ccoyle

Congratulations on finishing (from a Toffees fan)!

Congratulations on a very sharp result!

Since we don't really have a dedicated discussion area for topics like this one, I have moved it to the member introductions area.

Since the question concerns a specific kit, I have moved the topic to the kits discussion area. Can't help you with the numbering, though. 😬

Okay, I made a significant blunder in this next phase! 😬 More on that in a moment . . . Next we assemble the air intake duct. A pair of laser-cut parts form the divider. You can see that I somehow managed to scuff the black portion on the left side, so I painted over both faux recesses. The left side of the sheathing needed very slight trimming, as did the center-line covering strip. There are two ways you can do the forward section with the intake, either add the intake to its smaller ring and then join the two rings together, or glue the rings together first and then add the intake. I strongly advise the latter option. There is no joiner strip provided for the forward ring, so I mad a small one from 20# bond. Joining the rings might seem awkward at first because the aft ring isn't closed at this point, but the task is not difficult. Next I added the wheel well to the cockpit section. There is no tic mark printed on its interior, but you can easily position the well by aligning its hole (where the nose wheel strut will go later) with the hole in the bulkhead and its sides with the fuselage's printed lines. And here's the finished nose. When joining these two sections of fuselage, care must be taken to make sure the forward projection of the wheel well fits into the bulkhead gap provided for it and within the fuselage skin. Don't forget to add glue to the wheel well sides where the ends of the fuselage ring land on them. Let's see -- did I forget anything? Oh, yes, that's right -- I forgot to add EXTRA WEIGHT to the interior of the nose! 😑 Derp!! Oh, well -- I have a solution in mind for that when the time comes. That's it for now!

Welcome aboard, friend. Pleasant stay be yours, enjoy! Haiku I write poor.

Welcome aboard!

Such an iconic aircraft! And of course the surviving examples around the world wear a wonderful variety of liveries.

Now we get into one of the construction sequences that is affected by whether the builder opts for wheel wells. If you choose to omit wheel wells, the sequence is pretty straightforward -- just two more conic sections and a bulkhead. (NOTE: Regardless of option, weight must be added to the interior of the nose for the model to sit correctly on its tricycle gear.) If you decide to go for the wheel wells, well then things get a little dicier. First we fold and glue up the nose wheel well -- no biggie. I later added scrap card strips along its sides, as I did for the observer's tub. DO NOT add strips to the front or back -- the tub is designed to fit snugly between two bulkheads. Note that there is a small projection on the forward end of the well. Here we have the forward bulkhead with the faux air inlet laminated to it. The builder can either leave it like this or choose to add a more detailed inlet divider. The cutout at the bottom is only done for the wheel well option -- this is where the previously mentioned wheel well projection passes through the bulkhead. The next part could be a challenge. The first part of the detailed air inlet consists of a printed interior color ring that has to be wrapped in multiple paper rings. The challenge lies in getting the first ring perfectly round. Here's how I went about that. First, I needed to pre-shape the interior color ring. Happily, it fits perfectly around the handle of a 23mm dapping tool. The part was dampened, wrapped, taped, and allowed to dry. Note that the color side goes on the inside of the ring. Note that the ring parts are lettered b to f and that their lengths increase slightly with each part, because as each one is added, the diameter of the ring increases. Leaving the first ring on the dapping tool, I overlapped the seam with ring b to close the first ring. For each successive ring, I shifted the seam slightly so as not to create a weak point in the ring's structure. Here's the finished ring with some items to note. First, I wrapped the wrong end of the interior color cylinder. 😑 The wrapped rings should be at the front of the cylinder, and the little printed triangle on the interior ring points in that direction, hence my rings are on the back. Fortunately, this is only a minor error, but it's still annoying. Second, I did not add ring f; I noticed that each ring produced a widening gap at its seam, indicating some error creep, so on the very strong suspicion that the ring will be slightly too large even at this stage, I chose to leave the last ring off. Lastly, I soaked the outside of the ring with CA to stiffen the part. Finally, here's a group shot of all the parts that will go into making the nose of the aircraft: two conic sections, the wheel well, the inlet bulkhead, the inlet ring, and the parts to make the inlet divider. Unlike the previous fuselage sections, the larger ring here has no seam tab, since its two ends will land on the wheel well (hence the addition of the scrap card along the well's sides), and the smaller ring does not wrap around a bulkhead -- it will be glued to the joiner strip on the larger ring aft and to the interior air inlet ring forward. I suspect I may need to bevel the inlet ring to get things to fit easily. Fingers crossed!

The two fuselage sections are joined.

My folks had a '55 Chevy. Sold it before I was old enough to drive it. 😢

Nice to hear the voice that goes with the models! It was fun hearing your hosts describe one or the other of your models and thinking, "Hey, I've seen that one!"

Great work on the camo!

Now we get to see that fuselage grow! The forward bulkhead of the observer's section has a color piece to be laminated to the laser-cut bulkhead. Here are all the parts and sub-assemblies for the observer's section. Both bulkheads have been beveled. We add the joiner strips, close the cylinder, and glue in the forward bulkhead. It's better, I think to glue the instrument panel to the bulkhead after the bulkhead is glued in -- adding the panel first would make it more difficult to glue in the bulkhead. I added some scrap 2mm card to the flimsy observer's tub to increase the gluing surface area. Once the tub is glued in, there's no way to reach into the fuselage to help position the aft bulkhead. To make the task easier I punched a couple of holes in the bulkhead and stiffened it with CA. The holes make it possible to manipulate the bulkhead with pliers. And here's the finished assembly. A little bit of muscle (but not too much) will be required to glue the two fuselage sections together, so it's a good idea to let the glue cure for awhile. That's it for now! And yes, if you're wondering, I did mow and edge my grass today and plan to de-thatch it this evening. Fun. 😑

Congratulations -- nicely done!

Here are the parts for the two seats. Making the seats is not difficult. Matching the curve of the bottom to the two sides on each seat is a bit challenging, but not overly so. There is no reverse-side printing on the parts, so you will need to add some color to the front of each bucket. You can now see the different cant produced by the two sets of seat mounts -- the seat on the right with the steeper cant is the pilot's seat. The control stick has been added. The kit provides a paper part to be rolled, which is a pain for tiny, narrow tubes, so I replaced it with painted 0.88 mm styrene rod. All we needed to do next was glue the tub into the cockpit section and add the seat. BTW, there are locator marks for the seat on the cockpit floor, but they don't match the width of the seat mounts. They're useful, though, for centering the seat. Next we move to the observer's station, starting with his instrument panel. The panel consists of three pieces of 2 mm laser-cut card to be laminated together and then skinned. The construction is not difficult. And now for some bad news: We had our first hot day in the Upstate today. I had to turn the AC on for the first time this year to cool down my sweltering upstairs man cave (I really dislike summer weather). We also got a cubic yard of topper for the front lawn, so a lot of spring yard work is in the immediate forecast (I really dislike yard work). Hopefully I will still get some modeling time in. That's all for now!

A bit more progress. . . Next we have the rudder bar. There is a template for making the bar from wire. Don't worry about matching the template exactly -- this element will be difficult to see in the finished model. In fact, the instructions even suggest omitting the rudder bar if you don't want to deal with it. Here's the finished rudder bar mounted to the cockpit floor. The bar is fiddly -- there's no magic bullet for coping with the tiny parts. Maybe keep a swear jar handy?🤔 Also, there's no locator mark on the floor, but the bar is supposed to be positioned directly below the instrument panel. Next we will start on the seats, remembering that the pilot's seat doesn't go into the cockpit tub until later. Here's a bunch of seat parts that need to be doubled, i.e., folded and glued to make a 2x-thick part. The instructions say that the two seats are identical, but there is obviously two different sets of parts #11. I suspect the difference is linked to slope of the floor in each tub, but I will need to confirm this once both tubs are ready for seats. There's also a bunch of seat cushions that must be laminated to laser-cut backings. That's it for tonight. Time permitting, I'll get the seats assembled tomorrow.

Well done, Dave!

Being an intermediate-level kit, only rudimentary cockpit details are included. Here is the instrument panel laminated to its laser-cut backing and edge colored. No option for glazing is included, but it could be done by using a photocopy of this part. I have depicted glazing in some of my other logs. And here is the panel glued into the cockpit. You might be able to see where I added a center line tic mark on the fuselage skin to help position the panel correctly. The next numbered part is the gun sight. I suggest holding off on that part, because it sits on top of the cockpit dash, which means it might get bumped a lot during the fuselage construction. I have circled this part on the construction diagram to remind myself to add it later. Next we'll work on the bits that go into the cockpit tub.

That finish is looking very nice indeed, and it has a kind of old-timey look to it that is appropriate for the subject.

One thing I have learned over two decades of building card models is that it pays to study and re-study the diagrams. The part I mentioned in post #12 is not a false air inlet -- it's the interior nose wheel well color. Also, I noticed that the pilot's seat protrudes above the level of the fuselage, so it can't be glued into the cockpit tub until after the tub is in the fuselage. Here's a couple of simple modifications I made to the bulkhead before proceeding. First, I don't know how much of that bulkhead will be visible on the finished model, so to be safe I added some interior color to it. It's not an exact match for the cockpit tub, but at least it's not pulp board colored. Second, I added some scrap card along the lines that indicate where the tub is to be glued. This will make neater and stronger joints between the tub and bulkhead. Here's the fuselage section glued into a ring. Try to get the ring as round as possible -- it will make fitting the bulkhead easier, and the ring will be more difficult to shape once the bulkhead is in. A couple of tips on the bulkhead. Notice that the fuselage section isn't a true cylinder -- it's a conic section. Beveling the edge of the bulkhead will make it easier to fit and enable it to make better contact with the fuselage skin. Only a slight bevel is needed, so don't go overboard. If you want, you can soak some thin CA into the bulkhead to stiffen it. With the joiner strip in place, it can be difficult to align the bulkhead properly, unless you were careful in aligning the joiner strip to the fuselage piece first. If you were careful, then gluing the bulkhead flush with the ends of the darts cut into the joiner strip will also make the bulkhead flush with the cylinder opening. You can see here that the dart tips just touch both the fuselage skin and the interior bulkhead. Tip: With a large bulkhead like this one and any type of fast-setting glue (such as canopy glue), you may not have time to adjust the part if you apply glue to the entire rim of the bulkhead first and then try to position it within the cylinder (or vice versa). What I do in such instances is position the dry bulkhead first, then run a bead of glue around the interior seam -- like caulking a tub. That's it for this session!

Refer back to the PM I sent last Sunday. BTW, that was less than two weeks' shipping time, right? The people at WAK don't mess around!

When you say "JoTiKa version" versus "Vanguard Models version", you're really comparing an early Chris Watton design with a much more recent Chris Watton design.

Which cutters are you referring to, the ships' boats or the larger kits such as Alert and Trial?

Congratulations, Bill! That's a lovely model.