Hs 129B-2 by Hobby 2000 (Hasegawa) 1/48 -- two different dioramas

[DocRob]

Wow Mike, you are going all in with the detailing. The opened gun bay will be an eye catcher, as well are the engines.

Cheers Rob

[Landlubber Mike]

Thanks Rob!  I'm pretty excited with how it's coming out.  Though, with all the work and AM, I might have just been better off with the ZM kit which allows you to show off those details without AM.  Then again, it's a bigger kit and this is one is helping me advance my modeling skills.

[BlrwestSiR]

Mike, incredible work. Especially on adding the gun mount bay after the fact. 

[Landlubber Mike]

Thanks!  The gun mount bay actually has a lip as it's meant to sit in the slot from the inside before you close the fuselage halves together.  Would have been easier in some respects but I'm glad it worked out.

[CANicoll]

Mike, terrific work and that Osmark kit really fits the bill.  Great find.  You said the hinges actually work?  Wow. that is next level.  Great work getting the new set into your already closed up fuselage. 

[Landlubber Mike]

15 hours ago, CANicoll said:

Mike, terrific work and that Osmark kit really fits the bill.  Great find.  You said the hinges actually work?  Wow. that is next level.  Great work getting the new set into your already closed up fuselage. 

Thanks Chris!  Yeah, the kit actually has small pins that fit in the hinge joints to allow you to swing it up and down.  The pins are really tiny though - I'm wondering if I will be able to fit the pins after priming and painting.  I could always glue the opened cannon rack in place and glue the head of the pin at the ends if need be I suppose.

[Landlubber Mike]

Sandbox deadline is coming up quickly, so I've been trying to get my two models done while things are fairly quiet.

For the first diorama, I've gotten the plane and most of its parts primed.  The flaps gave me a little issue as I was planning to use the CMK flaps so cut them off the kit wings.  Well, as you can see in the picture below, the CMK flaps (upper right) are too short relative to the kit parts I cut off (bottom two on the right).  Thankfully I remembered I had the Verlinden set which had flaps that were the proper size (top left, relative to the kit parts I cut off immediately below it).

 

I finally got the pushrods added to the Vector engines.  A real pain, but I eventually figured out a way to get them installed - only 28 per engine!  But, the engines look pretty good now.  I had toyed with the idea of adding a small connector at the ends of each rod using minuscule pieces of brass tube, but I dropped that idea quickly as it was just going to be too difficult and take way too much time.

 

Here are pictures of the plane almost completely assembled, and later primed:

 

I also remembered that I had a Verlinden "Luftwaffe Airfield Carts" that is a multimedia set that allows you to build an oil cart (first two pictures below) and a power supply cart (second two pictures below).  Took much longer than one would think, but the two came out really nice I thought:

 

I'll probably use one of these in the diorama, as I found this picture:

 

Thanks for looking in!

[Landlubber Mike]

The second plane has been a little easier.  I did realize that the cowling shapes differed between the B-1 which was my kit versus the B-2 which i am modeling.  It helped a lot having the Hobby 2000 B-2 boxing for the other model so that I had a model to convert the B-1 cowlings.  It wasn't too difficult, and I didn't try to make them absolutely perfect given that the engines are going to be tarped anyway (all I needed was the general shape):

 

With the cannon pod removed from the plane in this diorama, I realized that all that would be remaining would be the cannon rack as well as the open space in the bottom of the fuselage for the ammo, etc.  So, I cut open the bottom of the fuselage similar to how I did the other.  Much easier this time around as I didn't have the various aftermarket detail pieces in the fuselage so the fuselage was essentially hollow.  After cutting, all I really had to do was line it which was fairly easy.  I'll scratch the cannon rack and add it separately at the end of the build.   

 

This model is also primed, so I can start throwing on some color tomorrow:

 

Thanks for looking in!

 

[CANicoll]

Mike, incredible work on, well, ALL of this!  The detail is amazing and I'm amazed at the pushrod work.  The fuel bowser to me looks like a baby buggy, every time I see one.  Can't help it!  Nice work on the cowlings - I'm looking forward to seeing how you do the tarps.  Could come in handy sometime!  

Have a good Christmas?  Sounds like it was a quiet one.  

Happy New Year, neighbor!

[Landlubber Mike]

32 minutes ago, CANicoll said:

Mike, incredible work on, well, ALL of this!  The detail is amazing and I'm amazed at the pushrod work.  The fuel bowser to me looks like a baby buggy, every time I see one.  Can't help it!  Nice work on the cowlings - I'm looking forward to seeing how you do the tarps.  Could come in handy sometime!  

Have a good Christmas?  Sounds like it was a quiet one.  

Happy New Year, neighbor!

Hey Chris, thanks for the kind words.  I thought the exact same thing about the fuel bowser lol  Looks very strange but I guess it served a purpose!

For the pushrods, I ended up using my micromotor to drill 0.4mm holes for the rods in the center section.  The idea was that if the holes had a little depth to them, I wouldn't have to cut the rods exactly to length.  The concept generally worked, though I was using 0.4mm brass rod for the rods and the holes were too small.  I tried going up a size and the holes ended up merging into one bigger hole.  That actually worked out just fine.  Gave me a little more room to play with, and I just used CA to fill in the gaps.

For the tarps, I got a product from VMS when I was placing an order for some of their glues to try them out.  I'll let you know how they go.

Good Christmas here.  Finally a couple of weeks of no work, kids have practically no activities, etc.  Almost too quiet!  Of course I thought I was going to get these dioramas completed and a host of other things done, but between catching up on sleep, honey-dos, and taking care of stuff on my to-do list, I haven't had as much time as I'd hoped.  It's all good though.

Hope you had a good Christmas!  Happy New Year to you too neighbor!

[BlrwestSiR]

Great progress there Mike.

I did something similar with the pushrods on my Seahawk by making them a bit deeper than needed.

[HubertB]

Great work Mike ! I hope you can make it to the deadline. As a general rule, I add 0.1 mm to the diameter of the holes in which a rod or tube is inserted. Albion Alloys are really precise, Evergreen not so much with tolerances in 0.05/0.1 mm area, but you just need a few hundreds of mm to throw you out of whack.

Very brave to use a motor drill for bits  this small. They induce so much torque, a  few vibrations, plus some top weight that make it very difficult to hold the bit straight and not break it. I do all my drillings with small bits with hand-held pin-vises, going slwowly and not forcing the torque when I feel resistance, and even then I break bits regularly ...

Your work is really looking good. I am not sure that a 1/32 kit would not have been simpler in the end than two 1/48 ones with accessories, but I am looking forward to see them completed anyway

Hubert

PS: good to read that, for once, Verlinden AM was the right size, and not oversized - which is the reason why I stopped buying them eons ago. Come ion Aires, if Verlinden can do it, so do you !

[DocRob]

Great detail work on the engines, Mike. Like Hubert, I mostly drill tiny holes with a hand held pin vise, but when there is a lot of drilling to be done, like with MFH kits, I use my Proxxon micro drill on a stand and with a foot pedal, which works equally well, with both hands free to hold the parts.
Until now, I never made larger tarpaulins, but liked the tin foil of wine bottle caps very much.
The oil cart will be a very nice addition to the dio.

Cheers Rob

[CANicoll]

34 minutes ago, DocRob said:

Great detail work on the engines, Mike. Like Hubert, I mostly drill tiny holes with a hand held pin vise, but when there is a lot of drilling to be done, like with MFH kits, I use my Proxxon micro drill on a stand and with a foot pedal, which works equally well, with both hands free to hold the parts.
Until now, I never made larger tarpaulins, but liked the tin foil of wine bottle caps very much.
The oil cart will be a very nice addition to the dio.

Cheers Rob

Oh, I do have a *lot* of wine bottle tin foil! 

[HubertB]

6 minutes ago, CANicoll said:

Oh, I do have a *lot* of wine bottle tin foil! 

Me 5 ! (Jumped 2 to 4, given the supply stock  )

Hubert

[CANicoll]

8 hours ago, Landlubber Mike said:

Hey Chris, thanks for the kind words.  I thought the exact same thing about the fuel bowser lol  Looks very strange but I guess it served a purpose!

For the pushrods, I ended up using my micromotor to drill 0.4mm holes for the rods in the center section.  The idea was that if the holes had a little depth to them, I wouldn't have to cut the rods exactly to length.  The concept generally worked, though I was using 0.4mm brass rod for the rods and the holes were too small.  I tried going up a size and the holes ended up merging into one bigger hole.  That actually worked out just fine.  Gave me a little more room to play with, and I just used CA to fill in the gaps.

For the tarps, I got a product from VMS when I was placing an order for some of their glues to try them out.  I'll let you know how they go.

Good Christmas here.  Finally a couple of weeks of no work, kids have practically no activities, etc.  Almost too quiet!  Of course I thought I was going to get these dioramas completed and a host of other things done, but between catching up on sleep, honey-dos, and taking care of stuff on my to-do list, I haven't had as much time as I'd hoped.  It's all good though.

Hope you had a good Christmas!  Happy New Year to you too neighbor!

Mike:  I just searched for VMS and found their stuff on the Hobbyworld website.  Is this the stuff you are referring to on the tarps?  VMS - WFU Modeling Paper

I'm sure you found this video on using their Modeling Paper.  VMS has a ton of how-to videos.  Never found them before... I seem to always learn something new from you!

[Landlubber Mike]

9 hours ago, HubertB said:

Great work Mike ! I hope you can make it to the deadline. As a general rule, I add 0.1 mm to the diameter of the holes in which a rod or tube is inserted. Albion Alloys are really precise, Evergreen not so much with tolerances in 0.05/0.1 mm area, but you just need a few hundreds of mm to throw you out of whack.

Very brave to use a motor drill for bits  this small. They induce so much torque, a  few vibrations, plus some top weight that make it very difficult to hold the bit straight and not break it. I do all my drillings with small bits with hand-held pin-vises, going slwowly and not forcing the torque when I feel resistance, and even then I break bits regularly ...

Your work is really looking good. I am not sure that a 1/32 kit would not have been simpler in the end than two 1/48 ones with accessories, but I am looking forward to see them completed anyway

Hubert

PS: good to read that, for once, Verlinden AM was the right size, and not oversized - which is the reason why I stopped buying them eons ago. Come ion Aires, if Verlinden can do it, so do you !

 

7 hours ago, DocRob said:

Great detail work on the engines, Mike. Like Hubert, I mostly drill tiny holes with a hand held pin vise, but when there is a lot of drilling to be done, like with MFH kits, I use my Proxxon micro drill on a stand and with a foot pedal, which works equally well, with both hands free to hold the parts.
Until now, I never made larger tarpaulins, but liked the tin foil of wine bottle caps very much.
The oil cart will be a very nice addition to the dio.

Cheers Rob

Thanks very much Hubert and Rob!  The little square area along the center hub in the engine was probably no bigger than 1.3mm x 1mm.  I barely could get two 0.4mm holes side by side.  When I tried opening them up with the 0.5mm bit to fit the rod, that's when the holes merged.  

Given the angle I would have to drill with the cylinders in the way, as well as the very hard Vector resin, I was worried about breaking the drill bits and spending hours drilling all 54 holes by hand.  A few years ago, at the recommendation of someone on the MSW sister site, I splurged on a micromotor made by Nakanishi.  Costly, but an incredibly useful machine.  It's like a Ferrari versus a Dremel which comparably is like a Ford Pinto.  

The stylus is much smaller and lighter than the Dremel.  Given the size and weight of the stylus, you can do a lot of detail work without your hand getting tired.  Speed is easy to control on the main box, and I use a foot pedal for control.  Speaking of control, there is zero vibration on these machines, so I didn't have the issues Hubert you mentioned relating to weight, torque and vibration.  I think it's very telling that even with the weird angle I had to drill half the holes for the rear cylinders, I didn't break a single bit drilling out all 54 holes.  I use it for drilling, sanding, sawing, and grinding.  It's come in really handy where I need to saw, sand, or grind off aftermarket pieces off their resin plugs - I can do those tasks really quickly and more accurately than if I tried to hand sand the pieces.  I set my shop vac nozzle in a vise on my workbench, and cut/sand/grind the pieces right in front of the vacuum nozzle to essentially eliminate the resin dust. 

Again, these aren't inexpensive machines, and they seem to have jumped considerably in price since I bought mine a few years ago, but it's been worth every penny.  There are some less expensive Chinese machines on eBay, but like most Chinese tools, it's buyer beware.

[Landlubber Mike]

7 hours ago, CANicoll said:

Mike:  I just searched for VMS and found their stuff on the Hobbyworld website.  Is this the stuff you are referring to on the tarps?  VMS - WFU Modeling Paper

I'm sure you found this video on using their Modeling Paper.  VMS has a ton of how-to videos.  Never found them before... I seem to always learn something new from you!

Yep, that's it!  And the video (along with their others) is very helpful.  Sold me on trying out their Modeling Paper.

I heard of VMS somewhere online, and was interested in trying them out as they seem to have configured their adhesives (in particular, CA) specially for modelers.  I used their clear parts glue on the canopy of my JRS-1 and it worked very nicely.

I bought direct from them earlier this year, but I believe they might have a US distributor now.  Since you're always kindly offering to let me try out various things you have on the shelf, you're welcome to try out the VMS or other stuff I own.

[Landlubber Mike]

10 hours ago, HubertB said:

Your work is really looking good. I am not sure that a 1/32 kit would not have been simpler in the end than two 1/48 ones with accessories, but I am looking forward to see them completed anyway

Hubert

PS: good to read that, for once, Verlinden AM was the right size, and not oversized - which is the reason why I stopped buying them eons ago. Come ion Aires, if Verlinden can do it, so do you !

I forgot to reply to this part.  After all I'm doing with the various aftermarket sets, you're right that I could have just bought the ZM Hs 129 kit in 1/32 scale and had an easier time.  Funny thing is I'm using the ZM instructions quite a bit to guide me on things like locations, colors, accuracy, etc.  Looks like you can open up the ZM kit a lot more than I did with my half dozen aftermarket sets!

This is the first Verlinden set that I used, though I have some others in the stash.  I've heard that other more recent AM companies are a little better, but so far this Verlinden set has been pretty good.  I'm in the process today of adding some of the Verlinden open-engine parts (rear part of the engine, exhaust ring, etc.) to one of the Vector engines at the moment, so we'll see how that goes.  Dry fitting things look pretty good thus far.

[KevinM]

Mike everything is really looking great there and I really think the carts came out fabulous.I am thinking if it's good with Martin if you need a couple more weeks let's make it happen. 

[Landlubber Mike]

Thanks Kevin!  If others need more time for their builds, I certainly wouldn't pass that up.  I don't want to be the only one as I benefited from the last GB extension 🫣

It's possible I can get the two planes done if I pull a couple of all nighters, but getting the dioramas and accompanying pieces done might be pushing it.  I probably could get everything done on the two dioramas by the end of this weekend which would help me be a little more conservative when it comes to painting/drying times.

[BlrwestSiR]

I'm getting close with my Wyvern but for the Sheridan I could a extra week or two. 

So you wouldn't be the only one. 

As for VMS, I found their stuff a couple years ago from a nearby shop but they were constantly sold out. BNA Modelworld carries them out of Australia and seems to have most of their products in stock.