Hi All,
I finally attached wings and stabs and this model is starting to look like an actual airplane. Luckily, I didn't need too much putty; although there have been a lot of intermediary re-puttying and re-sanding. The fuselage went together pretty well. I used a combination of brush on plastic cement and CA glue. The plastic cement is the best solution, but I don't like holding the fuselage halves together with tape until it dries because the glue that seeps out runs down the tape via capillary action and spoils the plastic finish. Thus, I spread plastic cement along a seam for a ways, then apply some drops of CA at either end of the cement line to act as the clamp to hold the fuselage together. I squeeze the fuselage and wing halves intermittently to allow some of the melted plastic to ooze out. When dry, a seam trimmer works great to trim the melted overflow, which in turn does a great job in filling small gaps (less putty). Doing this technique a few inches at a time allows me to get a pretty good alignment on part halves.
The challenge was the wing-to-fuselage joint. My port wing joint on top was quite tight. I only needed putty to blend the contours a little better. The starboard side top joint had a much larger gap. It was almost as if either the wing or the fuselage was a little bit concave where they joined along the mating surface. More putty required there. The bottom gaps on both wings were pretty good. I didn't even want to attempt puttying and sanding because of the tight space, so I squeezed in CA gel and wiped off the excess immediately. That added some strength and helped fill the gap a bit. Since the bottom joint is practically a 90 degree joint and would look like a seam anyway, I think primer and painting will look fine.
The bigger challenge was blending in the 3D printed bomb bay door plug and then scribing new bomb bay lines. The bomb bay plug works great, but I won't know how well it all looks until I hit it with a little primer (next step). The scribing was relatively straight forward, barring my slip ups (read: re-puttying and re-sanding above). Scribing across Green Stuff putty isn't the greatest, but I didn't know a better way to fill gaps and scribe until after I was done.
I have a lot of tape all over the aircraft to plug holes. Since I drilled small holes for ECM antennas, radio masts, pitot tubes, vent ports, and canopy and blister holes, I had a lot to cover. Hopefully it kept the dust out. The next challenge is trying to figure out the best way to clean everything for the primer coat since I can no longer wash it in soap and water. I guess I'll have to use a compressed air can and a damp soapy rag.
