Beech bomber 1948
Main airframe construction done, heavy coat of Tamiya primer to highlight missed scribing areas and areas needing minor sanding now
cutting out exhaust doors
Wood epoxy plug
NOW it fits well.
Stainless rod and brass.
Belts and a wash
The GAP!
Holymoly.....Tail planes are way, way off, crooked, too far forward, and dont fit! So time to cut...
rod bent at correct angle, flat spot will be inside of course
Remove tabs, drill out for rod
filled tail with epoxy, and drilled hole for rod
Much better, and incidence angle is now much flatter than the original mounting holes would have produced. Real progress, starting to look like a Bonanza now....
Also mount them a bit further aft as on the real aircraft.
Alignment came out pretty good, I think.
Cabin before closing fuselage
Spent far too much time on this panel, but had fun building it.
bit more sanding, rescribe few missed lines, then RAF bomb racks will go on before first color coat.
RED ALERT! Testors Guards Red...boy is it ever!
Not quite as scary now.... fixing a few paint prep flaws today....Camo coming soon. Upside to having a donor kit, free plastic window masking. just tacked in with a bit of Krystal-Kleer,popout when painting is done and install the original ones from the kit.
Finally! A good clean pull and smooth. Donor kit as the buck with kit windows filled and sanded smooth.
Nice and clear, ghost of windows outlines left.
Blocking out generous area to cut out windscreen - you can see build behind it, I have stripped off the previous silver and red - wasn't happy with it, and new reference surfaced showing original aircraft had two stripes along fuselage, not one. So, we get a do-over.
Spray FB primer after stripping.
FB primer for next silver coat. minor rescribes to do, kit windows are filled in and sanded flush now that I have a good vacuform buck for windscreen and windows.
Best depiction I've found of the original paint scheme when Mr. Senior bought the machine - minus the modern aerials and such; of course
Tamiya rattle can silver, Vallejo ModelAir Red 71.102 straight from the bottle. - Much better than the first combination a while back
1mm red stripes from K4 Supply Company. Very thin, continuous carrier sheet, but went on straight and pretty easily. Bought 1/8" wide sheet, sliced with fresh scalpel blade to 1mm - they do make much thinner sizes too, and many colors - highly recommend them
right side before second stripe
drying time for a few days for complete cure. Then a satin coat, mask off generous areas around windows and do the hasty camo job.
Removed portions of stripes, added Microscale Gothic Letters for original South African registration. Now they get painted over, then camo. Found some proper British Universal Bomb racks, (on the way), removed the pylon type carriers I had installed on the belly.
Removed nose bowl , needed more weight. Decided to beef up nose gear too while opened. Original nose gear shown, pretty darn good for a 1972 mold, eh? But we can do better now
pratice/test nose wheels - "There can be only One"
Albion Alloys brass micro slider tubes - brilliant for struts
Finger drilling out nose wheel for brass strut
Much better- And cocked the nose wheel a bit off center to hide my not dead-center drilling.
AA tubing strut -
AA tubing strut -
removed kit retraction arms (WAAAAY too long), built replacements with brass tube, detailed struts with very short bits also-
Thinned gear doors, made hinges from more brass - Main wheels have had hubs drilled /sanded out - new wheel 'hub' rings from aluminum tube
Main wheels - huge sink marks - so, drilled out 'hub' to tire edge, pressed in thin cylinder aluminum tube section, filled center with epoxy - Tires also too thick and too large diameter - thinned profiles, centered axles and drilled out to match kit 'axles' - will be reducing wheel diameter also
Test fit of adjusted nose ballast, (Yay!) new nose strut and rebuilt main wheels - She may be sitting a wee bit high - still, progress!
Rhinoplasty done finally, nose bowl back on, puttied, sanded. Third iteration of the nose retraction strut, wheel well smoothed out, exhaust pipe holes into plastic
Aluminum tube exhausts in place
They are a bit too large, but much better than plastic stubs
Finally dealt with the awful putty/paint lump on the belly, marking centerline for RAF bomb racks next to go on.
Kommentarer
26 28 February 2021, 01:22
Alex K
👍 👍 - thumbs up - for both the subject and the work done to get it right...
👍 👍 - thumbs up - for both the subject and the work done to get it right...
28 February 2021, 16:39
Gordon Sørensen
Great work, Casey! Interesting kitbashing. Looking forward to watching your progress!
Great work, Casey! Interesting kitbashing. Looking forward to watching your progress!
28 February 2021, 19:24
Casey Beckett
Thank you kind Sirs. More pics soon. Cockpit Juuust about ready I had fun going crosseyed applying individual Mike Grant Instrument decals and building the control yoke. Haven't found any reference material as to whether the ones that made it to Israel had single or double yokes, and the model 35 had both available, so just for fun I built it wit two.
Thank you kind Sirs. More pics soon. Cockpit Juuust about ready I had fun going crosseyed applying individual Mike Grant Instrument decals and building the control yoke. Haven't found any reference material as to whether the ones that made it to Israel had single or double yokes, and the model 35 had both available, so just for fun I built it wit two.
3 March 2021, 16:54
Gary Kitchen
Great work Casey. I'll bank the lesson on the tail planes for when I eventually get to one of these in my Zumbach collection.
Great work Casey. I'll bank the lesson on the tail planes for when I eventually get to one of these in my Zumbach collection.
9 April 2021, 06:49
Greg Baker
Oh, that's great work, I just revisited my build of this kit from a few years ago. Nice to see someone wrestle this kit into submission. Very clean work.
Oh, that's great work, I just revisited my build of this kit from a few years ago. Nice to see someone wrestle this kit into submission. Very clean work.
21 March, 00:48
Casey Beckett
Thanks Greg! As it actually nears the finish line, now I look at my Croco Models new tool V35, I think - man, I shoulda waited.. But this has been areal blast even with the ridiculous amount of time on it.
Get the Croco kit if you can - CMD72046
Thanks Greg! As it actually nears the finish line, now I look at my Croco Models new tool V35, I think - man, I shoulda waited.. But this has been areal blast even with the ridiculous amount of time on it.
Get the Croco kit if you can - CMD72046
21 March, 01:04
Greg Baker
I've run into the "shoulda waited" idea a couple of times... in fact 2/3 of my current projects have that problem. I'm (re)building a DHC Chipmunk, which I previously built from the ancient Airfix kit and am now re-doing using the new AZmodel kit that I got off Robert Podkoński. I'm also building a very rough resin-cast model of a DH Puss Moth that I was inspired to hunt down after I saw Uwe's version... but 6 years later there's now a much easier polystyrene version available. That resin kit was hard to get ahold of, so it's getting built, no matter what! 😉
I've run into the "shoulda waited" idea a couple of times... in fact 2/3 of my current projects have that problem. I'm (re)building a DHC Chipmunk, which I previously built from the ancient Airfix kit and am now re-doing using the new AZmodel kit that I got off Robert Podkoński. I'm also building a very rough resin-cast model of a DH Puss Moth that I was inspired to hunt down after I saw Uwe's version... but 6 years later there's now a much easier polystyrene version available. That resin kit was hard to get ahold of, so it's getting built, no matter what! 😉
29 March, 15:48
Greg Baker
BTW, I should mention how great a job you did removing the rear windows. I did that too and it was a PAIN to get them smooth and without the "ghost" image of a window. Nice job.
BTW, I should mention how great a job you did removing the rear windows. I did that too and it was a PAIN to get them smooth and without the "ghost" image of a window. Nice job.
29 March, 15:50
Casey Beckett
Thanks Greg- started with a wood epoxy plug inside the fuselage, Tamiya white putty. Then I finally discovered ,and got a hold of DM's Perfect Plastic Putty, and that did it -along with several sand, fill, sand sessions. It's been fun but a long build - waiting for the Marabu British UBC racks now. - May actually get a camo coat on this weekend. I checked out your your TinTin builds - those are really cool!
Thanks Greg- started with a wood epoxy plug inside the fuselage, Tamiya white putty. Then I finally discovered ,and got a hold of DM's Perfect Plastic Putty, and that did it -along with several sand, fill, sand sessions. It's been fun but a long build - waiting for the Marabu British UBC racks now. - May actually get a camo coat on this weekend. I checked out your your TinTin builds - those are really cool!
29 March, 19:41