This next installment will get this build caught up... Finally. I have been concentrating on building and not posting because my time has been limited.

The fuselage was glued together... and I temporarily taped the solid gun nose in place to figure out the weights and balances. I ended up using modeling clay, and some metal weights in the solid nose. I did not add the MG's in the nose or the ammunition tracks and ammo boxes inside the solid gun nose.

Instead I will cut off the MG barrels and stick them into the clay to secure them after painting. This allowed me more room for weight up front where it counts more.

The seams were filled, sanded and polished. I still need to re-scribe the panel lines and add some rivets. The wings are simply pressed in place here, and have not been permanently glued on yet.

This is a good photo of the bomb bay. It also shows the small opening where the turret retaining box is located. This is why I chose to glue the turret in place before the instructions called for this to happen. The front crew entry opening is not very big.

Then I started gluing the clear parts in place.

Here we have the canopy for the pilot / co pilot. Notice the top turret is not covered, and the twin MG's have been snapped out in preparation of painting the OD Green. They will be installed once the painting is done.

I painted the details of the waist gunner's MG's You can see the MG mounts are a Gray color, while the ammunition feed is a stainless steel color. The charging and butterfly handles are a dark brown. On some MG's they were a Black color, so either is correct.

Here you can see the waist gunner glass has been installed. These positions were staggered like was done on the later model B-17G, in an effort to keep the gunners from bumping into each other during combat.

This is the tail gunner position after the clear part was added.

The fuselage will be ready for painting once I finish the rivets and panel lines.

The wings are not too far behind. The second row of engine exhaust have to be opened up, and glued to the wings. The seams on the wings are getting close to being done. Then they too will be ready for painting.

Thanks for stopping by, and as always,
Comments are encouraged.

Good night everyone.

Some more great progress done, Louis @lgardner
You are really making big steps on this Mitchell.
Wonderful.

Positions for the gunners look great, Louis (@lgardner). Your access to the real thing is evident in your knowledge of the colors involved. I think I read somewhere that the waist gunners were directly across from each other at some point, but they staggered them on later models to keep from banging into each other in the heat of battle. I always worry when I add something like a machine gun and it sticks out from the fuselage. It would be almost 100% chance that I would knock it off during the rest of the build, and in most builds it becomes hard to mask. Probably an easier task with this model. Looking great.

Here is what I accomplished a few evenings ago. I was concentrating on the second row of exhaust openings

They’re molded as a solid piece. I decided to open them up to make them look better.

This shows the end result. The exhaust parts were glued in place here.

The wing was slipped into position when I snapped this photo.


Here’s a different angle




These pictures show the details.

This one shows how the engines look with their exhaust system in place.

The B-25 was then masked for painting.

You really are going all out here. Looking superb, Louis @lgardner.

Looks good with the yellow ZC, Louis (@lgardner). Masks look like they are a perfect fit. Are these commercial masks, or did you do the masking yourself?

Some strong work on this B-25 Lou (@lgardner). You aligned the nose perfectly, the engine and cowlings are primo on this classic. Spraying the yellow zinc chromate on the outside of the turrets makes sense. Two thumbs up.

Here is what happened over the last few evenings at the "Iron Werke"...

I was having trouble with my air brush. It was in desperate need of a good cleaning and the Model Master enamel paint I was using was too old and was coming out in clumps. I had opened the bottles years ago and they were simply not good anymore.

Unfortunately I discovered that after I had sprayed them on my B-25. Live and learn.

I disassembled my two airbrushes and let them soak overnight. The next day I put them in an ultrasonic jewelry cleaner. They ended up being spotless and looked like new again. More importantly however, the air brushes also worked like new ...

This ultrasonic cleaner works great for cleaning carburetor parts too for you car guys and gear heads.

Going back to the paint job now. It looked really bad because of all of the clumping that was dried on the surface. Plus there were some dry areas where the paint had dried before it landed on the surface and it was horrible looking.

So I had to carefully sand the entire thing down….. top and bottom. The other option was to strip the entire thing down to the bare plastic.

I opted to sand it down. I was concerned that it might cause damage to the interior painting if I had accidentally gotten paint stripper in places where it wasn’t supposed to be.

The Neutral Gray was then repainted with a new sealed bottle of MM enamel. The topside color was also painted with a new sealed bottle of MM enamel.

Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of this.

Next after the NG was dry, I used some tacky strip and masking tape to cover up the Neutral Gray areas that I didn’t want to be painted with the OD Green.

Here we can see the wings shortly after I finished spraying them with OD Green. I actually used Model Master RAF Dark Green for the color. It was a very close match to the B-25 I have a color photo of that was also in the 100th Bomb Squadron.

The turret was painted next. It dried nice and flat.

This shows the fuselage after the masking was removed. I’m very happy with how it turned out.

Next I added the exhaust stains on the cowlings and engine nacelles. It was easier to do that at this point.

The landing gear struts, tires and the propellers were installed next. Once they were done the wings were glued in place permanently. The fit was perfect.

I made sure the flat spots on the tires were lined up before the glue had dried. The weights installed in the nose were enough to keep it from being a tail sitter.

This shows how the B-25 looked at this point. It’s getting closer to being completed now.

The engines look nice too with the props installed. The propellers were simply pressed into position.



The props spin easily too ! It almost looks like the engines were running in these photos.

The top turret turned out pretty nice too. You can see the YZC showing up under the OD Green. I made sure to leave the clear joints alone and not paint them. The real turret was just like this one.

The masking was removed from the tips of the verticals and revealed the red paint. I’m very pleased with the color choice here. The other Squadrons in the 42nd Bomb Group used other colors for identification.

So far I have uncovered some pictures that show how the tails were painted with White, and Yellow in the other Squadrons.

Sometimes the tail was left alone without any colorations, so that could have also been an identifying feature for a particular Squadron.

There were a total of five Squadrons in the 42nd Bomb Group, with the 100th being one of them.

I’ll be doing more tonight and hopefully will get this B-25 wrapped up soon. I have some more detail painting, adding the various doors... landing gear, bomb bay, crew entry etc., plus the MG barrels need to be drilled out, painted and installed in some places. The radio antennae's under the nose, and possibly elsewhere need to be done.

Finally, the decals will be added, along with some more weathering, dirt, and grime, followed by a seal coat.

April 8th is only a few days away !

Hopefully, and if things work out, I just might make the deadline in the nick of time.

As always comments are encouraged.

Thanks for stopping by.