crazypoet

Love every bit of this build!

Engine tubes and wiring aren’t the most fun part of a build, but the results are *so* worth it! I’m loving this so far 🙏

Mostly pretty straightforward, except for the curves right where they enter the gund i had to use a toothpick and needle-nose pliers for those 🤣

The feed chutes are folded up, glued to hold the edges, primed (super thin coat of Mr Surfacer 1200), and with a single layer of Uschi Steel powder applied (it gets a bit brighter with each layer) The Uschi powder gives what I think is actually a better finish than the bare PE steel, but I’m going to step away for a bit and come back for another look. I folded up a spare gun #2 chute from the closed side to give a contrast of bare steel PE vs the Uschi - it’s waayy too bright for scale, I think The smallest chute has a bit of texture from when I tried using a drop of CA to fill in the bending lines, applied with too-heavy a hand. 🤦‍♂️ I can also see another that needs a bit of fine-tuning on one edge, plus filling in more of the visible bending lines (Eduard did a pretty good job of putting them where they’re not particularly visible, but you can still see them here and there) I will likely clean these off and do another test with Alclad bright aluminum to see which I like better (and also take a few minutes to smooth down the unintended texture from the CA on the gun #4 chute 😂🤦‍♂️) at any rate, this is my progress for the day I'm going to do a test fit of the ammo belts, with the chutes dry-fitted, to see how much I need to extend the belts (the kit belts are already a bit short; even more so after filling the chutes where the ammo is visible. I’ll try micro-clear canopy cement to glue the belt ends together, and see if that still gives me a decent drape with no kinks - hoping it does, as that’s the simplest approach Then, it’s off to painting the belts temselves wheeeee!

That beautifully done! I admire the craftsmanship of biplane rigging - it takes a steady hand and the right bits and pieces to make it convincing, and you nailed it

Damnnnn sweet!

Are those control links kit parts or scratch? If they came with the kit, I’m even more impressed that I was already with the quality they build into the box 🙏

The guns in the open bay are installed, and I’m relatively happy with them. Fit was a bit fiddly because the chutes for dumping the ammo belt links after firing have zero wriggle room, but everything fit with only a minimal amount of cursing. The fun part was wriggling the charging handle cables through their tiny holes in the back of the bay, but again, not too bad - I only screwed up two of them, and fortunately Eduard included spares 🤣 Next up are the ammo feed trays and belts, along with some more PE framing to tie it all together. This is also decision time about the clutter at the front of the bay. There’s a metal rod that appears to be a part of the lock-down mechanism for the bay cover and a couple of hydraulic lines that route who-knows-where from the front of the bay, under the gun barrels and out *somewhere* I’m using the kit vinyl ammo belts, which should be interesting. It will take some judicious use of hot water to get them into proper shape to drape over the ammo bay partitions and squeeze them into the Eduard feed chutes. Then I’ll find out if I have the proper paints for the bloody things 🤣 According to ChatGPT, the paints I have on-hand will work, so I’m at least somewhat confident 😎 (not least because finding model paints here in Phnom Penh is a bit…challenging 😂🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️) Should be fun!

Thank you! With a bit of work, I’m hoping to blend them in a bit better 🙏 now I’m working on the open side. The challenge there is that the inboard gun has to go in first, because of the PE chutes for the ammo belt links. I wouldn’t be at all worried except it will only align with the right amount of material added back on. this should be fun!

Well, ok. I’m calling the closed bay on the right wing done. I had the unhappy experience of the PE over the guns slightly “springing” up a bit as I clamped it to let the CA glue set (on the one edge where the gluing surface was almost microscopic), and there’s one corner of the ammo bay cover that did the same. I’m not thrilled, but I can adjust with a light application of a needle file, sanding stick, and a bit of filler to bring them into submission. The ammo tray cover was pretty simple, all things considered. The gun bay cover on the other hand, was an exercise in pure frustration. It took a ton of filing to get it to fit into the kit opening (Eduard made it a bit over-wide, for some reason), and it kept wanting to either bend too much or spring back as I was working on the airfoil curve. at any rate, they’re glued down, reasonably presentable (pending some final finishing touches), and I can continue beating my head against the internals of the open bay. The big challenge there is fitting the inboard gun, as there’s not much room to work with and I have to add some material to the base after the Eduard instructions had me removed it. Another example of “test fit things *before* blindly following instructions 😂

No pics just yet, as I’m still working through a couple of finicky fit issues But another hint for anyone else following along this path… if you want to use the Eduard PE panels to close one of the bays… for the panel over the ammo compartment, *first* glue in the kit plastic part, then glue just the top layer of the PE part on top of that. The kit part sits *exactly* low enough that one layer of the Eduard PE panel brings it exactly flush with the wing surface. This also helps to get the airfoil curve set properly on the PE part both the Eduard and Kit parts by themselves sit too low inside the wing when building a closed gun bay, but combined, they come out exactly right the alternative is getting creative with filler or other supports underneath everything, which is kinda hard to get just right (again, ask me how I know! 😂🤣)

Great work on those seatbelts!

Beautiful work on both!

Quick note to anyone who wants to do this kit in the future, with the Eduard Gun Bay set… do *not* follow the Eduard instructions in step one about removing the rear mounting/alignment pin on the inboard gun. you'll regret it later, when you need to add the same amount of material *back*, to get the guns to align properly during the installation ask me how I know 🤣🤦‍♂️🤣

I get that 💯💯💯🤣 one day when I’m feeling truly adventurous, I’m planning a 1/350 Arizona with all the AM stuff I can find probably also USS Johnston and Sammy B, in honor of their respective stands as part of Taffy 3 during Leyte Gulf, off Samar but that will come *after* I work through my existing stash 🤣 …and figuring out where to *put* the bloody things once I’m done 🤦‍♂️🤣😬

Simply gorgeous work!

I dug up another good pic of the P-47 gun bay, still without any ID on the specific model. this one has yet another gun-charging setup - looks electric in this one? One of the pics I posted yesterday is either pneumatic or hydraulic on the other hand, the Eduard set has simple charging handles that connect somewhere behind the wing spar, which is fine, and that’s what I’ll use. What is interesting to me is that this makes at least three different approaches to this on the same aircraft - I’d love to know the hows and whys behind all the changes. So I have a new fun research project 🤣 this picture also shows some interesting clutter at the font of the bay, similar to what I is visible in one of the other pics from my last post. there is what looks to be a structural steel rod and some hydraulic lines along the front of the bay, just above the gun barrels. I need to look up what they connect to, and decide whether I want to include them in my build one of the pics also shows some larger-diameter hoses that connect to metal fittings under each of the guns that look as if they connect to the ejection ports, maybe. i have zero clue what they are, and (looking at how crowded things are going to be in there), I'm going to simply pretend that they don’t exist (or were specific to a later model 🤣)

Ok, belay that last 😂🤦‍♂️ I’m going to do one open and one closed gun bay. I’m going to wall off that part of my brain that’s screaming “but noooo…!” to a couple of the incorrect details in the Eduard gun bay set and just go for it as-is. there was sufficient variation in actual field implementations that I can kinda justify the differences I’m using these two photos as working references - you can see notable differences between the two (though they don’t, sadly, note which photo represents with variant of the P-47 they display) you can see some of the different approaches even between these two pics - like stencils vs no stencils on the feed chutes, and different kinds of gun charger between the reference photo and what is included with the Eduard set. The good news on the gun charger detail is that I *think* that the second photo shows a later version of the Jug, since the wing appears to be NMF rather than painted. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it 😂 Sadly, the Eduard feed chute for gun #2 is simply wrong against *both* references, but I’ll bite the bullet and just use it as-is the big question is whether I can make the rubber/vinyl/whatever ammo belts that came with the kit work with the Eduard chutes. The Eduard ammo belts are kinda “nice try, but NO” for me 😂 The kit belts are much more accurate, but I have to be able to run them at least some of the way through the Eduard chutes to make the final assembly look right hopefully, this won’t take more that one large bottle of rum to get me through all the cursing - wish me luck! 😎🙏😂

Ohhhhkay bugger I’ve looked long and hard at both the Eduard and kit parts for the gun bays, and neither of them is going to really look “right” at least not without a shitton of additional scratching and such. so rather than going the way of madness, I’m going to just mount the guns and close things up. Maybe drape an ammo belt somewhere I’d hoped to have one of the bays open, but I just don’t like the results so far (I got a good start with the Eduard set, but the closer I look, the more I realize how much even *they* got wrong. I get that they had to work within the limits of flat PE, but damn - they could have done a resin piece for the feed chutes that would have fixed pretty much everything so oh well 😂🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️ at least this will save me a month or two of heavy drinking and head-scratching, and get me along towards finishing this thing 😂

Me either - let alone the engine pistons and crankshaft like this. 😳 its kinda cool, as it shows how the things were actually designed to work, but I can see it being a bit of a PITA to assemble still - very cool!

Just about ready to call this stage done. I have to put down the first layer of color on the outside of the gear covers, then these will be ready to attach to the wings (after attaching the wings to the fuselage, which I’ve so far put off doing) I know that conventional wisdom would have me leaving the gear covers off until after gluing the struts to the wings, but with the way this particular bunch all goes together, it was *much* simpler to do all of this up-front. If I need to do any fine-tuning to get everything properly aligned later, I’ll deal with it 😂 I now have to go back and face the reality of the gun bays 😬

Got the pins cut and glued to the struts It’s easier to align from this side than it would have been to glue them to the gear cover first The test-fit looked good (of course it will somehow be “off when I go to glue things together, because of course it will 🤣) But I’ll take a deep breath anyway and prime/finish the pins in place while I finish cleaning up the ejection pin holes and get a color coat down on the covers

Happily following this! I love the Grumman float planes of that era 🙏

Beautiful work!

The Revell 1/32 HE-111 P1. It’s a pretty solid kit, with the opportunity for a *bit* of dressing up the interior without too much fuss and bother. The only real challenge will be masking all that glass with just Tamiya Tape and liquid mask 🤣