druxey

I also agree that Lee Valley makes very good planes. Veritas is top quality, made in Canada. If you're an American or European  you benefit from the dollar imbalance and can purchase these items at a very good price point. Plus Lee valley stands behind there stuff. You don't have to go through the Amazon 30 day warranty that's offered then it's yours, too bad if you have issues. Been down that road.

Greg, I hadn't noticed this before:
 

 
Anything look familiar?
 

Maybe. I have to move in the next few months so I'm not starting anything non digital.
 
If/when I do it would probably be in 1:8 to match Camel and SE5a kits I have.
 

Nice to see the most essential item in the shop: your coffee mug. Congrats on your new piece of kit.

The gravel was delivered today. He brought 6 tons. 
 

 
We only had to move 3 tons.
 

 
Grandkids have soccer tomorrow but maybe by Monday, weather permitting we may be ready for the first of five pours for the floor.

Well we got the rain… still coming down. We have a county wide power outage. So probably no gravel today. This creek is normally dry, it only fills with rain water from all the ridges. This morning I walked down hoping it hasn’t started uncovering the counties main water line. I can deal with no power for a while but no water is a completely different story:-)
 
 

The framers showed up again today. It’s starting to take shape.
 

 

 
Lucky Me! It’s supposed to rain for the next 5 days. That means the guys bringing the gravel can’t dig on their other jobs and can squeeze me in. I might be wheelbarrowing in the rain for a few days.
Thanks for all the likes!

Yesterday we had a productive day. With my wife’s help we got the ditch dug conduit run , cable installed and the ditch filled.
 

 

 
Then I spent the day cleaning up the dirt piles left behind from all the post holes that were dug. It’s supposed to rain for the next 5 or 6 days. The soil is mostly clay, when it’s stepped on it packs down hard. After the rain it would be impossible to work. So I packed the dirt in the cracks at the bottom to prevent the gravel from rolling out.
 

 
Today I’ll just need to get the cable run in the trusses of the garage and over to the electrical panel. After that we’ll be waiting for the gravel to get delivered.

Three young men’s progress today.
 

 
Tomorrow I’ll start running the electric service cable to it.

They did have trouble getting the trailer close enough. He had to go back down the drive and back up:-/
 

Framing materials for the shipyard showed up today!
 

 
We’ll have to see how much gets done today.

The time is finally here for a permanent Shipyard! I’ve hired a contractor to erect a pole structure by my design. 
 


It’s 12’x16’ with a 6/12 pitch salt box style. 
I didn’t realize at the time, there would be a 6”x6” post in the middle of the right side door. I started thinking if I needed that big of space to get something in. It would probably be heavier than I wanted to lift anyway. So that went away:-)
 
My part of the build is clearing the site, which I’ve worked a couple of days getting it ready.
 

 
 
 
This is a shot from the back side, after it is built. The next things I am responsible for doing, kinda make me feel like I’m going back to work:-) I’ve got to get a 100’ of service cable out of the garage, into the root filled ground and up in side the ship yard. The worst is yet to come. Since it’s being built in the deep woods, no one is willing to pour the concrete pad with out bringing a cement truck up here on our paved drive. So my wife and I are going to mix and pour the concrete with 80lb bags.
 


That’s making my back hurt just  looking at it:-)

Today, I finished the front wheel any difficulties and started with the rear wheel. After fiddling the spokes into the rim, I secured them with liquid mask and set the rim and spoked hub into the rim. Next, I inserted the spokes carefully into their holes in the rim, where some needed slight bending.
Then the troubles began, while I tried to add the firs spoke nipple, some spokes flipped out of their holes in the rim, nasty. It was caused by slight movement of the hub in the jig and therefor, I used some blue tac to fix the hub like shown on the picture. During applying the nipples, a straining task, two spokes came completely loose from the hub, caused by too small heads, which slipped through the hole. Somehow, I got them fiddled in with a lot of swearing. On the pic below, one is still missing, but I fixed it now.



Cheers Rob

Next, I started with the wheels, an extra set made by Tamiya to substitute the not too shabby kit wheels. But what looks better than plastic, right, metal. The rims are turned and the spokes are pre lengthened and pre bent. I recommend to study the manual very thoroughly and check twice, as it is easy to make mistakes. There is a line engraved into the jig for alignment with the valve and I nearly interpreted a cast blemish for the marking.

First you add the spokes to the ABS hub and roughly align them correctly. The manual calls for using whit glue to fix them temporarily, but I thought, I try masking fluid instead, Worked great and will be easy to remove.



After the second of four sets are aligned in the opposite direction, it´s time to put the rim and the spoked hub into the jig. With a pair of tweezer and very light bending of the spokes, you insert them into the rims holes.



Finally, you add the spoke nipples from the outside. I used an old, very sharp pair of tweezers for that, holding the nipples by their middle hole and inserted them. Sometimes, a little wiggling with the spoke was necessary to insert the nipple properly. Then the nipples were secured with CA and whoops, half a wheel is finished.

 

Cheers Rob

The engine got a bad hair day with the tubing. I used the supplied vinyl tube, albeit it may be a bit on the thick side, but I want a relatively quick build and not hassle with preparing all the connectors with tiny brass rods. Not much of it will be visible, anyway. The frame was sprayed with Tamiya LP gloss black, which again was perfect with it´s shiny finish. The light brown "things" might be capacitors, if I´m not wrong, which will be connected with the spark plug wires.
The footrests are made from turned aluminum and are supplied with the original kit, nice touch, Tamiya.


 
Cheers Rob

Love your color selection. Looks like a working engine.

I started with the engine and I have to say, this kit is absolutely fantastic, even by Tamiya´s standards. I built their big F4-U and the 1/48 P-38, which were excellent kits, but the Honda is even better. 
The engine is very complex, but so well engineered and the parts are fitting perfectly. The cooling ribs are a piece of art and are only possible to be casted in plastic, as there are several thin parts, which get stacked onto each other, genius.
I used Extreme Metal colors for the engine, matte aluminum for the block, titanium for the oil pan and other parts and a mix from titanium and copper for the carburetors. The air funnels are turned aluminum and the clutch consists from PE clutch discs and a pre fabricated metal cage.
I used a brown panel liner for accentuation and painted all the screwheads with silver.











Cheers Rob

 

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. 😑

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.

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!

I will enter 3 models in the upcoming Pelicon 2025 IPMS show coming up April 26, 2025. of course, the Porsche Carrera GT is one of the three to be entered along with two motorcycles:
 
1:12 Tamiya Kawasaki Ninja H2
 

 
1:12 Honda RC166 Grand Prix
 

Thank you. I am so glad I found this hobby.

Yes, already received the credit
 
 

I only have photos of this build as it was completed rather quickly.