Ritchie! Most excellent work on your Swordfish! You have inspired me to build a Swordfish now as well! Very cool! Indeed! I always wonder about the different color Warhead noses on the British fish. All the Albacore pics show yellow noses and in a few museum pics I have seen red nosed fish like yours and white as well. Then the Tamiya Swordfish instructions claim the whole thing was semi-gloss black. I dunno probably a manufacture thing as I know early British Bombs were yellow then later dark green and even black.
What ever the case I like the look of yours! ![Thumbs Up [tup]](/emoticons/icon_smile_thumbsup.gif)
Have done a lot again. Been fixing the computer and working too much as usual. But I do try to do at least a little each day so let me show what I have so far.
Been working on the turret and replaced the solid bicycle horn looking intakes inside the cowling with some shaped brass tubing as planned.
The Gun barrels look out of scale. About the size of my 1/35 20mm barrels. So the plan was to replace them with the Quick Boost resin ones which are just too cool. They are getting hard to get and cost about a buck a barrel though so I used my Two part mold putty and Aluminite resin and made a quick copy. The whole process took only 20 minutes to get this as a first try.
While they are not as crisp as the original they are pretty good and a giant improvement over the ones that look more like hydralic pump levers to me.
Now I need to focus on doing some good painting and weathering. So I ask the XO for some tips. He was kind enough to sell me the Mark 3 Styro -stick stand for $397.02. A bit steep so I got the deal 2 for $597.12 ![Shock [:O]](/emoticons/icon_smile_shock.gif)
Thanks Frank! ![Dead [xx(]](/emoticons/icon_smile_dead.gif)
Also played with the cowling color. Seems that these were not copper. More of a tinish Brassy color. Mixed and mixed somemore until I came up with a color that looked close. Gold , steel, exhaust smoke and some Panzer red brown.
The new intakes are not so visable as I had hoped so I'll borrow Ritchies great pic again.
They really show up good here and I think some siver caps will do the trick and be accurate.
Another great thing about this photo is the details! You can see the crews and uniforms. The Poor cramped up gunner even. Great things like the different Uniform colors. Some dark brown and the Pilot in the British blue jacket at least shows up well! Thanks again Ritchie! These are just some of the details I can add because of your help!
Lewbud you are right on the money about both these being pretty much the same airframe. They look very alike aside from the Roc's turret. There are a lot of other less noticeable diffs too. The Wings are completed different. The Skua had narrow wings with upward slanted tips to control a bad tendancy to spin when maneuvering. The Roc which was designed later has larger eliptical wings of a slightly larger span and redesign. There were internal diffs I discoverd such as the large twin tanks of the Skua were replaced by a single larger tank ( with less fuel capacity) to give some room for the turret. Had to fix that as well. The kit had the same set up for both and the result was the turret didn't fit.
I love learning about these birds as I go along even If it means I have to back track a bit.
On a personal note. We have a new member of the family in the McNeal household. A full breed Datsun that Dee has named Bruno! Saved from the death chamber at the dog pond I wonder if you could really call him lucky with Master Dee and her cookie fits! ![Black Eye [B)]](/emoticons/icon_smile_blackeye.gif)
Yep she has him in an old play pin. ![Laugh [(-D]](/emoticons/icon_smile_newlaugh.gif)
What a little fireball! See Y'all later and good building! ![Bow [bow]](/emoticons/icon_smile_bow.gif)
![Make a Toast [#toast]](/emoticons/icon_smile_toast.gif)
![Pirate [oX)]](/emoticons/icon_smile_pirate.gif)