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  1. Hello all, Sorry for the delay but I've had to deal with a death in the family (sister-in-law) and an upper respiratory infection. Now, back to the C-46. Once the cowls were mounted on the wing, I used a 3/64" (.095") bit in a pin vise to drill out the prop shaft hole. Then a short piece of .095" brass tubing was installed. Later on I'll create a prop shaft from .0625" (1/16") tubing and end up with removable props. Definitely an aid when it comes to shipping the model. At this point you'd think things were about to pick up speed. Not so. In fact, the worst...and hopefully last...major problem was about to rear its head. When you start to mate the wing assembly to the fuselage is when you discover that the wing stubs integrated with the fuselage halves are not symmetrical. The starboard stub sits several thousandths higher than the port one. While that doesn't sound like much, it makes for major trouble as you're about to see. Align the wing center section with the bottom of the fuselage and the wing/stub joint won't line up. Align the wing/stub joints and the fuselage/wing alignment will be cockeyed...and you'll have major filling to do on the fuselage bottom. I chose to align the wing with the bottom of the fuselage and modify the wing/stub joint. This photo shows the port joint. Believe it or not, this is the better fitting one! The starboard joint is the real nightmare. Worse is the fact that the wing airfoil doesn't follow the airfoil contour of the wing stub. Fortunately that error, which is uncorrectable, won't be noticeable when all's said and done. That gap on the port joint is fairly easily resolved. I shoved a piece of .020" plastic into the gap, outlined the wing contour with a pen, removed the plastic, cut the piece off and reinstalled. Then added a little Squadron White Putty before an extended sanding session. Now for the starboard beast. After filling the gap with plastic, I still had a major step to deal with. I cut a narrow strip of .010" or .015" styrene and glued it down on an angle running from the top of the wing stub to the top of the wing. It's that stage you see in this photo. Then that was followed with multiple applications of solvent slopped on to get the styrene good 'n wet. Then White Putty and more sanding...putty and/or plastic where needed....more sanding...and more sanding...and..... Incidentally, if you're wondering why I'm using Squadron White Putty, it's because it doesn't crack when slightly stressed.
  2. Installment #9 of my Williams Bros C-46 build series is now available in the Builds Sub-Forum. Comments welcome as always.
  3. Installment #3 of the Kinetic E2C 2000 build series has been posted in the Buids Sub-Forum. All comments welcome.
  4. Here's the latest for your viewing pleasure: The kit exhaust pipes left a little to be desired, along with the fact that I would have had to drill them out. So...I planned to replace them with brass tubing. For starters, I drilled out the mounting hole with a 1/16" bit in a pin vise. Note that I angled the bit in order to allow the tubing to fit into the kit's recessed groove. Each of the exhaust pipes was a .30" long piece of 1/16" (or .625") diameter brass tubing. Since no tubing cutter I had on hand would handle tubing that small, I simply scored the tubing with a #11 blade, then snapped the piece using a pair of pliers. In order to avoid having to clean up the cut end, I cut each piece from the finished end of the tubing. Needing four stacks, that approach required two pieces of tubing. Fortunately, tubing that small comes packaged four pieces on a single card. Incidentally, instead of CA for installation, I used Gator's Grip, giving me time for minute adjustments. With the exhaust stacks in place, the cowls were mounted on the wing. Why now instead of later? Because I anticipate problems aligning the wing and the cowls will help get things right. Beyond that, it's easier to get the cowls properly aligned now. Keep in mind that the center section is dead horizontal with the dihedral not starting until you're outboard of the engines. Finally, and probably most important, because of gaps, seams and contour corrections that I would have to deal with, those problems would be a lot easier to handle if the fuselage wasn't in the way, This top view of the cowls after they've been installed. You can see some of the problems I'll have to tackle. With the cowl properly installed, this gap has to be dealt with. There's a slightly smaller, but similar, one on the other cowl. For reasons no one understands, Williams Bros left this flaw in their mold, along with those oddball gaps on the sides of the wing/engine housings. All of this has to be corrected before joining the wing and fuselage. Incidentally, the cowls don't mount to the wing without doing some adjustment to the inside of the cowls. I can't tell you exactly how to do it because it's probably slightly different on each kit. Just keep a knife nearby and do a lot of test fitting. Because of the size of the cowl/wing gap, I glued a piece of .15" x .20" Evergreen strip over the gap, then brushed over it with Same Stuff until it melted down. When dry, I could sand everything smooth. Some areas required small applications of Squadron White Putty, while others would be taken care of with Dupli-Color Sandable Filler & Primer. Of course, various grades of sandpaper and sanding sticks were used as well.
  5. 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.
  6. Hi all, Here's the next batch of progress shots. It's been a slow road, but things are beginning to speed up a bit. Right now, though it doesn't show in this installment, I'm mating the fuselage halves. Now on to the photos: Small rectangles of .020 were used for the main cowl flaps. Even smaller pieces were used on the inside to cover the Vee shaped gaps. Here's a before and after shot of the cowl flap installation. Note that the individual flaps are a butt joint where the mount on the kit cowling. Due to the .020" thickness, you'll need a light touch and patience. Whlle the flaps were drying, I installed the windows. Some of you may prefer to sand the windows smooth and then polish them out. Do that and you'll either have to rescribe the entire model or sand it smooth. My client preferred to retain the raised lines and use the windows as is. The cockpit as seen here is nearly done. Control yokes had to be shortened and there were a number of other problems, but the end result is satisfactory. All in all, not bad when you consider it's a Williams Bros kit. With the addition of the overhead console, I'm finally ready to close the fuselage! Incidentally, I would suggest the use of black rubber toughened CA from BSI to attach the overhead console.
  7. Hi all, It's been a long road from Part 4 to Part 5, but now I'm starting to get back into it. Even the CPAP is proving not to be all that bad. Now all (!!!!!) I have to do is catch up on all my commissions. So, let's see if we can make some more progress on the C-46. When closed, the cowlings show five cowl flaps. If building yours closed, be sure to eliminate the seam on the middle flap. Since I'm building this kit with open flaps, it's time to remove the molded flaps. Whie it's the old school approach, multiple scoring passes with a #11 blade along a raised (or recessed) hinge line works as well as anything. Here's a before and after shot showing the flaps removed on the cowl nearest the camera. Before creating the new cowl flaps, the cowl intakes need to be drilled out. You'll need a #64 drill bit, new #11 blade and a lot of patience. I did it the hard way; after the cowls had been built up instead of before adding the cowl rings. While a little sanding is still needed to clean things up, the drilled out intakes add a lot of realism. A rear bulkhead was cut from scrap styrene and mounted against the back of the floor.
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