means my ability to carry on with this project…M O J O!!!..don’t know why I cant post that!!

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Afternoon all!

This post is likely to be a bit photo heavy of building the Auxiliary DC generator for my B17!

The generator was built by looking at just a few photos I found and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed making it!..I used scrap plastic and wire as materials and I have taken a photo of each stage of the build.

First off…this is a photo of a real generator that I am trying to replicate…

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So I built it by stages and hope the photos explains how I got it together…here goes…

OK…so now it’s time to paint it …the best part!..but not before building the frame that it will sit on in the rear of the fuselage…

So here it is all finished…

…and up on it’s frame…

As I said …really had a lot of fun with this generator build!..excuse the amount of photos!

Onwards ever onwards!..to getting the tail wheel assembly built…till then

Cheers once again for looking in!

Fozzy

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Lets try that again![:(]

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Good day all!

Hope all is good where you all are and that everyone is staying safe from this virus!..2020 has been a terrible year for us all and the sooner it’s all over with… the better! Lets hope and pray for a better 2021!

So on with the next part of this project!..the tail wheel section!..I have been kind of dreading this next part as there is lack of information and photos of this area of the B17. If you look for photos in books or the internet it’s always the same.The whole area is covered with tarpaulin blocking out all the parts you want to see! Enthusiasts go for visits to see the B17 armed with their cameras and they can crawl all over the fuselage snapping away but the tail wheel well area is nearly always out of bounds!

I believe this is because the area is so confined that visitors would have to get on there belly’s to crawl through and for health and safety issues. Well of course this doesn’t help us modellers!

How ever I did managed to find a few photos of said area after hours of searching…(although only seeing certain angles on most of the photos) which meant I had to use my imagination for the areas that I just cant see!..the usual artistic license had to be got out of the draw!

So as you know I am building this fuselage in two halves…top and bottom …so I have started with the bottom half.

I had to make the tail wheel tub that the wheel retracts to and this was molded from plastic food packaging.

Here is the balsa wood plug that I made…

After heating up the plastic and using the plug (plug and mold procedure) and ended up with this. You can see that I have added some detail with strips of plastic

The wheel well floor was then made from plastic card…

…and from the underside…

The wheel tub was then glued into position…

Now for the wheel.

I hate making wheels!..I find it difficult!..I usually make them out of balsa wood and this time it was no exception!..it’s my own fault as I haven’t invested in a mini lathe…but that is all going to change soon…going to look for one!..meanwhile this wheel was whittled to shape by eye!

Time to paint the wheel tub area…

Here is the tail wheel strut…

Here is the tail wheel assembly fork head attached to the wheel…

The rest of the frame was then made from metal and electrical cables were added from wire…

Here you can see that I have placed the tail wheel onto the tail frame…

I then glued the painted tail wheel strut onto the frame…

The tail wheel area was in fact covered with a fitted tarpaulin and I thought about leaving it off because it would cover all the detail and at the end of the day this project is all about showing the workings of the B17G …so I then I had an idea of making a cover and having it pulled back so a mechanic could get at it to inspect!

The tarpaulin was made from a painted sheet of tissue paper…the eyelets made from small cuts from a piece of wire insulation and the tie cord was made from thread from the wife’s sewing box and threaded by one of her needles…that took some doing I’ll tell you!..I broke off the Wheel strut in the process and had to re set it!

Here is the cover…

So that is the lower half of the tail wheel area complete.

I have started the upper half of this area and it involves the re tractor motor and gears to bring up the tail wheel…and if I thought that this lower half was difficult I thought wrong!..but we will leave that till the next post!

So until then …Thanks a lot for looking and following this non stop build!

Cheers

Fozzy

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Hi there guys

Time for another update

My last post was the building of the bottom half of the tail wheel section and this time its the detail above the tail wheel!..I have had a lot of trouble finding information and photos of this area as I mentioned in the last post which forced me to kind of use my imagination a bit!..Well I was photographing what I had done and decided to take it all apart because I came across a photo of a C-1 auto pilot unit that sits on a tray just above the tail wheel!(2 days of work down the drain![:'(]) …I have found that there seems to have been different pieces of equipment depending on the model and year of the aircraft!..this of course gave me a headache because I had to decide what I was going to place in this area …so I went with the C-1 autopilot.

The other big problem I had was the fact that some of the parts extended from the roof of the fuselage down to the floor!..this was difficult for me as I had to line it all up so that when the upper and lower halves were joined it all connected up!..so a lot of trial and error and dry fitting took place!..the joys of scratch building![:)]

So the first 2 photos is of the retracting gear assembly just above the tail wheel it self…I built this out of bits of plastic and a cutting of one of my Bass guitar strings (kind of looks like the activating screw!)…

A few more parts now added and more Bass guitar strings!

The two white unpainted plastic parts you see in this next photo was the real problem lining up with the bottom section!

Here is my attempt at making the C-1 auto pilot unit…

…and painted…

So after it was all painted ,here is the end result with the two halves together showing you different angles…

…and my favourite shots of looking down through the fuselage!!..

I still have to place a few cables coming from the Auto pilot unit but that’s basically the tail wheel area complete.

So I turned my attention to the control line rigging that I thought would be easy compared with the last bit…I guess it was just time consuming and fiddly!

I first made 8 x cable guides that keep the control lines away from the fuselage sides…it took me hours!!

The cable guides were then put in place and then using some fishing line I pulled it all taught from one end of the fuselage through to the rear. I did made a mistake and had to move the position a tad as I forgot to line the cables up with the cables on the front section of this B17G already built …duhh!

Okay…so now I had to turn my attention to the area between the tail wheel and the Cheyenne turret at the rear.

This is causing this project to come to a grinding halt! I have trawled the internet for hours and hours…looked in books and I just cant seem to find any photos/drawings/diagrams…absolutely nothing except the flooring!..There is the Elevator and hinge control cable actuated mechanisms above the floors …but alas nothing but a few obscure photos either out of focus or just a slight glimpse of what I need!..I resorted to looking at photos of damaged B17s that have the tail unit blown off!..you kind of get a rough idea of the area but of course it’s all mangled metal!..I have also written to the Lyon Museum in California who have “Fuddy Duddy” on display to see if they can help me…waiting for a response.

Here is the said area…

So if any of you great modellers have any info or photos that I haven’t seen then please please give me the heads up!..but I’m not holding my breath!

Well that’s it for now…till the next time…

Cheers for looking in

Fozzy

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You might shoot an e-mail to the Erickson Collection in Madras Oregon. They have a “G”, now named Madras Maiden. Used to be"Chucky".

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Really nice work. Very fun to follow along. Thanks for sharing your build.

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Well…thank you for taking a look![:)]…posting actually helps me with the progression of the build!

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Thanks for the heads up!..I am actually getting quite a bit of information and photos from fellow modelers across on other forums which I am pleased and somewhat relieved about!

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Good afternoon everyone

Time for an update!

In the last post I mentioned that I was having a problem with finding information and photographs of the area immediately to the rear of the tail wheel tub…Well since then I have had great help with photos and info from some fellow modelers …so a BIG THANK YOU goes out to Ol’Scrapiron for his help in sending me the photos that I desperately needed to continue with this part of the build. I also reached out to the museum that looks after B17G “Fuddy Duddy” to see if they could help me but I never got a reply!

So after shifting through all the photos and studying them I came to the conclusion that a lot of the detail that I had already built into the area had to be changed as I was just guessing what it looked like from the photos I had!..so I carefully took pieces off here and there ready to start a fresh…very frustrating but it had to be done!

…but before we get into all that I can show you some new detail that didn’t need ripping out!

I made a fire extinguisher out of a plastic cocktail stick!..this first photo is of the real extinguisher…

…and here is my effort…

I placed it in the rear of my model…can you see it!!!