Landlubber Mike

Great work!
 

Great work!
 

Great work!
 

This one is all over, it's one for the books. She now rests in the cabinet with the rest of the stallions. Finished.
 

Maybe I will finish this thing today...or tomorrow. Almost there now.
 

 
 
 
 

Looks great - love the interior colors.  The flocking came out fantastic.

Love the looks of this car.  What a beautiful convertible!

Not to be funny... I find all clamps are very good until you need that special one... like right now.

That looks fantastic, excellent work as always!
 

With my foray into plastic, I've done four Accurate Miniatures kits - well, I guess technically two were in-house creations (the F3Fs), while the F4B-4 and the P-6E were repops of some older Monogram kits.  I was looking up other kits with yellow wings and came across the AM Vindicator - I had read about the plane, but never knew what exactly it looked like.  When I found it, I was like, man this is quite the ugly bird, but kinda in an attractive way.  Plus, when I saw there was a yellow wings version available, I was in.  The knock on the kit is that a number of them had an ugly depression in the side of the rear half of the fuselage, which was a pain to fix because it was in that area that looks corrugated.  When I bought the kit from UMM-USA, I asked if the particular kit they were selling had that issue and the owner, John Vojtech, kindly included another set of fuselage halves that look perfect.  What a nice guy!
 
Thanks for the clarification on it being pre-way versus neutrality patrol.  I think I had actually copied those words from either the instructions or another build log, so good to have my terms correct!  I'll probably go with the kit markings, as they are different and I won't have to paint the cowl a separate color. Otherwise, I have the Yellow Wings decals set for this plane and can do it up in the typical fashion of other yellow wings (like the other planes I built) with the belly band, painted cowl and tail, etc.:
 

 

  
For the wing fold, the kit does not include any instructions at all, but includes the insert pieces necessary when you cut the wings in half.  Another gentleman actually went through with it, and posted pictures here:  http://www.hyperscale.com/2008/features/sb2u1cb_1.htm
 

 

Please excuse my absence - there are two reasons - the first one is I HATE PLANKING and the second one is I have been spending a lot of time with my other hobbies - Amateur Radio, Photography, FlightSims and Painting (not to mention being busy at work).
 
So - the planking - oh dear, I don't think I will ever build a ship where my planking will be visible 😂 I'm just useless at it! Mind you, I do believe I've learned a little from my mistakes on this build. Anyway, the hull is planked and I spent today sat outside filling and sanding, filling and sanding. Because it will be a painted hull, I know from experience that every blemish will show through, so I'm being as careful as I can. I didn't take any photos of my planking progress because I have nothing to offer any builders. 
 
Before applying the first coat of paint to the hull, I intend to apply some Stopper. I did this on the St Roch and it worked out well.
 
Hope you're all keeping well.
 
Regards, Tom.

With any brand, vallejo, Mr. Finisher, etc. I generally leave on my primer coats undisturbed for at least 24 hours.  I've had Vallejo peel even after that period.  For example, on my last build, I had used Tamiya tape inside the cockpit to help seal it when painting the fuselage.  It pulled the paint and primer off the instrument panel - which probably had been primed and painted weeks before given the rate I build.  I can't recall whether the paint that was pulled was off plastic or metal though.  
 
On metal, Vallejo primers don't seem to have very good adhesion.  The Vallejo primer I used on the PE frames for the open panels on this build scraped off fairly easily, and I've had that happen a number of other times.  Maybe I haven't pre-treated/cleaned the PE frets enough, or maybe oils from my hands left a film on the PE, I don't know.  I picked this up a while back but haven't used it yet.  I might try spraying the PE frets down with this stuff first to give a better base for Vallejo to stick to.
 

 
Of course, it's totally possible all this is due to user error, which, if you ask my wife, normally ends up being the case.   

Well, it's taken me a while to get here, but finally got the fuselage primed.  Woohoo!
 

 
I love using Mr. Finishing Surfacer right from the can.  It dries (very quickly) in almost a baked on consistency and can be sanded, unlike Vallejo which is prone to peel.  Its leveling properties are almost magical.  I had a spot where too much spray had accumulated so I was preparing myself to have to strip it off and re-spray, but I came back a half hour later and everything was perfect.  The gray is nice because it highlights any flaws or other issues that need correcting.  Fill, sand, re-spray -- piece of cake.  Highly recommend it.  Really stinks though, so make sure you have a spray booth with exhaust or a nearby window.
 

 
I'll inspect for any issues tomorrow, and then I might be able to get the base colors on.  I'm still considering black-basing the entire plane, then slowly coming back to a white underside and gray topside.  Will have to sleep on that one though.

Lou thank you!  And your example is better than mine - great picture!
 
The picture is also great for showing how many more planes could be carried by a carrier.  The wingspan of the F4F-4 was 38 feet.  When folded, the wingspan was reduced to 14 feet 4 inches.  That enabled the Navy to increase the number of fighters assigned to a squadron from 18 to 27.  American ingenuity!
 
In looking at the Squadron book, apparently the early F4F-4s - which were designated as the XF4F-4 - were made by Grumman to include a hydraulic wing fold system.  During tests, the weight of the aircraft made it inferior to the F4F-3 when it came to speed, climb, and maneuverability, so the final production of the F4F-4 came with the lighter manually folded wings.  
 
 

Thanks everyone for chiming in here!  
 
I have a few panel scribers, and while they work great, they are triangular in shape down to the blade so what I've found happen is that you end up scribing out an increasingly wider section the deeper you go.  Given that the elevators are probably 3mm thick, if not a little bigger, the kerf (not sure if there is a more appropriate term when scribing) was getting to the point where it was just easier to mill them out with a micro milling bit.  Are there others that are more scalpel like in application?
 
As for the drooping, while there was a hand crank, I don't know whether they were mechanically locked or not.  I found a number of pictures suggesting that both the ailerons (damn, I suck at terminology and I just talked to Lou the other day who corrected me) and the elevators did droop.  Here are some pictures of different Wildcat variants, for example, from the Squadron In Action book on the Wildcat.  
 

 

 

 

 

 
Some other random pictures I have on file as well (first might be an F6F Hellcat, but likely similar engineering):
 

 

 
 
At this point, I'm not going to change things.  It was a little tricky getting them to sit in the position, but what I finally did was use CA, and once dried, followed up with a very thin line of two-part of epoxy along the underside seam.  I was worried that CA can be a little brittle and I'd likely knock one or all of them off at some point in the future, so the epoxy gives me a little more peace of mind.  So, I think they are stuck there, whether correct or incorrect 😐
 

Happy new year everyone!  Hope everyone is doing well and having a good start to the year.
 
I had all these grand plans to get a lot of modeling done over the past few weeks, but with the holidays, family stuff, honey-dos, etc., I didn't get as much done as I was hoping.  I did get some time in on various modeling projects like this one though.  After more time than I would have originally estimated, I finished the elevators.  I wanted to drop them, but it was a bit harder to cut them out because there is a tab that extends to the front so you can't make a straight cut across with a razor saw.  I was hoping to either cut through enough to be able to bend them down (like I did on my earlier builds) or cut them out completely, but the plastic was fairly thick and hard, and the scalpel would get bogged down.  Since I was too lazy to continuously change out the blade, I decided to mill it out using a tiny bit in my micromotor.  That ended up making things easier, but then I needed to build back a bit of the lost material.  That was probably for the best as I was then able to shape the leading edges instead of having two square edges.
 
While I was at it, I "dropped" the flaps (I think that's what they are called) on the wings.  Apparently when the wings were folded, the flaps "dropped" toward the top side of the wings.  I also added the framing spine over the top of the life raft compartment.  A bit of some sanding and filling here and there, but now I think I can finally get to the painting stage.

 

 

 

 
Thanks for looking in!

I've made some more progress on the Wildcat the last few evenings.  Would go a lot quicker if I didn't have to back to repair things that I broke 🤯  Case in point, as I seem to do on every plane build, I broke the tail wheel off.  Since I'm almost to the point of painting, I figured now was as good a time as any to put it back on so this time it's attached to the fuselage via a brass rod and 2-part epoxy.  I'm sure I'll find a way to break it off again.  
 
I also had to replace the radio antenna.  The kit part is only attached via a small nub into a tiny hole in the top of the fuselage.  I attached it a couple of weeks ago promising myself to handle the kit gently, but of course a few days ago I reached for the kit without paying attention and snapped it off.  Was too thin to pin, so I opened the hole up and built a new one out of plastic strip.  The new part extends well into the fuselage and is glued in with 2-part epoxy, so hopefully I shouldn't have any problems snapping this one off.  Of course, I had spent a good hour working on the first piece, test fit it into the fuselage, and put it down to get the glue ready and look forward to going to bed.  As I put it down, the part slid down into the fuselage, doh! 🤬  I couldn't go to sleep on that note, so I rebuilt another one and this time, added a little blob of poster putty to the end so the same thing wouldn't happen.  So, along with some minor putty work, here is where things are on the fuselage.
 

 
I spent some time with the Wolfpack resin wings.  After cleaning them up, I decided to remove the flaps so I could re-position them.  Apparently the flaps tended to open "up"/"out" when the wings are folded, so I'll glue them into that position.  One of the flaps came out a little thin, so in the picture you see that I added a thin strip of plastic sheet to the top that I'll shape into the right size.
 

 
The auction included a Taurus vacu-formed canopy.  After some research on how to release it from the mold, I managed to get it out (though the two rear corners would have to be glued back) and sanded it back to shape.  I was planning to model it with the cockpit open, but the Taurus piece doesn't seem to be molded in a way with a thick enough frame to cut into two frames for the windscreen and the rear piece (hope that makes sense).  So, I figured I would play around with it for practice given that these replacement canopies seem to be popular aftermarket for planes.  In the end, the canopy doesn't really seem to fit correctly anyway (seems to be slightly taller/wider) so good practice I suppose.
 

 

Hello everyone, hope you all had a nice Thanksgiving (for those in the US or that have similar holidays).  With the holidays, various home projects, etc., I haven't made as much progress on the Wildcat as I've hoped, but I did cross a couple of big thresholds.  
 
The lower tub is now glued into the fuselage.  Took some slight modifications to help get everything to fit correctly as there are multiple parts with the deflector plate, the PE open panel parts, etc., and I decided to use 2-part epoxy to make sure it all holds together.  Big relief that I'm passed that stage.  As you can see, I added a few wires in the open engine mount area, and opened up the fuselage panel at the top of the nose which leads to the oil tank.  Last night I glued the wing stubs from the Wolfpack set also using 2-part epoxy.  They went on fairly easily, which just some slight sanding to help get them to sit correctly.  Looks ugly, but hopefully things will smooth over after filled and painted.
 

 

 

 
I've got a tiny amount of filler to use, but so far everything is generally fitting together fairly well.  I do have an issue with the underbelly where the tub and the fuselage didn't exactly line up too well, so I'll have to sand it down, rescribe the panel line, and add rivets.  Will be a first for me, and hopefully it looks ok given that this kit has raised panel lines.
 
Oh, and I broke (1) one of the landing gear legs, (2) the tail wheel, and (3) the antenna rod on the top of the fuselage.  Ugh.
 
For next steps, I need to clean things up in preparation for painting.  I might try out black basing, though again, that will be new for me.  What will be tricky on the painting is whether to add the engine and cowl so that the paint lines are smooth across the model and with a consistent color (on the flip side, there will be some tricky masking with the open panels).  Of course the folded wing sections have to be worked in somehow as well to keep a consistent shade.
 
Thanks for looking in!

Thanks for the kind words!  It's funny, when I got back into models maybe ten years ago, I didn't want to do plastic because I thought it was insert tab A into slot B and paint from the old little Testor's enamels bottles (which I was terrible at).  So I went to wooden ships for more variety of components and parts of the build.  When I saw how plastic models have changed with all these detail sets, airbrushes, adhesives, etc., I've almost completely moved back to plastic (though, I still want to work on and complete my wooden ship kits and there are a few I'd like to scratch build down the road).  Personally, I find the subjects of WWI-WWII era planes and ships (and for cars, early 70s and earlier) more interesting.  
 
So, I'd give it a shot!  I really feel like I've learned a lot in terms of techniques, tools, etc. to be a better wooden ship modeler.  Definitely post a build log here.  The MSW folks have been kind to allow a place for non-ship builds, and I have to say, there seems to be more activity, commentary, help, and sharing here than on some of the plastic plane boards.  I'm enjoying the camaraderie and education on this forum as much, if not more so, than actually building.

Just wanted to pass along some tools I've found very helpful on this build.  I picked these up from John Vojtech of UMM-USA (Unique Master Models) :  http://umm-usa.com/onlinestore/index.php (no affiliation).  He's got a lot of other goodies for plastic modelers on his site, so just a warning  
 
Micro saw - very helpful to cut plastic and resin parts with a very thin kerf.  I used this to cut out the fuselage for adding the life raft.  He also sells mini miter boxes for this saw.
 

 
 
Scribers - these are really helpful for a variety of uses as shown below.  I used them to cut out the various panels from the cowl and fuselage.  I started with a #11 blade to deepen the panel line a bit, then ran the scriber to finish the cut.  Much quicker, easier, and safer than trying to use an X-acto blade in my opinion.
 

 
 
Micro chisels - very helpful to cut out and remove sections of parts for better fit, to replace with aftermarket, etc.  They come in different sizes and shapes.
 

Thanks guys for all the kind words, really appreciate it.  
 
Well, after many more hours than I care to admit, I think I'm done assembling the cowl.  Lot of surgery and new parts!  The Aires PE and resin parts generally fit very well, but the instructions are sparse to put it mildly.  Good diagrams showing what goes where, but there is quite a bit of dry fitting and figuring things out on the fly.  The engine compartment forward of the firewall in particular took a lot of studying, research, dry fitting, etc. to figure out how things all fit together.
 

 
Here's the cowl - I'm pretty pleased with how it came out.  After cutting out half of the cowl and carving out the air intakes, I added the interior frames (PE), the three air ducts (resin), and eight cowl flaps (PE).  Aires also gives you exterior panels to cover up the open areas if you choose, or you could display them off the model in a maintenance scene.  
 

 

 

 
Unless I decide to open the gun bays, that should be it for the Aires set.  The rest of the build should come together fairly quickly given the relatively simple color scheme and the fit and design of the kit.  
 
Thanks for looking in!

I've been spending a lot of time on the model, but making excruciatingly slow progress.  More than a few times I just wanted to put it back on the shelf and work on something else, but figured I should press on and try to get over this stage of the build.  It's not that the Aires set is bad - I think it's quite good aside from the serious fit issues of the cockpit side panels and dash - it's just that there is a ton of work needed to modify the kit parts to accept the various detail parts.  I'm still fairly new to this plastic stuff, so maybe I should have started with something a little simpler or at least a well-designed kit that I didn't have a lot of aftermarket for -- I keep saying that on all these plastic builds 🥴  But, all complaining aside, I'm learning a lot and so far I'm pleased with how things are looking.
 
So here is where I am.  Managed to get the bottom tub completed.  As I mentioned earlier, the Aires cockpit fits together really well outside of the fuselage, but there are serious fit issues when you try to install it.  So, rather than drop the fully assembled cockpit into the bottom tub which is inserted as a unit into the main fuselage, I only included the cockpit tub into the bottom tub, and inserted the seat back, dash, and cockpit side panels into the main fuselage.  Took some surgery to make it all fit, but eventually got there (you can see some of the cuts, etc. in the picture below which won't be visible once glued into the main fuselage).  I also put together the section of the engine compartment between the air dam and firewall.  That wasn't too bad, but there was a lot of test fitting and sanding/cutting back to get the framing rods fit in place correctly.  Need to dirty it up a bit more, but I think it's looking good.
 
 
 
The next part which has taken me more hours than I care to admit was cutting out the front quarter panels and installing the cutaway frames.  I was really afraid of cutting too much away so it was endless dry fitting, cutting and sanding a bit, dry fitting, cutting and sanding a bit, etc.  Finally got the panels on last night though, hooray!
 

 
If you look just above the cutaway panel, there is a small square panel on the top left of the fuselage.  I think that's the access panel to the oil tank, which is the dirty yellow squarish thing in the prior picture.  I think I might cut that panel out for a little more visibility into the engine compartment.  Saw another modeler do that and thought it might be a nice way to show off more of the compartment including the oil tank.
 
For an idea of how things will look, here is the bottom tub dry fit into the main fuselage:
 

 
Now I'm working on the cowl.  Lot of surgery here to cut away most of it.  There is a fairly detailed PE framing piece that goes on each side, which are covered by what I believe looks pop up panels along the edge of the cowl.  Then there are three resin parts that look like air intakes that get attached to the inside of the cowl.  
 

 
I have a love/hate relationship with the PE in this set.  I believe it's made of some kind of stainless steel or perhaps aluminum.  It doesn't seem to like to glue via CA to plastic very well, but maybe I should have done some more prep in cleaning off any residue or etching it.  On the plus side, it's a lot stronger than brass and holds its shape very well.  My worst nightmare came to be two nights ago when I was trying to glue one of the front quarter panels and it fell onto the floor.  I stepped back out of my chair to a place I was absolutely sure the part wasn't, and ended up stepping squarely on the part. 😡  Not only that, but despite the part being fairly flat, somehow my foot managed to crumple it 🤬  Using pliers, I was able to straighten the part out, so in the end, the modeling gods must have taken pity on me  ☺️  
 
Thanks as always for looking in!
 

Thanks for the pointing out the cowl flaps.  The way Aires has the PE, it looks like these are supposed to be partially open as you surmised. 
 
Found another diorama where it looks like the builder used the Aires detail set I'm using for an F4F-4.  The modeler has the cowl flaps slightly open and the gun bays open.  Looks pretty cool (though, again, wings are down)!  I still might pass on the gun bays on this kit though.  I have a few other kits where I have the option to open the gun bays so might try it there.  
 
 

 
 
Also, I think the color scheme and decals for the FM-1 Wolfpack are for an Atlantic-based plane, and these FM-1s generally were used on escort carriers.  I'd love to make a diorama scene like the above, so will probably have to wait until I get to a different model where I can model terrain (and not have to figure out whether gun bays were open on folded wings or not).

That looks fantastic, excellent work as always!
 

That looks fantastic, excellent work as always!