ipmsusa2 Posted September 29, 2017 Report Share Posted September 29, 2017 Hi all, Here's the latest for your viewing pleasure. The port outer wing panel trailing edge didn't line up, so I had to fill it with a piece of .020" Evergreen strip. Also, in order to attain the correct dihedral for the outer panel, I had intentionally left the bottom seam unglued. A piece of .020" styrene was shoved into the seam on each side, adjusted by eyeball so that the dihedral would be equal and slopped on some solvent. When that dried, the styrene would be cut down to match the wing. At long last, the fuselage halves were joined. I had to do it a few inches at a time, starting with the top seam and slowiy working my way around. Rubber bands, wood spring clothes pins, metal clips and anything else that would work were used. In spite of that, I still wound up with steps in some areas of the seams that would have to be addressed. In order to protect the surface detail, a strip of blue masking tape was laid down paralleling the seam step that needed to corrected. Squadron White Stuff was used to fill the step, then sanded down with 120, 320 and 600 grit sandpaper. The photo shows the putty already sanded down. Incidentally, the tape allows you to get a near-featheredge before removing the tape. Here's the bottom seam after being filled and sanded. Strangely, the short portion aft of the tail wheel well turned out to be the worst step area. In order to finish feather-edging the putty into the fuselage skin, I laid down another couple of tape strips just slightly out from the edge of the recently sanded putty. Then I went over the putty with 600 grit paper to finally fair the putty in. The bottom seam was finished out the same way. And there you have it. The step has been eliminated and smoothly faired in to the kit's surface. After a shot or two of DupliColor Sandable Filler and Primer, I can move on to the next problem. Incidentally, The cockpit has been merely masked off, due to the extreme thinness of the vacuformed canopy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Deliduka Posted September 29, 2017 Report Share Posted September 29, 2017 Beautiful work! Amazing how well that seam turned out. I'm taking extensive notes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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