brahman104

Nice work, Kai! Craig

You guys are too kind! Thanks for looking and hopefully I'll have some more progress to share in about a week or so! Cheers, Craig

Thanks Gus. I've been playing around with the technique (can't claim it as mine though!) for some time. I've found that if you don't push the area around the rivet back down it just looks wrong, and the rivets will deform the whole panel considerably. So while it may be painful, it's worth it! Thanks Peter But you know you've got it all over me for photography right?????? A little more progress under the cockpit floor. References are sketchy at the best of times for this area, but it looks as though the early B-17's had almost a filing cabinet arrangement to conceal various avionics items such as autopilot components etc. Quite tricky to fit with everything else into a fairly confined area, but I got it sorted eventually! Same area viewed from the front Now back to the rear fuselage.... Cheers, Craig

Thanks Peter! It's certainly only with the emergence of 3D printing and having access to original drawings through Aircorps Library that this build could really be possible. There are talented people out there who could carve masters to vac form the fuselage sections (as I was going to) but there's no way I could have got it looking as good as what it does Fear not Gazza, this will very much be natural metal and pre-war Thanks mate Thanks Ian. This build has taken me over 7 years so far to get to this point. If I can give any advice it's that you shouldn't be afraid to attempt something like this..... I've grown my skillset with this build, by gaining inspiration from the myriad of super talented modellers out there who are doing even more spectacular things. Sure, I've got a pretty capable workshop that I've built up over the years, but I failed quite a lot before I got to what you see here! Thanks Carl! Yeah it was a big call but once I saw how well the print came out I was sold on the way forward. My main aim in this project was making a B-17 that looked like a B-17, so to accept anything less was selling myself short! Thanks mate! I'm just glad you're enjoying the progress Cheers, Craig

Thanks Peter, indeed time does fly! A few more progress photos to get you up to speed. My apologies, these will be all over the place, but they're more to give you a bit of a summary of what's gong in to getting to the point above so far.... As you can see, once I redrew the nose to fit the kit nose-piece (which was surprisingly pretty close to being correct) and placed the two side by side, there really wasn't any choice but to remove the old one and attempt to graft the new one on. It worked, but it took a HUGE amount of filing and sanding to get right. All up it took the best part of a month, working on it every day (during lockdown) to return to where I was previously, but sooooo worth it! I used the eduard brassin resin engines, which are lovely, but according to my information, also wrong. The crankcases were a bit too long to fit in the early cowls (which I also had to redo as they are different to the E model ones HK provides you with) so I redid those in resin too. Eventually had them looking presentable... This probably better explains my corrective work to the outboard nacelles to lower their position in the wing, yet still allow me to use the eduard turbochargers. And some corrective work on the inner nacelle exhausts which include 3 "boilers" present on the early models but not the later ones. And the finished product : I then embarked on the super involved process of adding aluminium skin with raised rivet detail. I had to modify my silhouette curio to achieve this, but with a lot of trial and error, I started to get results... This process takes a few stages: 1. trace the shape of the panel, 2. Import into a CAD program and correctly scale, 3. Transfer into the Silhouette proprietary software and convert the lines to dots with the correct rivet spacing. 4. create the above, 5. cut out the panel and deepen each dot with a beading tool 6. turn over (onto finished side) and with a suitable piece of stainless tube, push the surrounding area around each rivet back down. This really makes them stand out. This is best done under a microscope, but then you end up with a really nice row of rivets like this: 7. Then work out the correct order to achieve the right overlap, and add each piece one by one.... As you can imagine, this all takes an exhorbatent amount of time, but the result speaks for itself... I've also been working on the lighting. No point in going to all this effort if you can't see it right? And almost back to the present. The tail wheel retracted opposite to the later models, so it was scratchbuilt too, along with a smaller diameter tailwheel. Yet another issue is the landing gear leg length. HK has the position without weight, which just makes the fort look plain weird on the ground! So another correction And lastly, work resumes on the interior. Lots more to go, but it's a start! There you go guys. Apologies for the big post but that's a very quick summary of what you've missed out on to get to where I'm at in the previous post. As you can see, she's far from finished, but when she is she'll embody everything I could possibly do in my power and skill level to make an accurate early model B-17! Cheers, Craig

Nice! I do love a helicopter build. I have the 1/24 offering but this might be a better option for really going to town on one day! Great start and following with interest! Craig

Ye gods!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I've literally just found this thread and holy crap am I impressed! I need to go through this is slow time and try to get my head around this amazing work! Craig

Thanks Gaz, yep she's still moving along. I get bursts of free time here and there to work on her. Still got a fair amount of work to do before I close up the fuselage permanently, then the skinning can begin in earnest! Thanks Kevin, I'm just one artist among many. It's sure lucky that art is not specific Thanks mate! Don't get me wrong, the kits builds very nicely and this thread is not about HK bashing, but yes there are quite a few glaring flaws that those quite familiar with the B-17 will find hard not to see. I'm lucky (in a way ) that I have come across some excellent references and had some very personalized help learning about the aircraft and where to make those corrections. Mind you though, I quite often don't get it right the first time and have rebuilt certain parts more than once. But this is my holy grail build, so I'm okay with it taking 7 years so far..... Thanks mate, plenty more to do! Thanks Hubert! Yes I do remember you mentioning your penchant for the 307. I've thought about it as well, but yes, that's a rabbit hole I'm best off not jumping down at the moment! Thanks mate! Still a loooong way to go yet, but seeing it up on its feet for the first time is really something special! Thanks for (re) joining me on the journey lads, here's to more posts Craig

Well the post seemed to come up fine, so here's a few of sort of where she's at. I realize there's a whole couple of years to fill you in on, but I'll do my best. Big milestone just recently was getting both wings finally glued together and everything set up to see how she looks: The keen eyed among you will notice that the nose is now grey. That's because I wasn't happy with the shape, so I redrew the entire thing and printed out a new version in resin. The keener-eyed among you will notice the the two outboard nacelles look different. That's because on the kit they sit waaaay too high so I removed the entire assembly from each wing, created new ones to fit within the existing wing section and spliced them back in. Huge amount of work but definitely worth it! The super-keen eyed will see that I have begun the process of covering the whole thing in aluminium with raised rivet detail. Again a huge amount of work but totally worth it! There's been so much more happening on this since I last posted, but I'll have to make sure I keep this forum up to date with the progress from now on! Cheers guys, Craig

Wow! Apparently the last time I posted here January 2017! Been still chipping away at the big fort, just gonna try posting a pic here and see if it works.... I've still been posting on LSP, but I realize there's some people that aren't members on here so I'd better get my act into gear and do an update! Craig

Hey guys, Thanks for the interest. Initially I wasn't considering making this available but I may once I can check that it all works. As you can appreciate, it's not an easy or straight forward process to do this, so there's still a lot of work to do. In the mean time, here's the resin version.... Unfortunately, I'm not going to have much of a chance over the next 12 months or so to do much more, but keep a look out! Cheers, Craig

Hey guys, Been a while since I posted here, but I wanted to share my attempt at correcting the look of the B-17 around the windscreen/cockpit area. I haven't given up on my C model, as you can see, and I won't be progressing any further with this one for a while as I'll be moving overseas shortly, but I wanted to try a trial just to see if it could be done..... I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, even at this very rough stage! Cheers, Craig Cheers, Craig

Thanks very much mate Just remember that I'm kind of going a bit overboard here, the kit on its own will build into a very nice looking model. Having said that, at the end of the day don't let me stop you, but this build so far is now into its third year! Good luck with yours when you do it, and make sure you post it on here Hi Cees, Not entirely sure yet, but I think I'll have one side of the bay without any load, and maybe some bombs on a cart near by. I don't think it'll be a diorama, but I will probably put a mirror underneath so you can see into the bay. In any case, that's years away the rate I'm building! Cheers, Craig

My, my, June last year? I have been slack haven't I? With apologies to those who frequent here, I've only just recently been able to work back on the project, and have been continuing to post on another forum. For those of you that reside here, I'll do my best to bring you up to speed.... First up, as I'd been away for about 5 months, a desk clean up was in order. I'd been looking at how to do the gun tunnel above the radio room for a while, but the only way around was through. It took quite a while to get the right contour of this part, considering the radio room was already installed in the fuselage..... This is a rough set up for the gun mount, but you get the idea.... I also wanted to get the cockpit installed so I didn't break it accidentally, and did some of the soundproofing work. And some of the control cable installation. This is really fun Oh and those lights work the way I then turned my attention to the bomb bay. I still had to "plate" all the brass pieces in litho plate and add the little gusset plates that make up the trusses. I decided to make the main catwalk truss out of a single piece of aluminium, due to it being seen from all sides. This piece took me five days to make..... Then it was on to fabricating all the little details throughout the bay, of which there are many. It doesn't look pretty, but this was running the control cables through the top of the bay. Apologies for the crappy photos, I'm certainly not the world's best photographer, but at least you hopefully get the idea and are now pretty much up to date As always, feel free to comment or question. Cheers, Craig

Thanks guys! Gusmac, the sheet is 0.1mm thick aluminium. I got a packet of about 150 sheets off eBay (took a while to fins and think it was a one off) so I probably have a lifetime's supply, even when it comes time to skin the big girl So I've been playing around with painting techniques, which is something I've never been very good at. My aim for this part is to replicate the wood grain floor inserts. Once the acrylic base was dry, I went over it with oil paint and then took most of it off, to leave a streaky finish. For my first effort, not too bad. I did have the Uschi decals as a back up, but for where this area is, I think I'll live with it I also started to run the control cables as any additions from now would make these very difficult to do later, as much as it's like modelling inside a bird's nest until I can finish all the runs. I also started folding up some brackets for more pulleys to sit on. The above was a heap of fun to do, twice A lot more work but she's starting to get there. I will say that working with this aluminium is really easy and produces an excellent result, providing you work methodically and for the most part, carefully. If you haven't tired it yet do yourself a favour, go get some and have a crack.... you'll be glad you did! Cheers, Craig

Back for a little more! I haven't had a great deal of time lately, but I've managed a little progress on the cockpit section. This time around I've been experimenting with lining everything in aluminium sheet, as opposed to painting like I did last time. This a a few advantages; firstly, I don't have to paint a metallic colour (which as we all know can be fraught with danger), secondly I can emboss surface details like rivets into it and thirdly, I don't have to worry about trying to clean up in the corners of the print, which is pretty much next to impossible. Anyway here's the pics Once you get into it, working with metal is actually quite fun and not overly difficult, but if you take you time and work neatly, it can produce some pretty good results. Compared with my first effort, I think I'm on the right track I'm also trying my hand at painting the wooden panels, so hopefully they come out okay. We will find out soon enough! Cheers, Craig

It's been a while since I checked in on this one Cees, but it just keeps getting better! It's really starting to come together now Craig

Hi Guys, It's been a long while since I've had a chance to get to the bench, but finally I have a small amount of progress to show you. So first of all the new printer. I'll let the photos do the talking... So after some initial trials that had varying degrees of success (I have leaned over time that each printer is lightly different in its operation and takes some time and more than a few failures to get the hang of it) I decided that seeing as I was going to rebuild the cockpit entirely, I'd have a go at printing the basic floor/cockpit tub in one piece. Since I had the drawings for the new nose I'd made, I used these and measurements from the old floor to produce a new one. In the meantime, I also started work on a new instrument panel, using Airscale's etched bezel and decal sets. Very fiddly, but definitely worth the effort. I weighed up the pros and cons of doing this in brass again, and felt for what it was worth, plastic would do just fine And here's a comparison between the old, built up tub and the new printed piece. I deliberately didn't put in a great deal of detail as it was a basic test piece, but it does give me a nice start point to build the new one from. And after a few hours of fiddling with very tiny decals, the new IP is done While it does seem like a lot of work to go back and re-do the whole front end (and it is) I think it's definitely been worth it. I'm much happier with every step now, rather than it just being a compromise between what I started with and what I was trying to do. This was the old one: While I don't think it was terrible, the new one is a vast improvement I feel. So now it's on to the fun task of detailing the cockpit tub, especially underneath. I'm planning on trying to use aluminium as much as I can this time for the details, so we shall see how that goes. Think Peter's (Airscale's) epic Spitfire build, but just no-where near as good See you soon Craig

Thank you Gentlemen! My apologies for the lack of updates of late..... Let me say that this project is far from dead in case you were wondering, unfortunately work is massively interfering with my bench time at the moment and for the next few months I will potentially be away a lot but progress will be happening when I get the chance. I am still very much into this build, so do not fear that I have burned out. I have also been having some issues with my computer, which is also the one I do my 3D work on, as well as the documented issues with the printer. My laptop is currently in the shop for repairs and I have a brand new (and much larger 3D printer on its way to me.... very exciting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) http://3dprintersuperstore.com.au/products/up-box Hopefully I'll return soon with some progress to report! Cheers, Craig

So here's what I've been up to I've been plugging away at re-drawing the rear fuselage on Rhino. Why did I do that? A few reasons actually. Firstly, I got some better, more accurate drawings which gave better dimensional accuracy. What I had was pretty close, but seeing as I just did the front, why not make the back accurate too! Secondly, the first time I did the rear fuse I lost most of the original drawings, so I unless I went the old-school, laborious way to find the correct contours for making the bulkheads, drawing them afresh seemed an easier way to get accurate contours. Thirdly, in keeping with above, I figured I could also use the power of Rhino to work out the profile for the longerons and stringers and then print new templates to make them in brass or plastic. It worked well for the nose, no reason it shouldn't work here right? The above is a screen shot of how I made templates for the bulkhead and the stringer profiles. Yes, the stringers wouldn't be that big, but they needed to be rigid enough to survive the printing process and I only needed the outer edge accurate. So after an entire weekend's worth of puddling around to get the shape right, then split the rear fuse into sections small enough to be printed, one would have thought the physical printing would be a breeze right? Very, very wrong. In the fickle world of 3D printing, there are many many variables that can stuff up your print. For a start, your drawing can look like a technical master piece, but if the driver program for the printer doesn't like what it sees when you import it, you may be doomed to failure. The even better part is, it won't tell you what part of the drawing it doesn't like, so then you have to go back and try and work it out for yourself. The printer itself is not free from issues either. Even if you take a perfect drawing, mirror copy it and print both at the same time, they may come out looking very different. Have a look at the join for the horizontal stabiliser. Same drawing, cannot explain why one printed okay and the other didn't. Luckily I can fix that. To add to that, lately for some reason and more often than not, the printer can just stop feeding plastic about half way through your print. The printer doesn't know this has happened and the machine doesn't have a pause feature, so even if you happen to see it there's often very little you can do except start again. This is especially awesome when you are about 4 hours in to a 7 hour print. In the end, a couple of the sections took four or five tries to get what you see below. Yes it's rough, but it's a solid base and shape, and that's all I need, so I rolled with them. Just for amusement's sake, this is a photo of the extruder head on the printer. This eventually gets covered in molten plastic, which will semi harden during the print. If enough plastic builds up on the head, it can contact the part being printed, which can either dislodge itself from the base (ruined part - start again) or dislodge the entire extruder head (ruined part - recalibrate and start again!) So there you go folks, even though 3D printing can produce some stunning results and slash the time taken when compared to traditional methods, it is far from trouble free. I wanted to show this to highlight the "other side" of using new technology for those who may think of it as a relatively straight forward process Having said that, when it works, it works a treat! Oh and lastly, here's the new fuselage compared to the existing one. Pretty close, but you can see some dimensional changes. Still glad I did it Craig

That's dedication! So much sanding........ Looking very cool indeed. Craig

I'm kind of in the same boat. Can you let me know if you have any luck getting onto them? I've tried emailing and haven't heard anything back. Craig

Hi Jeroen, yeah I've really come to like Rhino, but I guess that's just because I'm used to it now. I've just recently found a few more features that are really handy, and have made my life much easier than the first time around. Stay tuned to see what I mean. I've never heard of Cinema4D. Is it a CAD program too? Are you using it to design 3D printed parts? Thanks mate! Wow! 3? I feel your pain man. Have you got any photos of them? I'm glad you're enjoying the build. Been a lot of CAD work on the rear fuselage over the last two weekends and some printer issues, but there should be some progress to report soon Craig

Thanks Mike! Glad you're enjoying the show Lol! I would truely not be surprised James. I'd be happy to see more D's getting built. This one has been a slog, but heaps of fun Thank you Sir! I'm glad you approve Thanks very much Cees! I certainly feel the whole redesign was worth it. And comments like that only encourage me to go and hack more plastic I want this fort to be as close to capturing the lines of the real thing as possible, so it doesn't matter how long I take, I just want it to be the best I can possibly do. I've spent the weekend re-doing the whole rear fuselage, based on the much more accurate drawing that I redesigned the nose with. It's printing section by section now, so hopefully soon we will be able to see a companion between old and new Can't wait for that E/F version to be released Craig

Sure does! I got it from Tigger models. Very basic, but has everything you need I did get it with the intention of making the mk V. Might be up on the to do list once I finish the fort...... Craig