A brief update on the Beaufighter project. While working on the landing gear bays, I began to think of how to fabricate the "fuel dump ducts" (my term, not Bristol's). These are small parts that Revell skipped over when they (over)simplified the gear doors. The picture below shows these ducts.
I started by cutting small squares of sheet plastic and gluing them together with the intention sanding the edges and gluing a plastic dowel to serve as the pipe. Sanding something this small was a real chore (especially with osteoarthritis in my thumbs), so I wanted to find another way. Along came Blender, a 3D rendering program, and access to 3D printers at my friendly local public library. Maybe I could use Blender to create a 3D model of the ducts and ship the files off to the library for printing? Five weeks later, this is what I came up with:
My next steps are to scale down the 3D model (currently they're probably almost life size) and ship the file off to the library. If this works, I'll probably make more extensive use of Blender and 3D printing to make custom parts for the 'Beau.
