Vought SB2U Vindicator by ccoyle - Kartonowa Kolekcja - 1/33 - CARD

[ccoyle]

I started adding the wingtips, left wing first, but had quite a bit of trouble getting the tip pieces to close correctly. It dawned on me that there was no interior framing here, as there is in some kits. It's possible I simply overlooked them somewhere, but I don't think I did. In any case, I decided to make a couple of such pieces from scratch.

 

 

The left tip is not closed up at this point, so I can still get the framing piece in there. The hardest part of making the framing was getting the left and right versions correct. I already knew in advance that the two pieces are mirror images of each other, but inadvertently made two right wing pieces anyway. Had to make a third piece to get the correct left wing version. 😑

[amateur]

Sometimes I think you love card-planes better than card-ships.

Is the pattern of the ribs just rendering, ordid you do something to enhance it?

 

Jan

[ccoyle]

6 hours ago, amateur said:

Sometimes I think you love card-planes better than card-ships.

 

I love whatever subject I happen to be working on at the moment. 🙂

 

6 hours ago, amateur said:

Is the pattern of the ribs just rendering, ordid you do something to enhance it?

 

That is just the artwork, which is very good. One interesting feature of the kit is that the fuselage bulkhead that goes where the fuselage on the real aircraft transitions from all-metal to fabric-covered tubing is actually a polyhedral; that way, if the modeler chooses, he can emboss the printed 'tubing' on the aft fuselage skin and get a more realistic fuselage shape. That is rather beyond my skills. Plus, once that bulkhead gets beveled it is more or less oval -- at least in my experience.

[ccoyle]

Wingtips finished, ailerons built and attached, and wing mated to fuselage.

 

[yvesvidal]

It is a big bird, for sure. Superb construction as always.

 

Yves

[ccoyle]

One down, one to go -- port fillet is done. Fillets are always tricky to do because they curve and bend in multiple directions. Parts for the starboard fillet are shown for comparison.

 

[ccoyle]

Somewhere along the way, I picked up a little bit of error creep, with the result being that the starboard dorsal fillet didn't line up well with the ventral part of the fillet, producing a large-ish gap.

 

 

The fix for this included surgically removing the fillet from the ventral skin, cutting off its joiner tabs, and moving it over slightly before reattaching. The seam still didn't end up being very good on the top side, but it will have to do.

 

[Danstream]

Good luck with the modification. The work so far is very nice.

Best regards,

Dan

[ccoyle]

1 hour ago, Danstream said:

Good luck with the modification.

 

Oh, it's done already. Did you not notice? Good! 🙂

[Danstream]

1 hour ago, ccoyle said:

Oh, it's done already

Brilliant! from the upper side, although it seems you have some reservations, I couldn't notice big blemishes. Now rereading your text, perhaps you mean that the edge of the fillet panel doesn't run side-by-side with the edge of the black anti-slip strip. But that is hardly noticeable for one that doesn't know all the fine details of the build.

So, I can say it is a good save.

Dan

[ccoyle]

Horizontal stabilizer added. The framing went together lickety-split, followed by some thin CA to stiffen the structure and a little sanding to get the outboard taper correct.

 

[ccoyle]

And now with elevators.

 

[ccoyle]

Empennage is complete.

 

 

Work has started on the engine.

[Old Collingwood]

Looking Super Chris.

 

OC.

[yvesvidal]

Chris, this is superb. And what a treat to not have to paint: I find that to be the most difficult (for me) in building a model.

I truly love the look and proportions of that Vindicator, done in an era where planes were designed to really fly and not just be a cockpit pushed by big engines (basically a rock when the engine shut down).

 

Yves

[ccoyle]

45 minutes ago, yvesvidal said:

And what a treat to not have to paint

 

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.

[Canute]

Yves, you described what the F-4 is. A refrigerator strapped between two J-79s, going Mach 2. 😄