crazypoet

Loving this! It’s a joy to see a master at work 💯

Just catching up on this - you’re giving a master class here 💯 this is a *gorgeous* build!

I’ve been wanting a 1:32 A-20 for *years* to go alongside the B-25 strafer I have in the queue I am looking very very much forward to this!!!

Ok, so this doesn’t *entirely* fit here, but it *is* very large scale, and some of the bits came as a kit😂 This was a project I built in a friend’s shop, paying rent by helping him finish a rifle of his own so this is a Lehman-pattern half-stock percussion rifle in .50cal it took just over a year, working Sunday afternoons in his shop It’s fully functional, rifled for modern sabot shot rather than lead balls ready for the ‘23 season 😎

So not a whole lot of progress, as I took the weekend off (utterly worth it, though - Savannah is *awesome*) bits of filing and sanding, and starting to work on landing gear hydraulics (yes, I’m putting off working on the gun bays out of sheer laziness 😂) trying an experiment with .8mm braided line, wire, and some paint I’m not thrilled with the results yet, but it’s got potential. There’s only a few of these particular flexible lines that will be at all visible, which helps. I'm going to keep fiddling about until they look right

Haven’t gotten any new pics yet, but those will be forthcoming i spent some time doing a bit of gap-filling on the seams on the leading edge of both wings. There were a couple of spots where the edges gapped by .5mm, despite everything else lining up happily. Once that’s all dried and smooth I’ll redo a couple of rivets that I managed to screw up in the process. after that, I will turn my attention to the gun bays. I have the Eduard gun bay set, and so far I’m happy with it. I’m not entirely sure about their ammo feed chutes - I’m going back and forth between those and the ones from the kit. They both have minor issues, based on photos I’ve seen, so I’ll go with whichever looks best. I’ll also have to deal with the charging rods, which promise to be a right PITA, but that’s all part of the fun. I’ll next have to decide whether to go with the PE ammo belts or the rubber ones from the kit - again, both have issues, and I’ll go with whichever looks more “right” after getting them painted up. If I had the brains god gave a turnip, I’d just close up the gun bays and not worry about it. We’ll see how badly I screw things up stuffing all the bits inside, and go from there once those are settled, there’s some hoses and such to add to the landing gear bays while they’re still easy to reach wheee! It’s good to be back

I realized that I had to do a bit of trimming on the back of the engine - that’s where the problem came from. It sits a bit too far forward out of the box with that done, the rocker arms and engine mounts fit *perfectly* I’ll get some pics of that later today

I’m *loving* this! Following happily 💯

Good to *be* back! I’ve missed y’all

Sooo… Hi there! It’s been a long minute. First Covid and associated work-place hassles had me off the bench for a while, then I took a year to build a 1:1 scale fully functional muzzle-loading rifle (1850’s Lehman Half-stock, .50 percussion trade rifle) I’ve dusted everything off, gotten the bench back in order and easing my way back into this. I’m starting back in with some little bits to get my hands working again - some Eduard PE on the wings and horizontal stabilizers, and finishing the cowl flap mod needed to take is back to the correct version for this bird

Finally got the book, and yes I’ll need to do some repainting of the gun and landing gear bays. The restored versions that I’ve seen in cockpit green are not correct. Curtiss-produced versions were done in cockpit green, and some field depots also used this color. But... since my bird was Republic-built and I can’t reasonably document field mods outside of the gunsight and prop, back to the factory finish it is

You may be correct; I’d already started with interior green when I found the info on Zinc Chromate Yellow on another site. I’ve seen enough examples in Interior Green that I can at least make a case (the early photos I found were green, which is why I started in that direction). Since then, I’ve noticed that there seems to be about 50/50 mix between green and yellow, plus some gray/white examples just for fun. The challenge is that these are all restorations; while I *hope* that they’d stay with original colors, there’s no guarantee. I finally tracked down a copy of “P-47 in Detail and Scale”, which should help insofar as using the correct color for the correct factory on this bird if need-be, after the book arrives tomorrow, I’ll repaint.

This is just mind-blaring attention to detail and craftsmanship both i’ve loved this since you started...

This build is *gorgeous* particularly the cockpit - nice work!

That’s an awesome video! I’ve seen other Japanese wartime videos here and there, but this one covered aircraft types I’d not seen in other contexts. great find and thanks for sharing!