I have not had much time for building over these past few days... Hopefully this will change in the future. Tonight I made some progress on these. Please follow along and I'll explain.
First off, I carefully removed the scoops on both the NAS Jacksonville F4U,
and the Goodyear plane.
Then I filed and sanded the spots down smooth. They should be ready to do some touch up paint work now.
I did some research about the length of the front antennae on the Goodyear F4U. After some math I cut the Tamiya kit supplied front mast down to a little over 3/4 inch in length. I'll paint it and install it when I do the final Dark Sea Blue color. I also prepped the pitot tube and it's ready for painting too.
Earlier on during this dual build, I messed up both of the clear windscreens. I managed to get glue on the back side of them when they made contact with the instrument panel coaming. This left a nasty mark on the plastic that wouldn't sand out. In the future I will use Future or some other similar product such as white glue, to secure the canopies in place.
I "borrowed" a windscreen from another Tamiya kit in the stash for the NAS Jacksonville plane. But I didn't want to keep on taking parts from my other unbuilt kits, and I have been wanting to try an experiment on making my own clear parts. Here's what I did.
I took one of the messed up canopies and glued it to a wooden stick. I added a cross brace to the lower corners so it wouldn't collapse on itself when pressure was applied. I now had a simple master pattern.
My wife held the pattern and a small lighter for me. I held the clear plastic over the flame and as it began to melt, I simply pulled it down over the master canopy part. It looked like this:
Carefully I cut the excess away and ended up with a part that started to resemble a new clear windscreen.
I taped the sliding canopy in place to use as a guide. Then I carefully made marks on the new plastic windscreen and started trimming it up using sandpaper and scissors.
In a few minutes, I had a new windscreen that looked very nice.
It fit well, so I glued it in place using Testors "clear cement". I held things together using Tamiya tape.
The canopy frames are visible, but they don't show up well in these pictures. I'll most likely paint some strips of tape Dark Sea Blue, and simply press them in place on the replacement wind screen.
Once the glue dries overnight, I'll remove the tape and see how it looks once everything has had a chance to dry. I can go back and add more glue as needed. There isn't any where the tape is now, so it will be a process that takes several steps.
I decided to make several more replacement windscreens. Several times I pulled the plastic too tight, and the end result was a part that was too thin. This is a trial and error thing. Here you can see one that went into the trash can...
Also the heat from the clear sheet plastic melted and distorted the original master mold. It only lasted for several attempts. If I was to do this again, the next time I would cast a master plug using plaster or possibly make a plug out of wood. I ended up with a few extra ones left over for future builds. I just might end up making a good durable master plug mold for eventual vacuum forming. I am also thinking about making a conversion set for an Udet Bf-109 V-14.
Erik
@airbum
has been working with me and supplying some great information on this project.
My friends Marc Barris, @marc
Rodney Williams, @f2g1d
and Jim Harley @jimh
have been very inspirational here with their scratch building skills.
This is a learning experiment, and I'll let you know how it went tomorrow.
I also simply snapped the clear window in place that is underneath the cockpit. No glue was necessary here.
In less than an hour from now we will have a New Year.
Stay safe and Happy New Year everyone.
As always, comments are encouraged.
