Had a challenging week at work, so I told my wife when I got home this evening that I needed a little time at the bench tonight. Kinda a stress relief. I jumped right into my build for this GB, an old AMT/ERTL B-35 Flying Wing.
The kit was a gift my mother-in-law picked up at a garage sale a few weeks ago for a buck. Knowing that Italeri has recently re-released this kit with a large price tag, I was overjoyed to get this bird at such a steal. Except when I opened it up I noticed right off that it was missing the clear parts sprue, decals and instructions. The lack of clear parts was initially a bit of a concern, but I was not bothered by the other missing stuff. I can make my own decals, or paint them, and how hard can this thing be to build? It's just a big wing! And I'm building it wheels up, so even better.
But when I really got to looking at what was in the box, I felt like there might be even more missing than I initially thought. I went to the Italeri web site and found a page with their version of this kit, and it showed the entire set of sprues necessary to building a B-35. And I discovered that in addtion to what I already knew was missing, I was also missing a couple of other sprues that included the engine nacelles and all of the interior cockpit parts. Cockpit details I can live without (it will be hanging from the ceiling, so a missing interior will not be noticeable). But the engine nacelles? Yack.
I contacted Italeri to see if I could purchase the parts from them, but when they finally e-mailed back to me, they indicated that they did not sell parts but that if I sent them the UPC and the exact parts numbers, they could probably get them to me. Sounded good until I remembered that this is the AMT/ERTL kit, so the UPC is likely different. Ah, I decided to not pursue that and instead attempt to scratch build the nacelles. But also missing are the ailerons, but I figure those will be simple.
For the nacelles I have procured some cheap plastic - some packaging material from something we got for my daughter, crayons perhaps, and some flimsy For Sale signs I picked up yesterday at Home Depot.
So I put the entire air frame together - remember, it's a wing - and started working with these tubes.
I cut the tubes down to a specific length and affixed them first with scotch tape to the wing mounts, then used some Tamiya liquid glue to permanently set them.
What I have to do next is determine how to cut the pieces that will form the vertical surfaces of the nacelles, and mate those parts to these cylinders. I doubt that the finished product will look exactly right, but it's my first attempt at so ambitious a scratch-building project.
Finally I measured the plastic necessary for the ailerons and cut the parts from the For Sale sign. In the photo I have glued a narrow piece of sprue to one end to act as a separator for the two pieces of For Sale signs that will form the ailerons.
I doubt that I will make much more progress this weekend, but we'll see what tomorrow holds.