Grumman Iron Works Group Build

Yeah, I won't get to mine until 2008, but don't count me out. I like the birds that Grumman has put out over the years.

I've got about 3 builds I want to hack out before that. One's 85% done (The F-84G), one shouldn't take too awfully long (my famous last words)(A P-36A) and one I HAVE to finish before X-mas as it's a present for my father (Bf.109E).

I'll do the Hellcat (or maybe a Wildcat) after those builds... 

I won't get to mine until 2008

Charles, that's perfectly fine.  This GB goes until the end of next August, which allows for plenty of time.  I may even put in multiple builds for this one, but for now I'm going with the SA-16 Albatross.  I have all of the Cats to build, but if I do add another kit to this GB, it'll probably be another somewhat unusual bird rather than what I expect most would want to build.  Perhaps the Duck that I have, the Classic Airframes kit in 1/48.

I'll probably get started in the next 2-3 weeks depending on how my P-38 finishes, and I am strongly leaning to building 4 P-40s, all different kits (Monogram, Hasegawa, Eduard, and either Trumpeter or Academy) for the P-40 GB.

Too many models, too little time.

jeanton01,

I would certainly appreciate the help with creating a gif for the badges.  I went into my photobucket account and placed the badges in a slideshow, but that does not work on my signature line.  Anyway, the badges on my signature line are for the Revell-Monogram group, the Farewell F-14 group, the Jolly Rogers group, the Yellow Wings group, and you can just see the top of the Knights of the Sky group.  Missing is the Aircraft Carrier group (that I started).  I do not know if it will help, but here is the slideshow address: http://s108.photobucket.com/albums/n27/More-Power-Scotty/?action=view&current=5838de50.pbw

Thanks for your offer to help me with this.

Aggieman,

Even though I am really excited about this build, I too will not be starting for a while, heck, I have yet to decide which Grumman plane to build (so many choices in my stash).  I have a refueling outage starting next Saturday, so I will essentially live at work until some time in November.  I will peek in from time to time, and as soon as I make a decision on my kit, I will let you know.  Fortunately, there is still plenty of time to work with.

Scott, if you will send me a message with your e-mail address I will send you the gif, it's allready done.  The FSM e-mail seems to strip attachments.

Mine is jeaton(at) afes.com.

Scott,

There's plenty of time for this one, so take as much time as you need.

I have actually already started.  I suppose I was ready to go on this scratch-building thing.  My only previous experiences with scratch-building was in putting a few strips of styrene in the wheel wells of a Monogram P-40B that I built many years ago, and I tried to super detail an AMT/ERTL Imperial Star Destroyer of Star Wars fame that had lights inside.  That effort didn't turn out too well.

For this Albatross I'm probably not going to be able to super-detail it given the scale, but I've been thinking of where I might have a few 1/72 crew seats.  An old Matchbox Do-17 that I never finished may have some seats like that, and who really cares if the seats are (a) German and (b) about 15 years or so older than what would have been in an Albatross?

So far I've managed to cut some molds out of cardboard for one of the bulkheads and a portion of the flooring.  I have also cut internal support pieces for one section of the flooring.

Nothing to show off just yet, and probably not for a while.

Hey Aggieman

I would lke to join in this group build.  I have a 1:48 Tamiya F4F-4 Wildcat that I will change into a -3 by using Wings and Things -3 conversion set.  I also had begun a 1:32 Trumpeter TBF Avenger.  I will send updates via email as progress continues.

Regards

Frederick Seitz

IPMS # 35450

jeaton01,

That was quick!    Just to play it safe, my work address is _ and my home address is _.  Even without having looked at the final product, I sincerely thank you for helping me out!

Frederick,

I have you down for both the Avenger and the Wildcat.  Welcome aboard! 

Steven

I've actually gotten started on this GB.  It's going to be slow going with all the other stuff I have going on, plus my wife suggested yesterday that I've been spending too much time at the modeling work bench. 

But I have managed to cut out a few internal pieces, including the instrument panel and the bulk head at the back side of the cockpit.  I drilled instrument holes in the IP and plan to glue pieces on the back side of the IP.  The main panel will be black but those back pieces will be white, so there should be an illusion of a bunch of instruments and perhaps there will even be depth there in the appearance of those instruments.

Once I get things to a good finishing point in the cockpit, I'll start taking and posting pictures.

Hey Guys

This is my first installment to the group.  I got really busy last night and today, I got a lot accomplished. 

First, I know I was planning on using the Just Plane Stuff -3 conversion set.  Well I hate to say this but the set really isn't as good as I thought is would be.  The fit I found is downright bad.  Not to mention the level of detail on the casting of the main wing doesn't come close to detail on the rest of the kit.  I wound up filling seams on the kits wings, sanding down the cowl for the F4F I want to build; basically working the existing Tamiya kit from a -4 to a -3.  That was not as hard as I thought that was going to be. 

First I sanded down the carb air scoop as the version of F4F-3 I am building had the carb scoop inside of the cowl.  After I was done with the scoop, I hit the area with Mr. Surfacer to fill any small gaps and then re-scribed whatever detail that had been damaged.

Then I painted the engine ...

I then worked on the cockpit.  I went with the kit parts mostly.  The only part from the JPS kit I did use was the seat.  Even it is not the best but it did look slightly better than the kit's seat, plus it was correct in that it only had the lap belts.  I glued the fuselage together and installed the cockpit and front bulkhead for the landing gear.

The next thing I need to attack will be the wing details.  This will involve some filling of panel lines, replacement of lost detail, repositioning the pitot tube and filling in the existing gunports and redeilling the holes to accept the .50 gunbarrels I have from Qwickboost.

I think the project is moving along well.  Once I get this baby ready for painting I will start on that 1:32 TBF-1c "Avenger".

See ya's on the next post.

Frederick,

That's very nice work you're doing there on that Wildcat.  Nice engine.  Looking forward to seeing more progress pics!

John,

Let me praise you in public (something they stressed in a couple of my supervisor classes) for the absolutely fantastic job that you did in creating the .gif image for me.  As you can see, I loaded it a few minutes ago, and it started to work immediately.  Thanks again, and if there is any tip or technique that I can offer in return, please do not hesitate to ask.

Well, I am ready to show off what progress I've made to this point of the build.  These pictures represent about 3 weeks' worth of work, not every day mind you.  So far everything is just being cut out and built - no painting yet and very little actually glued into the airframe.  I also can make no guarantees that any of this is really to scale, as I simply eye-balled everything and tried to envision what looked "right" for the size.

Instrument panel

Interior bulkhead with a door opening cut out.  I'll position the door inside the forward compartment just behind the cockpit.

The forward compartment floorboard with internal support framing.

Three shots of the cockpit.  I struggled with the seats.  I tried probably 3-4 attempts to cut them out of sheet styrene but could just not get the look I wanted.  Then I read another poster's depiction of some interior detailing he is doing for his Hien (sorry, don't recall the poster's name) and he showed pictures of the seat he had constructed from cardboard.  Ding ding ding!  So I cut out of a couple of seats today and was satisfied (although mine do not look nearly as good as that seat he did for the Hien). 

I also could not get anything remotely resembling success in constructing the second steering column.  The one I have is one I pirated from an old Matchbox Do-17 that I had never finished, and was never going to finish.  I just decided to leave the second steering column off as there is not going to be much that visible in this cockpit anyway.

Interior layout thus far (without the instrument panel as I am not ready to glue anything in place - other than the 4 support beams in the forward compartment).  There was a slight engineering issue that I noticed in dry-fitting everything in place.  The landing gear on this kit are designed to retract.  I didn't really want to lose that, although I'll likely never touch the gear once the kit is done, so I cut a notch in the forward wheel well floor to allow the strut to retract as Monogram designed it to do.

More Power Scotty wrote:

John, Let me praise you in public (something they stressed in a couple of my supervisor classes) for the absolutely fantastic job that you did in creating the .gif image for me.  As you can see, I loaded it a few minutes ago, and it started to work immediately.  Thanks again, and if there is any tip or technique that I can offer in return, please do not hesitate to ask.

Hear! Hear! John is always a "model" member in these forums. Pun fully intended.

Hey All

I have been busy with this latest Wildcat build.  I am using Tamiya's 1:48 scale F4F-4 kit as a base.  I originally was going to use Just Plane Stuff's F4F-3 conversion set.  However after I began to get busy working, the JPS's many shortcomings became apparent.  I decided to modify the Tamiya kit's parts; this turned out to not be as bad as I thought. 

The first pic is an overall shot of the model, sitting in the spray booth.

Here are a couple of pics, showing how I filled in the many panel lines that needed to be filled, in order to make the kit from an F4F-4, to a -3.  This mostly involved the wing fold seams and removing the outboard wing gun and ammo bay.  I also did a lot of replacement of the many rivits that were wiped out, by all the sanding.

Here is how the engine looks all mounted up in the cowling.  I took the kit cowl and basically sanded off the top carb air scoop.  It makes the whole model look like a completely different kit with just that one modification.

Lastly, a couple more shots of the cockpit.  I really am looking forward to getting this baby painted and decaled and posted up here.  BUT....I will take my time and NOT rush because that's how a mistake will happen and ruin the whole thing.....right?  Right!!

When I get this done, it's on the 1:32 Trumpeter TBF-1c that I have looking at on the shelf for a really long time.

Thanks for looking at my post and as always, comments welcome

Regards,

Freddie from LI

Freddie, nice work on that Cat so far.  Keep us posted!

So here is my progress on the Albatross.  I've completed all of the scratch-building and painted the interior.  I also put on a white primer coat on all the exterior surfaces.

Interior painting is a dark gull gray. 

I added some styrne rod to represent throttle controls mounted above the cockpit area. 

I figured that since this aircraft was used by the Coast Guard to rescue people, presumably some of these people were in the water so perhaps there should be a life preserver somewhere on board.  I made the preserver from the cap of a ball-point pen. 

The forward compartment with some radio equipment and a seat. 

The completed cockpit. 

   (I really need to learn how to shoot pictures without a big ugly shadow I think).

The rear compartment.  Again since it is an sea rescue bird, I figured there could be a set of bunks.  I didn't build the bunks to good scale as originally I intended to put two sets of bunks inside but upon test fitting, the bunks I built would not fit real well.  Maybe I'll tackle them again to scale them down a bit.  The pillows and sheets are tissue paper. 

A couple of shots of the interior layout. 

I don't have any pictures to share just yet, but I've made some good progress today despite all the appealing football games that were on TV (and my plans to go to the A&M-Oklahoma State game tonight had fallen through).

Anyway, I had put some white primer on this kit earlier in the week, and today decided that I would go ahead and get most of the exterior painting done.  I started with flat white for all of the external structures, then spent a couple of hours masking the Coast Guard identification striping.  I finished painting just in time for the A&M kickoff on TV, and while watching the horrid first half, let the paint set.  When I got back to the modeling bench at half time, I started removing the masking, for which I had used Tamiya tape.  I thought this tape was the lowest tack tape one can get but it pulled up great chunks of my base white coat.  On top of the half-time results of the game, I was getting quite upset!

So here it is after midnight.  The Ags pulled out that game with another 1-point victory over the Pokes, and I returned to the bench to re-paint.  I finally called it a night when I finished painting all of the de-icer boots.  There is still a little bit more exterior painting to be done, plus I have not even addressed the molded-in engines or the props, and I've yet to build anything other than the interior details.  Hopefully I'll have a completed model this time next week, but I'll post pictures as soon as I can find the time to take them.

Hey Folks

I have finished the F4F-3 Conversion, will post pictures tonight!

Regards,

Freddie

Pictures at last.

Internal layout:

Cockpit:

Forward section:

Rear compartment:

Exterior:

She's looking very well Aggieman, can't wait to see her done

Regards,

Freddie from LI

Here she is, Tamiya's F4F-4 converted to a -3 by filling panel lines and sanding off barts that didn't belong.  Here is what I did to complete this build:

Stretched sprue antenna, Quickboost .50 MG barrels, Superscale decals sheet # 48-1033, True details resin wheels, wire brake lines, added second oil cooler inside wheel well, filled in all panel lines on the wing for a -4 (wing fold, gun access panels, ammo boxes), rescribed panel lines bringing the wing in line with the configuration with a -3, sanded off carb airscoop off the cowling, repositioned tailwheel, Paint is Testors Model Master Enamels and weathering is done with thinned oils and pastel chalk. 

The markings are for an F4F-3 flown by US Marine Major Robert E Galer, (VMF-224) from Guadalcanal during 1942.

Here are the pictures, I hope you like them and as always comments are welcome.....Now it's on the the 1:32 Trumpeter TBF-1C.

Regards,

Freddie from LI