Beautiful work on the instruments. You know they're there, right? Work above and beyond! I envy you the ability to actually eyeball the Bronze Green yourself. Great stuff!
What did the guy in the second seat do? I thought the radio/gunner downstairs aimed the bombs, not sure about the torp.

Thanks Bernard ! Yes I was very fortunate to have actually seen the "Bronze Green" in person. It's a very unique color indeed...

The "second seat" was for use by the "radio man / ventral gunner / bombardier". Some sources say that the first 50 Avengers produced also had a second set of flight controls in this position, while other sources say that just the gauges were present and the controls were deleted.

On the TBF-1C this second seat was removed and radio equipment was placed in this space. On the early TBF-1 that I saw I didn't remember the seat being present. But it may have been already removed as the restoration was well underway.

Here's a few pictures of this morning's progress.

I glued in all of the parts mentioned in the instructions for step 1. Only later did I realize that I glued the parts into the wrong fuselage half ! Oh well. So far, so good... but I still have to complete the rear tail section interior bits.

This photo below shows how everything fits together.

The radio compartment below:

The pilot and radio operators positions:

The bulkhead and turret sub-frame.

Close up of the pilot's cockpit.

Here's a small difference between the early TBF-1's. The radio operator's seat was mounted along the length of the fuselage. Here's how mine looks after I modified it by cutting away the back rest.

On later model planes, the seat was moved a little closer to the radios and was oriented from side to side as it is depicted in the kit parts.

Here I am holding the fuselage halves together to see if there are any problems. So far the fit is looking good...

This is a cool picture... It shows the radio compartment as you are looking into the rear side crew entry door.

This is the last photo for now... It shows the remaining parts left to install in the rear fuselage section. This is the next step...

To be continued...

Tonight I completed my mission for today and finished the fuselage.

Before I buttoned up the sides of the fuselage, I wanted to make some lap belts for both the front and middle seats. I learned something about these during my SBD / Richard Best Midway build. Apparently US Naval aircraft only had a lap belt at this time. The shoulder harnesses came along shortly afterwards.

So here is my humble attempt at reproducing the lap belts:

The next step was to install the rear most bulkheads. One bulkhead has the flare chutes and the other actually mounts the tail wheel assembly.

This photo shows the arrestor hook installed in the "Raised" position. The other small hole located at the lower base of the Fin / Rudder is for installing the hook in the "Lowered" position.

At this point it was really starting to shape up... Here's a photo below that shows all of the progress up until now.

Next up was the tail wheel assembly and rear "Stinger" machine gun...

Followed by a few last photos before the other half of the fuselage gets glued on...

Since I had everything completed and the fit was spot on, I went ahead and glued the other half of the fuselage in position...

Once that set up enough, I decided to glue the engine assembly and the elevators / stabilizers in place. Both of these items had been previously assembled.

It's starting to look more like a TBF Avenger ! I'm really pleased with how it has turned out so far.

I have a little filler work to do on the upper seam of the cowling, and I still need to reposition the landing light. Once that is done, I can glue the wings and cowling in place...

As usual, comments are encouraged.

I started out earlier tonight by sanding down the green putty after it had been allowed to dry overnight.

Once the sanding was completed on the cowling, I sprayed it with the sand able gray primer to fill in any imperfections that may still remain. Here's how the upper seam on the cowling looks now... Please keep in mind that this will get sanded again at least one more time with a very fine grit wet and dry sand paper. After these pictures were taken I restored the panel lines and rivets. Some of the detail was lost when it was filled in with the primer paint. That has been taken care of now.

The underside of the wing received the same treatment. This area will require several coats to fill in the imperfections to make it look as it should.

While the primer paint was drying, I decided to tackle the rear gun for the turret. This was pretty tricky as the instruction drawings were not exact on the placement of how these parts fit. It took some time to figure it out. It also didn't help that these parts had been pre painted which interfered with the glue, even though I scraped off most of the paint in the glue joints before any glue was applied...

Since I have several of these AM Avenger kits, and one just happened to be open and sitting next to the work bench, I decided to save myself some future trouble and assembled the rear gun for the other AM Avenger. I did this before any paint was sprayed... The fit of the parts and the gluing process was much nicer this time.

You can see the gray unpainted turret gun parts on the right side of this picture.

and on the bottom of this picture below.

Now that I have figured out most of the little trouble spots on this AM Avenger kit, I may go ahead a pre assemble these small sections in the other one that is sitting next to the work bench...

I hope you all had a nice Good Friday.

Please stay tuned for updates, and comments are encouraged.

Take care...

I have read about the problems that people have had with installing the turret. I'm not really looking forward to doing this part. Thanks for the heads up though Bernard.

Today was really good for getting things done on my TBF. But there was also a minor problem too. Luckily it wasn't too bad.

Please follow along and I will explain.

I had to apply a small amount of filler on the bottom of the wing since a tiny chunk popped out when I was finishing up sanding on this area.

The cowling came out very nice however.

Once I finished the sanding work, I sprayed on some Light Gray on the bottom of the wings.

Here's how the conversion of the landing light turned out.

Since I was spraying the color I decided that I would mask off the bomb Bay Area and spray paint the fuselage too.

Once this dried I just had to test fit the wings in position on the fuselage. This is where I realized that this plane is going to be a decent size once completed. I know that the real one is massive once you get close enough to it.

Since I was on a roll, I masked the demarcation line between the Light Gray and the Blue Gray using a tip from Rick Wilkes and his wonderful adhesive putty. This stuff really works great ! I'll be using this one again.

This is the famous "Grumman Wave" on the forward fuselage.

And the rear fuselage. Here you can see how I used the clear window glue as a masking agent on the rear windows.

And how it looks after I removed the clear glue from the window openings.

Since I was REALLY on a roll now, I decided to go ahead and install the landing gear and wings.

The "Turkey" is on its own feet now !

So I placed the red and white striped rudder on next.

And that's when it happened... the minor setback occurred. I was touching up the propeller and the colors started to run together. Apparently I had mixed Tamiya paint with Model Master paints and they didn't get along too well once I sprayed Dull Coat over them.

But that gave me an excuse to paint some more Props in anticipation for future builds.

Can you name these props ? The two props on the left side are for the TBF Avenger. One is the one that the paint ran together on.

The rest of the props are all single engine US Navy WW2 fighter planes and all start with the designation "F"...

There are two identical props on the top right side of the photo. These are from two separate kits and fit the same type of plane.

Anyhow, this is where I'm calling it a day. And a good day it was.

Thanks for following along with this one.

Happy Easter everyone.

Take care.

It took some digging but here's your Easter Egg,

http://web.archive.org/web/20090327114353/http://www.accurate-miniatures.com:80/builds/avenger/avengerturret.shtml

That my friend is the address for Bill Bosworth's directions for installing the Avenger Turret, with pictures of his hands and everything. More proof that nothing posted on the internet is ever really deleted.

This is the address for the support section from AM's old website that has all the build articles, instructions etc.

http://web.archive.org/web/20090210023605/http://www.accurate-miniatures.com/support.shtml

Feel free to wallow in a little nostalgia when going thru it, I,know I do lol

That is some real modeling!

Good news !

I just finished the turret... and it popped right in without any fuss... it must have taken about 10 seconds to do it.

I simply used the directions on the link above that Rick Wilkes posted.

Thanks Rick !

Here's a few construction photos of the turret...

in this picture below, I have everything painted. I also painted the outer edge of the armored glass plate that went in front of the gunner's face. The real one was like this... If you look close enough you can see the edge of the glass is green.

Here everything is test fitted in position to see just how it will eventually go.

These photos below shows the interior parts for the second turret that I am building for another AM Avenger kit. I decided to glue these parts together first and paint them later. It worked out perfectly this way.

Then the moment of truth ...

Following the link to the instructions that Rick posted above, I simply followed along with the photo sequence and the turret was installed in a matter of seconds.

You want to make sure that the turret assembly has dried very well before you attempt this part. If not it could pop apart easily.

Then the last step was to install the turret blanking plate. Here you can see it is installed between the turret and the rear cockpit bulkhead.

The TBF is getting much closer to being finished. I'm going to eat dinner and get back to working on it. All of the canopy parts have been painted and are ready to install.

To be continued...

Comments are encouraged.