ccoyle

Windscreen and cockpit canopy done. Building and installing the bomb sight was a booger -- the paper part wound up being too large, so I had to replace it with a piece of styrene rod wrapped with several paper bands.

Yep. There's a picture of it in the first post.

Starting on the greenhouse-style canopy. This is the first of five sections. 😵‍💫

I laughed when I read that, but only because I know the magnitude of the understatement!

In all seriousness, I think I built mine back in the days of pinching Crayola markers from my kids. I think I may even still have the gray one somewhere. These days, I would much prefer something like the AK markers I purchased a while back. Sadly, the set included only one or two shades of gray, and nothing in the usual nautical grays.

Sounds like a great trip! Believe it or not, I still haven't been north of Charlotte since moving to SC ten years ago!

And I thought I had a lot of tabs open! 😮

Do you mean Oregon pine? That is a regional name for Douglas fir. It was very commonly used in West Coast ship building, it being a very large and straight-trunked tree, which made it a prime source of long, straight-grained planks. Most of the West Coast schooners that have been in the news here on the forum lately were built of Doug fir.

Made quite a lot of progress since the last update. First, I got the engine mated to its bulkhead and the forward fuselage ring done. You can see some of the cowl rings in the background. Next, all of the cowl rings were shaped and closed. At this point they still need a little final shaping. Here the cowl rings have been added. I had a problem with the last ring because I didn't realize that it was supposed to angle back into the cowl opening instead of forward. I made a few cosmetic boo-boos in getting it repositioned. I also overlooked that there is a printed interior cowl piece. Fortunately, as this photo suggests, the interior is difficult to see, so the interior piece's absence shouldn't stand out. A couple of exhaust stubs and an air scoop later and the forward fuselage was ready to mate to the rest of the model. Finally, the .30 cal mount was completed. It's just loose-fitted for this shot -- I will remove it while I work on the canopy. I had originally planned to display the gun in the stowed position and have the aft canopy closed, but the diagrams were unclear on how to configure the mounting to make that possible, and I could find no helpful images online. Displaying the gun deployed means that the rearmost canopy section will need to be separated from the rest of the canopy in order to display it in the open position. That's it for now!

Not much -- which is why I'm going to pass on super-detailing this one.

And here's the finished engine.

That looks great, Rod! Congratulations!

I got the engine block built and all of the paper parts for the cylinders cut out -- fourteen cylinders at six parts each = eighty-four parts to cut out. After that I started rolling cylinders, but I only got two done before my brain died. 🥴

Ooh ooh! I know what it is!!

Welcome aboard!

Sorry, the 'there' in my post was in reference to my sneaking in the English spelling of color. I haven't actually built a British aircraft in any of those schemes, though I do have one in my stash (Hawker Nimrod).

The coloring on this kit is really very good, and I agree that the plane has pleasing lines -- unlike, say, the SB2C, which I also have in my stash. I like the early-war light blue over gray scheme, and I already had suitable edge coloring paints left over from my F4F-4 build. The blue just needed a little lightening. The 30-pen set I purchased earlier from AK included a shade called "deck tan" which is a pretty close match for the underside gray of this kit.

Can't help but love the various RAF peacetime fighter squadron identification colour (see what I did there?) schemes of the 1930s.

This one was an integral part of the fuselage spine.

Empennage is complete. Work has started on the engine.

Welcome aboard!

Open up the editing pane. At the bottom is a tray containing all the photos you have uploaded for that post. Click the 'X' to delete any unwanted photos.

You shouldn't miss too many. Not too long ago, the moderators went through all the build logs (an enormous task) and tagged all of the existing logs. Was it a chore? Yes, it was -- but y'all are worth it!

Sounds vaguely ominous! 😬 In this instance, I think any kind of doubling technique would adversely impact the scale of the part -- but your description of the process is intriguing! I can easily envision this conversation going down at the Coyle household later: Mrs. Coyle: "Honey, what are you burning?" Me: "Me? Nothing. Why?" Mrs. Coyle: "It smells like melting Ziploc bags in here." Me: "Hmmm. Can't imagine why." 😝

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If you like painted models better, then paint them. If a paying customer wants bare wood, then leave it bare!