Things have been progressing, albeit slowly, on the Beau front. Having been sidelined by various other higher priority projects around the house, I did manage to spend some time correcting the openings for the 20mm auto-canons living in the belly of the Beau. This photo shows the rather indifferent attempt Revell made to mould the cannon openings.
After firing up my Dremel tool, I ground out the existing moulded openings. I used 3/23” styrene tubing (left over from the earlier Pocher Fiat restoration project) as a basis for the new openings. Sanding down the tubes to match the surface contour resulted in a very close approximation of the actual shape of these features.
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1. Looks awful now, bit it will look better once cleaned up.
Note that the starboard outboard cannon outlet is arranged slightly aft of its counterpart on the port side. My research shows that most Beaufighter models (like the Revell example here) have incorrectly aligned outboard canons. Note also that Revell failed to include the 20mm shell ejection ports, which I will cut out later.
This was a good first step because it allowed me to gauge my skill level at “plastic fabrication”. If this had turned into a disaster, I would have binned the whole project.
The next task is to fill in the gaps around the tubing, smoothing out the joints. However, my tube of Tamiya putty dried out, so it will have to wait until I find a replacement. I may try using a water-based filler rather than the smelly toluene-based Tamiya stuff.
This would also be a good time to cut out the pilot’s access hatch. However, I’ll hold off on that until I procure a copy of the Model Monkey cockpit so I can ensure that both align. At the rate I'm going, that could be several months away.
In the meantime, I’m starting work on the undercarriage bays. I’ve been accumulating a list of materials and supplies to buy for this project with the goal of maximizing the shipping charge by limiting, to the extent possible, the number of orders placed. It’s a good thing I held off on the order as I found a stash of sheet styrene when cleaning out my storage room (one of the higher priority projects that “bumped” the Beau project). I figure the plastic is going on fifty years old, but this stuff really doesn’t go bad (which, from an ecological standpoint, isn’t real good). Anyway, I should have more than enough to complete the Beau project and save about 25 bucks.
Once I complete the undercarriage bays and come up with a modification for the main landing gear (it will need to be taller than the kit supplied gear), I'll work on opening up the oil coolers on the wing leading edges outboard the engines. The way I see it, none of this work requires assembling any of the kit components, so I can focus first on fabrication, then on scribing panel lines and some noticeable fasteners and sanding off the raised panel lines. Earlier I said that I was going to minimize panel lines and rivets, but given the size of this model, I think that would be a mistake.
