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

[ccoyle]

Okay, I'm trying something a little different with this model. Usually I glue the wheel wells into the wing framing and then do the skins. I've gotten some pretty unimpressive well-to-wing fits with this method. So this time I'm going to try gluing the wells to the wing skins first. I've already done this with the left wing. The risk here is that for some reason the glued well may not fit into the framing properly, however, i did a test fit and everything looks good so far.

 

Here's the pre-folded wing skin, wheel well (with landing light), and shell casing ejection port. The opening for the landing light has not been completely cut out, because doing so would leave an extremely narrow strip of skin between the opening and the wheel well; I did some preliminary cuts around the opening but will make the final small cuts after the wing has been skinned.

 

 

 

And here's how the well-to-wing fit looks from the outside. Looks pretty good, I think!

 

 

Cheers!

[ccoyle]

I started skinning the left wing yesterday. First I glued the framing to the lower wing skin, paying close attention to the instructions that the frames should sit 0.3mm forward of the aileron cutout and 0.7mm forward of the flap edge. Seriously? A tolerance like that is virtually impossible to measure and mark with the tools I have on hand. So I guestimated.

 

When I was ready to glue the top side down, I discovered I could not get the flap edges to meet. Then I remembered that I had forgotten to sand the wing framing before skinning -- doh!! I was still able to do some sanding at this point, but despite all of my efforts, I could not get the edges to meet, so I decided to go with whatever result I could manage. Ultimately, the top edge came up about 1.5mm short of meeting the bottom edge. So I did some cosmetic surgery with my paint markers. The greens don't match exactly, but the idea here is to camouflage the surgery as best as possible. I have to keep in mind that this is an artistic rendering of a Ki-61 and not an actual Ki-61! 

 

Anyways, here are the before-and-after pictures:

 

  

 

Cheers!

[Dave_E]

Don’t see a thing… except a beautiful wing! 👍😀

[ccoyle]

49 minutes ago, Dave_E said:

Don’t see a thing… except a beautiful wing!

 You are not looking hard enough, but thanks anyway!

 

The right wing is now skinned as well. Interestingly, I wound up about 1.5mm short of matching the flap edges again. Much as I hate to think it, I think this might be a design flaw -- it probably would not have been a factor if the flaps were displayed down instead of up. I don't see how I could have avoided the error, since the placement of the upper skin is contingent on the location of the wheel wells relative to the internal wing framing (which is why the error is the same amount on both sides). Had I done my usual technique of gluing the wells into the framing first and then adding the skins, the 1.5mm mismatch likely would have simply shifted to the region around the wheel wells. Honestly, this option was probably by far the easier cosmetic fix. Note also that the cannon breech blisters have been added.

 

 

Here's a test fit of the wing and fuselage. It's quite tight -- too tight in fact. The wing will not even seat properly at the time the photo was taken. This will require only some very minor knife work to fix, so no big deal.

 

 

After I took this photo I opened up the landing light port, and the light turned out to also not be seated properly. Again, don't know what I could have done to easily fix that, since the wing skin position was determined by the fit of the wheel wells inside the framing. The error is not too noticeable, thankfully.

 

Cheers!