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brahman104

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Everything posted by brahman104

  1. brahman104
    Thanks for the Preview, looks awesome! I'll be getting two I feel I like the touches like the cowling shape. Very nice Craig
  2. brahman104
    Brilliant work Cees. This is certainly an epic undertaking you are doing here. I'm loving the old school conversion work... Makes my 3d/CAD stuff seem very much like I'm cheating! Craig
  3. brahman104
    Well Bill ask and you shall receive.... The first step was grafting the new forward fuselage back onto what was left of the HK fuselage. (I'm still calling this a conversion, not a scratch build!) Here's a comparison between the two. You can see some small but important dimension changes, including.... The all important bulkhead #3 location. Despite all the effort I put into the cockpit earlier on, I feel the best way forward in light of the new information I have, is to rebuild this whole area from scratch. Did I mention I love a challenge? Here, you can also see how wrong I had the windows. This was a result of trying to make the original kit fit with what I was trying to do. In the end, I had to go back much further aft to correct the shape errors, but this has definitely been worthwhile. Scary stuff! I like what brass could provide in terms of "sharpness," so I redid the window frames to the correct size. I think this is MUCH better.... I then drew up the nose cone piece as a solid shape and printed it out to see how close I got to the right profile. Once I was happy with that, I split the drawing up on the computer into the 11 segments of the nose frame. This would then act as a master for all the shapes of the individual pieces I would need to be made from brass. A quick comparison between the HK and my part.... Extremely rough at the moment, but over it's looking a lot better. I'm very glad I decided to have another go at the forward fuselage. I think it would have forever bothered me if I didn't! Thoughts, opinions or comments are always welcome Craig
  4. brahman104
    Yeah I was kind of hoping for another update.... My D model build is getting lonely all on its own!!!! Craig
  5. brahman104
    Yep, I would definitely get one. I have a vac Mk 1, but a Mk V would take cut out the middleman for what I was going to do anyway! Craig
  6. brahman104
    That is some spectacular filing work Cees.... I couldn't get it that perfect if my life depended on it! A piece like that would be a prime candidate for 3d printing, but what you have done here is better Craig
  7. brahman104
    Thanks Mike! Never too late you know Cheers Cees, looking at it now you would certainly think that it would have been easier to just do a whole new fuselage from scratch. When I started out I thought it might have been a relatively straight forward process, but it has become bigger and bigger. I didn't have access to the drawings I do now, so when I did come across them it pretty much sealed the deal for me. The original plan is still in there, in that the whole concept was to pretty much leave the very centre section alone so it would provide structural strength and perfect mating for the wings (which, touch wood, I hopefully won't have to change too much). 3D printed parts are not as strong as IM plastic, so there is always that factor to keep in mind. In using a blend of the two, there was always going to be a bit of a compromise on "total" accuracy, but I doubt I could have achieved much better from scratch too. In any case, this project has been a great learning tool into what can and can't be achieved with this new technology. As I have said, it is a tool to assist, but it is not the only way forward. There are many places where traditional techniques may have yielded better results, but I'm trying to document the potential here, oh, and hopefully have a nice model at the end of it. That would be a bonus! One of my future projects is a 1/32 H-21 "flying banana." This will be entirely from scratch, so it will be interesting to see if I can build on what I have done here. It certainly opens up the flood gates to make your dreams a reality, but as always we are constrained by the information we have at hand. Given the way I have done this project, if I were to do a York it would probably be along the same sort of path, although the fuselage would have to be entirely done from nothing. I do feel confident now that I could probably just start that one with a set of IM wings and go from there, but that's for another day! Wow, rambled on a bit there didn't I? Craig
  8. brahman104
    Incredible work there Cees! Am loving watching this come together Craig
  9. brahman104
    Thanks for your kind words Cees! Since my last update I've been looking again and again at the size/shape of the whole front end, pretty much right back to where the wing root meets the fuselage as I'm still of the opinion I haven't quite nailed the look I'd challenged myself to capture with this build. As you may recall, I'd drawn up the original nose and rear fuselage conversion parts in Rhino3D and printed them. By a stroke of luck, I came into possession at this time of an excellent dimensioned side view drawing of the D model which I believe is actually an official Boeing drawing! A nice feature of the Rhino program is that you can import a background image into each particular drawing plane, scale it and then "build" your new model off it. I'd never done it before but it seemed like an option. So the decision was quite easy; import/scale the photo, draw/print an entire new forward fuselage, graft the new one onto where the old one used to be, providing of course it looked better than what I actually had Anyway, we all come for the photos, so here you go.... The drawings are now imported, scaled and ready to begin... Pretty much built up in the same way you would if you were using traditional scratch building techniques, but a lot faster I decided to see if I could get away with inserting the windows now and hope for the best in the print.... And into reality! Yes the print quality is not perfect, but I'm only after the overall shape, the detailing and cleaning up will happen later. I'm about to remove the left hand side of the existing fuselage to graft the new one on, some comparative photos to follow soon, stay tuned! Craig
  10. brahman104
    Thanks Cees! It was certainly one of the main aims of the whole conversion process; to get the "look" right. There's still a lot of work to do and in hindsight, my path has not been the most efficient, but that's how I learn Once I'm happy with the fit of the windscreens onto the fuselage and the roof, I'll probably separate the windscreen at the centre to allow me to continue to work in two halves. The key to doing this is of course that I need everything to fit more or less perfectly so the two side will line up when I join the fuselage down the track. The join itself is not an issue, as the area will be covered by metal foil anyway. On the subject of fairing in, once I am happy with the fit of the windscreens I'll build up the right contours with magic sculpt.... I believe this will be the easiest way to get some nice, smooth pieces which are so important to the overall look. That's the plan anyway, if you can see a better way I'm all ears! Craig
  11. brahman104
    A little but important update I finally found some marking out dye so it was on with the cockpit window/windscreen framework. To get these frames strong and thin enough, and not suffer from warping, I decided they would be made out of brass. Using my styrene form as a template for measurements I transferred these onto brass strip and cut them out... And all soldered together. This was a little tricky to get close to the right angles I needed And the test fit. I still have a bit of work to do to refine the fit of this and the roof, but I reckon I'm pretty close. I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to do the windows, but I have every confidence I'll think of something in the fullness of time Thanks for looking, I think I'm close to the right shape now for the overall look, what do you guys think? Cheers, Craig
  12. brahman104
    Hi Frank, thank you very much. I'm glad you'll be watching this one progress. I finally decided to put it up on here to spread the love so to speak. The more people that see it, the more help I can get when I need it! Many thanks Jeroen. This is all about pushing the boundaries for me, and the subject lends itself well to these new found techniques. Always room for refinement though! Hi George. You know I never used to like the early models, but since I got the Koster conversion a few years ago they've really started to grow on me. It's such a shame there's not much documentation around them and their very brief, but intense combat history. They are always overshadowed by the 8th's exploits. I hope I can do it justice! Thanks Thomas! I know it's hard to believe but you're not the first one to question my sanity Especially when at the moment I'm not really using very much of the original kit at all. I just like to a) be different and do things the hardest way possible.... thanks for looking in! Hi Cees. My pleasure! There's some talented modellers on this site so I'm pretty pumped about showing it here. What you're doing with that manchester is super cool and I've got to have a good look at it. One day I'd love to convert their lanc into a york. That, of course, would mean throwing away the entire fuselage, unless I could find someone with a pre-loved one.... Might be sometime in the future for that though! After this, I have the HK B-25 to attempt to backdate to a D also. I figure that should be pretty straight forward after this! So many dreams, so little time! Cheers, Craig
  13. brahman104
    Starting to add some raised rivet detail around the radio room and building the lift raft stowage bin behind the cockpit. Well, that's pretty much it in a nutshell. That's over a year's worth of work and it's only really now beginning to go somewhere! As you can see, the conversion has not been easy, and not as straight forward as I was initially thinking, but I'm having fun and learning a lot at the same time. I'm certainly pushing the boundaries of my not very considerable modelling skills So I hope you've enjoyed having a look at the progress so far and continue to check in as I go along. Like I said, there is no guarantee of success but I'm happy just giving it a go. As I said at the start please feel free to comment or question anything I do. I'm a B-17 fan, NOT an expert. Info on early B-17's is pretty scarce, so if anyone has anything they'd like to offer, please feel free too! Cheers, Craig
  14. brahman104
    Back to the nose. With how much I've altered the kit, it's a wonder than anything lines up at all!
  15. brahman104
    More on the radio room roof. This part was extremely difficult to make. I guess that's why it's not included in the kit . With the bomb bay stringers after a lot of trial and error, I decided to cast and paint them. It would guarantee repeatability, and the painted colour would add some nice variation to the overall metal finish....
  16. brahman104
  17. brahman104
    Given that early B-17's were mostly unpainted, I started skinning the interior with aluminium plate. This gives a much nicer finish than paint, and I'm not very good at painting anyway
  18. brahman104
    thanks Mikester! I appreciate you stopping in to have a look. Apologies for the avalanche of photos all of a sudden, but it gives you an idea about what I've done up till this point I hope you continue to follow this build, I still don't know if I can pull it off yet, but I'm having enormous fun trying Cheers, Craig
  19. brahman104
    These days I'm working more and more with metal, so I thought for strength and pure cool factor, I'd try making the bomb bay out of brass... The idea with this is that I would need to do a lot of test fitting, so I wanted something strong so I could remove and install it whenever I liked without fear of breaking it, plus it would give strength to the centre section of the aircraft where all the load is going to be
  20. brahman104
  21. brahman104
    Leaving the nose for a while, time to do some interior detailing
  22. brahman104
    The big girl gets a nose job
  23. brahman104
    The more I get into this kit the more I realise how little I can actually use from the original kit... oh well, live and learn hey! The hardest part by far is trying to get the nose/cockpit area to have the classic B-17 look. In my opinion, I think this is the most glaring fault of the original kit. I know the fuselage flattens out near the windscreen, which I've tried to incorporate into the 3D print. I'm not saying I can do any better, but it's certainly my intent to give it a go! Cheers, Craig
  24. brahman104
    As you can see there's no point in having all this detail inside if you can't see it, so I'm putting in dome lights in their actual locations and using "nano" LED's. These are about 1.5mm wide by 2.3mm long so they are a bunch of fun to solder Craig
  25. brahman104
    More again The 3D printed parts are only done on a low res home machine, so I'm not doing any detailed work with it. More so, I'm using it as a base, and then good old fashioned modelling skills come to the fore for the the interior as you can see with the cockpit section Cheers, Craig
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