Revell's 1/48 Bf109 F2/4

Nice start John!  I recently added this kit to the stash, so I'll be watching your build!

Steve

Hey John, That's an excellent start your off to there. Very nice work on painting and detailing both the engine and cockpit.

On to the completion of the engine and getting the cockpit installed in the fuselage.  The piece that covers the canon mechanisms slides into the firewall and then some other pieces get attached and the instrument upper panel is glued onto it.  I wanted to make sure that the firewall is as flush as possible to the fuselage side sections.

This made the instrument panel be too far aft in the cockpit, so I added a strip of styrene card to flush it up.

The firewall "holes" at the top are where the engine mount pins are attached, but the holes were too small for the pins.  I used a .07mm bit and drilled out the holes to make them a little bigger.  The whole engine is supported basically by the two upper engine mounts and the tab on the front of the cannon "guts" section previously glued to the firewall that goes into a slot at the bottom of the engine.  There are also two support rods that are supposed to anchor the bottom of the engine to the firewall, but these are very delicate.  The whole assembly can be easily twisted as it is not very strong, so I decided to complete the remainder of the fuselage aft of the firewall and then put in the engine as I don't think is will be strong enough to handle all the filling and sanding needed.

Next up will be getting the cockpit seat and floor sections in and then glueing up the fuselage halves.

John

Very Very nice John.  I hope to do as well with the inspiration contained in your pics.  Thank you for posting.

Looking great!  I just bought this kit a couple of months ago, so I'll be keeping a close eye on this.

I built this kit a couple of years ago; yours looks much better!  The trickiest areas I found were mounting the engine straight and the angle of the underwing cooler vents.  If I were to redo the kit I would do a better job.

OK, on to completing the cockpit floor to the fuselage.  You insert the tab on the front of the floor at the base into the slot at the bottom of the firewall.  The tab was way to thick to fit and had to be sanded down in order to slide neatly into the firewall.  There is plenty of room at the opening along the bottom of the fuselage, so no need to worry about the fuselage halves being joined together first if you wish.  I used Scotch Blue and wrapped them together just in case I needed some extra room.

<iOnce the floor tab is inserted and glued into the firewall, you are hit with a bit of a problem.  The top of the seat wants to be a decent distance behind the front of the opening.  Now I should say that this may be due to my skills (or lack thereof).  Since I did not have the fuselage sides glued together this could have been part of the problem also.  I decided that if the fuselage sides were glued and the seat would still not fit properly at the top I would be stuck so to speak.  So I left the fuselage sides unglued and use some good old fashioned finger force to push the seat forward so that the top (or at least where I had glued the seatbelts to the top of the seat were forward of the back edge of the cockpit.

I have been using Robert Grinsell's book on the 109 as reference and could not really get a good idea of exactly where the seat is supposed to rest along the back of the cockpit.  I am OK with the small gap as I can fill and sand out  the gap later.  It is worth noting that I did check the rear canopy section and it fits very nicely in place.  The gap in the picture is actually larger than it ends up after gluing the fuselage halves together.

You can see from the top down shot that the seat looks about right.  The seatbelt buckles are glued to the edges on each side of the gap, so I am not sure what I can do?  With the canopy on and unless you are getting within about 4 inches of the thing you won't really notice it.  this is one of the things with most of the 109 kits I have built that seem to be a recurring issue.  Probably just me though.

I then proceeded to glue the fuselage together.  I use the mini clothes pins that you can get in a pack of fifty for $2 at WalMart and they are great for a lot of things like this.  I got too much thin cement along the front line of the tail section and it melted the plastic.

It is worth noting that the plastic in some areas of this kit is so thin that you are almost helpless if you need to do anything with it.  See the photo below for how the light shines right through after the two halves are glues together.

It is also worth bringing up at this point three things about this kit that are "different" (at least from what I am used to and I am no pro at this)

1.  There are NO locater pins anywhere on the parts.  this can help if you need to really ensure two sides are perfectly aligned, but it is also tricky as the slightest nudge and things can slip kind of like a fault line in the ground.

2.  There is flash on almost EVERY piece of this kit.  I finally took all the parts off the trees and trimmed and sanded each of them before I did most any assembly.  This is an ICM kit and I don't know maybe the molds are old?  Having build some Eduard and a Tamiya kit or two, this was much different than what I was used to.  But hey, it is about a $20 kit also.

3.  In reference to number 2, there are NO part numbers on the trees, so make sure that you refer to the tree drawings at the front of the instructions.  I used a #2 pencil and made small numbers on some of the parts that were not obvious.

Once I had the fuselage glued together, I noticed that the top line was really nice, and the bottom line was a bit off.  Again without any pins, it didn't take much to move things.  I also see this raised portion along each side of the center line.  I can't find a reference photo anywhere that shows that..

I then glued the wing tops to the bottom main wing section.  I did some dry fitting, and realized that the bottom of the firewall was hitting the bottom of the lower wing section and that would keep me from getting a good fit with the wing when trying to join to the fuselage.  I sanded and scraped out along the bottom wing section and sanded some at the bottom of the firewall until the dry fit looked good.

Lastly for now, make sure that the trailing edge part of the wing at the fuselage side is glued to the bottom part of the wing on each side.  It doesn't look like much, but if you don't glue it, I was seeing a tough fit with the dihedral on the wing.   Here is the port side before I glued it down and you can see the small gap.

That is all for now.  Next will be getting the wing section glued to the fuselage.

John

I have buttoned up the fuselage and added all the other main pieces to it.  I noticed that the inboard flaps did not really look very good when the pieces were put together.  There was a small opening.  Since I am going to have the cowl open, I decided to have the inboard and outboard flaps be extended.  I cut the flap portion from the section that slides into the housing under the wing.

I then slid the non-flap piece into the opening and glued it in place from behind.  I then glued to top inboard flaps and then after they setup, glued the bottom inboard flap sections.  I made sure to have the same gap between the top and bottom sections on both sides.  I then added the outboard flaps on both sides in an extended position.  I added the wingtips, leading edge slats, elevators, and lastly the rudder which I offset slightly.

The "wave" in the tail is a bit of an illusion since I have it positioned to the left.  Ready now to complete the sanding and filling of any gaps.  

John,

Nice!  Great WIP thread.  You're doing a great job of detailing the steps you're taking.  Will follow this one along.

Gary

Gary;

Thanks.  I am now approaching the stage where I can get sloppy.  I am so close to start painting that I can skip over small details and then it comes back to haunt me.

John

Nice work thus far, I was curious what this kit would be like, as a 109 fan.  Not sure it looks on par w/Zvezda version but a lot less fiddly bits I'd guess, keep posting!

I have been experimenting with Perfect Plastic Putty, and I have to say I really like this stuff.  Initially, I was using it straight out of the tube with just a little distilled water and it was kind of flaky and not wanting to stick to anything but my toothpick or spatula tool.  I decided to thin it down as I was remembering my work with Mr. Surfacer 500.  So I put a small amount of the putty into a paint pallet and then added some distilled water.  About a 50/50 mix.  This in hindsight was a little too much water.  I did my best to mix it up.  I waited about 5 minutes and came back and the putty had started to dissolve a little bit into the water.  I was getting a consistency of about pudding.  I found that I could then take a fine brush and very precisely apply the "pudding" to where I wanted it to go.  I allowed for the water evaporation, so there would be some shrinkage.  I waited only about 5 minutes (the sheen of the mix goes away) and then I used a medium to light grade sandpaper with VERY LITTLE pressure to smooth it out.  I finished with a super fine grit and it made the surface shine like a good gloss paint.  Here is a before and after:

This stuff has no odor and you can literally start sanding in minutes.  It flakes off into a fine dust and reminds me of chalk.  For those of us old enough to remember chalk and blackboards in school, it reminds me of that kind of a chalky dust.

I got too much on initially, but here is the back side of the canopy after some careful sanding.  first the before, and then the after photo.

I need to re-scribe some lines and I am sensing care will be needed as the surface is not a hard impervious one.  All in all, I am liking this better than Mr. Surfacer as I can change the consistency of the mixture and there is no odor and clean up is a breeze even after 30 minutes when the brush is hard as a rock running it under warm water and a little soap and it comes right back.

I am going to let it dry for several hours before doing any scribing.  Now onto the landing gear.

I felt like I was doing a micro-surgical rotation while doing these.  Very frustrating and I did just a little at a time and took a lot of breaks.  The struts were based painted with RLM02.  First I used a silver paint pen to add the silver to the oleo strut area.  I then used 34 gauge wire and super glued it to the strut.  I then cut 1mm strips of Tamiya tape and wrapped it around the strut.  I used some photos and tried to get close to what it might have really been.  I will paint the tape and the wire RLM02 and then when the weathering starts, it should all blend together.

I now have to figure out how I am going to get the engine compartment all put together and those seems taken care of as I am going to have the cowl open.  that will be next.

John

I did the machine guns.  They should be able to be placed on top of the engine and slid back on top of the firewall.  At least that is the plan.

John

Next up is the re-scribing.  It went pretty well until I did the seam line down the underside of the fuselage.  I put a piece of tape down as a guide and it pulled some of the putty off.  I think it was so thin that it won't make a difference after painting anyway.  I am going to try to seal the putty with some Tamiya fine cement first next time.  After scribing (with a very shape new number 11 X-Acto blade), I used the thin cement along the re-scribed lines to smooth it all out.

Ok, next to put together the front section of the engine compartment.  Two side pieces and then attach the oil cooler and some sanding and a little plastic putty and we're off and running.

Well, now things have started to unravel a bit.  The engine is becoming very problematic.  Firstly, the propeller shaft is too large for the hole in the front section I just assembled.  No worries, a trusty drill bit and some slow hand turning enlarges the hole:)  Now to slide the engine in and proceed.  Since no good deed goes unpunished, the wire I added to the top of the engine block is now causing the engine to not have enough clearance to slide all the way in:

So I clipped off the front section of the wire (probably won't be seen anyway), and while I was doing that, the right exhaust section came loose, grhh.  Glued that back on and secured the wire and then went about attaching the engine and the top two mounts to the firewall.  Another long story short, there was a twist and I couldn't get things to line up.  Also the small tabs on the front of the wing section that are to glue to the front part of the engine compartment were not lining up.  In the picture below, I am going to sand the leading edge smooth.

I am going to try gluing the engine into the front section first and then work backwards to the firewall.  A qucik eyeball seems to say that I don't know how the cowlings will fit tight over the engine anyway...  I think that the Eduard 109 had that same issue.  I need to look at this, but that will be for tomorrow as I am frustrated and need to step back.

John

Looks like you are ironing most of the issues out with this build. Looks great so far! A wash with a dark brown/ hint of black would REALLY set that already nice engine off. I'll be watching this cool build.

OK, back to this with a nights rest and ready to tackle this beast.   I glued the engine into the front of the compartment and attached the lower engine mount supports

You can see from the front of the exhaust stacks that I think the fit is good.  It can't go forward any more as the engine itself won't fit.

From the back I again think the fit is correct as the stacks are sitting on the oil cooler housing.

Next I glued the engine and the compartment to the firewall and the bottom of the leading edge of the wing.  The unraveling continues...  The post that goes through the firewall fits into the hole at the back of the engine as we saw from an earlier post.  the upper engine mounts are to go into the small holes at the top of the firewall, and the lower supports are to rest against the "tabs" at the bottom of the firewall.  All well and good except that the post is the center of the teeter-totter and it isn't working for me.  I got the engine mount supports to sit correctly to the bottom of the firewall and tried to glue the engine compartment to the leading edge of the wing as below:

It isn't a great fit, but I can fill it and do some sanding.  BUT... the pins from the top of the engine mount no longer will slid into the holes.  I tried to push them in but as the post is the fulcrum of this thing, that causes the seam between the bottom of the compartment and the leading edge of the wing to separate.   The glue then hardened up so I am kind of stuck but I thought a little paint and weather and those mounts can be made to look like they are attached to the firewall.

I then realized that the machine guns needed to be attached FIRST before attaching the engine to the firewall.  I thought I could add them on, but they are too long and the magazines for the shells won't fit in with everything attached.  I am going to have to glue the machine guns and then somehow add the magazines afterwards.  I then realized that the magazines don't actually attach to anything other than the machine gun, so that will be very tricky.

So I then decided to dry fit the starboard side engine access panel onto the compartment.  I was planning on having the port side raised.  See below where this has more fit issues than a last minute tuxedo rental:(

So now I am very close to calling the dog and seeing if he will play fetch with this styrene monster.  I am going to put it in the box and walk away for a while, but I think this now screams diorama.  I will have to not put the access panels on either side period and just sit them on the ground next to the machine.  I can also put the machine guns on a table of some sort along with the magazines as if they are out for cleaning.  I sense a Saturday trip to the local hobby shop to see about some diorama possibilities.  So much for the less than $20 kit.  I guess you get what you pay for and I certainly made a couple of boo-boos.

So that is all for now.

John

Aww man John, and you were doing so good up until now. I guess we all have to get a "stinker" at some point in our modeling history. You are right in just putting down the model and stepping away. It's amazing how often divorcing one of a bad situation for a short bit can bring clarity and resolution. I am sure you will come up with something to successfully address the situation.

You're giving me flashbacks of building mine.  I've forgotten (or blocked out) all the problems I had!

Argh John, that really stinks!  I know exactly how you feel when in the middle of the "kit from hell" (mine was the Mono B-36) except there was A LOT more styrene.  Good call, walk away for a while and come back when your head is clear......and your memory fades. 

Wow, I'm starting to feel your pain. As I said, I bought the same kit yesterday and I must say I've never had a kit with such terrible fit...

Well, I am back after some time away from this one.  I had a couple of ideas about the diorama (more to come), so with those thoughts in my head it is time to move on.  First to mask the cockpit, the wheel wells, and put on the engine compartment panels to get ready for priming.  As the panels don't fit real well, I have attached them with poster tack (which helped fill the gaps to protect the engine) and that will also make them easy to remove.  I masked over the exhaust stacks as they had already been painted.  Lastly, I was not sure about the upper end of the flaps.  They are extended in my build, but would they have been painted the top color?  I am not sure if the ground crews would paint with extended flaps and slats, or leave the under color?  I decided to have a small strip of RLM02 where the flap would meet the wing.  Masked and ready. 

Primed with a mix of grey and panzer grey Vallejo acrylic primer.  I then put down the white for the wing tips, engine/spinner, and the fuselage band.  I also drilled out the spinner front for the cannon and the fuselage for the through tube.

Now for my diorama.  The Afrika Korps has an area against an old adobe wall where they will be working on this bird.  The base was a piece of heavy cardboard over which I brushed on some Liquitex Medium Matte Gel.  I then took some fine dirt (living in Arizona I was able to find some "desert" dirt:)), and sprinkled it over the gel.  When it dried I then sprayed some scenic cement from Woodland Scenics.  I then filled in the areas needed with more dirt and a final spray of the cement.

For the wall, I took some old styrofoam packing material.  It is the kind where it is made up of the small beads.   The scale looked right, so I cut the two sections and then took a rough file and gouged out all over to simulate the wear.  The foam was white, so to color it I took Apple Barrel acrylics from WalMart ( a whopping $1.00 a bottle), and mixed up some dirt colors.  I added a touch of red to try to simulate the clay that might have been used.  I white glued the wall sections to the base and then smoothed in dirt at the bottom.  when it had all dried, I gave it a final coat of the scenic cement and the airbrushed Model Master sand until I got the final color.  I added a couple of rocks as well.

I then needed some "equipment", so I scratch build a table and a work stand out of balsa wood.  They were painted with Model Master wood, and then had some stain added with Windsor and Newton burnt sienna oils.  The angles aren't perfect, but I figured they needed these and they didn't have time for a mitre box for all the cuts.  What I mean is that it was too small to get it all square:)

Next up will be the yellow section on the 109, and then I can add the main colors.

John

Happy Memorial Day to all.  Time to finish up with the top colors.  I had put down the white which is Model Master Flat White.  Then I added the RLM04 Gelb under the engine.  I used Model Master for this also.  Now the final two main colors being the Blue and the Sand Yellow.  I used Vallejo RLM78 and RLM79 for these.  I have never had an issue putting one acrylic over another.  I usually allow 12 hours to dry between coats of different colors or manufacturers.

My only decision here was how to paint the combination of the two.  I have seen drawings where the blue was primarily only on the bottom of the airframe and the sand yellow was on the top.  I did some searching on the net and found several black and white photos of this one where you can clearly see a line that seems to show that the sides of the fuselage were two colors pretty much right down the middle.  I also show some that seemed to show the rudder being a darker color.  I have seen drawings where it is a dark red.  However these did not have the 100 number symbol at the top.  I couldn't find anything to contradict it, so I painted the whole tail RLM79.

My biggest disappointment with this is that I used too dark a primer.  I really like how the panel lines came out, but the sand yellow seems a bit too dark to me.  I did go back over it after adding some Model Master Flat White to the RLM79 and giving it a dusting, but it still doesn't seem faded enough to me.  All in all,  I am pretty pleased with the paint job. A couple of small touch ups needed around the engine compartment, but the masking seemed to do the trick.  Also a few scratches that I didn't sand out enough, but the weathering will help blend them in.

Setting this aside to dry and then time to clear coat and get ready for the decals. 

John

Hi John,

I have this kit as well, and am sorry to hear that it has been causing so much difficulty.  I was really looking forward to doing up a Marseille 109.  That said,I think you're doing a great job of saving it and I appreciate all of the posts and info you're providing with this build and I have this thread in my favourites to help me along when I start mine.

As for doing up the paint scheme for a Yellow 14, since you have split the Desert Yellow and Blue down the middle and white wingtips, you can do a couple of his different a/c:

Wr No - 10059 - That paint scheme, Rudder is desert yellow (68 kills), white  / yellow spinner,

Wr No - 10137 - That paint scheme, Rudder is desert yellow ("70" in a wreath and 31 kill bars below), white spinner.

WrNo - 8693 had the red tail.

The plane on the box cover is WrNo 8673, and its desert yellow extends down to the bottom of the fuselage.  His 151 kills were on the rudder ("100" in a wreath, 51 bars).

Again, a great job on a (sadly) difficult kit.  I am still anxious to do mine though, as Marseille is one of my favourite subjects.  He was a very interesting young man.

Allen

Allen;

Great info, thanks!  I don't recall seeing a picture where I could count the bars and see the number in the wreath.  I will use the kit decal and call it my "version"..

Using the following photo which I found on-line, and since I am going to be showing the engine cowling iinside, I decided to add some more detail:

I used some .02 and .03 strip styrene to add the "beams", and then added a tape circle painted black and some "dots" for the larger rivets for the air scoop.  Some weathering wash will blend it all together.  Since I had already airbrushed the RLM02 on, I got lazy and decided to just brush over the beams.  Since Vallejo Model Air is really thin and doesn't hand brush well for me, I decided to add some Model Master RLM02 to it.  Model Master is more grey and the Vallejo is more green, but it came out OK I think.

She hasn't cured long enough for my tastes to spray the on the Future which I use for the gloss coat so this is probably all for the day.

John

Looking great so far!

Chanter

Again, a great job on a (sadly) difficult kit.  I am still anxious to do mine though, as Marseille is one of my favourite subjects.  He was a very interesting young man.

Allen

Yes, nice recovery John and the paint looks great.  Marseille (IMO), was the best fighter pilot of WWII.  Remember, a majority of his kills were against better trained pilots (than those on the Eastern front). I'd recommend for everyone to read the book "Star of Africa", great reading.

Nice detaining and progress.  The 109 in that photo must have just been delivered.  Not gonna stay that clean for long.

The clear coat went on and dried for 24 hours, then the decals went on.  They behaved pretty well, but a couple need another hit of solvent.  I got some swastikas from a sheet I have for the tail as the kit doesn't have any, and then answered the phone and figured I could multi-task.  Bad mistake.  I put the wrong swastika on the starboard side tail and it dried before I came back to do the port side.  Ahh.  No pictures of that side as I decided that I didn't want the hassle of getting off, then repairing, then decaling again.   This little bird has been a test of patience:)

Starting to look like a 109.  Another clear coat to seal the decals and then on to some weathering.