Those ships do look good!
Meantime, back to the Puma...
I used the etched set’s turned brass smoke projectors and smoke grenades, because they seemed either thinner or better-detailed than the kit items. I used the kit mounts, however, because the etched items seemed very fiddly for not much extra detail.
Assembling the hull upper and lower halves went routinely enough, though the rear section had to be clamped while the glue set. I considerd replacing the engine deck ventilator vanes with the etched items, but once again found them to be a lot of extra, fiddly, work for not much, if any, improvement on the kit items. I did, however, use the etched grille mesh beneath them.
Things went less well when it came to assembling the fenders. I opened up a couple of the side stowage bins, and made new doors from 20thou pc, using the etched fret locks. Assembling the fenders to the hull sides, however, showed up a lot of large gaps, which I filled with CA and Tippex. At first, I thought this was down to my lack of modelling skills, but in this month’s Scale Military Modeller International, there’s a build article on the Dragon Puma by Bill Plunk, whose modelling ablity I know and respect. He encountered similar problems, so maybe it was the kit after all!
I wanted to have the rear stowage boxes open, so used the etched items, which are much closer to scale thickness than the kit items. Likewise, and for the same reasons, the spare wheel mount. To give them a rusted texture, I coated the exhaust mufflers with Mr. Surfacer 1000, and then stippled them with a short, stiff, brush, dipped in laquer thinner.
And that was more or less it for main assembly – though there was still a fair bit of detail work to go. Next up – main painting.
Cheers,
Chris.
Cute and cuddly, boys, cute and cuddly!