Here's a few more pictures of what I am talking about with the fuselage side windows. There are some good illustrations and photos in this book called TBF /TBM Avenger in Action by Squadron Signal publications.

If you look closely at the side windows you can see that they are one section off. There is also a small round window on the rear crew entry door. You can see this in the pictures and illustrations. This has to be corrected if I am to have an accurate early dash 1.

4 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Thanks for sharing this information with me. I have the book that you're talking about and have been using it. You're absolutely correct it's a very good resource for building the TBF. I have several other books on WW2 Naval Aviation that have some good stuff too as far as photos go. I don't have the Walk Around book though.

I was fortunate enough to have access to two different Avengers. One is exactly like the model I'm building. It's one that was recovered from the Great Lakes and it's being restored to a static display.

The other is a TBM - 3 that was having an annual done. These planes are huge up close...

I appreciate your support. Thanks again buddy.

2 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Here's a picture of how the MG opening turned out on the leading edges of the wings. The next step was to sand down the ejector holes under the wing.

This was followed with sanding the green putty on the fuselage side windows and the gun trough on the cowling. The green putty had some minor blemishes but I hope that they fill in with a little primer paint.

So I'll spray paint these areas now and let them dry overnight.

5 attached images. Click to enlarge.

One other modification that will need to be done is in regards to this area on the upper surface of the wings. In this picture I am pointing at the bulge that covered the breach of the wing mounted .050 caliber machine gun. Each wing has a single bulge and a cover for the ammunition feed trays. The bulges will have to be removed and the surface details depicting the ammunition covers will have to be filled in.

1 attached image. Click to enlarge.

Here's another heavy coat of primer paint. I sprayed it on extra heavy in certain areas on purpose. I'm trying to fill in minor blemishes and build up the area where the initial sanding revealed the flaws.

I'm going to let this dry overnight and sand it down again tomorrow sometime. This process may have to be repeated several times.

Meanwhile, the 1/48 AMT A-20 Havoc is calling...

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Thanks Martin ! I appreciate the words of encouragement.

I started out by carefully cutting off the bulges that originally covered the gun breaches using a single edge razor blade.

Then I block sanded the under surfaces of the wing where the empty shell casing chutes had been filled in over several attempts over the past few days.

I'm happy with the way these areas turned out so I gave them a final light coat of primer.

6 attached images. Click to enlarge.

The starboard side of the fuselage cowling needed more filler too after that area was wet sanded.

So I sprayed more of the primer on this location. I tried to use the air from my air brush to blow the primer into the crevice that was low.

Since I was spraying primer, I decided that it would be a great time to mask off the areas on the top surfaces of the wings where I trimmed off the machine gun breach bulges and needed to fill in the ammo doors. Once this was done I sprayed the area really heavy with paint. It looks horrible right now but it is exactly what I needed to fill the low spots in. This ugliness will disappear when sanded away. Hopefully it will not take much more of this treatment so I can get cracking on the building.

Thanks again for reading this and following the progress of the Avenger. Have a great evening.

3 attached images. Click to enlarge.