Kawasaki Ki-61 Hien "Tony" by ccoyle - Halinski/Kartonowy Arsenal - 1/33 - CARD

[ccoyle]

Got the cockpit skinning all done. As you can see, there is a small gap along the bottom on the port side. Hope that doesn't come back to bite me in the butt! 😬

 

 

Next it was on to the fuselage cowling! Here are the two sides and top all prepped and assembled. These are some of the nicest machine gun channels I have yet built.

 

 

The three sub-assemblies have been glued together and are ready to go on the fuselage.

 

 

One thing you absolutely cannot do with a Halinski kit is simply throw the frames together and start skinning them. Every Halinski kit I have ever worked on (and, to be fair, this is true of many other kits as well) has required some fairing of the framing before skinning, and some Halinski kits have required a lot of fairing. This is one of those kits! So, it's a case of sand-fit-sand-fit-sand again-fit again-repeat. Finally, though, the job was done.

 

 

I noticed after I got this finished that one side is sanded down a little more than the other, but hopefully this will not be too noticeable on the finished model. And yes, all of my man-handling of the fuselage broke one of the frames where the wing will eventually slot in, but that will be easily repairable.

 

Thanks for stopping by!

[ccoyle]

Lower cowling completed.

 

[amateur]

What do you use for sanding? Just plain Sandpaper, or something more ‘refined’?

 

Jan

[ccoyle]

3 hours ago, amateur said:

What do you use for sanding?

 

Whatever works -- sandpaper, files, but mostly emery boards.

[ccoyle]

Forward fuselage skins done.

 

[James H]

2 minutes ago, ccoyle said:

Forward fuselage skins done.

 

What wizardry is this?

[realworkingsailor]

2 hours ago, James H said:

What wizardry is this?

 

Say it like Boromir 😆

[ccoyle]

One more fuselage section added. The fit between the two sections was extremely tight -- too tight, in fact -- the result of not adequately beveling the aft-most cockpit frame. While wracking my brain about how to fix this, a 'new' idea popped into my head, except it's probably not new, since our Polish friends have likely thought of this already. It occurred to me that the frames are made of pulp board (duh), and pulp board can easily be deformed. So, using the flat end of a pair of tweezers, I simply burnished the offending parts of the cockpit section until the aft fuselage section fit properly. We're talking about only a tiny amount of deformation needed to do the job, and it worked a treat.

 

 

You may recall I was worried earlier about some possible registration errors between sections as a result of not getting the cockpit skin aligned 100% correctly on this port side, but I'm very happy with how well the two sections have gone together. Overall I am very pleased with how this kit has gone together so far.

 

The next part of the build takes us to the fuselage section that houses the tail wheel well, so there is a bit of framing and other structural work to be done.

 

Cheers!