JohnnyK

Thanks everyone!! I really like working on those older Monogram/Revell models. It reminds me of when I put those together as a kid (long time ago). Back then I tried to paint the finished model with Testors' paint from the little square bottles. That never worked out very well, so usually I left the models in their natural gray plastic, blobs of glue and fogged up canopies.

Following is a photo of my P-51 next to my P-47. The P-47 is a much larger plane.

Yep, it takes a long time to finish a model in foil because each panel needs to be individually foiled. However, is the best way to duplicate a NMF. The B-29 took over 100 hours, because a bunch of that time was spent correcting poor engineering, especially the exhaust pipes.

It took a long time, nut my 1/48 B-29 is finally finished. That's a P-47 in front of the B-29. The B-29 is a big model.

It's about time that this model is finished. Next in line is gluing the nacelles to the wings. Revell's solution is to glue the edge of the nacelles to the thin area shown in red. Not only would this result in a weak joint, but there is a good chance that glue would ooze out of the joint. Time to put on the thinking cp. I cut sheet styrene into strips and laminated them into blocks. The blocks were glued to the nacelles The back of the engines were glued to the blocks which resulted in a strong, clean joint. Time for final assembly. The main wings are designed to slip over the spars that extend from the fuselage. This is a good solution and produces a strong joint. However, the spars are a little loose and the heavy wings don't fit tight to the wind root. Since the model is finished in foil, I could not use tape to hold the wing to the fuselage because the tape would pull off the foil. I stacked a bunch of chair cushions on to of each other and wedged the model between the cushions. This way the wing was in the correct position as the glue dried. The greenhouse is a different shape from the fuselage. Using a hairdryer I heated up the greenhouse and held it to the proper shape until it cooled. That did the trick. The greenhouse now matches the shape of the fuselage. If only I sanded off those dumb looking rivets. The last thing to be done was to install the landing gear and the turrets. The model is finally finished. Go to the tread "Finished 1/48 B-29" to see the results.

It took a long time, but the foiling of the wings is complete. Foiling of the top of the wings did not take too long because of the large painted area. However, foiling of the underside of the wings took a long time because the underside is 95% foil. Each panel needs to be individually foiled. The nice thing about this is that it produces realistic looking panel lines. No highlighting of the panel lines is required.

Thanks. Wait until you see my solution for making sure that the wings are glued to the fuselage at the correct angle. You'll have a huge laugh.

Outside of spending hours applying foil, dealing with the fuselage was pretty straight forward. Now it's time to have some real FUN (i.e. big problem) with the main wings. In fact, the wings are the most fun (i.e. biggest problem) of the entire kit. The fun revolves around the engine exhaust pipes. This is a photo of FIFI's engine exhausts. The larger pipe is the main engine exhaust. The smaller pipe is the exhaust of the turbo-supercharger which was located behind the louvers located in front of the exhaust pipe. These photos show how Revell dealt with the twin pipe exhaust system. The top photo shows an indent in the nacelle. This is where the exhaust pipe is installed. The next two photos show the result. Revell only supplies a single pipe that does not fit properly into the indent . REALLY REVELL!!!! That looks really stupid. I purchased to aluminum tubes and cut them into pieces. I then painted them with Testors' Flat black and Rust. Next I filled in the indent with filler. Next I needed to drill two holes in the nacelle for the two exhaust pipes. Out came a big drill. The result is two holes for the two pipes. Each engine has two sets of two exhaust pipes. So, 8 indents have to be filled and 16 holes have to be drilled. I inserted the painted tubes after I finished foiling the wings. They are not 100% accurate, but the look way better than what Revell supplies.

After the seam on the fuselage was cleaned up I added Bare Metal Foil to each panel individually. The raised panel lines were used to guide my hobby knife when I trimmed the BMF. I am currently building a Monogram 1/48 B-58 and I removed the raised panel lines. Dumb move because I now have nothing to indicate where the panel lines are I used 0000 steel wool to enhance the grain of the BMF. Usually I do not add decals until the model is fully assembled. With this model I was concerned that it would be difficult to add decals after the main wings were added because the model would be clumsy to hold. So I added the fuselage decals before I added the main wings. Next up are the engine exhaust on the main wings. These were a major pain in the butt to fix.

WOW!!! That is a great photo of the greenhouse. Now I know why you were trying to make your own greenhouse frame. I wish that I had that photo when I was building my model. I would have removed those big bumps on the greenhouse frame. The big question is why did Monogram/Revell put those big rivets on the frame anyway? The tend to do odd things for no reason.

I just visited your link. DUDE!!!!! I can't believe that you tried to make the frame of the greenhouse out of a sheet of aluminum??? Even I wouldn't try that! I used Eduard pre-cut masks for the greenhouse. Trying to paint the greenhouse frame by hand would be a nightmare The shape of the greenhouse does not match up with the shape of the fuselage. Heating the greenhouse with a hairdryer solved that problem. I think it looks pretty good. Maybe the rivets in the frame are a bit too large, but it's okay. It's nice that interior of the flight deck is visible. I agree with you regarding how difficult it is to work on the fuselage after it is assembled. Those long wing spars make it impossible to roll the model onto its side. I kind of solved the problem by placing the fuselage on a block of foam. That way I could place the fuselage onto the edge of the foam and roll the fuselage on its side. It would have been impossible to foil the sides of the fuselage otherwise.

Time to assemble the fuselage, add rivets and finish it in Bare Metal Foil. This is the fuselage directly out of the box. Note the raised panel seams and the lack of rivets. Normally I add rivets after the model has been foiled. This time I experimented with adding rivets before adding the foil. Bare Metal Foil is thin enough for the rivets to show through. I use a set of rivet wheels by RB Productions to make rivets. I cut my old high school lettering templet into smaller pieces to help guide the rivet wheel. The flexible plastic works great going around curved surfaces. Normally I join both halves of the fuselage before adding foil. However, This model's fuselage is so round that is difficult to hold it steady when adding foil, so I added foil to the sides before joining the halves together. A couple of clamps and some tape was all that was needed to hold the fuselage halves together while the glue dried. TAKE NOTE: Those gunner domes are glued to the fuselage from the inside of the model. Make sure that they are securely glued in place before gluing the fuselage halves together. If you accidently push one of the domes into the fuselage there will be no way to reglue it in place! After the glue dried it was time to cleanup the long seam in the fuselage with filler, sanding, filler, sanding, filler and more sanding. I am sure that you know what I am getting at. Note how far the gunner domes extend from the fuselage. Don't accidently push on them.

Thanks. The best thing about these types of forums is the ability to share "out of the box' solutions with fellow modelers.

Since we had so much fun dealing with the warped wings and that nasty joint in the nacelles, lets have some fun dealing with the nose weights. A lot of weight will need to be added to the front of the plane. I intend to add solid weight blocks under the flight deck and lead shot behind the flight deck in that area outlined in blue. Using epoxy, I added solid weights under the flight deck. However, this will be no where enough to pull the nose down. I dry assembled the airplane with blue tape and added lead shot into a plastic bag placed behind the flight deck until the tail came up and the nose went down. I added additional weight for good measure. I wired the bag in place and painted the front of the bag black since it is visible through the flight engineer's window. A problem arose in that the weights are visible through the opening in the flight deck's bulkhead. I found a photo looking back from the nose of the plane through the bulkhead. I cut the area of the photo at the opening and glued it to cardstock. I glued the photo behind the opening in the bulkhead. Now the weights are no longer visible.

You are probably correct regarding the ignition wires. Those would be too small in diameter to be fuel lines. One thing that I noticed after I finished the kit is that not very much of the engine is visible due the cowling and the props. No wonder that the engines had overheating problems.

A few years ago I was walking through my favorite big-box craft store, Hobby Lobby, and I saw this huge box in the model airplane area. It was Revell's 1/48 B-29. I had to have it, so I used my 40% off coupon and bought it. I remember building a B-29 in the mid 1950's. I don't remember if it was an Aurora (1/76 scale) or a Revell (1/133 scale) kit. It was pretty big so it was probably the Aurora kit. Both of those kits are really odd scales. I remember reading somewhere that those kits were "box scale" kits. The scale of the model was determined so that it would fit into a box of predetermined dimensions. I think that the same size box was used for the B-17, B-24 and B-29. I did not paint the finished plane because all I had were those small Testors' square bottles of paint and a paintbrush. My, how things have changed. Following are some links to B-29 models from the 1950's. https://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-1954-AURORA-BOEING-B-29-SUPERFORTRESS-1-76-w-RARE-CEMENT-REPR-DECALS/223062744883?epid=1322001483&hash=item33ef935f33:g:-xUAAOSwWTRWxMKw https://www.scalemates.com/kits/193921-revell-h-208-98-boeing-b-29-giant-superfortress https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/vintage-aurora-boeing-29-1924213020 The ailerons, flaps, rudder, etc. were all made of fabric. I guess to save weight or expensive aluminum. On the Revell kit, these surfaces have a quasi-fabric texture on them. It's a little over textured so I gave them a light sanding before I painted them.

Time to do the engines. This is a photo of a B-29 engine. I decided to add some "bling" to my model's engine by adding the copper colored fuel lines. First I painted the engine aluminum. Then I dry brushed the cylinder with black and painted the pushrod covers black. Thin copper wire was cut and bent to simulate the copper colored fuel lines. Holes were drilled in the cylinder heads and fuel manifold. The copper wires were glued in place using super glue. This is a photo of how the appearance of the engines evolved. The front edge of the cowlings were painted Testors' Metallic Aluminum which was buffed to a high gloss and sealed with Testors' Sealer. I highlighted the space between the cooling flaps with black. The remainder of the cowling was finished in Bare Metal Foil and rivets were added. The grain in the foil was added with a single swipe of 0000 steel wool.

One more thing about this kit. I purchased it two years for $30.00 US. I looked on eBay and the price jumped threefold, sometimes more. Amazon has some for $145.00 US.

I really like the vintage bomber kits produced by Monogram/Revell. According to Scalemates, the last time Monogram did a new tooling of the B-29 was 1977. Since then the kit has been reboxed with new decals eight times. Revell included new props and two atomic bombs with my kit. My kit was dated 2004.

The plane has a full bomb load, full fuel load and the crew is very overweight

I'll put the wings aside for a while and work on the landing gear. I didn't like the way the kit's tires and wheels looked, so I purchased resin tires and wheels. The landing gear was painted aluminum with a light weathering. I added wires to simulate the brake lines and highlighted the bolts at the joints with brass paint. The piping may not be 100% correct, but it adds some "bling" to the landing gear. All three landing gear are finished. The wheels are not glued to the gear at this time. I did not glue the wheels to the glue until the model was finished to make sure that the flattened area of the tires were flat on the ground.

I finished Revell's 1/48 B-29 last year. It is an impressive model when finished, but it also has a number of challenges. I thought that I would share my experience with this kit. This is a very large model when finished. That's me, looking totally exhausted from building this model. The finished model has a wingspan of 34", a length of 25" and weighs in at 2 1/2 pounds. The majority of that weight is added weight in the nose of the plane to prevent it from being a tail sitter. I built the 1/48 P-47 three years ago. That was my first airplane finished in Bare Metal Foil. The B-29 model has a number of irritating challenges: The nose greenhouse is a different shape than the fuselage. The model needs a lot of weight upfront to prevent it from being a tail sitter. The exhaust pipes look terrible and are incorrect. The joints at the nacelles between the top and bottom parts of the main wings are a real pain to fix The main wings are warped The joint between the nacelles and engine cowls is poorly engineered The bomb bay doors are engineered to only be in the open position. There are no mounting tabs provided to glue them in the closed position. However, I have good solutions to all of the above. If you have one of these models stashed away, or if you planing on purchasing one of these, I recommend that you build one. The results are worth the extra work. Let's get started with the cockpit: The flight deck is visible through the large greenhouse, so I purchased an upgrade kit from Eduards. Photos of B-29's indicate that the flight deck was painted in a verity of colors; black, gray, aluminum and green. I chose to paint the flight deck Tamiya Cockpit Green. The seats were painted Testors' Leather and the molded-in seatbelts were painted tan. The Eduard gauges are a big improvement over the molded-in gauges. I used a silver pencil to highlight the edges of the bombsite and the instrument pods. When the cockpit was finished, I moved onto the wings. I painted the fabric covered areas of the horizontal stabilizer Testors' Metallic Aluminum. After the paint dried I sealed it with Testors' Metallic Sealer. A little bit of dry brushing with flat black brought out just a little of the fabric's texture. The remainder of the wing was finished in Bare Metal Foil and rivets were added. On to the main wing and problems. Upon dry fitting the main wings together I noticed that the joint at the nacelles was HUGE!! I removed that material marked in read and the joint was greatly improved. The large main wings were noticeably warped. Warped wings would ruin the final appearance of the model, so a solution was necessary. I needed something very straight and very stiff to straighten the wings so I figured that I could use my old architect's scale. The triangular shape of the scale ensures that it would remain straight once it was clamped to the wing. I glued the two parts of the wing together and used clamps and rubber bands to hold the wing together. Success!!!! The wing ended up straight as an arrow. The joint at the nacelle disappeared after a little filler and sanding. This is a photo of the main wing of a B-29. The flap (aileron?) was a painted fabric. The center section of the wing was an alloy that need to be painted to prevent corrosion. Testors' Metallic Aluminum was used to paint the main wings of my model in the same manner as the real airplane. More problems with the wings to follow.

Do you put the adhesive on the foil or the airplane? Do you use a brush? I've read that some modelers use their finger to apply the adhesive. Do you apply the adhesive to each piece of foil individually, or do you put the adhesive on a large sheet of foil and cut into smaller pieces? Thanks, John

Gaz, What brand of foil do you use? I have always used Bare Metal Foil, but recently they have had a problem with orange peel.

The B-24J is a Monogram kit dating from 1995. Those old Monogram and Revell kits were nice kits. Not 100% accurate, but still nice kits with decent interior detail. I think that if you want to build a 1/48 scale B-24 or B-29 will be stuck with with a Monogram or Revell. The rivet detail is meager and the panel joints are raised, but I still like them. Fun kits to build and impressive in size.