HK Models 1/32 Lancaster Hints, Tweaks and Tips,

[yknu]

14 hours ago, NigelR32 said:

I'll check mine later.. not looking good is it or is it the angle of the shot? Are you sure you've got the stb tip on stbd wing? I'm sure you have..

Here are updated pics. ( k17 and g9) there will be some work to be done with the fit of the wigtip. 

[FME erk]

6 hours ago, NigelR32 said:

Hi David,

In my opinion there are many ways to do this, but by far the best, especialluy if you want to scribe over the panel lines is to either use sprue goo or Mr Surfacer. One thing to keep in mind with both is to leave them for at least a couple of weeks to fully cure before sanding back as you will experience shrinkage that will make the panel lines visible if you remove excess too soon. Super glue is a great filler but is very hard compared to the surrounding plastic so make scribing a little more difficult to look consistent.

As I said, this is my opinion and others will have a different view.

Nige

In your video showing the use of Mr Surfacer, What alcohol are you using ?

I presume its a bottle of some such rather than straight whiskey  

[NigelR32]

1 hour ago, FME erk said:

Nige

In your video showing the use of Mr Surfacer, What alcohol are you using ?

I presume its a bottle of some such rather than straight whiskey  

You can use anything that is designed to thin acrylic paint. Obviously thinners like Mr Hobby Levelling Thinner and the new AK thinner are hotter, but as long as the plastic is not left to soak in the stuff you should be OK. I generally plump for my own alcohol water mix or Tamiya X22A.

Some use Cellulose thinner or acetone.. beware.. this WILL affect the plastic.

[NigelR32]

7 hours ago, yknu said:

Here are updated pics. ( k17 and g9) there will be some work to be done with the fit of the wigtip. 

 

Hey yknu..

I have done the same as you, but using the starboard parts as my port wing is faulty and is being replaced.

In these first two pics, we can see that the fit is not so bad as

yours.. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That is because i shoved a soft sanding stick inside the wing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To improve the fit on the top side, I laid two strips of tamiya tape on the flange... Obviously when actually assembling you would use plastic card...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then I refitted the tip to see if it was better.. it sure was.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the underside, I think some plastic will need to be removed from the flange on the wing to allow the tip to sit flush with the surface of the wing.

Personally, I would have preferred the wings to be as standard with a one piece upper and one piece lower rather than this supposedly "clever" design. Fitting the tip seamlessly will obviously take some skill to do neatly, and will more than likely entail rivetting and scribing. Add this to the fact one of my wings is faulty.. that's where my opinion stems from.

[yknu]

Hi Nigel, 

thank you from you pics. I will check also the other wing. My plan is to put son filling but you cannot put much as it impact the shape. 

[npb748r]

Nige,

I have continued to keep 2 or 3 steps behind your build with my own as I'm a slow builder.  But it's mainly because I picking stuff up from you (and others building and posting) as you all progress so thanks for showing the way......

On a couple of online pictures of the interior of Lancs there appears to be a flare gun behind the wireless operator attached to the cover of the front main wing spar that's not in the kit ?

thanks

neil  

[npb748r]

also just working on the rudder peddles but can't seem to get them to fit equally, one side appears to have been moulded shorter than the other. Unless I'm not putting them together correctly ??

[ChaoticMike]

You're quite right, they are molded wrong. I took a couple of millimetres off the longer one. 

[NigelR32]

On 1/25/2019 at 11:53 AM, npb748r said:

also just working on the rudder peddles but can't seem to get them to fit equally, one side appears to have been moulded shorter than the other. Unless I'm not putting them together correctly ??

 

18 hours ago, ChaoticMike said:

You're quite right, they are molded wrong. I took a couple of millimetres off the longer one. 

Thanks for the tip off guys. You found another correction.

[NigelR32]

Hello guys. 

In amomngst my other projects I have managed to get this far with the cockpit mods. Iseem to be going one step forwards five steps back..

If you look closely, you'll keep seeing more and more little mods.

Yes, that IP support column or cable/chain/wiring conduit is leaning back as per the original.

Obviously this is an ongoing series of mods with much more still to come.

It's a bit different than stock though eh..

Thanks for looking..

[BlrwestSiR]

Really great work Nigel! This will be invaluable when the time comes to starting mine in the stash. 

For the wings, I recall having to do something similar on their Mosquito which also has a one piece wing. 

Carl

[Bill_S]

On 1/24/2019 at 3:23 AM, yknu said:

Here are updated pics. ( k17 and g9) there will be some work to be done with the fit of the wigtip. 

I've yet to unpack my kit, but this reminds me of something I used to spread the fuselage on my Tamiya Phantom to minimize wing to fuselage gap. I stuck a balloon inside, then inflated it until the part expanded to where I wanted it. The balloon applies even pressure over the entire area. Given that the wing tip is more rigid than the main wing, it should minimize this gap too.

[HubertB]

Outstanding work Nigel. Definitely my type of modelling.

Hubert

[npb748r]

great work Nige.  Here's a picture of my cockpit so far, sorry about the quality of both the picture and the modelling. The picture is entirely down to the camera however the modelling is down to me, trouble is as I've got older my eyes have got worse, what I see is not what I produce ! I'm building a plane that came late in the war so have painted the front section black, I read somewhere that this was done to later built planes as the front section was made separately from the rear which continued to be green. I'm also not sure if I will use the H2S on the build so have left the boxes off at the moment that attach to the pole behind the pilots seat at the end of the table. Couple of tips from me, I couldn't think of a way to paint the round yellow dots on the pilots seat (or make a mask) and there are no decals so I painted a couple of spare circles of thin plastic and glued them on. Not perfect but as I said, with my eyes and with the lid on the plane it will be ok for me - I'd rather have a perfectly round, slightly raised circle than a messy yellow blob ! Also, on a few photos I found the navigator and wireless operators table top looked worn with the wood showing through. I used some old 1/350 wooden ship decking, attached to the table top, painted and rubbed down. Not sure if this is how it would have looked but I'm happy with it. Keep up the good work on the build. 

[npb748r]

given the way the kit is constructed I plan to paint the kit's component parts before finally attaching the wings, tailplanes, etc.  I'm using the At War series of books and Avro Lancaster Definitive Record (Harry Holmes) as reference and came across a couple of interesting bits that I thought you might find useful which was news to me but you may already know.

At the end of the war it would appear that around 80% of all marks of the Lancaster had H2S fitted which is much higher than I expected. Remember if you build without the H2S fitted I believe you should exclude the instruments in step 5 of the instructions.

According to the At War book early planes where painted in 'lamp black' extra matt paint which did not weather well and became powdery and rubbed off (see picture attached). It was superseded by smoother paint with a slight sheen with the black becoming progressively glossy towards the end of the war with some Canadian built machines receiving a high gloss final coat.     

[yknu]

On 1/7/2019 at 4:21 PM, NigelR32 said:

Hi Everyone,

I thought I'd start a new thread much in line with Ernies thread on the B-24, regarding the HKM Lanc.

Please post here your hints tips and tweaks for this model. There are already some great reviews out there on this model, some of which have pointed out some omissions and issues, but thankfully these all seem to be related to internal areas, so, at last we may well have a kit which at least has correct external shape.

I would like Cees to jump in here and add a list of his known issues with the model, so if the mods can jump his reply to post #2 I would be grateful.

I already have a couple of issues and omissions up my sleeve, all of which will be simple scratch building additions and simple modelling work arounds, but I'm going to keep these close to my chest until Cees has popped in.

 

 

[yknu]

About the decals W4783. I tried to find a picture from it with the old bomber blister (HK Instructions page 40 and 42) but I could find war time pic only with the later bulged bomber blister from lancaster-archive. Anyone seen a pic with this Lanc and  early blister? Just writing box review to local modelling magazine.

http://www.lancaster-archive.com/ground crew_photos.htm

 

[NigelR32]

56 minutes ago, yknu said:

About the decals W4783. I tried to find a picture from it with the old bomber blister (HK Instructions page 40 and 42) but I could find war time pic only with the later bulged bomber blister from lancaster-archive. Anyone seen a pic with this Lanc and  early blister? Just writing box review to local modelling magazine.

http://www.lancaster-archive.com/ground crew_photos.htm

 

Could you please be a little more specific? I assume you mean the nose blister, but don't know why you refer to pages 40 and 42?

[NigelR32]

On 1/26/2019 at 7:34 PM, Bill_S said:

I've yet to unpack my kit, but this reminds me of something I used to spread the fuselage on my Tamiya Phantom to minimize wing to fuselage gap. I stuck a balloon inside, then inflated it until the part expanded to where I wanted it. The balloon applies even pressure over the entire area. Given that the wing tip is more rigid than the main wing, it should minimize this gap too.

This is a great idea, thank you, but unfortunately it will not cure the fit issues on this kit. It has issues not only with the "bulge" of the wing itself, but also the stepped flanges of the wing and tip do not match up, hence my adding the tape.

[NigelR32]

3 hours ago, npb748r said:

given the way the kit is constructed I plan to paint the kit's component parts before finally attaching the wings, tailplanes, etc.  I'm using the At War series of books and Avro Lancaster Definitive Record (Harry Holmes) as reference and came across a couple of interesting bits that I thought you might find useful which was news to me but you may already know.

At the end of the war it would appear that around 80% of all marks of the Lancaster had H2S fitted which is much higher than I expected. Remember if you build without the H2S fitted I believe you should exclude the instruments in step 5 of the instructions.

According to the At War book early planes where painted in 'lamp black' extra matt paint which did not weather well and became powdery and rubbed off (see picture attached). It was superseded by smoother paint with a slight sheen with the black becoming progressively glossy towards the end of the war with some Canadian built machines receiving a high gloss final coat.     

I would suggest printing this picture off and keeping it in your pocket if you plan to show your model in this scheme. Onlookers will comment, "He's overdone the weathering on that Lanc", pull out the picture and shout "SHUTUP" back at them.

[FME erk]

1 hour ago, NigelR32 said:

Could you please be a little more specific? I assume you mean the nose blister, but don't know why you refer to pages 40 and 42?

You will see the early shallow bomb-aimers blister here  . . .

https://www.ozatwar.com/ghistory.htm

there were two later version of that blister to come . . .  I hope this helps 

David

[yknu]

8 hours ago, NigelR32 said:

Could you please be a little more specific? I assume you mean the nose blister, but don't know why you refer to pages 40 and 42?

yes, the nose blister. And HK Models instructions for decals  (page 40-41) the nose blister is early type and the picture I found it looks like nose blister is late type. 

[Bill_S]

Nige, I took my wings out of the box today to check fir of the tips.

It's small, but there is a parting line present on the hidden mating area of the main wing. An enlargement of your picture shows the effect...

There is no parting line internal to the wing tip. My kit has similar issues - particularly the "step", but I hit that parting line with a sanding stick and it was vastly improved.

[NigelR32]

6 hours ago, Bill_S said:

Nige, I took my wings out of the box today to check fir of the tips.

It's small, but there is a parting line present on the hidden mating area of the main wing. An enlargement of your picture shows the effect...

There is no parting line internal to the wing tip. My kit has similar issues - particularly the "step", but I hit that parting line with a sanding stick and it was vastly improved.

I think there is variation, part to part. I really dont know how this could be, but I can tell you I have a new port wing on the way because my kits wing is paper thin on the upper outer end?? I ca only think the core is shifting during moulding, but having been involved in mould tool design myself, I doubt this very much?

I really dont get why the wings were made in this way??

[NigelR32]

8 hours ago, yknu said:

yes, the nose blister. And HK Models instructions for decals  (page 40-41) the nose blister is early type and the picture I found it looks like nose blister is late type. 

Ah, OK, now I get where you are coming from.

I guess the model should be built to depict the aircraft as the period you wish to depict. S for Sugar had a very long career, and would have undergone many maintanence schedules and upgrades through her life.

I still don't know what the holes in the blister are for, so if I were you I would check to see that the kit contains the necessary parts to make the larger blister viable?