George R Blair Jr (@gblair),

Glad your doing 1/48 maybe not the gentleman's scale but, you can have, hold and see what your doing. Monogram captured the look and soul of this a/c. One thing I learned about the exhaust systems is through reading restoration projects of B-25s being back dated to Warbirds. The give away or you know by looking at a Warbird that it was either a trainer or had been bought for agricultural uses or fire fighting by the exhaust set up. I can think of one museum that restored their aircraft back to individual pipes for each jug. One mag had a story on how you can tell a B-25 instructor from all the rest . They talk loud and are hard of hearing. Being stuck between two radial engines does that. I believe, North America went to individual pipes for the speed advantage, early C and D had the collectors. I will be following your adventure and discoveries in B-25 history and modeling with interest.

Thanks, Stephen (@stephen-w-towle). I have been doing some more reading on the exhaust systems. It seems that going to individual exhausts increased the drag and slowed the top speed almost 10 knots. They streamlined the exhaust covers and gained some of that back. I suspect that using a collective exhaust gave some of that speed back. I also read that the Canadians used a double collective exhaust system on some of their B-25s, and they had two large exhausts on the outboard of each engine. Now that I am clued into the different exhaust systems, I have been noticing that many of the warbirds have the modified exhaust system. I have read that many of the B-25 warbirds came from former trainers. I have the same hearing problem from flying C-141s for 20 years. My hearing in my left ear is much worse than my right ear, even though we always wore headsets that supposedly provided hearing protection.

Thanks, Walt (@luftwaffe-birdman). I have enjoyed this conversion, so far. I belatedly decided to get some interior stuff, so I have an Eduard PE set coming, as well as an Eduard 3D set, and another 3D set from Kits-World. I didn't order them until after I had already started the conversion. I am stalled on the interior until I can see what each set has, then I can build up some of the interior with the sets as a guide. I plan to use one of them for this conversion, and save the others for later conversions.

Thanks for the info and photo, Stephen (@stephen-w-towle). No thunder to steal. I think we are all learning the finer points of late B-25 exhaust at the same time. Notice in the photo that the individual exhaust fairings extend past the midline, so there is at least one and maybe two exhausts on the outboard side of the bottom of the engine. Seven of the exhaust fairings in the Revell kit are separate pieces, which should make it easier to add the fairings where they are needed.

1 attached image. Click to enlarge.

Amazing job so far, my friend @gblair! The interior shines already with all the extra job being performed.

Great scratch building improvements on the interior, George @gblair
Together with the Eduard set it will look impressive.

Great work on cockpit!

I think I have all of the interiors ready to go. I added the inner framing to the cockpit and nose section, then added the boxes for the instruments. When everything was done, I wanted to use flat black as the starting point for painting the interior. I sprayed Vallejo flat black from a spray can over to bring all the different parts together. This will also serve as a good start for pre-shading. I hope to paint the green interior tomorrow. Cheers.

5 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Thanks, John (@johnb). Acrylic putty is great. You let it dry, and then you can reshape it or remove it use water or alcohol. I discovered it to fill seams, but it works great for other stuff.