A Gutless challenge - Fisher’s mighty F7-U3 M. Working hard before trying to make both ends meet ...

[CANicoll]

I always wanted a set of Waldron punches, but thought they were too expensive.  Should have bought them when I could.

[Irishman1]

Absolutely stunning!!! 

[Fran]

I have had the pleasure to see with my own eyes, this fantastic build!!! It`s already a beauty!! When complete ti will be epic!

 

[HubertB]

The pleasure was for me, Fran. 
(Yesterday, we had a full-fledged meeting of the LSM Portuguese contingent, around a bottle of wine and some BBQ-grilled fish. To quote Fran seeing my in-progress builds, my bench and witnessing my tool-addiction : « You’re crazy ! » 🤣😂🤣. Guilty as charged you Honor 🤪 !)

And, btw, Fran’s WnW biplanes are fantastic, and one took a well-deserved medal 🥇 at Modelscala Montijo (knowing another one was not competing, having won last year).

A great time together 👍 !

Hubert

[HubertB]

Well, after a 9-months plus hiatus (enough time to have a baby - only this is waaayyyy beyond my current capacities  ), moving to a new house, completing a mile-long to-do list, I have sat again at the bench in earnest.

So I’m back at the Cutlass. 
 

After adding a few bits and bobs in the front landing gear well, I have splashed some paint to blend everything together, and painted the details. The front LG well is now finished  !

 

 

And I have started working on the boundary layer exhaust vanes. If you have followed Scott’s build thread, you know there is a gap (about 1.5 / 2.0 mm wide) on each side of the front fuselage, where it meets the intakes. The boundary layer exhaust vanes are flush with the front fuselage, so have to be modified.

Scott modified his, but I have decided to reproduce the original exhaust vanes system. It is a series of S-shaped plates, that start horizontally between the intake and the front fuselage, and duct the boundary layer air to exit on the top fuselage. I am using a thin Evergreen strip shaped by hand, and CA-glued to the intakes inner side. Each one has to be adjusted before gluing the next one, so it’s a time-consuming process, with long waiting times to let the glue and putty dry before adding the next strip. Here is  strip #1 glued on tne left intake.

 

In the meantime, whilst I wait for the strip to be finished I am trying to improve my figures-painting skills. More on that in a separate thread

Hubert, happy to be back modelling.

[BlrwestSiR]

Great to see you back at the bench Hubert. That's quite the journey to get back to it. 

The boundary layer vanes look to be quite the job but you're got a great if tedious solution to it. 

Carl

[DocRob]

It´s not often, that you get the chance to see two Cutlass´s being build. Now that you showed us your new beautiful cave, there is no way around progress .
It will be interesting to see, how Scott and you tackle the problem areas of this demanding build. Landing gear bay looks nice and busy.

Cheers Rob

[HubertB]

3 hours ago, DocRob said:

It´s not often, that you get the chance to see two Cutlass´s being build. Now that you showed us your new beautiful cave, there is no way around progress .
It will be interesting to see, how Scott and you tackle the problem areas of this demanding build. Landing gear bay looks nice and busy.

Cheers Rob

Thanks Rob,

I confess it’s a constant personal challenge to choose between my AMS that pushes me to add more and more details, and a realistic view that most of these details are invisible or unnoticeable for 99.9 % of the population, and that I am growing older with a significant stash to reduce, therefore I can less and less afford to spend a lot of time satisfying my AMS …

My excuse for the Cutlass is that the nose landing gear bay should be visible with the high stance of the F 7-U. I will spend far less time on the main landing gear bays ( but I’ll still add some details, because I can  ).

Mind you, adding details is also probably a way of procrastinating before I have to paint the kit, as it’s never been my favorite part of a kit build. But then, seeing Peter’s and John’s builds always reminds me that this where you can get a decent-looking or a great-loooking kit .

My Cutlass will be a VA-83 F 7U-3M in NMF, so a challenge in itself …

Hubert

[Peterpools]

Hubert

Absolutely a treat to see your Cutlass back on the bench and underway as the first project to be worked on in your new home and Man Cave. Completely agree about as the years march on, learning to cut ties and limit the amount of AMS is so very important in my eyes as well.  I'm close to 77 now and just enjoying what is in the box has moved to the top of my modeling list, with detailing falling close to the bottom. 

As Rob pointed out, it's a rare day to be able to follow two Fisher Cutlasses under way - what a treat for sure. 

 

[CANicoll]

Looking forward to seeing this beauty continue to develop.  There is always the challenge of how much detail to add, versus how much will actually be seen, versus us knowing what work we've put into the build. These build threads are a wonderful way to capture so much of that 'inside' work that won't really be seen, but still adds to our satisfaction of the build.

Keep up the great work!

[ScottsGT]

Now that’s a level of detail and attention that would have me tossing mine in the can next to Carl’s B-25’s.  
If anyone can do this, it’s you Hubert! 

[HubertB]

Well, Scott, this is one is a special "drive me crazy" for you, my friend ...

I am slowly progressing on the Cutlass, but it is some time two steps forward, and one step back, all of my doing by the way. I mentioned I wanted to reproduce the guide vanes for the boudary layer air between the front fuselage and the intakes. I mentioned earlier that they were S-shaped, to guide the air towars the top fuselage. THis was just too much to swallow for me:

1) There are 7 vanes at the "entrance" and only 4 on the top fuselage. This means that some guide vanes just merge into a single exit. So my rendition was only "figurative" any way ...

2) shaping the vanes to conform both to the intakes's sides and the front fuselage side proved a real too much of a challenge

3) I used thin Evergreen strips to simulate the vanes. The many trials to fit the front fuselage to the rear end, whilst shaping the guide vanes, proved too stressful for the thin plastic, which broke into shards.

Moral : "Better is the enemy of good". I will simply show the 4 vanes on the top fuselage, and the 7 on the side of the intake, and will forget the S-shape in-between. Nothing is sufficiently visible anyway. Reality 1 : 0 Hubert's AMS.

Having learned the lesson, I have decided not to detail the main landing gear wells. I just added a prominent pipe on the rear of each well, et voilà !

Hey, but the AMS is kicking back in ! Before mating the front and rear fuselage, I wanted to deal with some additional detailing of the rear end. When both the rear and front are mated together, the Cutlass will be too hefty and heavy to facilitate some works. The Cutlass rear end was festooned with raised rivets, when the rest of the airframe has countersunk rivets and sometimes glued panels.

So, after a few hours and using most of an Archer rivets sheet, here is what the rear end of my Cutlass looks like:

From the top :

And from below :

In the meantime I have added Airscale faces to the five dials which are in the front landing gear bay :

... and added some bits and stuff to the rear deck behind the cockpit's armoured plate ...

There is a limit to how far you can push back my AMS, after all 🤣 😂 !

And, btw, using Scott's experience, I added a few grams of lead in the nose to be sure the Cutlass is not a tail sitter, here barely visible below the IP coaming ...

 

I am now thinking about how the beef-up the liaison between the front and rear fuselage. The contact points on the lower fuselage look a bit too reduced, not to say flimsy, to my liking, when they will take all the bending loads applied to the front fuselage.

TBC

Hubert

[BlrwestSiR]

Whoa...

Some very nice and precise river work there Hubert. 

 

[CANicoll]

That rivet work is amazing, Hubert.  The patience to do that, and perfectly aligned.  Wow.

[HubertB]

A pity Archer are not any more in operation. I wonder what I’ll do when my stock is exhausted.

This said, laying down their decals is tedious, but not necessarily more than stencils on a Phantom

Hubert

[BlrwestSiR]

20 minutes ago, HubertB said:

A pity Archer are not any more in operation. I wonder what I’ll do when my stock is exhausted.

This said, laying down their decals is tedious, but not necessarily mora than stencils ona Pha tom

Hubert

Hubert, suposedly they're back. Someone took over the business. 

https://www.archertransfers.com/ArcherMain2.html

[Peterpools]

Hubert

Brilliant! Your attention to detail and coming to grips somewhat with your AMS is a great compromise. Rivet work looks so good but the nose gear well - unbelievable - the detail is amazing.

 

[ScottsGT]

Ok, that extra rivet detail is going to be well worth the extra effort you’re putting in.   

[DocRob]

On 7/27/2024 at 6:41 PM, HubertB said:

So, after a few hours and using most of an Archer rivets sheet, here is what the rear end of my Cutlass looks like:

Great detail work in the landing gear bay and with the riveting job, Hubert. 
I never used them, but Eduard has 3D rivets launched lately, which are possibly an alternative, if Archer will not be available.

Cheers Rob

[PanzerWomble]

Far more patience than I Hubert - I salute your work ! 

 

Can I say ...thats a nice ass on the Cutlass ! 

[HubertB]

I continue to work on the small improvements required, before ttrying to make both ends meet. When this mating is done, some of the work will be just clumsier because of the bulk of the new ensemble.

So :

1) The fins are in the process of being improved, on two accounts. Firts the back of the fin at the base of the rudder was a bit short, probably as a result of mold wear.

I cut off a small piece of resin, and glued some plastic to recreate the right profile, with the result below :

There is still some tweaking to do on one of the fins, but the issue is now cleared. You can also see the second improvement I had to do. If you have followed Scott's own build, you will have seen that there is a significant mismatch between the end of the MLG bay and the fin that abutts to it, of about 1.7 mm - the fin being too skinny to match the profile of the end of the MLG bay. The extra thickness was built up with plastic card, then putty. I will do a primary smoothing with the fins still independant, before fine-tuning the fit after gluing them in place.

2) I mentioned earlier that I did not like the gluing area between the front fuselage and the main one, at the bottom of the front fuselage. The gluing zone is very small, and matching the frony end rear ends will require some pressure that  will add more tension on the gluing area. So I decided to add a heavy duty "keel" a) to help the matching of the two halves, b) to increase the gluing area, and finally c) to have a way fo transferring the torsional load that will apply to the bottom gluing area when the Cutlass is on its legs, to the top fuselage. It will also make sure the rear end of the front landing gear bay stays put without any temptation to lift upwards. It's not pretty, but it should work as planned

 

 

 

3) The prominent exhausts on the top fuselage have a good, but not great, molded representation of the vanes. I decided to remove the molded vanes, and add new ones from thin plastic card. Fortunately, Fisher's resin is easy to work with, especially with a well-honed chisel.

This is how it looks now.

 

4) Finally, I have masked and painted matt black both the inside and outside of the canopy components.

 

 

 

Please note how Fisher has done his usually good homework by molding accurately the armoured windscreen, thicker than the sides 👍. It took me the masking job to notice it.

And, btw, I ground off the front of the interior of the windscreen, as it was creating fit issues by conflicting with the IP coaming.

 

That's all for now, folks. More when there is more

Hubert

[Landlubber Mike]

Nice work!  And congrats on all the life changes!

[BlrwestSiR]

Amazing work there Hubert. 

[Martinnfb]

Some neat touch ups and detailing. Me likey ! 

[HubertB]

Thank you guys. There is more, which I forgot.

I have prepped all the antennas, pitot boom and fuel dumps to ensure they will hold by more than just a butt joint. So I drilled a 0.6 mm hole in each, to insert a steel pin. Just need to drill the same hole on the fuselage, and I will have stronger joints.

Of course, the pins will be shortened before gluing, as for one fuel dump where it is already done. 😉

Hubert