Finally made some progress on my Devastator this weekend. Started by doing what I always do when starting a build - assembling the parts that don't need painting first!
The outer wing halves went together first. I started by test-fitting the outer starboard wing panels, and they looked ok (or so I thought). I glued the pitot tube in place, then glued the halves together using the old Testors tube glue that comes in the blue tube - has that great citrus smell to it. I figured I would go back to the old days with this build - the way I built when I was a kid, using the same stuff that I used as a kid. Do you know that if you DON'T use that stuff for a while (as in years), you get outa practice with it? I didn't, either.
Anyways, once I joined the two halves together, I discovered that the trailing edge had a decent-sized gap in it. I then applied some Tenax-7R, thinking that would help fuse the plastic together a bit and close the gap, but I was wrong. Didn't help a bit. Didn't hurt anything, but didn't help, either. So, ok, I figure I'll just have to use a little putty on the trailing edge, and accept the fact that I'm gonna have a thick trailing edge on one wing. Below is a view of both outer wings before sanding the squished-out glue off:
Here's a view of the trailing edge of the port starboard wing panel showing the gap:
The trailing edge of the port wing is next:
You can see the difference. I attribute this to me not paying close-enough attention to what I'm doing......
Below is a front view of both wing panels.....
I kinda wish that Monogram had molded the wings as one-piece affairs (so there would be no seam in the corrugated areas), as the corrugation on all the wings' leading edges are gonna make cleaning up the seams a bear. What I'm considering is sanding the leading edges as I would any other wing to get them nice-n-smooth to eliminate the seams, then use some stretched sprue to replace the corrugation that's lost in doing so. What do you folks think? Is there a better way to get around this? Take a look below:
That's all I have for now. Hope to have more done before the week is out.
Also, I have something in common with Toshi. I have always used flickr for my photo posting, but, since my last use of it (sometime in late July 2017 to start posting on this group build - been using flickr for many years), something has changed to where I can't obtain the link to post photos here, so I have switched over to Fotki tonight. It seems to work ok; just gotta get used to it's user interface.
Gary Mason