Excellent job so far, my friend @gblair! Effectively overcoming the kit's glitches.

Nice work so far George (@gblair). I'm with you on the pitot tube survivability. My Fury had this same setup. The only saving grace was that it was on the outer wings which are separate from the main assembly because I will be folding them. It survived until I started painting and then had to be re-attached.

I think the trick to good glue joints and seams is to glue it in sections with wait times between sections. You can then focus on getting the best alignment on each section without worrying about getting everything else together before the glue dries. It definitely reduces the amount of seam work required.

Nice work, George. I built that kit in its FJ-2 guise and found it generally pleasant, if not super accurate.

Exactly what I do as well, Carl. @clipper
I also glue large areas (such as fuselage and wings) in sections, using fast drying Tamiya cement.
Just hold the pieces together and let the cement flow along the seam, works perfectly with minimal seam in most cases.

I haven't gotten a lot done in the last few days thanks to the weather. We had several days of heavy rain, hail, high winds, and a tornado or two. I don't like to use my airbrush when it is really humid (like when it is raining). So, now the rain has passed, but these storms are always a one-two punch for me. Everything gets really wet, then mold breaks out (which apparently I am very allergic to), and then I spend a week trying to get over a sinus infection. This time both my wife and I have sinus infections. The weird things is that I didn't have any allergies at all until my mid-40s.

I have managed to get the model to the point where I can paint it. This model is a case of mistaken identity. It is supposed to be an F-86E, but the more I work on it, the more it looks like an FJ Fury. The kit was originally designed to allow either a Sabre or a Fury using the same basic components. This create some problems. The fuselage has a cut-out for the arresting hook, but for the Sabre you get to cover the area with an ill-fitting panel. The canopy rail has indentions that would workperfectly for the FJ canopy, but we get to use plastic pieces to make it look like a Sabre. The worst problem is that the canopy and the nose look more like a Fury than a Sabre, with no easy way to fix the problem. Control stick was a funny problem. When you add it to the cockpit floor, the handle sits higher than the instrument panel and the canopy rails. I cut the bottom third of it off and now it looks better.

I hope to paint tomorrow. I want to try using Tamiya Silver from a spray can for the initial finish. Experiments have been positive. More tomorrow. Cheers everyone.

10 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Despite the identity crises, good progress has been made, George @gblair
Those are some serious weather threats you had, glad all of them passed with out too many issues for you.

Nice progress on this “Jekyll & Hyde” kit! 😉
Weather over here is not as impetuous as with you, but we can surely do with less rain and some more sunshine. Spring was mostly grey and wet. I think John @johnb can agree with this observation.

Thanks, Alfred (@alfred) and Carl (@clipper). I have some Navy planes in the queue, but I think my next model may be an early B-17.

Carl is right about the weather. The lakes around here provide drinking water for the cities, so you start to worry when the lakes are only 50% full. I wish it would rain a lot more, but I can do without the grapefruit-sized hail, 70 mph winds, and tornadoes. These sorts of things were rare up until recently, now we get them almost every time there are thunderstorms.