1/48 Hasegawa Arado 234 Blitz-After 3 years..Finally Completed

Nice technique in scribe and rivets!

Toshi

Excellent progress Joe. The filling and sanding work you have done has done the trick as far as I can tell. And great rivet/panel line recovery. Looks straight and sharp.

moving along nicely between the NFL and this 82deg.  cold front it's just to hard to get back in to the shop lol 

Thanks alot fellas. Still filling and sanding and drilling out replacement rivets and am contemplating drilling out the rest of the riveting detail as to make all the rivets uniform in appearance. As to what scheme I'll be going with.......I think I'm going for the top one on this sheet. Call me a glutton for punishment .....I just can't help myself. Gotta go for the "cool" and different looking one.

I think I'm at a place now to where I can actually pull that one off........I think.

That is one cool scheme. I know you can do it Joe. I have complete faith in you.

I'm following along with interest in accumulating some modeling techniques. You guys are so talented it's scary. 

I would like to know how you would place that swaztika on the tail - it seems to have all three colors of the camo inside it. I know this is probably a dumb question but hey, at 73 I'm still trying to learn.

Thanks Joe and Mike.

Mike: It doesn't take very long with steady model building but I'm better than when I started anyways. There's alot of things / boo-boo's that I've learned (as most any modeler) to hide behind weathering or additional detail items. That being said, I'm far from being an expert.

For what this is worth I've got the top riveted but I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand I feel good about the overall riveting and on the other I don't get that warm and fuzzy feeling.

Looks pretty darn good to me!

Mike

Looks great from here Joe, you'll get that warm fuzzy feeling once its all painted and your wash brings out that nice detail. How did you like the RB rivet wheels? I really like my set, but it is time consuming to change out wheels, and it ties up another exacto handle, but the price sure beats those expensive Rosie the Riveter sets!

Okay Joe, after our discussion this morning and having a close look at your pics, your rivet work appears quite acceptable and nicely done. I concur with Nathan in that once you have the paint and weathering in place you won't much notice the difference in rivet spacing. Now, as for you, accept that it looks excellent, let it go and move on. It's all good my friend.

Thank you all for the encouragement on this bad boy. It's much appreciated .....especially when I have times at the bench like I've had for the last couple of days. I mean.........I pulled this next stunt off but it was a bit frustrating to me.

I finally opened up the Aires engine set because I'm at that point to where I want to work on the engine mounting for the starboard engine as that's the one I'll be displaying opened up. I was just getting over all the goodies in the kit (these engines look fabulous BTW) when I turned my attention to the instructions of how these beauties mount up to the wing. At first I wanted to put everything back in the box and move on.
You guys know about where I'm at with the build right now so you can imagine how I felt when I saw this in the instructions:



Yeah. That's what I said too.

I did, however , think about it over a cup of coffee and came up with this plan:

I took this:



and cut the locating pins off of the base and sanded the back side down until I was left with the center strip and the offset mounting hole, made all the cuts and holes in the wing like I was supposed to and inserted everything into the openings and holes in the wing from the outside.

The results? Something I think I can live with:



Ok.....made it past that hump! Movin' right along now.................................

Nice recovery Joe. Thats what happens when you build too quickly, and try and add too much dang Resin. There's too many instructions to not follow...at least thats my problem!

Simply outstanding work Joe, I specially drool over the pit pictures. 

That is definitely an oustanding solution to your unexpected issue. I hope it works out as planned. Do we have a new bend in our learning curve now? Seriously, excellent work my friend.

Nathan T

Thats what happens when you build too quickly

Thank you Ernie and Joe. Hopefully I can get underway with the engine nacelle to wing fit now.

Just got myself caught up on this one.

Good work as usual, Joe.

Going back a little ways, I surely don't see anything wrong with your re-scribe/re-rivet job. To say the least.

mustang1989

Thank you all for the encouragement on this bad boy. It's much appreciated .....especially when I have times at the bench like I've had for the last couple of days. I mean.........I pulled this next stunt off but it was a bit frustrating to me.

I finally opened up the Aires engine set because I'm at that point to where I want to work on the engine mounting for the starboard engine as that's the one I'll be displaying opened up. I was just getting over all the goodies in the kit (these engines look fabulous BTW) when I turned my attention to the instructions of how these beauties mount up to the wing. At first I wanted to put everything back in the box and move on.
You guys know about where I'm at with the build right now so you can imagine how I felt when I saw this in the instructions:



Yeah. That's what I said too.

I did, however , think about it over a cup of coffee and came up with this plan:

I took this:



and cut the locating pins off of the base and sanded the back side down until I was left with the center strip and the offset mounting hole, made all the cuts and holes in the wing like I was supposed to and inserted everything into the openings and holes in the wing from the outside.

The results? Something I think I can live with:



Ok.....made it past that hump! Movin' right along now.................................

 

Thanks Greg and Johnny! I'll see about those rivets when the primer coat goes on.....till then..............fingers crossed.

'Preciate that Bob!

Lot's of cutting and sanding going on as of late. I've got the port side engine pod minus all the panels about ready though. I still have some sanding and filling to do at the front and rear but I feel fairly good about the progress so far.......it's just taking forever to get anywhere past all the cutting. lol

Cut and sectioned out:



I cut the center strip out of the left over engine pod root and got the halves glued together this morning:



I didn't foresee being able to paint the engine air intake area on the starboard closed up engine uniformly so I cut the starter assy out of the center of the air intake to paint it and will reinstall it after painting.



That's about it for now but I still have one more day this week to make some progress on this bad boy.

Agreed, nicely done on the save. I think I would have had a melt down like a 4 yr old in the toy store who was just told no. Well done.

BK

All the cutting you have done looks nice and clean Joe. Excellent work. I like your approach for painting the engine intake. As you well know, the time investment into that tedious work is going to pay great dividends. For all of us.

What? Your not decalling yet?

All of the sanding, filling, and cutting is really awesome.  I love the amount of detail you're adding onto this build!

Toshi

Thanks fellas!

Brandon: Thanks and who days I didn't? lol

Nathan: Oh hell no you didn't just say that!! lol

Everybody: Ok gang....It's Monday which means we're back on the Arado once again. I got the engine nacelle installed on the starboard side and did ALOT of test fitting and trimming for the displayed port side engine.

Here's where we are today.

This morning saw more sanding and filling of the engine nacelles to wing joins and so far it's looking acceptable to me. I've started cutting the casting blocks from the 004 engine, cleaned the parts up a little bit and started test fitting. All I've gotta say is that these engines are works of art right out of the box. LOTS of detail:

The three main parts:



and all together:

Good to get an update from from you Bro. Looks like solid progress is being made. That resin engine is indeed very impressive. That is going to be a real beauty after you get your skillful hands on it. I really am excited to see the finished product. Appears from the pics that there may be some tricky clean up on the mold lines there. But, i know that you've got this. You are doing awesome.