Fw 190 Butcher Bird 2013 (extended to June 2014) Group Build

If it were acrylic or if the canopy was dipped in Future I would just say soak it in Windex, Iso and strip it. I honestly haven't a clue on how to remove enamel from clear plastic. I know lots of people soak parts in brake cleaner to strip enamel paint but I do not know what this would do to clear plastic.

Just a small update tonight for me. More work on the engine. Since none of it will be be easily visible, very little time was spent on painting. Just primed with flat black and each cylinder head was hit with some Alclad aluminum. Afterwards, I began the slow task of installed the exhausts. With much caution, everything lined up perfectly thanks to the jig provided by Eduard.

I really do look forward to building another A8 in the future and opening every panel up surrounding the engine.

More sanding was done on the rear of the accessories and the fan to get it recessed the way I wanted it. A test fit of the cowl piece revealed a superb fit with need for little to no filler thankfully!!

With all that being said, I am growing a bit tired of the construction phase on these two and am very ready to move to painting!!!!

Nice work there, Eric. I hear ya on that desire to build one completely opened up. I'm gonna do a 190 A* sometime with everything open including the radio hatch. What are the guns peaking out of your hood made of? Is that Eduard's kit extra's or did you fashion your own from brass tubing?.

My canopy glass is toast. Tried several different remedies and now have several layers of failure on them. Anybody got a 1/32 Hasegawa canopy set layin around??? No? Shucks! I wonder if anybody's aftermarket canopy is going to fit this old kit. I WILL find out. I'm not giving up now. But, I'm also not calling this thing done if I put this glass on it.

Eric: Looking nice!

Bill: I'm sorry to hear that. Have you tried contacting Hasegawa? Tamiya offers a service for replacement parts, so Hasegawa might do the same. I have a similar problem as well: I managed to split the canopy of my 1/48 wildcat in half, so I had to order a new set of clear-parts... I hope you can get that sorted out...

Cheers, Clemens

Eric:  One thing that Eduard made sure of was they didn't have a shortage on the parts count for these kits. That template for the exhausts makes all the difference doesn't it? Nice work pal.

Bill: Hang in there good buddy. Somebody has to have a canopy for that jewel of yours.

Bill - I do believe I can help you. As I mentioned when you started that I have that exact kit and I have no issues parting with it. So, PM me and maybe we can work something out to get that to you. Other options are to see if Squadron has a suitable vacuform one or you could make your own by taking some packaging plastic and heating it over the old and thusly make your own. Seen that done several times here on the forum. And by the way, very nice work so far.

Well, I am now officially in full bachelor mode. The wife has gone to Seattle to begin her nanny duty for the granddaughter. And, well, it sucks. So, once I get my new routine down around the house I'll be getting back at the bench.

Oh yeah, Eric, simply awesome work your doing. You have those Eduard kits by the horns and giving them the what for. Nice.

Bill, I have some spare Eduard canopies that I can experiment with if you want. I can over spray some paint on them and soak one in Simple Green and one in brake fluid and see what it does. Would be no trouble at all.

And thanks everyone for the compliments, at one time I feared the Eduard 190 kits......now they fear me! LoL!!

Bill- Sounds like Rix can get you back in business. And that last pic I posted is a captured 190 at the end of the war, hence the GI scoping it out.

Jester- Those 2 beauties are gonna looks sweet with some paint. Nice assemble job. I don't think I've had that kind of luck on an Eduard kit yet as far as fit, but I'm gonna try.

Oh, and Bill those are brass barrels by Master Model. I order them several sets at a time from a seller on eBay. I think I paid right at 10 bucks for this kit which is all 6 gun barrels, some of them multipiece affairs, and the pitot tube.

Use a set of those Master model gun barrels everytime I build a plane!!! Can't beat em!

Great example of my half-tard-ed-ness. Spent 15 minutes typing a reply and some thanks to you guys for all your help and whatnot  ....... shared some details about my canopy fix adventure .......... clicked on one of Eric's pics to get a closer look at those sweet brass gun barrels and ......... gone! Everything I typed went bye bye when I hit the back button . Thing is, THAT AIN'T THE 1ST TIME I'VE DONE THAT. OMG, I gotta quit sniffin glue. Talk to y'all later. Tomorrow's another day.

Bill - Yeah, been there, done that. Sounds like you may have resolved your canopy issue. Just want you to know that my offer still stands. Just let me know so I can get it off ASAP.

Joe - Dadgummit, I plum forgot to recognize your excellent work on the gun bays in my last post. Consider it recognized. Really, Very nice work.

I have the whole weekend off. The house to myself. It's going to be 108 degrees (Already 94 at 8:20 am). So every reason to be getting in some quality bench. So what in the Wide, Wide World of Sports am I doing here on the computer. Gotta Go!!

Well thank you Joe. Good to see you around here again buddy. Hope all is going well at home.

Man BIll, that sucks to lose your work like that. I know some folks type their posts up in Word or Notepad then copy and paste here. Another cool trick is that you can Cntrl-Left Click any link on this page and it will open it up in another tab for you. This is useful to me for scrolling back through other posts or pages.

Joe, good grief, 108!!!! Stay cool my friend, thats crazy heat!

Joe: We had such temperatures (42° Celsius) here in Vienna as well (2 weeks ago), but the best thing is: It is much colderin Austria normally, so it was a real pain...

Bill: You are not alone, mate! It happens to me a lot as well...

I went to an airshow today (Airpower '13) and it was a stunning experience:

It isn't as big of an airshow as you guys in the states are used to, but it was still very nice. Here's a link to the official page of the show (too much stuff to list it all)

Good stuff:

• B-25
• The aerobatic-teams were awesome 
• 2 F-16s literally drifting around in the sky (those things are bloody loud!)
• A Corsair
• Some helo-action (a Cobra, a Hind and lots of other awesome stuff)
• Really nice weather
• I got a poster of each F-16 (1 Belgian and 1 from the Netherlands) signed by their pilots!
• heaps of other good stuff

Bad stuff:

• The Lightning wasn't there because of technical problems
• I missed a good third of the show because me and my friend (Florian) weren't able to use the official train for the show, so we were arriving 2 hours after the show started
• we missed the Mustang and Spitfire (we saw the Mustang taking off when it flew home though)
• I got toasted (forgot to take my sun-block with me ) and I look like a tomato now

It was still a very nice experience and I have to go there next year as well!

Taking pictures was impossible for me though, as my camera is not suited for this task, but Florian took some really nice ones (i hope to get them from him soon) and I willl upload those for you (in a separate thread). Just a little warning: We were only able to take pictures untill 2/3rd of the show, because we ran out of batteries .

I'd love to visit one of the airshows in the states as well, but travelleng there is bloody expensive, so it'll be a challenge to do this. I'd like to see the Thunderbirds in action at some point (a really awesome aerobatic-team!).

Cheers, Clemens

Clemens, Sounds like an awesome airshow. There is nothing like it for sure. There is an annual one in Grand Junction, Co., 100 miles away, that is always a treat. For now you can save your money as the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels are currently grounded due to budget cuts. Very, very unfortunate. And to get to see a Corsair. Well, that there is just plain worth living. Yeah, Corsairs are my all time favorite. Might have something to do with my father flying them.

JOE RIX

 For now you can save your money as the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels are currently grounded due to budget cuts. 

Yeah, our local air show was a little sparse w/out the B/A's or Thunderbirds.......... like they can't find a little for petrol out of $3 trillion to keep them in the air. 

Reasoned

JOE RIX

 For now you can save your money as the Thunderbirds and Blue Angels are currently grounded due to budget cuts. 

Yeah, our local air show was a little sparse w/out the B/A's or Thunderbirds.......... like they can't find a little for petrol out of $3 trillion to keep them in the air. 

Alright, temporary fix for the canopy glass. If you'll recall, I got some enamel overspray on my canopy glass. I tried a few different remedies and ended up with fogged canopy glass (windshield as well). Now, I've ordered a new set of the clear parts for this ancient kit. Gonna take several weeks to get it. Hasegawa USA has to get it from Japan, of course, and then I guess someone has to row it over in a little dingy. Whatever, meanwhile I came up with this resolution as a means to get this bird finished for now and probably for the purposes of this Group Build.

Battle Damage.

Why not, right? That'll work ,won't it? Isn't that what we do to cover up the Oopses with military models?

I should've just done that in the first place and never told you guys what I did to my glass. What was I thinkin?  I'll probably call it done using this glass but I will submit update pics when I get my new glass.

Ok, now ... I want some honest opinions on these: 

Homemade gun barrels (these are just for the wing guns).

It's just aluminum tube stock that I shaved a bit and textured and plan to fit with either larger tubing or rubber where they join the wing.

Still working on fuselage guns.

Well ... you know how much I LOVE battle damage! I Like the canopy!

That's a great fix you did there, Bill! Looks really cool IMO!

I made some (minor) progress as well (This will be a picture-heavy post):

I filled/sanded the huge gaps on the right gun-hatch:

Wings are glued together as well:

The wing joins are going to need a lot of fillin/sanding as well (note that what looks like a gap is actually a step between the wing halves):

I glued the ailerons in place:

A quick dry-fitting session revealed that the wing-root join is as perfect as it can get (it's perfectly flush when you apply a wee bit of pressure):

But only on the right side (a spreader-bar will help a bit, but there is still a gap to fill):

It's starting to look like a plane right now:

My Dora limited-edition arrived today as well:

I expexted the box to be a lot more damaged to get 1/3rd off (I love Hannants!):

The box is bursting with goodies (I can't close it up completely anymore):

And I even got a cute little Me262 in 1/144 (yay!). This will be my first (and probably only) build in this scale: 

I'l l build the D-9 supplied with the AM decal sheet I showed you earlier and this D-11:

And now for some really special decals:

Most kits you can buy in Austria come from Germany. As you might (or might not) know, it is forbidden by the government to use swastikas in Germany and Austria. (Not a very nice part of our history...) But there is one exception in Austria only: It is completely legal to use swastikas on scale models, as long as they are used to make the model historically accurate. This is not the case in Germany. So most kits I can get here in Austria have all swastikas censored. But now I have some of those to put on my German planes!

And now for some kinda strange food/drinks:

I was at a Chinese restaurant with the family 2 days ago and decided to go a little bit experimental regarding my dessert and my drinks:

The dessert was some mango-creme with heaps of strange fruits (it was delicious!):

And I had this strange looking drink:

It's a tea made out of flowers which has a nice shade of blue (no food colors added):

As soon as you pour some lemon-juice in the drink, it becomes magenta:

I won't be able to make any progress today, as I am ill ATM and don't feel like doing some work on my model builds at all. I went to the drug store and got myself some medicine and I hope that I feel better soon.

Cheers, Clemens 

Bill-Those scratched gun barrels will definitely look the part!! Love the damage on the canopy glass too, sure hope the pilot was ok!

Clemens-Nice progress! Looks like you got the right wing mg hood down and faired in nicely! Not too bad of a gap in the wing root either, as said, I'm sure a spreader will eliminated the majority of that gap on the left wing! How do you plan to move forward with the engine compartment? Will it be opened up any? Is your cowl mg hood a little wide at the front?

I havent had any time for the bench lately. Hoping to get some in this evening if I am lucky and get these 2 bad boys finished up and prepped for paint. I have also decided to build at least one more Eduard 190, although probably not in time for this group build. I noticed that Eduards A-6 boxing also has some Dortenmann markings so I will probably build myself a little collection of his craft which will be and A-6, A-8, and the D-9. Cool thing is that the A-6 is in winter white wash so this should be a interesting experiment for me as I've never done anything in whitewash before.

Bill, could you explain how you accomplished the 'battle damage' (cracks and hole) in that canopy? It looks really cool and as usual, I'm clueless how you did it.

(yes, I read back and understand what led to this). I tip my hat to your perseverance and positive attitude.

Eric: I'll try to open up the left cowl panel, so you can see that nice enginbe Eduard provides. This should get a bit tricky as I have to cut the panel and it's clamps out and I need to add nome scratchbuilt details on the inside (a first for me)...

The mg-hood is only a bit too wide at the front (1/10th of a millimeter), but also at the rear (I am thinking of sanding it down a bit)

Cheers, Clemens

It seems like everyone has different fitting problems and issues with those Eduard 190s, LOL! I really enjoy building this kit even with all it's flaws and problems. I just have to step away from it sometimes and build something easier (Dragon's King Tiger for example) to keep myself motivated. It is a challenging and different experience for sure (especially as one of my first aircraft models....) You guys are also good at keeping me motivated. You are a great group of modellers!

Cheers, Clemens

Not sure if it will help you or not Clemens but my hood was a smidgen wide at the rear and pretty wide at the front. Fact is, its not the hood that is wide but the fuselage is to narrow as there is nothing in the front to spread it out. On mine, I attached the hood to one side making sure it was flush with that side and glued it. I let this set up until it was firmly attached and dry then I spread open the forward part of the fuse a bit until the hood and the unglued side were flush. At that point I glued that side and held in place until the join was strong enough to hold the two fuselage halves open on its own.

And you are right, Dragon's King Tiger is a cherry little kit that absolutely just falls together!! I built one a while back and loved every part of the build! Are you currently building one and do you have a WIP up anywhere?

Bill: Man the damage on that canopy is really something else. Nice work!

Clemens: Coming together nicely on that build. I had the same problem with the wing to fuselage fit on one side and with the upper lip problem on the wings. It took a little work and a little tweeking but it came together ok. Seems like there are lots of fit problems on these things but I do love the outcome!

Eric: Cant wait to see some paint work on your two. You guys are really breezing right through these Eduard kits.

Thank you very much for the tip, Eric! I'll try that out when I get to glueing the hood on (I have to spray the inside in RLM 02 first).

Yes, I am building the big kitten atm (jsut to have something relaxing to build). It is in the Steel Cats GB.

The turret is completely done as well as the lower hull (I still  have to take some pics of it though).

Cheers, Clemens

Clemens... Wont be too much longer and you should start slinging paint! Looking good! As to your foods... my wife being asian can come up with some lulus too, (LOL)Some I'll eat and some I wont let her make indoors, The smells can be ghastly and take days to clear the air.(ha) It got to the point that I pleaded with her not to cook at night while I was trying to sleep, What you had there looked yummy!  

Eric, like Joe said, cant wait to see your paint begin, I've become a big fan of your paint work. I still go back to the display page and drool over your first Dora... I dont think Ive seen any bad paint work here yet, but you just hit the right shades and right blending to make it look awesome!

A bit under the weather myself but starting to feel better the last few days, Hope to begin work on my Eduard "Langnasen" soon. Take care all! Keep up the great work guys!

Doug

Thank you very much, guys!

Doug: I know that problem with the smells. I am experimentng with cooking some chinese stuff myself sometimes and like you said: It takes forever for the smells to vanish...

Joe: I just sanded the fuselage bottom down a bit on the left side and the fit is much better now. I'll add a spreader-bar tomorrow and hope for the best regarding those gaps... I have to do some more filling on the right gun hatch, as it broke loose at the front and there is a tiny gap visible again (should only take 5 minutes or something like that)

Cheers, Clemens