Accurate Miniatures SBD 5 - WIP - Another Small Update - 30 March 18

If the rest of this build is as good as the progress so far this will be one of the best builds I have ever seen. Awesome!

Happy Easter Everyone,

Thanks for all the great comments so far.  It really is nice to read them.

Just wanted to post another short update to progress in the cockpit, and out.  Since my last update, I attached the controls and a panel on the port inside wall of the pilot's cockpit and also decided to add instruments to the back of the gunner's small IP in the rear cockpit (to add a little more depth).  Also, right below this small rear IP I installed the antenna reel, after I finally found some small enough copper wire to fill it (40 AWG copper wire from Remington Industries).

On the starboard interior fuselage I installed the ammo container for the twin .30 cal MGs in the rear, the small deck piece that covers the radio section just aft of the pilot's armored bulkhead and the pilot's seat.  Also on the seat, if you look back to my last update for reference, I replaced the HGW cloth shoulder harnesses with ones I made from Tamiya tape and the buckles from the HGW set. The harness was too thick and there is no way I could fit them through the buckles provided with the set. Then I painted them with Tamiya buff, applied a little burnt umber wash and a touch of pastel powder.  I think they turned pretty nice.  The lap harness is from the Eduard PE set.

The fuselage is almost ready to close up but before I can do this I will wire and install LEDs to illuminate the lights in the rear of the fuselage.  Right behind the .30 cal MG gun tunnel are two position lights; one green and the other clear.  And on the very aft end of the plane just below the rudder is another clear position light.  For the two on top I will glue in colored clear pieces; one from a CMK nav lights set and the other one I made from a piece of clear sprue.  But the rear position light will be a piece of .5 mm fiber optic cable coming out of a small cannister that will hold the LED light.  I got this tip from the May 2017 issue of FSM. 

While waiting for glue to set, paint to dry and resources to arrive in the mail, I started working on animating the propellor.  I plan to install a Vector resin engine but first will drill out the center of the engine to fit a pager motor.  The propellor shaft hole already in the prop wasn't true; I couldn't get the prop to spin straight.  So I drilled it out larger and slid in a small piece of brass tube.  It fit in tight and straight enough that I didn't have to glue it in. Then I drilled a small hole into a piece of .6 mm styrene rod to take the pager motor shaft.  This will be the main propellor shaft coming out of the engine.  I tried using a jig to drill this true but couldn't get it straight enough, so I just eyeballed it with a pin vise and my thumb and fingers and amazingly, got it centered and almost perfectly straight.  If I can post a video of the prop spinning, I will.

That's all I got for updates today.  I'm making slow, but steady progress and hope to close up the fuselage soon.  Because the wings are going to require a lot of work, not to mention the cowling and getting the engine and prop in straight. 

I have to agree with Uncle Jay Jay!

your friend, Toshi

Thanks all for the great comments, I truly appreciate them.

This is just a small update as I glued the cockpit floor onto the starboard fuselage half.  Kit instructions say to first glue fuselage halves together and then insert the cockpit floor in from the bottom.  But I have too much extra stuffed attached the fuselage walls for the floor to fit in this way.

I also finished and glued in a few levers and pump handles as well as the landing gear indicator and the fresh air hose under the IP. 

This last photo is the pilot's seat and harnesses and the navigation/plotting table which fits into a slot right below the upper IP.  The lap harness is from the Eduard Big Ed set which inexplicably doesn't include a shoulder harness.  Even though, according to my resources, Dauntlesses were equipped with shoulder harnesses at the start of WWII. So I'm using a piece from an HGW Models harness and buckles with Tamiya masking tape for the lower part of the shoulder harness.  I might just replace that upper HGW harness piece with masking tape too, the HGW piece looks kind of thick next to the masking tape. 

Wow, fantastic job on the cockpit.

You are doing this AM kit proud, as it deserves.

Nice work, thanks for sharing.

Man these AM kits build up nicely!!! Great progress so far on that beautiful interior.

Awesome work on that cockpit!

Looking really great. Excited to watch this come together.

-J

The detail on the IP and the weathering in general is really top notch! Very, very impressive.

The added detail is phenomenal. Really enjoyable watching this one come together. 

Good looking office there, you have  Lawdog's  touch for sure 

Just adding another couple photos of the cockpit floor with IP attached.  I also installed the control sticks assembly, the pilot's relief tube, the pilot's foot rest, hydrauic pump handle (right side of the IP) and the landing gear indicator (just left of the pilots foot rest).

I also decided to build in the instruments on the back of the IP because when loooking from above there will be a small opening in the fuselage covering the IP and one may be able to see the instrument backs and supporting wires/cabling.  I still have to paint them and attach the wires/cabling.

Very impressive work. 

So, it's been a couple weeks since I last posted, maybe a little longer than that. Though I've tried a few times, other events seemed to always get in the way.  

I'm slowly making progress on this build but still don't have the fuselage closed and that probably won't happen any time soon, still too much to do on the inside.

I got the interior fuselage walls, floor and bulkheads painted and weathered as well including most of the little parts; controls, radios, radars, oxygen systems, etc.  And then started onstalling and attaching all of these parts. 

THe first photo just shows the radio rack and the fuselage interior before installing companents.
This second photo is the pilot's port side control panel and assembly and another look at the flare pistol painted and weathered a little.  Next are the scratchbuilt control sticks, front and rear, and the pilot's and gunner's high-altitude oxygen systems.  These are all scratchbuilt too, except for the main container component from the kit parts that you can see in the bottom photo.
The third photo is the gunner's swivel seat with one half of the seat harness glued in.  The harness/seatbelt is an Eduard piece.
The fourth photo is the instrument panel, almost complete.  I still need to finish and and install the slide in/out navigating/plotting board.  The IP is now glued onto the cockpit floor but that photo will come later. 

Here're some shots of starboard interior fuselage walls with radios, controls, oxygen systems and other electronics attached.  Still have a few more pieces to install and that should come pretty soon. The radio rack and most of the electronics are scratchbuilt with exception of either Eduard or Waldron radio faces. 

Finally, I only have a couple photos of the port side fuselage interior and it's still a little bare.  but the controls and panel in one of the earlier photos above will go in the pilot's office up front. 

My progress right now is a little further than these photos show but I gotta take some more photos and post another update, soon.  I'm almost ready to glue the floor onto the starboard fuselage side, but am doing a little additional work to the IP before I attach it.

Thanks for looking, I'm really enjoying this build, especially the detailing. And I welcome any and all comments.  Hope to post the next update a lot sooner.

Thanks much for following this and thanks again for the great comments.  Sorry I haven't updated in the past few days, but I think I have a pretty good excuse. 

I'm TDY (business trip) in Kharkiv, Ukraine this week.  Yesterday we were at the Malysha tank factory in Kharkiv - for the armor fanatics amongst us, you may know this is as the birthplace of the Soviet's T-34.  This is the factory where the T-34 was designed, developed and began production in the 30s-40s.  We are here to examine, measure and fit a Ukrainian T-84 (also produced here, among other impressive armor systems) with our MILES instrumentation system.  If you've ever been to or heard of the NTC, JRTC, CMTC and JMRC, you'll know what this is.  For the lay person, these are the US Army's combat training centers and MILES is the system we use to facilitate and conduct realistic force-on-force training scenarios and events.  But enough about that. 

Here're a couple photos I have on my computer here. First is the Vector resin engine I'll put in this SBD 5, that I'm also planning to motorize (see the FSM issue a few months ago about lighting and animating a P-51).

While waiting for glue to set or paint to dry, or something like that; I assembled the cowling and fitted the top panel assembly that covers the .50 cal MGs in the nose.  I immediately noticed a pretty signifcant mis-fit - the starboard side of the panel assembly does not allign well, at all, where it fits into the cowling.  I couldn't figure out where the problem was, until examining the cowling closely I could see there was a bit of a bulge on the upper starboard side.  Then I opened the Eduard rebox of this same kit to see if it was an isolated issue, but the Eduard kit cowling and panel assembly have the same mis-fit. I think you can see the problem pretty well in thiese photos.

I wasn't sure how to fix it, but since it's seems to be a bulge, the only logical thing was to sand it down until the panel assemply fit it correctly.  So that's what I did.  The only thing I lost was the moleded in druz fastener closest to the panel line on the starboard side.  I think it turned out pretty good, but have to somehow recreate that druz fastener. 

Also on the fuselage exterior, I really didn't like the thickly molded on rear maching gun tunnel access panels - one on each side of the fuselage just aft of the rear cockpit, and I wanted to open them up as I've seen in a lot of photos. So I sanded them off, rescribed panel lines, and and cut the hatch out.  I made new panels and channels from thin tee candle metal.  You can see these right in the middle of the tap in the third photo below.  In the second photo are the open hatches and also you can see where I drilled out the flare gun port and inserted a small metal tube.

And going back to the inside of the fuselage, this photo shows the kit flare round pouches molded into the the rear cockpit port side panel piece and the scratchbuilt flare round pouches I made from thin metal, peces of styrene and tissue soaked in white glue. 

That's about all I got for now.  My progress is a bit further, but I need to make some more photos and upload before I can post, sometime this weekend after I get home from this trip.  

This is a seriously impressive build

Great attention to detail!

Your friend, Toshi

Wow! You've got my attention Kielers. That is some outstanding detailing you have going on. Seriously impressive. I also have this kit and I'm on board for this ride for sure. Top notch work. 

Some lovely detail work there kielers.

Hi Paladin, thanks,

I'm using the standards - Squadron's In Action and Walk Around, and In Detail and Scale. But also a Douglas SBD Dauntelss Yellow Series book by Robert Peczkowski, that's not too bad.  I also have a lot of photos from the internet, but for as popular this warbird is and the success it had in the war, there's not a lot of real detailed photos, especially of the cockpits. 

Thanks for the great comments.  1943Mike, thanks for posting the 'before' photo of the flare gun.  I drilled out the barrel, and added a metal trigger and trigger guard, also some styrene pieces to make it look more real. 

Wow, looks fantastic! What are you using for reference? I'd like to try adding some more detail to some of my kits, but I'm not confident with my references. The internet can have lots of pictures but some of them are not clear, or labeled correctly. 

You've definitely got my attention pal. As far as I'm concerned this was the Cadillac of the sky. Beautiful bird and a killer kit to represent it..........and that's not to mention your skillfull twist on things.

You're doing superlative work.

I have the same kit in my stash and will certainly use this thread as a reference when I get around to building it.

You certainly don't have any problems working on a small scale . When you say you dressed up the flare gun a little .. holy cow! That's amazing!

You started with the kit gun which I'm showing here just to compare with what you did. I'm impressed.

I'll certainly be following along.

Man,you're going all out on this thing and it looks terrific. TY for posting ,it's giving me a lot of ideas to apply

Just a quick update.  Below is the kit radio rack from the rear cockpit.

I cut it all apart, sand the radio panels off and attached Eduard PE radio panels and rebuilt the rack to mount them on.

On the cockpit floor I removed a lot of the molded detail, scratchbuilt and replaced the foot rest channels and the rudder pedal brackets. Also added a lot of wire cables hydraulic lines, etc. 

In the very back of the rear cockpit I built/soldered brass wire foot rests to replace the thick molded kit parts.

Here is the rear cockpit, radio operator/gunner's seat assembly

In the front cockpit I added rails to mount the seat onto.  I also had to put in a lot of spacers to get the two bulkheads to fit on the insides of the fusleage and on the floor and especially around all sides of the rear machinegun tunnel. 

And some of the smaller stuff, here is a antenna wire reel (mounts in the rear cockpit) and the flare pistol that I dressed up a little.

Hope you enjoy!!