@adrianstarling - If you're using my old friend the late John Alcorn's books, you are working from The Master. We were once members of the same IPMS - Golden Gate - waaayyyy back in the early Jurassic (1972=78). The first time he ever showed up (he worked at Stanford Research Institute with George Lee, also a member) he brought in a solid wood 1/32 Bf-109E that everyone thought on first look was made of plastic. One of the nicest guys ever in modeling; I think that comes through in the books. It was stunning to watch him create his famous A-20. Watching you here is similar.

John and George were both the best teachers ever - if you brought a model to the meeting, they would look it over and "review" it for you. Never any put-downs, always neat little tricks that would make things easier/better. I definitely know every model I make is still the result of those sessions. And a good part of any advice I post is just me channeling them.

Adrian, I have / had both of those books as well although the second title no longer seems to be around my house. Not sure what happened to it. Excellent books though and they made it look like it was a doable thing. Watching your work along with Marc 's and many talented modelers on LargeScalePlanes provides that same sort of feeling. Thanks for that.

A few late nights this week which yielded a few small but important parts. The air intake on the lower cowl, rear cockpit panel unit and spinner and prop blade housings. I hope the pictures tell the story and finally I have made the assembly base with two fuselage templates glued to the base to hold the fuselage at the correct standing angle and height and additional templates will be added as the parts ( wings and elevator) are built and ready to be assembled and adhered to the fuselage at a later stage. As previously mentioned, I find that the base helps align all elements and more importantly it ensures that all angles and cords are correct. I hope you enjoy the update!

16 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Hi John, the lower cowl was vacuum formed in two halves and cut/sanded by hand to allow a fit with the upper cowl along the common line. For the spinner, the brass parts were cut and super glued on a jig - shown in the attached image. The balsa was sanded on my Proxxon mini disc sander to the cylindrical shape and then glued over the brass tube. I then secured the rear facing brass tube in my drill and sanded the balsa to the required shape using a template to get the correct profile and coated it with CA and gave a final sand before vacuum forming 0.25mm ABS over it. I hope this helps?

2 attached images. Click to enlarge.

This is such amazing, solid progress, Adrian!

Adrian this build has all the characteristics of a master modeler at work. This is model building in its purest form and you make it look so easy! Looking forward to the next installment.

I do like your nice and smooth finish. Looks very nice and clean compared to my own messy chaos builds 😉

I have been thinking of a vac-form machine like so many other modelers, it's just that I am "allergic" to Chinese imports, and that makes it a bit harder to get one. I suppose I have to go online and find a bunch of "how-to" videos.

As always, I like to check in on your progress Adrian. Great stuff.