Hi Carl (@clipper): My hands always shake a little when I start thinning major kit parts like the wings. I had a kit several years ago where I was thinning the wing to add resin to box in the gear, and I was happily sanding away until I realized that I could see through the plastic in the wing. Just keep your eye on the target and it will be fine. Looking forward to seeing your magic on these gear wells.

Looks excellent so far, my friend @clipper! Looking forward to seeing how this area will look once done, will look super for sure!
I also like at times adding some extra details to any kit and, by the way, your Hudson IS a contest winner in many respects.

Thanks Spiros (@fiveten) and John (@johnb). I appreciate your compliments on my skills. I consider myself more of the type of person who is willing to try things than the type of person who is very good at what they do. I look at my models and recognize that I am able to do things with them now that are past the beginner stage of building. But I also look at my models and see many areas where I need a lot of improvement. It's always somewhat embarrassing to me when people think I am highly skilled because I try a lot of different things. But if I have any skill I am really good at, it is the willingness to try new ideas and step out of my comfort zone.

I am with Spiros, Carl (@clipper). No perfect model, but having a modeler that is willing to take a leap and push the edges of your skills is inspiring. I don't mind taking risks, but sometimes when I am working on something expensive I become much less willing to take a chance.

I've spent some time getting the landing gear wells and struts figured out. Since I've decided not to sacrifice the Hobbycraft kit I was originally going to use for this conversion, I have to come up with landing gear struts. But first, I wanted to get the second gear well cut out from the resin and fitted to the wing. This is similar to the previous photo except on the opposite wing. So the second resin piece was cut out and prepared in a similar manner to the first resin piece and the wing had a corresponding section cut out to accept it. These pieces will be backed up with styrene and PE and perhaps some small ribbing details in the wells.

I am adding some styrene to the inside of the wing pieces to aid in holding the resin parts to the wings.

The new scratchbuilt struts will use the kit struts as an example for length and probably form (although I may deviate on this a bit). I have several different sizes of tubing (brass, aluminum, and plastic) that all telescopes together which will be used to construct the gear. The largest brass tube will be mounted into the wing to support the strut mounting. The wheel and tire mount is a piece of brass rod that will be soldered at a 90 degree angle to the main strut brass tubing. The plastic tube will be used for the larger casing on the outside of the tube as well as blending in the 90 degree mount. I'll get some photos up on this as soon as I get it all worked out.

Some of the PE is going to be used for the narrow part of the resin wells, but the larger pieces of PE, I have not decided on yet. The P-36 has fabric in the wheel section on many of the photos I've seen so you would not be able to see the PE detail if I put in the fabric. But I do sort of like the detail of the PE and may still decide to use it.

The lower gear doors are formed parts on the real aircraft. I have the kit parts showing in the picture. I think I can duplicate these using plastic tubing and sheet styrene.

I second what our friend @gblair said, my friend @clipper! What a great approach! Looking for wad to your next steps!

The first part of the landing gear wing conversion is in place. I still need to do seam work and detail restoration on the glue joints. Because of interference to wing fit, I had to make some modifications to the plastic parts and make some small plastic sheets to cover the odd ball section at the forward end. I decided to go ahead with the large PE for the wheel bays rather than the fabric seen in some Hawks. To make sure this conversion is strong enough, it has been glued in with epoxy.