Yep, the sandind/filling loop can go on and on and csn be irritating, my friend @gblair. The tail looks great noe, though! "Looks like glass" seems to be an ample performer!

This "Look like glass" seems to be nice product! Very nice putty work on tail! Putty are always challenge!

I have to find it in my hobby Store.

@gblair, thanks for sharing, George.
Will try to get one of "looks like glass" myself

Thanks, John (@johnb) and Spiros (@fiveten). So far, I really like the "Looks Like Glass". It dries to a really tough surface.

Got a little bit done. The fuselage is all closed up, and all of glass has been added except for the nose glass. I am building this in sub-parts: each of the wings, the elevators, and the fuselage were all completed separately. This allows me to putty, sand, smooth, and then restore panel lines without worrying about interference from some other major part.

I added the wings to the fuselage over the last couple of days. I didn't want to deal with trying to keep two long wings in-place while they dried, so I did one wing first, let it dry, then the second wing. Elevators will come tomorrow. One wing fit perfectly, but the second wing was a problem-child. The trial fitting showed that the wing was thicker at the wing root than the attachment point on the fuselage. I tried several things, but in the end, there was going to be a step where the wing meets the fuselage. It made sense to adjust the fit so that the top of the wing matched the top attachment point on the fuselage and have the step underneath the plane. I took some plastic off the tab that holds the wing to the fuselage, which allowed me to adjust the top of the wing down to meet the attachment point on the fuselage. I can deal with the step on the belly tomorrow.

Painted the props and the engines today. After I got done, I was examining a photo of the plane that I am replicating, and noticed that the outer 1/3 of each prop had the paint worn off. I figure the Mediterranean operating environment for the plane was similar to Pacific Islands, with lots of sand that scoured the paint off the props during takeoff and landing. It crossed my mind to repaint the props to match, but I didn't think the fragile props would stand up well to the process to remove the paint and then repaint them. In the end I decided to leave them alone and save the paint-damaged props for another build.

Well, that's it for today. I am letting the glued wings set up completely, and then I can deal with any putty/sanding at the wing roots. Getting close to paint time finally. Thanks for dropping by. Cheers.

2 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Looking great, my friend @gblair! I believe you can weather the blades as much as you like: the paint might be worn off in the pic, meaning that you can go for those looks, but you can also go for something "lighter", presumably representing the looks at earlier times.
Love your jig! Looks scary enough and reminds me of some of my (even scarier) "jigs" 🙂

Thanks, John (@johnb), Spiros (@fiveten), and Bernard (@lis). Hopefully everything will be solid today and I can take the plane out of its precarious jig. I have found that doing something like this takes the plane off the workbench and reduces that chance of getting bumped while doing something else. I usually only use regular plastic glue, either the thin Tamiya glue in the small bottle, or the thicker stuff like Testors or Revell Contacta. I sometimes use superglue, sometimes with an accelerator, on smaller parts. The Airfix B-17 has some nice girders to hold the wings in place, but not this one. I thought about creating some areas where the paint has worn off, but I worried that the black paint already on the props would make the effect look obvious. I then thought about taking off some of the black paint, but that creates a concern that the props are so fragile that they might be damaged during the process. Still thinking about it. Cheers everyone.

1 attached image. Click to enlarge.