popeye the sailor

First step in making the wings was adding the remaining internal frames.
 

 
Each skin is a single piece, shaped, folded, and glued with the help of a joiner strip.
 

 
Each wing structure is then slipped into its finished sheath. No fillets have been added yet.
 

 
That's it for now.

A bit more progress. I needed to take a slight detour and make the rudder so that I could confirm the positioning of the vertical stabilizer skin. Unlike many kits, the rudder has no internal framing.
 

 
And then the vertical stabilizer was skinned.
 

 
And that's it for the moment. Next up will be the wings' internal framing, but first I need to take a break and watch the Champions League final (I'm strictly a neutral for this match).

When canopy glue came out it (a long time ago) was used to glue clear canopies to R/C aircraft models. I learned quickly I had to literally tear/cut a model apart to break the bond between canopy and airframe once it set and cured. A very strong glue and it dries clear.

Yep the brand they sell is known as Formula 560....
 
A go to glue for many thing....

Great for gluing PE to plastic and resin or wood to plastic or resin, too.

Yup. I like it, obviously -- great for more than just canopies.

You mentioned canopy glue again. Did you say once you got from Hobby Lobby?

I cant get my nut round  what you  do with  paper/card.
 
OC.

That came out very nice indeed. Wouldn't know it was a patch if you hadn't said something about it.

Here's the patched-up seam. I first filled it without about three passes of canopy glue, then applied a thin wash of appropriate edge color, followed by a shot of matte clear spray to take the shine off the filler. It doesn't look too bad -- certainly not the Polish Touch, but better than the untreated gap looked. Naturally, bright lighting and closeup photography makes it look worse than it does at normal viewing distances and lighting.
 

 
And here's the rest of the spine.
 

I have confidence you will getter done Chris.

Me, too!

I'm interested to see how that seam gap is remedied.

Yep, they are all card. They are part of the laser-cut frames set, cut from what the Poles call "beer mat" stock -- it is the same stuff used commercially to make disposable coasters.
 
On to skinning the spine. The kit includes joiner strips, which is nice -- I would have made them myself but the kit spared me the effort.
 

 
I glued the first four pieces together using their joiner strips, then glued the entire piece first along one side . . .
 

 
. . . and then along the other. The color registration is good.
 

 
I got a bit of a seam gap on the other side, which I'm going to try to remediate. We'll see how that goes.

Are all those ribs card? They look like wood.

Framing for dorsal hump and vertical stabilizer has been added -- calling it a night. Not all of the transverse bulkheads come up to the height of the dorsal profile piece; I'm not sure what the deal is there, but I'll find out once I start adding the skins.
 

Not uncommon for card planes, the fuselage consists of a number of conic sections.
 

 

Chalk it up to damage some time ago new panel/paint.

Sort of a wood/card hybrid.  Always enjoy watching your progress on these card models, Chris.
 
Gary

With the cockpit closed up, it's time to start skinning the forward fuselage, beginning with the wheel wells. I'm now committed to eventually building the Wildcat's nightmarish landing gear. 😬  To this point, I've been following the sequence of diagrams pretty closely, but for anyone who decides to build this kit later, it's a good idea to add the flat skins of the wheel wells before gluing the frames together. You can still do it afterwards, but it's a little trickier, because that central girder is part of one of the frames, and it clearly gets in the way.
 

 
Then we have the first two fuselage skins added. Fit and registration has been good, although there seems to have been a deliberate omission of certain joiner strips. I added homemade ones -- no biggie.
 

 
There's a very slight color mismatch between the second and third skins, but strangely enough it's only on one side. The parts came from the same sheet, too, so it's kind of weird. But the difference is not as noticeable as it was for the GPM Hellcat kit, so I won't complain. Once again, the fit for this part was very good.
 

 
I then decided to skip ahead a bit and add some of the wing skeleton parts, just to stiffen up the spindly spars a bit. They were beginning to get uncomfortably wobbly from being jostled around. Interestingly, there are multiple errors in the numbering of these parts between the diagrams and the laser-cut frets. This hasn't been an issue so far because it's pretty obvious which parts are which and where they're supposed to go.
 

 
That's all for now!

I can’t get over the level of detail and small stuff! Those rudder pedals are amazing. So is that left hand side console! 👍😀

All the cockpit components ready to add to frame.
 

 
All closed up now.
 

Starboard side instruments completed.
 

I’m with you, wrong word on my part. 👍😀

To be clear, it's not a quality issue with this kit. The kit is purposely designed for intermediate modelers, therefore its detail level is not that of a Halinski or Card Army kit, but the quality has been fine so far.