building a Seagull
The fuselage of the real airplane was constructed of a steel tube frame covered with panels. The tube frame was visible in the cockpit (as could be seen in several photos) therefore I decided to scratch build this part of the frame.
Scratch-build instrument panel, rebuild pilot's headrest and smaller loop antenna (the first I built did not fit in to the canopy!)
Since the canopy provided in the box is quite thick, I reproduced a "vacuformed" one from a transparent PET foil by using the thick original canopy as "mould".
Left: the scratch-built canopy. Right: the original canopy.
a last look in the open cockpit
the canopy is glued on the cockpit and some adjustments are made to the joints
The engine provided in the kit has enough detail for the fun/accuracy ratio of this project. So I painted it without any additional detail.
Left: some detail on the tail wings made from wire. Right: the original tail wing.
I added small rings from brass wire in the lower part of the upper wings (and on top of the lower wings) for the rigging.
the wheels provided in the kit are without the wheel covers, which were self-built from slices of sprue.
The worst thing I did to this kit was sanding off the raised panel lines and trying to reproduce the suface detail on the fuselage by adding strips of styrene. Far from being satisfied with the results, I moved on. Next time, I will try something else.
Since the decals in the kit went bad after so many decades, I reproduced some markings with painting
For the rest of the markings I reprinted the decals on a white decal sheet (right). On the left the yellowed original decals. Notice the true color of the tail is black and not red.
Other decals were printed on transparent film. I downloaded the "USN stencil" font type from dafont.com/ and reproduced the yellowed original decals with the Paint software on Windows7.
At first I tried to reproduce the rigging using the classic sewing thread (left)... HORROR! Using stretched sprue provides a better solution (on the right)!
Here we are. Almost finished!
コメント
1 3 October 2015, 12:32
Peter KlinThe kit is from the 70-ties, I bought it recently on e-bay. From a collector's point of view the box is in less than good condition (at least this is my opinion), but I believed the kit inside had worth a chance to become "alive". I like to work on these kits which waited several decades for someone to build'em!
5 October 2015, 08:36
Peter KlinThanks! Actually I did a lot of tries before reaching an acceptable result with the vacuformed canopy.
18 November 2015, 21:41
Wim van der LuijtCool project! Count me in for the rest......nice work on that canopy
18 November 2015, 22:13
Peter Klinthanks! The american planes from the 30-ies with their yellow wings can give a lot of satisfaction to the modeller.
12 March 2016, 20:13
Mike GrantNice work on that old kit, I see you even masked/painted the fuselage nos. in 1/72! Most impressive. Are you going to post more pics of the finished model (please)? 👍
22 February 2017, 13:57
