Silver Dollar

It looks like I distorted the throttles in handling somehow. I fixed it. Thanks for the tip.

Thanks Craig. Yes, the door will stay open so you can see up into the area. I did a little more fiddling in the cockpit last night by setting up the control yokes. The fabric boots were made with aluminum foil and painted flat O.D. green but didn't come out matte enough even when covered with flat clear acryl. I should have reshaped the base of the yoke because the boots came out looking more like baby shoes than boots. The horn buttons on the wheels were painted with white enamel and covered with a dot of gloss clear. I did them with high magnification and a 6 bristle brush. I did the black and white thing also. More to come.

I think I've put about as much as I can on the tunnel roof so I'll leave it where it is. There's still some room for a few touch ups and clean ups that I could do but they really won't show very much. It would be more for the camera and the scrap book. I especially want to add some riveting which I do more with paint than anything else. I just add a few thick drops of paint with a very thin brush and that seems to suffice. It leaves a nice, round raised bump. I did one shot in black and white to test the realism. It seems to be an interesting effect. I'll still have to do a bit of additional work on the tunnel and that will be to construct the side walls which are not reflected in the kit. A couple of pieces of styrene shed and some fiddly bits should do the trick. Then it's on to the cockpit floor.

More of the Adventures in Tedium. I've done some of the detail for the pilot's wall and the tunnel. For the forward part of the tunnel just below the yokes, I cemented a piece of .005 styrene sheet to cover up all the drilled holes and the throttle quadrant hollow and then added the C shaped styrene for the framework. The wood is 1/64 inch birch plywood veneer stained and varnished and superglued to the roof. Here's the pilot's wall. There's still some touchup and detailing to do. This is the tunnel roof in its basic form. there's a lot of detail that still has to be added as well as weathering, paint touch up and washes. The final shot shows the brackets the control wires will go through. There's also a lot of further detail to add.

Here's what I have so far. This is the starboard cockpit wall with as many doodads as I could find in my research. I still need to add the manual hydraulic lever as well as some wiring, the hydraulic plumbing, the O2 tanks and plumbing and whatever else I stumble across in my research. I still need to add the washes and the light weathering. And some close up shots. More on the way.

I use an 8x power set of magnifiers I used when I was in practice. I can't work without it anymore. It was made by the Zeiss company. You can find some good ones though at much lower prices than I paid.

Oh yeah. When 1mm begins to be divided, you're working in microns. Here's the rear cockpit wall with about 95% of all the parts completed. I still have to put in the wiring and plumbing as well as finishing the bomb bay side of the bulkhead. The bomb bay detail is pretty much there so I'll be detailing it mostly with paint and washes. No need to reinvent the wheel. More to come.

Just a quicky update tonight. I've been working on detailing the cockpit side of bulkhead #2 as the detail is not there but the potential for adding it is very high. I've added some ribbing structure as well as scratch building the hydraulic parts (those thingies on the starboard rear of the bulkhead). I'm about to scratch build the doohickies that go on the rear starboard part of the cockpit wall. I'm somewhat weak on the correct terminology of the parts, I just make 'em. I'll post some pictures after I get the bulkhead assembled and painted. Stay tuned for more Adventures in Microns.

Hey Craig. I'm glad to see you found your way here.

Thanks Cees. I absolutely have no idea what this box is or what it does but there wasn't any in the kit and I know where it goes. The "on" lights are yellow stretched sprue with a little yellow paint to make them stand out and the "off" lights are clear stretched sprue. The metal rings around the light was made by pushing a hot needle about 1mm into the plastic. That raises a melted edge which I painted chrome silver. You definitely need supervision or good magnification for this step. This is a shot with the box on its side. The correct position is 90 degrees counter clockwise. I did that to better see the raised detail

That's fantastic cockpit work. First rate all the way.

Absolutely gorgeous. That weathering is perfect. I love the variation in the interior colors. Here I sit waiting for more.

Here's a few more details from my Adventures in Microns. I finished the floor as well as cementing the throttle quad to it's detailed base. Here's the whole assembly so far. This is the floor after sanding and waxing with a little candle wax rubbed onto the clear to dull it down a bit. Light wear is the name of the game. An up close pic of the quadrant against the IP. And finally, some throttle pedestal detail. My next step will be to start on the front bulkhead and do some detailing in the tunnel. Normally, I would have left the tunnel alone but you can see a good bit of it throughout the front hatch as well as the tunnel entrance from the cockpit. I'll mostly be some ribbing, a few black boxes and a bunch of wiring. 'Til next episode of Adventures in Microns.

Just a quicky progress shot tonight. I covered the floor with 1/64 in. birch plywood. Each piece is individually cut and painted to get the variation in the wood panels. I painted the pieces using clear acryl tinted with different shades of brown and yellow to get that look. When you dilute the color with water, you'll wind up destroying the wood. If you dilute enamel paint with thinner, the mix is way too thin to get a decent coat on the panels. The next step from here will be to gently sand the "varnish' smooth to better simulate the correct scale. After the acrylic paint is smooth, I'll polish it with a little wax. That should give just the right amount of shine so it will look like a used wood floor but not beat to hades and back. You can see how out of scale the roughness is at this point. Here, you can see what I did to the sides of the tunnel opening. I thinned the walls out and then added styrene strips. I just wish I could find my Archer rivet decals that I bought last year. I have no idea where I put them.

Man, that's a lot of brass, but you can't beat the way it looks.

You earned the compliment, Nigel. That is about as sincere as anyone could be. You make dental burs?? Wow, what a coincidence. Did you also make the diamond crown and bridge and porcelain stones too? I used to use those things up like crazy. Nothing cuts a good crown prep like a fresh diamond. I especially loved the diamond straight handpiece stones. They were way better than the Dremel ones.

Good moderation is the key to a successful forum. We can agree or disagree on any topic so long as it's done in a polite and civilized manner. Some folks believe that the winner of an argument is the guy who is loudest and shoots the biggest insult rather than providing evidence based facts. I've dealt with that all my professional career. Nigel has and is providing us with invaluable info and technique such that even I'm attempting some of the easier procedures. We're fortunate that he takes the time to help us out and raise our level of skill. That kind of passion is rare. I wish more of my dental professors were like that. Now, on to more modeling.

O.k. so that's 2 for Moonlight Serenade. And the work continues.

Thanks for the kind words. I'm glad you guys like the jackets. That's another one of my hobbies I had to curtail because the jackets got way to expensive. Tonight, I finished the IP. It's just dry fitted to the bulkhead. I did a clean up of a number of areas and added a few more doodads that didn't come on the original kit part. It should look fairly good behind the throttle quad. The whole entire panel was done with the sandwich technique but I didn't use clear acetate for the dial glass. Instead I used microscope slide covers, i.e. real glass. The pieces are extremely thin and do a better job than acetate. Here's the close up of the right control box after cleanup.

Way nice job on that foil. That's what I call first rate all the way.

That's great Jack. We can use your input.

Wow, those PE parts really add a ton of detail. That's great work on the ribbing. I'll want to follow this carefully when I get to my own B-25.

Here's some more work on the IP i.e. the control box on the right. I had to scratch build that part for two reasons. 1) The control box has no detail and is the wrong shape. and 2) When I was originally going to modify the kit part, I cut off the right side so I could slide the center section up after trimming its top. I went and lost the part I cut off, dang it. I made it by cutting a piece of blood wood and covering it with a piece of aluminum from a soda can. The fire extinguisher handles are soldered brass pieces and the indicator lights are brass rod with paint dots. And the close up. There's room here for a bunch of touchup and some cleanup on the box. It looks better at a distance but it's still just not where I want it yet especially on the side where the indicator lights are.

Hey Jack. Actually, I was going to send you a PM over there but you found me before I had a chance to do that. I didn't want it to be public knowledge so the naysayers wouldn't follow us here. I'll definitely be patient, Nigel. This is way too good to rush.

O.k. Now we're cooking' with gas. I just put a special section in my research files for this. Those are some mods I can do. It looks like in trimming down the control box on the right part of the IP, you corrected its shape. I'm glad you dealt with that one. I'd like to see how you handle the control column fabric. Thanks for posting.