Mitsubishi A6M5a Rei-sen by ccoyle - Halinski/Kartonowy Arsenal - 1/33 - CARD - Allied code name "Zeke"

[ccoyle]

I have managed to do some very unsatisfactory seam work on the rear fuselage and will now have to go about seeing what I can do to doctor things up. Not the result I had hoped for. 🫤

[ccoyle]

Okay, I got the fuselage completed and all the seams patched up, and I think they look pretty darn good! Of course, I also used my camera's onboard "magic eraser" tool on the photo. I should've thought of that trick earlier! 😂

 

[James H]

The compound curves in that fuselage look absolutely perfect. I'd love to be able to do stuff like this.

[ccoyle]

3 minutes ago, James H said:

I'd love to be able to do stuff like this.

"Magic eraser" -- I'm tellin' ya, that's the secret!

[ccoyle]

Completed the vertical stabilizer and rudder. Here we have the rudder framing and cladding. I added a joiner strip from scrap card.

 

And here's the finished assembly.

 

And, just for fun, here's the same shot of the rudder after being massaged with "magic erase". 🤫

[ccoyle]

Horizontal stabs and framing . . .

 

 

. . . and glued to fuselage.

 

[ccoyle]

Stabilizer fillets and elevators added.

 

 

A curious factoid: the diagrams show a trim tab on the rudder which the kit parts lacked. I did some web searching to see which was correct -- turns out the A6M2 had a rudder trim tab, but the A6M5 did not.

[Landlubber Mike]

Looking really good Chris!

[ccoyle]

I have started in on the Sakae-21 engine, which is going to be real challenge. The paper engine supplied in the kit consists of 250+ parts, not including the exhausts, so one can understand why I opted for the resin engine, which consists of only 15 parts, not including the push rods and exhaust stubs.

 

 

Some hurdles to overcome:

• Liberating the resin parts from their sprues. This takes forever because of the care that must be taken when handling the brittle resin.
• The resin engine includes a distributor ring, but obviously no spark plug wiring. Since it seems dopey to include the former without the latter, I will need to add the wiring. Which leads us to the next hurdle . . .
• . . . the resin cylinder heads differ slightly from the Sakae-21s I am seeing online, which means there will be a little guess work about where to attach the spark plug wires to the cylinder heads.
• The kit includes a bulkhead that forms the shape of the cowling. Most of the kit engine block attaches to the front of the bulkhead, but a small slice goes on the back and acts as a spacer between the fuselage and engine assembly. This is obviously different than the structure of the resin engine, which means I'll have to remove the white portion of that bulkhead and pass the resin block through it. I'll have to position the 'spokes' of the bulkhead precisely on the engine block so that the block is in exactly the same position between the fuselage and cowl opening as it would have been when using the card parts.
• The resin exhaust stubs (not shown) are grouped together differently than is shown in the kit's build diagrams; the resin stubs are molded together in groups of three or four, while the aircraft depicted in the kit has mostly individual stubs with a coupe of paired sets. I have not been able to find any pictures of any aircraft powered by Sakae radials that have their exhaust stubs grouped in the manner provided by the resin set. Most likely I will have to cut apart the resin stubs (which is tricky, considering how brittle the resin is) and mount them individually.
• On the kit bulkhead, you can see a ring of 14 white dots -- these are where the kit's printed stubs should attach. The resin stubs are designed to pass all the way forward into their respective cylinders. I have an idea for how to pull this off relatively painlessly, but the plan hinges on the separated stubs having the proper bends to reach their cylinders. In any event, most of the stubs will not be visible once the cowl is on, so a second option would be to simply use only the portion of each stub that is externally visible.
• Speaking of attaching to cylinders, the resin kit does not include the air intake pipes. This is not a huge problem, since they would not be visible on the finished model anyway.
• Finally, I'll need to settle on a paint scheme. The Sakae-21s seen online exhibit a variety of schemes.

Ultimately, the idea here is not to replicate a Sakae-21 in every possible detail (I'll leave that to the plastic fanatics), but simply to up the 'wow' factor a notch on the finished model. Hopefully I can accomplish that while maintaining my sanity.

[ccoyle]

The parts are now separated from their sprues. Most online pictures show black cylinder heads with aluminum valve covers. Blocks and gear boxes are shown in varying shades of bluish-gray, from light to dark. I have settled on a light blue shade and have grunged it up with weathering chalk. I have tried several different washes and chalks to try and highlight the cooling fins, but nothing has been satisfactory so far.

 

[ccoyle]

The engine block and cylinder heads are now together -- still have push rods and wiring left to do. As i mentioned earlier, there are no intake pipes for the engine. Those would potentially be visible on the finished motor, but they would be a huge pain to make from scratch, so I probably will not add them. With the help of a fellow card modeler from Poland I was able to solve the riddle of how the first pair of inner and outer cowling rings went together. The eventual mating of the cowl and engine required removing the entire center portion of the cowl bulkhead, as shown. The engine will have to go into the cowl and then the bulkhead added afterward, but that is down the road a bit.