Your very welcome and thanks for the kind words all. I decided not to give up on this one and I shall forge ahead. I suppose I should call this one the "Tutorial Dauntless", because here I go again with a bright idea. Today I'm going to take you step-by step through improving the Accurate Miniatures example of the Wright Cyclone powerplant. The other night I sat there staring at the Cyclone dryfitted together and it just looked funny to me. Then I realized the piece that represents the pushrod and ignition harness was the problem. Although it was a valiant effort by AM to recreate this area, it's was just way over scale and the wires looked like snakes on the engine. Unfortunately the wires are molded on top of the rods which complicated things. I decided I just had to hack the "wires and rods" off and replace them with styrene rod and fine wire. Here we go.....
There was a little "nub" and I hacked them just above it (See photo)...
Here we are with them all hacked.
I then added the "ring" to the cylinder piece. The rods I hacked off made this piece sit properly on the cylinder heads, so now we had to build the new push rods. I used .10 styrene rod and sliced it to the proper lengths. Tweezers and Tenax took care of the rest. This takes no tme at all because Tenax is like super glue when attaching bare styrene to bare styrene and it grabs immediately. (Note: To avoid confusion, I keep my Tenax in the Tamiya bottle because I love their applicator).
Here's how it turned out. Much better than the kit version yeah? (I did leave the bottom wire detail because I liked how it looked).
Its now time to start painting, so I primed that turkey with Alclad Grey.
I then sprayed everything Alclad Duraluminum. For some reason thats my initial go-to shade for everything. No particular reason really. As you can see, I left the reduction box housing in grey primer. It will stay that color since these were gray. I'm all about efficiency.
It was time to start the brush painting. I broke out the XF-1 Flat Black and 91% Isoprophyl then painted the push rods black.
Then it was time for the fun part.....adding the ignition wires. All you need is fine wire, superglue and tweezers. I use copper wire ripped from an old stereo cord so I dont have to paint it. Most pictures I've seen show these as being a copper colored...short cut?..laziness?..you decide. Its then a matter of cutting them the right length and manipulating it with your fingers and the tweezers. I keep super glue on a jar lid and dip the wire into it (both ends). Its then attached by one end to the ignition point and the other to the cylinder. It then stars to go pretty quick as you work your way around.
This took about an hour or so. The Cyclone is easy because there is only one row of cylinders to wire up. Here you can see where I painted the bottom wires (that I decided not to hack off) Copper. I then sealed everything with with Testor's gloss to prepare for the wash.
My old standard. The Detailer wash (Black/Brown mix).........wonderful stuff. I just let it work its magic...
Once I remove the excess and I'm happy with the appearance, I gets a Testor's Dull Coat which I cut with Lacquer thinner.
I could stop here, but I don't. I hit the face of the engine with a blast of Tamiya Smoke X-19 to give it that used dirty look. Done......
Next I'll build the landing gears an such. The Eduard canopy masks came the other day so perhaps I'll knock those out as well.
..............and still nothing from MRC. I'm not impressed.....
Joe