BACK IN THE SPOTIGHT--THE BOMBER GROUP BUILD (Medium and Heavy bombers from all eras)

Jeeves,

Great job all around - A really nice tribute to your veteran friend. It must have been fun doing a kit like this that you know will have special meaning to someone who will really appreciate it.

Chris

Thanks guys!

Jason-- appreciate the comments....this was my second attempt at using Doc O'Brien's weathering powders and they have been great to use both times!!

Chris-- It is !! It's also good to know this behemoth won't be taking up half my bench when I do get it to him LOL

Jeeves,

The B-17 looks awesome! I especially like the open ball turret hatch. I don't think I've even seen that done before.

Regards,

Thanks Drew! It took around 10-15 minutes of scribing the one half of the turret until I could detach it. Then, I added a spare gunsight and seat to the inside (none of which really shows up now)...took some small bits of copper wire painted red for the hatch handles, and glued it on.

Call me "almost done"

Here's Moby with full face paint. One more decal to apply (that I lost - it's here somewhere !) Can you see which one is missing ?



The differences in darkness of the Olive Drab are due to the fact that I only put future in the aras where decals were to be applied. After I get the lost decal on the upper surface of the port wing (there's your clue) I'll be able to mask him up for a dull coat. I'll also do some weathering - I figure there's no way to make a B-24 pretty - so I'll make it look butt ugly ! How am I doing ?

Chris

Chris looks good so far. One question though is it tail sitting or just the pic?
Jason

Jay,

Thanks,

Yes it's definitely tail sitting. I don't think I could have put enough lead into it to make it sit tricyle style. I haven't put on the tail skid yet - so he sits even lower now. It will be displayed with a scratch built ammo crate under the tail skid. I've seen pics and I've heard that this was done with the real thing.

Chris

Very nice Liberator, you have done the great bomber proud, And I resent that remark about the B-24 not being able to look pritty, you did a great job doing that

very nice b24 chris looks like its coming together nicely
jeeves nice b17 i love that pic of the ball turret

QUOTE: Originally posted by Bossman Yes it's definitely tail sitting. I don't think I could have put enough lead into it to make it sit tricyle style. I haven't put on the tail skid yet - so he sits even lower now. It will be displayed with a scratch built ammo crate under the tail skid. I've seen pics and I've heard that this was done with the real thing. Chris

Chris,

I saw the B-24, "Diamond Lil" at the WWII Weekend air show in Reading, PA this past summer. This is what she had under her tail:
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I took the picture because so many modelers are worried about having planes sit on their tails. I've read that the Grummer Tigercat also tended to sit on its tail until its fuel tanks were full.

Regards,

Hi all,

Here are three more in-progress photos of my MB-2 bomber:
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Regards,

Thanks Vintage & Ghettochild !
Ugly planes are beautiful in their own special way. I like 'em.

Drew,
Thanks for the pic. I saw in some reference book on the B-24 - a cartoon where they were making a joke about the fact that someone removed a crate from under the tail skid. The nose was way up in the air and there were "#$%&@*'s coming from inside the waist gunner position. I bet it happened more than once. It's probably why 'Lil has a "fourth leg".

The finish on your MB-2 looks really fine. It'll look great painted.

Chris

Thanks, Chris. I really like priming my models with a matte enamel prior to painting the finish coat with acrylics.

I'm glad you liked the picture of Diamond Lil.

Regards,

Work is proceeding well on the MB-2. I got the cabane struts assembled and painted. These are two somewhat complex assemblies that connect the engine nacelles, bottom wing, top wing, and fuselage. Taking a tip from a magazine article on building this kit, I used the fuselage as a jig for assembling the cabane struts. They're primed and ready for painting and rigging.

The radiators each have a nasty ejector pin mark on the back, messing up the mesh pattern molded there. I plan on sanding the pin marks down, and replacing the mesh pattern with tulle fabric (a very fine mesh fabric often used in wedding dresses -- my wife’s idea) that I got at a fabric shop.

The engines and nacelles are going to get my main attention in the next few days, and then I'll paint and decal the fuselage and lower wing. After that, I'll paint and add the tail to the fuselage, decal it, and rig the control wires.

Regards,

Another update:

My glacial pace continues, but I am getting work done. My main focus right now is on painting the engines and nacels. I hope to finish that up in the next couple of days. Then I'll mount the nacells, mask the engines, and paint the lower wing/fuselage assembly and tail. :-D

I have a couple of good shots of a real Libery engine that I took at the Udvar-Hazy Center this past December. The kit engines are a reasonable facsimile, but there are areas where the kit maker chose to simplify the shape. I used Testors MM aluminum for the main engine body and MM steel for the cylinder heads. Both are acrylics applied over an enamel primer.

I "painted" the plumbing along the bottom of the engine body with a very fine point Sharpie marker.

Next up is the manifold and the nacell backs.

Regards,

Lufbery- I have got to say that your MB2 is really coming together, keep us posted on her progress, I cant wait to see the finished product

The skies the limit,

V.A

Drew,

Your glacial pace is outrunning my "distracted wanderings". I hit a snag on Moby Dick - I still can't find that one nat insiginia that goes on the port wing.

So what do I do ? I look for it, but then I see the to-build pile, hmmmmm.

I finish off a 1/72 Airfix P-40 and start on Toko's 1/72 Sopwith Snipe. The entire fuselage of this little bumblebee of a kit is less than half the size of one of the B-24 engine nacelles. Oh yeah ! The B-24... I was looking for something - wasn't I ?

Chris

Chris,

Your post gives me a great idea! Howabout a B-24 with four Sopwith Snipes providing the thrust instead of engines?

Seriously, though, there are tons of aftermarket decals available for tons of planes. Are you looking for something really special for the wing, or just the star and bars?

Regards,

Drew,

Yeah - Just the plain vanilla star and bars.

I know there are tons of aftermarket decals available - but I also know exactly what will happen: as soon as I fork out the 8 bucks plus shipping for a full sheet that I'll never use, I'll step up to my work area and the darn thing will crawl out from under someplace I forgot to look. I'm holding out (stubborn streak) at least until the next time I do a full cleaning of the work area. I know it's there somewhere !

In the mean time, I feel like i'm getting things accomplished in 1/72 land. Going from one of the bigger 1/48 kits to one of the smaller 1/72 kits is quite an adjustment. I mixed 7 drops of paint last night to make the PC-10 "Olive-Drab like" color for the Snipe, and it was enough to paint the entire fuselage and the top surface of the bottom wing !

Man - do I sound cheap or what !

Chris

Chris,

I hope the carpet monster coughed up your decals.

Here's another quick update:

I'm just about finished with the engines and nacelles (that's the correct spelling, as opposed to my previous post). They're practically kits unto themselves.

I used the extra fine point black Sharpie to "paint" the manifold. I painted the pipes that go from the manifold to the tops of the cylinders aluminum. I had to fill some gaps with those parts with super glue, and then I painted the filled gaps a steel color to match the cylinders. I like the effect I'm getty when I use two different types of metal paint colors. It's subtle, but nice.

I then painted part of the rear nacelle pieces, but not the whole thing -- just the areas that would be impossible to paint after I glue the pieces on. Now all that's left is some filling and sanding around the rear of the nacelles, and I'll attach them to the lower wing.

Next up is fixing the ejector pin problems in the radiators; painting the fuselage, lower wing, and upper wing; rigging the cabane struts and installing them to the fuselage.

Regards,

Well - I did a thorough cleaning of the work area from the desk surface and up. Including all my folders, books, bags, and storage nooks. No decal. Now I'm wondering if I threw it out by accident. I also remembered - there were all those little prop decals too.... bummer.

Drew - that kit sounds like a ton of really fine work - even before the rigging. It'll be something to be proud of when yer done.

Chris

Hi all,

Just a quick update: The wings, fuselage, and tail are painted. YAY! The engines and nacells are done too, except that I want to add exhausts to the engines, and I still have to do the radiators.

Regards,

Hi all,

I'm not sure if anyone is following this thread anymore, but I'm still working on my MB-2. I suffered a bit of a setback shortly after my last post, when I realized that I had glued the cabane struts together the wrong way! I had glued the two fronts together, and (naturally) the two backs together. This is the second time I've glued the wrong parts together on this kit, and I'm a compulsive dry-fitter. However, the parts aren't numbered on the sprues, so I have a little bit of an excuse.

If you want to see what parts I'm talking about, go to this page: http://www.crossandcockade.com/WNW/MB2.htm and look at the struts around the engines in the last three photos.

Fixing this mess required me to clip off the two struts that connect the front and rear pieces on each assembly. I bought some round styrene stock of the right diameter and tried to butt join the whole assembly back together. It didn't work very well.

Then inspriation hit me. I'd read about drilling holes in struts and inserting wire to strengthen a joint, but I'd never tried it. So I tried it, and it worked!

I have a pin vice and a set of small drill bits that I bought to drill holes for rigging. I drilled holes in the ends of the round stock and corresponding holes in the cabane struts. I stripped the insulation off a spare electrical wire that I had in my basement. The "wire" was actually a whole bunch of much smaller wires in a bundle. I clipped some, and put two to three of these in the holes I drilled in the struts.

Everything fit togehter perfectly after that.

I've repairt one cabane strut assembly. I hope to finish the other one tonight, then I'll be back on track.

Regards,

Drew -

I check this thread out every week or so just to see how yer doin. I guess I just timed it right this week.

I haven't been very active in finishing Moby - things have just been really busy lately and I've done a little work on some other kits. Once the weather warms up a bit I'll probably be putting the finishing touches on him before I hit him with Dullcoat. Then I'll do a little weathering after that.

Quite often, I suffer from the same type of error you made. Like putting on the props of a P-38 the wrong way and then having to cut and switch them - and that's just one example ! I also used the wire reinforcement method you described to replace some landing gear and prop blades that got snapped off. It's a very handy method for repair of pieces that get damaged. For the prop blades I just use stretched sprue. If they break again I can just repeat the process.

Keep up the good work !

Chris

Good to hear from you, Chris.

I got kind of discouraged about my mistake at about the same time I got pretty sick and then pretty busy with school work. It sort of stinks when life gets in the way of my hobbies. {;)]

Toward the end of last week, I started experimenting with the wire reinforcement -- something I'd read about, but not tried.

Anyway, thanks for keeping track. I keep saying I'll post some photos, and I will... soon ... I promise.

Regards, and good luck on your builds!

I still check in now and again Drew....glad to hear you overcome the problems you've encountered....but there seems to be something missing in your thread....oh yeah-- pics!

Well, I figured I'd better say somethin - if only to keep this thread in the front pages of the group build section.

I had a weird thing happen today. A transformer blew at about five in the morning at the place I work. For some reason - they didn't want people around in the building - so I got a day off. (We'll see if it becomes a forced vacay day) But anyway, I came home and was able to get a little modelling done. Last week I put the dull coat on Moby the B-24, so today I started applying the last of the glass and fiddly bits. Not much left to do. I might be able to get him finished in time for NoreastCon - which is in my backyard this year.

I'll take some pics when he's ready for showtime.

Chris

Hey Chris,

Isn't it great getting a day off to model?

Here are the long-promised photos. I think you can see the riggin on the one cabane strut in one of the photos:
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Still plugging along...

Coming along very nicely Drew !

The interior detail really pops out - especially against the dark body - very nice. The plane almost looks black in those photos. I'm assuming its dark green and that the photos are just dark ? Or is it really black ?

I went to the craft store while doing some birthday shopping for my wife today. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it !) I just happened to pick up some of that smoke colored invisible thread you mentioned. Nice and fine ! I might even check it out tonight - stretching it over a bow of sprue with a little slack and then seeing how it tightens up with the heated screwdriver idea.

Thanks for the idea. It looks like it will also work well for antenna wire on a non-rigged plane.

Chris

too bad I missed this one.. Right now I am researching my great uncles wartime serv ice and would have loved to build one of the planes he might have flown then... either a B-26 or B-24.... (one of the few oral histories was from my grandma who said he mentioned several times that flying over Guam was the roughest missions he ever came across... and only B-26's and B-24's flew that one according to the USAAC records)

let me know when the next Bomber build comes up!!! would love to join yall!!!