Beech bomber 1948

1
April 19, 2021
Main airframe construction done, heavy coat of Tamiya primer to highlight missed scribing areas and areas needing minor sanding now
2
February 28, 2021
3
February 28, 2021
4
February 28, 2021
5
February 28, 2021
6
February 28, 2021
7
February 28, 2021
8
February 28, 2021
cutting out exhaust doors
9
March 20, 2021
10
March 20, 2021
Wood epoxy plug
11
March 20, 2021
NOW it fits well.
12
March 20, 2021
13
March 20, 2021
14
March 20, 2021
15
March 20, 2021
Stainless rod and brass.
16
March 20, 2021
17
March 20, 2021
Belts and a wash
18
March 20, 2021
The GAP!
19
April 9, 2021
Holymoly.....Tail planes are way, way off, crooked, too far forward, and dont fit! So time to cut...
20
April 9, 2021
rod bent at correct angle, flat spot will be inside of course
21
April 9, 2021
Remove tabs, drill out for rod
22
April 9, 2021
filled tail with epoxy, and drilled hole for rod
23
April 9, 2021
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....
24
April 9, 2021
Also mount them a bit further aft as on the real aircraft.
25
April 9, 2021
Alignment came out pretty good, I think.
26
April 9, 2021
Cabin before closing fuselage
27
April 9, 2021
Spent far too much time on this panel, but had fun building it.
28
April 19, 2021
bit more sanding, rescribe few missed lines, then RAF bomb racks will go on before first color coat.
29
April 25, 2021
RED ALERT! Testors Guards Red...boy is it ever!
30
April 25, 2021
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.
31
February 11, 2024
Finally! A good clean pull and smooth. Donor kit as the buck with kit windows filled and sanded smooth.
32
February 11, 2024
Nice and clear, ghost of windows outlines left.
33
February 11, 2024
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.
34
February 11, 2024
Spray FB primer after stripping.
35
February 11, 2024
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.
36
March 20, 2024
Best depiction I've found of the original paint scheme when Mr. Senior bought the machine - minus the modern aerials and such; of course
37
March 21, 2024
38
March 21, 2024
39
March 21, 2024
Tamiya rattle can silver, Vallejo ModelAir Red 71.102 straight from the bottle. - Much better than the first combination a while back
40
March 21, 2024
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
41
March 21, 2024
right side before second stripe
42
March 21, 2024
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.
43
March 29, 2024
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.
44
June 23, 2024
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
45
June 23, 2024
pratice/test nose wheels - "There can be only One"
46
June 23, 2024
Albion Alloys brass micro slider tubes - brilliant for struts
47
June 23, 2024
Finger drilling out nose wheel for brass strut
48
June 23, 2024
Much better- And cocked the nose wheel a bit off center to hide my not dead-center drilling.
AA tubing strut -
49
June 23, 2024
removed kit retraction arms (WAAAAY too long), built replacements with brass tube, detailed struts with very short bits also-
50
June 23, 2024
Thinned gear doors, made hinges from more brass - Main wheels have had hubs drilled /sanded out - new wheel 'hub' rings from aluminum tube
51
June 23, 2024
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
52
June 23, 2024
Test fit of adjusted nose ballast, (Yay!) new nose strut and rebuilt main wheels - She may be sitting a wee bit high - still, progress!
53
July 1, 2024
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
54
July 1, 2024
Aluminum tube exhausts in place
55
July 1, 2024
They are a bit too large, but much better than plastic stubs
56
July 1, 2024
Finally dealt with the awful putty/paint lump on the belly, marking centerline for RAF bomb racks next to go on.

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.

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.

9 April 2021, 06:49

Łukasz Gliński
Beautiful cockpit 👍

9 April 2021, 07:30

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.

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

21 March, 01:04

Finn
Following

22 March, 09:42

Michael Kohl
I like all the attention that went into this kit.

29 March, 03:23

Nicolas
How did I miss this one? Following.

29 March, 08:26

Robert Podkoński
Me too!

29 March, 08:37

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! 😉

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.

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!

29 March, 19:41