Trumpeter 1/32 ABM Avenger Build Thread

Nice!

I love me some "Turkey"!

My Grampa was a Radio Op. on these during the war (Catalina's as well). Someday, I'll get this kit, at the right price!

This is a really fun kit as I built this last year.  It's really detailed well!

Toshi

Now onto today's work. I hand painted burnt iron on the lower cylinder portions. I then used one of my newly acquired super-small carbide drills. This drill is a #88. That's not found in any micro-drill sets and is so small as to be a needle. And yet somehow they're able to grind flutes into it AND it's solid carbide. After measuring the Eduard PE spark plug wires at 0.008" so I used this 0.009" drill to open up spark plug holes so the PE would have a place to land. The front cylinder bank had a boss that made finding the plug opening easy, but the rear bank didn't have anything since Trumpeter didn't expect people to put spark plug wires... just what were they thinking. An engine this big must have wiring.

While doing this I was painting and plastering tunnel portal wing walls on the mountain project. I got them into position nicely. Then on the ABM, I prepared and painted the crankcase piece with the pushrod tubes. Unlike the Eduard B-17 motors, these are all on one part and that greatly simplifies assembly. Of course I did break one off when attempting to deburr the part. It was a clean break. I drilled the nub with a 0.028" drill just enough to let the broken part have something to hold to and CA'd it back in place. I painted the casing flat aluminum, the tubes semi-gloss black, the upper part first flat black and then dry-brush silver to simulate the clamps. These pieces are not glued in place yet.

In this picture you can clearly see that the valve covers are black over top of aluminum rocker boxes. These parts are separate and, when glued, support the tops of the pushrods. But they're attached to the sprues by their sides which makes painting them on the sprue a little tough, so I'm going to detatch them, stick them to some masking tape and paint the two colors. That will also keep paint off the gluing surface. I got this pic from a reader of this build thread on another forum. I'm actually posting this on three reaching very different audiences.

The picture shows the yellowish zinc chromate of the structural parts. I also shows the valve cover colors, and it shows the oil cooler and carb intake air trunks. It shows how the panels come off which I'm going to do since I'm going to put a lot of stuff into this part of the plane. Also of interest are the radial rubber snubbers that absorb torque so it doesn't tear up the air frame. There's no provision for these on the model engine, and I'm not sure I'm going to attempt them.

Builder, those are called Lord mounts, the name comes from the manufacturer, who is still a major supplier for all types of aircraft engine mounting systems.  Their purpose is vibration isolation, though of course torque loads do pass through them to the engine mount structure.

Nice work on the TBM, it's going to be a beauty.  Did Trumpeter get the spacing between the cylinder banks rright on the R-2600?  It's too wide on there R-2800's, bums me out.

Thanks! I have no idea if the cylinder spacing is correct. 

My plastering on the mountain needs at least another day of drying so I did more ABM work (after getting back from the LHS and buying Dark Sea Blue). I went further into the engine. It's a nice model to work in 1/32.

After gluing on the pushrod tube components on the front and rear banks, I needed to paint the valve box/valve cover parts. I could have painted the flat aluminum while the parts were glued to the engine, but felt that it would have been more difficult so I stuck them all to some masking tape. I only wanted to paint the bottom aluminum-colored part because I could paint the black valve cover part.

I could have airbrushed them, but was afraid that the blast would blow them all over the place so I brush painted them.

After fitting and gluing them in place on the engine, I brush-painted the covers semi-gloss black.

This really jazzed up the engine's look. Next up was the intake manifold which was also painted flat aluminum, and then it was time for the first engine PE. Eduard includes two different kinds of sheet metal baffles that sit atop the front and rear cylinder heads.

This part gets folded in a "Z" fold and then is CA'd to the rear heads. I scrap the primer (Tamiya primer) to expose bare metal so I'm not gluing to paint. Luckily, Eduard includes extra parts because I ended up folding two of them backwards and when you try to fold Eduard brass twice they usually break. Here are the first two in place. After taking the picture, I glued on all 7. BTW: I use the Small Shop's Plexiglass PE holding fixture so you can cut the parts in such a way that they don't disappear into the quantum rift.

Tomorrow I will install the front pieces and paint them semi-gloss black before adding the plug wiring.

Builder 2010

Did you post any pictures? For some reason my yesterday post didn't show up. 

 

First thing I did today was install the front motor mount ring into the baffle plate (don't know what else to call it since it's not really the fire wall since that's behind the engine mounts, especially since the carburetor is on the rear side of this piece. I think it just acts as a guide to steer air flow through the cowl flaps.) I painted both interior green. I masked the outside since I didn't want to have to paint the blue over another color if I didn't have to. The accessory case was airbrushed semi-gloss black.

 

 

I noticed 2 large conduits coming into the ignition ring from the rear of the engine. They are the ignition feeds from the two magnetos on the accessory case. I wanted to add this wire in the front and also at the magnetos.

 

Here's a picture that was available on the web which shows all the activity at the accessory case.

 

 

The mag wire is the large white one that's heading directly left into the engine. The wire comes into the mag's side with a 90° fitting. There's a lead on each side feeding that side of the ignition ring.

 

To make the connection, I flattened the end of a piece of 1/32 brass rod, punched and drilled it 0.032" and then soldered another piece of the same rod into the hole. After some bending and fussing I fit the wires and put them through holes in the baffle.

 

 

After gluing the accessory drive I CA's the mag leads and painted them chrome silver.

 

 

There's a ton of other wires and pipes running around the engine's rear. I don't know how much of this I'm going to model, but if I do, I'm going to open up and access panel so it's visible.

 

I then started building the engines themselves with painting the blocks and heads flat aluminum. I'm looking forward to building this engine. I find engines some of the most enjoyable aspects of modeling.

 

 

Tomorrow I'll keep going on the engines.

 

Like your last build of which was the B-17, this is another one of your most detailed techniques you utilize!

Toshi

Toshi, just read you WIP thread. You very nicely built TBF. This build will be the TBM. There are some minor differences. It will be fun to compare our builds. Since I'm using some more PE, that will also add to some differences. Question: I noticed you used some different colors on the accessory drive items. Where did you get the guidance for that? I've left mine all black since pictures I've seen lean in that directions.

I had just started modeling.  Most of my information I used in the beginning was from the directions and pictures from the box.  Also I was limited in colors so I mixed what I could with my very minimal skills in my early building situation.

Back then, my TBI was much worse and at times I would have really bad episodes of where I had no idea what I was doing.  I would get up the next day and find things assembled not knowing how or why it was done!  LOL!  However I still get these episodes, just not as frequently.  It feels like someone else came into my den and built something while I slept.  Leprechaun's?  LOL!  In Hawaii we call them Menehune MAY-NAY-WHO-NAY.

I'm most honored that you would be using my very bad WIP of my TBF Avenger.  Thank you very much sir!

Toshi

Let's get rid of the "sir" stuff. My real name is Myles.

I too would be in the woods if it wasn't for the excellent stuff that I and many of my post followers find. The Internet is a wonderful thing. I'm posting this same thread on three forums with distinctly different audiences. The other two are The World Affairs Board which kind of defies description. It's populated by military and military enthusiasts and covers a vast range of topics, but they have a modeler's corner and the inputs are terrific. The other is WW2 aircraft. It's a U.K. based forum that has a very international following. Again, different folks with different ideas which I am happy to apply. I get as much from the readers as I spend in putting it all in words. Since I'm using the same thread, I start it here with FSM and cut and paste it to the others. WW2 uses the same kind of picture engine as this one, so all my downloaded pics transfer directly. WAB uses a completely different engine and limits 5 pics per post so it takes a little more labor.

Plaster was still not dry on the mountain so I spent the day building an R-2600 and moving into other engine bay stuff.

I finished putting all the "sheet metal" PE baffles onto the cylinder heads. I then wrapped that thin piece of PE around the engine tying it to each baffle with thin CA and a sharp toothpick and then painting it all semi-gloss black. 

I hold the engine in a Panavise with soft jaws to keep it steady while working on all this cylinder stuff. I painted the induction pipes semi-gloss black while on the sprue since it would have been very difficult to fully paint them when installed. That being said, I did have to touch up the sprue attachment point after they were all installed. I also touched up the flat aluminum at the intake flange at the head for the rear bank.

While I was waiting for the black to dry I started working on the firewall PE. The first thing to do was shave off the molded oil tank brackets which get replaced with the folded PE brackets. I used a large hold-n-fold from the Small Shop to do most of my PE bending. I got this one from them as payment for allowing them to use my Missouri in their advertising. It's a wonderfully designed tool that makes the almost impossible very possible.

These were CA'd to the firewall and then the glued up tank CA's to the bracket. You have to remove the attachment pins on the tank so it woudl nest properly. Eduard included some new straps that would attach the tank to the brackets. These were an example of "even though you can DO a thing, you probably shouldn't". The parts were damaged on the fret and the little tangs that were supposed to attach the straps were so frail that several had already separated before I even attempted to remove the part from the fret. 

The strap you see on the right center of the pic shows the tiny metal connection between the tangs and the straps. The other one was toast. So I had to make new straps using left-over fret material. It lacks those tiny eyes but who cares. i certainly don't.

There were several other PE details on the firewall: another brackety kind of thing, an instrument box of some sort and a wiring harness. All of this will be airbrushed interior greena and then the details picked out by hand. Again... I always scrap off the primer to reveal bare metal before CA'ing. Otherwise, the PE WILL FALL OFF when the paint lets go from the metal.

On Monday, the plaster will be dry on the mountain and I will be painting that. After landscaping there will be more drying time and I'll be back on the ABM. The next step will be to install the ignition system.

Wow! your "not too happy" is exceptional in my book.  With PE I usually end up gluing that to my fingers more than anything. 

That's too bad about the PE. 

Exceptional work so far. Very impressive detailing!

i suppose it's a little too late to suggest using stretched sprue?

it worked well for my Hellcat engine.

Yesterday's plaster was not dry enough paint so the whole work session went to the ABM. Finished the engine by repairing the errant ignition wires. Two sets were replaced with the additional Eduard parts, but I had to make two more sets from scratch using conductors scavanged from some hook up wire. Actually, I wish I would have done this for all the leads. 

First step was to clip off the little plastic nubs on the ignitiion harness ring, file a little flat spot, make a *** mark with the pointy end of a divider and then drill with a #80 drill. I did break a couple of the new skinny carbide drills. The wires were CA'd into the holes and then clipped to a similar length of the Eduard PE ones. After getting all the wires in I repainted them black and repainted the copper-colored ring to Tamiya gold since you see engines with brass rings. The arrow points out the copper conductor used for the new wires

The engine needed the propellor governor and the oil sump pressure module. The instructions call for these two parts added much later in the assembly, but I wanted to make sure that they were installed correctly AND painted.

There's a little tiny pulley that attaches to the governor, and of course, it pop out of existence in this dimension from the tweezers. So I machined another one on the Taig Lathe. This was CA'd into place.

After installation I painted these two parts. I also added some rusty brown weathering powders to the exhaust collector to ton down the brown. With that, the radial was complete. In this picture, the engine was not glued to the baffle plate. I also added an alcohol/India Ink wash on the cylindes to kill some of the shine.

Before mounting the firewall, the engine needed to be glued to the baffle (and the motor mount on the other side). I painted the baffle's face Vallejo Dark Sea Blue. Before doing so, I masked the center circle where the engine will glue. Trial fittings showed interference between the exhaust outlets and the relief notches in the baffle. I used the Dremel with a small mill to remove enough material so the engine sat flat against the baffle. I used solvent cement first and clamp it together. After it set I reinforced this critical joint with thin CA.

The engine mounts:

Instructions were ambiguous as to whether they should be glued to the firewall first and then the motor mount or vice versa. I chose incorrectly. I glued all four to the firewall and attempted, unsuccessfully, to glue all eight contact points into the motor mount. There was tension of them, and I get seven pins in and #8 would pop out. I'd get #8 in and 3 and 5 would pop out and so on. As usually happens when things start going south, applying more pressure did not help and eventually two thing happened; pins broke off in the motor mount and parts were coming off the firewall.

After gluing everything back together, I airbrushed the firewall interior green. 

Time for some drastic action! I realized that the mount struts should be glue firmly into the engine mount first and then the firewall. To do this I added some 0.032" brass wire and drilled the broken off stubs to receive the brass. I CA'd all four struts into the mount and when set, I solvent cemented and CA'd the firewall to the struts. This time, everything was square and intact. I had to touch up paint several areas, but it's ready for some additional Eduard details. Notice too that I added, the oil drain pipe that will get  some more details before disappearing into the depths.

Here's the assembled engine and mounts.

Hopefully, tomorrow the plaster on the mountain will be able to be painted. If not, I'll be doing more ABM work.

WOW! Love that detail!

Nice work, Myles.  I'm with Lawdog on the wires.  PE doesn't work well for that.

I'm curious as to why you are calling this an ABM.  I had always been under the impression that Avengers were either TBF's if built by Grumman, or TBM's if built by Eastern Aircraft. 

Thanks.

That's because I probably don't what I'm talking about. It is most certainly a TBM. 

I just finished reading an entire thread from 2007 where a master builder took two years to do a SUPER DETAILED Accurate Minatures Helldiver kit. After seeing what Chuch does, I am very, very humbled. There is always someone out there that does something better than you, and it's how you up your game. I learned stuff from his thread.

If you're interested, look here.

http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/...ldiver/&page=1

Good tutorial. The only thing the PE "wires" do is give the proper spacing, but otherwise they're really awful.

Oh... an here's that mountain to which I keep referring. This took almost five months to construct out of cardboard and three different kinds of plaster. It will require a jack hammer to remove.

Nice mountain!..I'd love to see more of that train display. Indeed Chukw is in a class all of his own.

Didn't do much TBM work. The grandkids were here (with their parents) and we ran trains and had lots of fun. I got everything running well before they arrived. My older granddaughter Anna (11) is a tech savvy, budding photograher and she took 300 pictures and some videos. Here're two examples.

The reason why I'm posting is I was introduced to a company Albion Alloys from the U.K. They make precision metal shapes like K-S and Special Shapes, only much, much finer. I was introduced by a thread where a fellow was building a 1/32 Helldiver. He was able to hydraulic and brake line fittings that were terrific. It is the perfect material to use on engine ignition rings to hold the spark plug wires.

I bought two packs of the telescoping sampler from Sprue Brothers which has Albion's whole line in stock. These are 0.4, 6, 8 and 1mm. The small one's so small you can barely discern the hole. They have a much thinner wall thickness than K-S which is my big complaint about K-S small diameter tubes. These are spectacular.

Price wasn't out of sight a $6.00 a pack. It's an object that I didn't know existed unless you went into the world of stainless capiliary tubes. It also saves not having to use hypo needles for this purpose.

That train set is nothing short of amazing.  May I ask a question?  Do you purchase most of your needed supplies from sprue brothers?  Thank you in advance.

Toshi

Actually, I just started buying from Sprue Brothers because they had the ABM painting masks in stock and also these cool Albion Alloys products. I try to buy as much as I can from my local hobby shop, Scale Reproductions, Inc. in Louisville. They have the most complete plastic model department of any shop I've seen in years. They'll also special order anything I need and I don't have to pay shipping, but sometimes it's faster to get it from the web.

The train layout has been in construction in this location for over 4 years and a couple more to go. It really keeps me busy in retirement. And the kids like it too.

Just got a few minutes to do one little thing; put the first Eduard PE "wiring" into the engine mount area behind the engine. I've been working full-tilt on finishing up plastering on the train layout and haven't done much ABM building. I have another intense week of railroad work and then they'll be a break for more TBM work.

As usual, Eduard wiring is tricky since it's not round, but flat and behaves as such. I also cut the next piece off the fret and was attempting to install it on the other side, but it was time to quit, I was hungry and my hands were even more unsteady then normal so I put the part aside and went upstairs. In my mature status, I hope I've learned that when you try and do that "just one more thing" is usually when all hell breaks loose.

That box and wires should be painted some color or another. There's also a little folded PE box glued to the firewall on the left.

Nice work on the PE wiring.  You're definately right about the "One more thing" rule!  LOL!

Toshi

Back again for a bit of work. Meanwhile the mountain project is moving apace and will be finished sometime next week. I do have other railroad projects comiing up that could be topics for FSM too.

I tried to use the Eduard wiring harness for the port side, but as usual, the wires broke off when handling them so I went back to using small gauge copper strands with some wine-bottle foil strapping. It's not as elegant, but it works. After installation I painted them zinc chromate yellow based on some images that I saw.

After installing this I needed to find a way to terminate the oil line from the oil tank. I cobbled together something with a piece of styrene tube, styrene rod and a piece of hi-tech toothpick. The line was a piece of shrink tubing with a big i.d. so I need something that would spill the space without a lot of hassle, ergo the toothpick.

Here's what that pipe looks like with the painting on the starboard side.

And the port side painted.

The bomb bay floor had a large amount of deep ejection pin marks. I usually don't bother with fixing these, but I wanted to try usng my new Tamiya putty. It worked, sort of, since I probably have to use a second coat to make them dead flat, but I probaly won't. In reality, and let's get real here people, the only way to see those pin marks would be to pick up the model, turn it upside down and stare at the bomb bay, ignoring all the other parts on top of it, and focus on the bomb bay roof to see those divots. A) most people don't do that, and B) I wouldn't want anyone picking up the model for any reason, let alone to find ejection pin marks. I think this is an example of AMS (Advanced Modeler's Syndrome). While there's still more stuff that could be crammed into this firewall area, I'm going to cut it off at this point. The other details would be a nest of fuel lines and manifolds, but the big baffle plate makes access very difficult. On the TBF version, that area is all open, but not the TBM.

The last thing I did yesterday was add some sort of PE detail to the front of the floor. I don't know what this detail is, but it was two parts and five folds.

As an update, here's the current status of the mountain.

Another view showing the waterfall outlet at the fascia board. Next week I will pour liquid epoxy bar-top coating down the falls and it will (hopefull) look like a real spring-fed stream coming out of the mountain. The "waterfalls" are made from clear silicone caulk.

This is really fun - an airplane and a model RR build all in one. I'm following with interest. Fantastic detail work on both!

Mike