crazypoet

Thank you! 🙏 I think it will work when taken as a whole - this is an airframe that’s been though a year of great maintenance but hard service, and it will show and FA made a good point to about emphasis in shadowed spaces, to “pop” the highlights just a bit

Yup - and I know now how to make it better and brighter next time ‘round Using the right paint but with the wrong approach, on a material it wasn’t designed for left things too dull for the space. You're right, it needs to “pop” a bit in that space As Doc said, it should blend a bit better once it’s done, especially taken as a whole, and it will work with the overall weathering I’m planning But I certainly learned something 🤣🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️

Belts are in and have a gloss coat applied. I’m not 💯💯💯 thrilled with how they look - the brass should be a bit brighter and the links should be better defined (and a lot more even than I could get with slightly shaky hands and a brush 🤣), but I’ll live with it - and promise myself that *all* future ammo belts will be accurate cast resin with realistic links, that I can straighten with a bit of hot water and then airbrush The PE chutes were a bit fiddly to install while stuffed with the rubber ammo belts, but they lined up with no more than the usual amount of cursing, and it’s worth it to see proper links in the chute cutouts I’m chalking this up to “learning experience” and will take a deep breath and move forward. A bit of thin wash once the clear coat dries will help a bit, and then I can finish up the PE in the gun bay and get the wings properly attached

This is beautifully done, and the work you did to make everything “work” is inspiring me to power through some of the similar issues I run into - you’re always a good teacher! 🙏

Welcome to the asylum! And great work, there - always a bonus to be able to watch and learn from each other 🙏

Useful for running, when out of ammo! 😅

The max load per-gun on these was 425 rounds. That would make the full belt a bit over 32 feet long, or about six layers when folded into the bays - these things could get seriously crowded! Even the “normal” load of about 250 rounds per gun would give three layers of linked ammo in each tray I wish I had enough belts to actually do this, but I have to go with what I’ve got on hand 🤣

A bit of actual installation progress, finally 🤣 I have the first two chutes and belts in, and I’m mostly happy so far I realized (of course *after* the glue had dried on the first belt) that I’d set far too much “sag” into it between the supports in the tray. Sooooo…. I went back and added a few snippets of links to fill-in, and it looks ok unless you get closer than about 3-4 inches away. grrr It will look a bit better after a gloss coat and some wash, but it shows what happens when I’m thinking a bit behind what my fingers are doing with the tweezers 🤣🤦‍♂️ The chutes themselves will also get a bit of a touch up with the Uschi powder once they’re all in place Once these are all in and dry, there are a few bits of PE framing around the perimeter to install, then I can face the bay covers. There is supposed to be another steel rod across the back side of the gun bay, according to the photos I’ve seen, but I’m not sure that there will be room for it alongside the PE strip in that same area. We’ll see how it goes at that point The covers will need to be folded up and bent to the appropriate airfoil curves, then they’ll be set aside until I do the final painting and assembly The gun tray cover will sit loose on the wing (not a hinged piece), but the ammo tray cover is hinged with some delicate bits holding it in place The wing insignia overlaps these somewhat, so getting the decals right will be kinda fun - I’ll have to set the covers in-place, cut the decals accordingly, and hope my fingers are steady enough to get everything properly lined up

That’s nice detail out of the box! Have fun with those 😎

Very cool work on that locking latch!

That is brilliant work, dealing with the fit issues and making them look seamless 🙏

So far, so good-enough 🤣 I made an impromptu “straightening jig” with a little lucite square, some doubled-over office tape to hold the belts down, a couple pieces of thick PE fret left over from the picket boat I finished way back when, and a bunch of masking tape The results aren’t magnifying-glass perfect, but given the belts themselves not having molded links, they’re at least reasonably presentable from more than a couple of inches away You can still see where I glued the belt-ends together, but only if you look closely. I’ll live with that, especially since the glued bits won’t all be lined up side by side in the ammo trays. I’m hoping that it will just look like normal variations in the individual links and rounds once it’s all glued in and a light wash applied to tie everything together 🤷‍♂️🙏🤦‍♂️ There’s enough of each belt that looks good that I’ll be able to fill the feed chutes and the ammo bay itself, then I can move on to the last bits of Eduard PE for the gun bay and wrap this stage up

I may give this a shot next 🙏 My first effort at masking and painting the belt links failed miserably - these vinyl/rubber belts are seriously twisty! It’s hard to tape them down solidly enough to get masking tape in nice straight lines along the full length of the belt 🤣 This is the case even after pretty aggressive treatment with hot water to straighten things out - they tend to slowly re-curl a bit during handling *Parts* of the belt I tested on came out perfectly, but other sections were…not perfect 🤣🤦‍♂️ I’m going to strip off the paint and try a slightly different approach I’m going to use some good sticky office tape and some straight edges cut from spare PE to hold these things as rigidly straight and level as possible, then try again with the masking approach. if *that* doesn’t work, I’ll go with your suggestion. *Really* thin tape might be just the ticket, if I can get it to settle a bit between the individual cartridges (depending on how much trial-and-error I go through with this, the gaspatch cast resin belts may arrive in time to save me and my rum stash from disaster 🤣)

(Eduard *could* have saved us all a ton of headaches by doing these belts as resin in their Gun Bay set, but noooo 🤣🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️) [edit] and of course, as soon as I said that, I realized that Gaspatch does *indeed* sell resin 1/32 .50cal ammo belts. All I had to do was look 🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️ Now, all I have to do is find someone who can either drop-ship to my friend in the US or ship them to Cambodia. I will probably not get them in time for this build (and they may have some issues with the short-radius bends needed to fit the P-47 ammo trays anyway), but I *will* have them on-hand for my upcoming builds where ammo belts are kinda prominent 🤣

State of play with the ammo belts. having a girlfriend is awesome, but also means that I don’t get a lot of bench time on weekends or most evenings 🤣🙏🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️ So. I ended up having to use a tiny bit of CA to glue the belt ends together, which was a bit of a pain but at least it worked (I tried three other glues, but none of them held together at all). Now each belt is long enough that I can both fit them into the Eduard feed chutes and have enough left to also drape them properly in the ammo trays These have been primed with thinned Vallejo Surface Primer in Panzer Gray, then the cases brush-painted with Alclad Polished Brass, and the bullets themselves hit with just a touch of Tamiya Bronze. its all a bit sloppy up-close right now, but I’ll smooth things out with the next steps There is a lot of *tiny* vinyl flash around the bullets themselves that I’m going to simply ignore - I can’t cut it without making it look worse, so I’ll take a deep breath and hope that it’s hidden once I get them settled in. Once this is all thoroughly dry, I’ll swipe it with a tiny bit of Mr Leveling Thinner to smooth things down, then dust the bullets with Tamiya Weathering Master Copper powder. I'm debating with myself on the belt links. Theres no molded detail on the belts, so I’ll have to do those entirely by hand. Masking long skinny flexible things will be a challenge, but the alternative is to either leave them be or try to paint each link by hand. We’ll see how much I can screw things up when I get to that point 😂🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️ After all that, I’ll glue them down, along with the feed chutes. Once they’re in place, I’ll use my go-to Secret Weapon washes (heavy-body black and sewer water), to refine the links and tone things down a bit Hopefully, I can get them at least close to the reference photo - we’ll see

*very* nice work!

Beautiful!

(Complete aside - I sometimes look back at my *own* posts to try to figure out “what the hell was I thinking when I did *that*?!?! 🤣🤣🤣)

🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

Keep them coming! please 🙏 I don’t look every day, and my own posts tend to be wandering OCD excursions into my slightly neurotic brain 🤣 all that said - I rely *heavily* on the work I see here, done by others, as both inspiration and instruction as I go about my own work. so please leave the pics and posts up, so we can come back and marvel/be inspired/learn something new 🙏💯🙏

Nice!!!

Just had to vent here for a moment. Shopping for modeling supplies *sucks* just now! 🤣 Amazon doesn’t ship *most* things to Cambodia (notably including such things as solvent-type glues and lacquer paints 🤣🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️), and even when they do, you pay international shipping individually per item, rather than per shipment. So… I recruited a friend in Atlanta to accept some deliveries for me pending a short visit for a business meeting in November. So far so good but thennnn… I discovered that neither Hannants nor Eduard will ship to the US because of the tariff/customs situation. They won’t even offer a guess as to when that might change (one of the customer service folk at Eduard asked me, politely, to elect a new president, so the world can shift a bit back towards to sanity) Soooo I took a deep breath and placed an order from each of them, to my Cambodia home address. Delivery services here are a bit “informal”, and one is never quite sure how local Customs is going to handle things. I’ll keep y’all posted as the adventure continues 🤣

Thank you all! This is exactly what I needed to know 🙏🙏🙏

I’ve seen several folk use custom-made stencils in their builds over the years, but for the life of me I can’t find references to the sources for them. i have a long-term project that will need stencils for group and squadron markings - I have literally everything else, but those are a bit of a sticking point 🤣 I could *maybe* make some of them with Tamiya tape and a sharp knife, but my skillz aren’t quite up to the finer bits of the lettering any ideas would be most welcome!

Different tires on the same hub? That’s the only thing that would make sense to me