After a couple days away from the bench because of other life activities, as well as a bit of burn out after the episode with the PE process, I got back into building the Mohawk. Not much yet, but something that needs to be done before I can continue with the remainder of the build, namely getting the fuselage together.

You would think this was an relatively quick task, and for the most part, the Clear Prop fuselage and components fit together quite well. I had to do a bit of adjusting to get the cockpit to fit. I suppose that's the price that's paid to get all this extra detailing. But it went in well, just required taking it slow to let certain glued areas dry a little bit before moving on to the next glued area.

However, this kit has two parts that are less common in some kits, the upper fuselage forward of the cockpit, and a bulkhead for the engine, both of which have to be assembled afterwards, and until they are in place and glued, make handling the fuselage a bit tricky.

The engine bulkhead was fine, although you have to be careful because it doesn't have a positive location making it easy to accidentally get it in and rotated slightly out of position. I didn't have that happen thankfully, but it did threaten to do this while gluing up.

The upper fuselage piece however was a different story. I am not sure where the problem lay, but this part would not press into position. Possibly, the fact that it's curved and had maybe been molded at the bottom of it's tolerance range was the issue. Or perhaps I got something in the cockpit not quite right. Certainly, tolerances on this kit are exceptionally tight and you have to make sure to clean all joints of any paint and minor flash. But there was still some interference, requiring me to remove the part twice after gluing before I got it to fit well enough to glue permanently. You can see I have tape in place to hold it down while the glue dries, but there will be some seam work to do here.

What I am glad about is that I did not yet do the louvers on this top fuselage piece, because they would have almost certainly been damaged in the glue up process. Fortunately, the technique I came up with for the louvers isn't affected by having the part in place.

None of this is to say anything bad about this kit. I think this kit is one of the finest I've encountered so far. It was just this one little area which I should have test fit better before gluing. Coming up, the wings which is where most of the conversion work on this kit will occur.

Great that everything fited, my friend @clipper! All good!

Good to see that everything fitted in the end, Carl @clipper
A wise decision to wait with the louvers.

I've been working on two different projects for the last several days. The P-47N which I am foiling, and this RAF Curtiss Mohawk. I finally have something worth writing about on this bird.

As you know, this kit is being converted from the fixed gear Hawk 75 from Clear Prop into the retractable Curtiss Mohawk Mk.IV used in Burma in the early 1940s. As such, it requires modification of the kit's tail wheel and main landing gear. The tail wheel on the Hawk 75 is fixed, but the Mohawk is retractable. I was lucky and found a large photo of a currently restored French Mohawk and from that, I extracted this photo of the tailwheel area.

How to reproduce that? Well, I started by cutting off a portion of the fixed gear fairing.

THen I opened up the tailwheel area and partially cut the rear section of the opening. THis rear section was then bent out slightly to match what I am seeing in the photo. Then I added tiny bits of curved plastic at the forward end of the "V" created when I bent the piece out.

The tailwheel was robbed from a scrap 1/72 Lockheed Ventura from my Hudson build earlier this year. That wheel had a double yoke and the Mohawk has a single yoke, so I trimmed away a portion of the yoke and then filed part of it to make it look more like the picture. A small disc was punched out of .005 inch plastic and glued to the unyoked side of the wheel. To mount this wheel into the fuselage, which will be done later, I will have to go through the small tailwheel well opening, so I extended the sides of the block that the tailwheel strut was attached to and this will be glued to the inside of the fuselage.

I also created a small "C" shaped frame member which you can make out in the photo of the real tailwheel. The frame member will have to be installed after the wheel is glued in, so it will be installed and then painted. But I went ahead and painted the tailwheel assembly. As I said, all of this will be installed later after painting.

One thing not yet done is creating the tail wheel doors and figuring out how they will be mounted. This stuff is pretty small, so it's tough to do this accurately and with any real finesse (at least for me). But I think it looks the part well enough.

Thanks Spiros (@fiveten)! I think the main landing gear conversion is going to be equally as interesting to do.

Thanks George (@gblair). It was the only wheel spare part I had so, I got lucky. My spare parts bin is still pretty sparse since I no longer have anything prior to 2017 (really 2019, when I really got serious again).

Yeah George (@gblair), I need to get serious about that. I may get one for my birthday after the end of the year. There have been several times when having one would have been beneficial. Designing and making your own detailed parts has got to be a real hoot.

Still, there is a certain amount of satisfaction in being able to do things the old school way. But I am not going to be one of those guys that never wants to change. It just needs to happen at a time when I can manage it.