Trumpeter 1/32 ABM Avenger Build Thread

While I did this work yesterday, I'm just getting around to post it. I did some more mountain work and while the epoxy "water" was curing, I did get some ADM work done. 

I began to realize that air brushing the cockpit was problematic based on the various colored pieces that needed to be glued in, and some parts were actually partially hidden by parts that were interior green. So I've been brush painting the green. It takes two coats, but looks decent. I'll do some aging and wearing on it to kill the "newness". Here's a case in point. That radio set buried in the structure that sits behind the pilot. And those oxygen bottles...

The main part of the cockpit has two consoles mounted to the floor and I decorated them with little bits of paint. The right-hand one in real life is all chrome toggle switches and circuit breakers on the side. I briefly entertained the thought of actually inserting pieces of High-E guitar string to simulate those switches and then as quickly disabused myself of that stupid idea since that panel will be partially hidden by the tumble-home of the fuselage sides and basically invisible. It wasn't worth breaking expensive 0.010" carbide drills to do it.

The control sticks will be painted next session.

Here's the opposite side view.

I finished the mountain and all its water features today. I still have to add bushes, trees and whatnot, but it's now a complete feature unto itself and trains can run again.

Should get to some more ABM work tomorrow.

Toshi! Yes it is, and using it, I was able to adjust the colors on the panel to as closely match the picture as possible.

After doing this I was reading ahead in the instructions and looking where the cockpit floor (which supports the entire engine/firewall assembly) joins to the bomb bay ceiling. It's a critical joint that takes places on a thin edge in the front and vertical plate in the rear. It's so critical that it would be hard (for me) to get a good strong joint when all the other stuff is glued in place. After staring at it for a while, I concluded that it could be safely glued in place now to ensure it was a strong joint.

I also came to this conclusion since the engine as I modified it, was interfering with the front edge of the bomb bay floor. That oil line that I put it was right smack in the way. I had to carve a bit away so the line would clear and this added stress to the cockpit floor joint which was another reason to glue it now.

In this picture you can see the front thin joint. That has to fuse properly. The other place the engine is supported is the firewall to fuselage side joint. That's going to provide most of the support.

Next up will be more cockpit componets moving rearward to the radio compartments.

That's an amazing reference!

Toshi

One of the readers of this thread that I'm also posting on two other sites is actually rebuilding his own TBM Avenger... a real one. He's been posting great pictures on the thread including this one of the panel on a restored TBM. It shows some differences in color than I guessed. I'm gong to adjust mine tomorrow.

Most of today was spent getting "water" into the water feature on the layout. But I did get to do just a few things on the TBM. I first glued all the control panel layers together with PSA. I then went back and put a couple of dabs of thin CA since there were some gaps that needed to be tightened up.

I dropped it on the floor and the small red T-handle PE parts disappeared. I don't know if I'll worry about it.

I put together the pilots seat and painted it O.D. although it's probably interior green. I then glued up two of the side panels. Instead of using the PE parts, i made my own using 0.021" brass rod with round balls created with medium CA.

Tomorrow I'll adjust the panel colors and keep going on the cockpit parts.

Glad to keep you guys happy. I'm happy too since I'm building the railroad and the TBM concurrently. What could be better than that.

I poured the liquid resin into the pond area so while this was setting up I got to work on the TBM's instrument panel.

I built a quicky project for the pond: a little fishing pier that will eventually have a fisherman or two. It's all styrene, primed with Tamiya Surface Primer and then a dark brown wash. Two boards were treated like they've been replaced.

The Trumpeter panel for this 1:32 ship is a three-part affair, with a clear outer panel, a film inner layer with instrument faces in clear, and a grey styrene back panel. Both the front and back panels have extra parts on them and they have lots of knobs and switches. 

The outer clear panel (and for the life of me I don't know why it's clear since the instrument faces are just holes, and the rest needs to be painted) has five PE levers/pull knobs attahched. The PE parts are very small so to cut them without losing them, I used an idea I found from Chuck Walas, who's a superior fine scale builder, where you cut the parts with the fret attached to masking take so nothing flies away. I measured their little stems and they were 0.021". I drilled the panel with this size drill and it made fastening them in much more secure than just expecting the CA to hold them there. 

After drilling the holes I looked, but couldn't find the darn panel. It disappeared. I searched the work space three times, swept the floor, check my pockets, etc. NOTHING! I had all the little parts cut and stuck to the masking, but no panel. Then I find it sitting direclty in front of me on the upper bench in front of my Panavise. Hiding in plain sight! See! There it is! I think I should resurface the workbench since all the stains make picking out parts sitting on it much more difficult. That surface is Homasote, which is excellent for pinning plans and parts down to hold for assembling.

I then painted this clear panel with the Tamiya Primer so it had some good tooth for the color coat. You can see the little levers on the lower left.

After airbrushing flat black on both panels I found my favorite fine-pont brush and was able to pick out all the knobs and things. I used red, white, silver and back painted flat black when necessary.

Some folks pick out the instrument rims with dry-brushed silver. I'm not going to do that since all of those aircraft instruments have black rims. I may pick them out with gloss black if I need some highlights.

The insert instrument face film is photographically produced (it seems to be Kodalith or equivalent) which has jet black background, but is clear where the instrument graphics lie. They need to be white. So I painted the back with some Vallejo white in two coats

I put the front and isert togehter to see how they'll look together. The registration is not perfect yet, but it's just sitting.

I like the way it looks. None of this painting was called out in the instuctions. If the back panel was painted black, the instruments would have been obscured. I'm going to glue this 3-part sandwich together with MicroMark's Pressure Sensitive Adhesive (PSA) since the film will not respond to plastic cement and the PSA is very easy to control. The instrument don't need gloss faces since the film is glossy on that side.

More work will come tomorrow.

Two parts, five folds, and nowhere to go!  LOL!  It's looking good my friend! I just picked up it's cousin, an Academy 1/72 TBF Avenger.  I haven't opened it up yet but I hear it's good.

Toshi

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

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.

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

Toshi

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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. 

WOW! Love that detail!

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Toshi

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.

 

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.