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Greetings to all ARC readers from Ceki Erginbas.
I was saving this article for a special day. And "May 19 Turkish
Remembrance day of Atatürk and
youth day" was appropriate for it.
I will try to share with you the building steps of my Bristol Beaufighter
Mk.X which has won the first place for diorama category in the 20.th İstanbul Aviation Museum
Plastic Model Contest.
Here is the photo of the Aircraft I built.
Bristol Beaufighter NT850 MB-T, in 236 Squadron with D-Day invasion stripes.
The Kit I used is from Tamiya.
It is a wonderful kit
with the usual Tamiya quality. But I wanted to add some scratch
built details to this model so I started with
the cockpit.
I used this photo as a reference for some scratch built detailing.
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- I added the device that I don't know what it is from
sprue and copper wire
- I added the arm from stretched sprue with
Super
glue at the tip
- Added the levers with thin copper wire.
- I also added the photo-etch seatbelts from Eduard's
RAF seatbelt set.
Click on
images below to see larger images
I wanted to add details at the back of the cockpit,
inside the aircraft, but I wasn't sure of which devices was inside, and the where they were
located. So I used some referance photos, some photos of the resin detail sets, and most of all my imagination.
Since
when the model is complete, only a very little portion of those
details can be seen, so I added them to give
a busy, feeling inside the aircraft.
Plastic poker cards, copper wire, sprue parts, and plastic hoses from Tamiya Motorcycle kits were used
for the details.
Click on
images below to see larger images
| I also cut the rear cupola to display it in open
position. Then masked the clear parts using Bare Metal Foil. I wanted to display the elevators in an angular position. So
I cut the kit parts, separating the
elevators. When you cut the elevators, which consists of two separate parts, you make them
unstable. So you have to fill something between the parts to make them stable. I used again
plastic
poker cards for this purpose filling the void. Then used putty to smooth the surfaces.
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The actuating arm detail of the kit is not very good.
So I cut them out, sanded and smoothed the surface and added scratch
built actuating arms made of plastic
cards, and stretched sprue. After all the work tail was looking like this
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| Then I did something really mad, and decided to build
the flaps in opened position. For this purpose I first cut out the flaps from the kit pieces.
Since the
parts from the kit was too thick for this scale, I replaced them with again plastic card pieces.
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Wings in the kit are given as a 3 piece
assembly. So
when you cut out the flaps, large wings becomes really unstable. So you should again fill the inside of the
wings with a dense material. Plastic card was again really helpful in this step.
With some visual and
metric measurements, I built the necessary support for the wing assembly.
Click on
images below to see larger images
| Lots of test fitting in this point is a must.
Since
the weight of the wings can cause some problems in the following steps.
Later the edges were covered all over with putty and
sanded to obtain a smooth surface.
Inside of the Beaufighter flaps were looking like
this.
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I again used plastic poker cards to build the little triangular elements.
First I made some measurements, then separated the plastic card into triangles in the desired shape and proportions, using a pen.
Then
with the Tamiya decal scissors, which is a very nice tool, I cut the parts, and then drilled them with a
1mm hand drill. At last fixed them inside the wing using super glue. I have to admit that this is not
the perfect application for the impatient modellers out there.  It took about 2 days to complete
these parts. Flaps were build similarly.
Click on
images below to see larger images
| At last I checked the overall
cleanness of the build
by spraying interior green. The result was better than I expected. |
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images below to see larger images
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There's a piece called the aerial fairlead at the
bottom of the aircraft, which was a nice detail to add.
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I used q-tips and some hose from Motorcycle kits to
build it.
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At last the model was ready for the paintjob.
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I started the paintjob with a pre-shade at panel lines
with flat black. Then Paint the bottom of the aircraft
with Tamiya XF-21 Sky, then added a little flat white
into the sky and sprayed it between the panel lines
lightly to give a three tone color variation.
Click on
images below to see larger images
The top of the aircraft was painted the same way.
After
that I started to paint the D-day stripes. I masked
the the aircraft step by step to form the stripes.
Click on
images below to see larger images
Here is the result
Click on
images below to see larger images
It was time for the decals.
Decals from the kit is
usual Tamiya "very thick". After spending that much
time for this model, those decals were just not enough
for this kit. So I said let's do the markings with
paint.
I started by preparing the circular forces at the
wings. Circle templates from my technical drawing
class, came in handy at this part. Here's how I prepared
the masks.
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First find an appropriate place to cut the masks, like
a piece of glass. S tick some masking tapes, an then fix the circle template strongly on the mask. Keeping
the template fixed during the cutting process is very
important. Try to use new blades for your x-acto
knife since dull blades may rip the mask.
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Place the mask, and spray the appropriate color.
You
can use male or female masks that you prepared. In the
upper picture I first sprayed red and placed a male
mask on it then sprayed the Dark blue. If you want
to add different color tones on the markings, now
is the perfect time, which I forgot during my
building process.
For the Letters, I copied them with the transparent
paper, coming on top of the decal sheets with the
kit.
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| Fix the copy to a glass, with masks on top.
Then cut
with a steel ruler carefully to obtain the masks. |
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Making the circular markings at the sides of the
aircraft was the hardest part, since there are 4 circles in 4 different colors. My first attempts
weren't satisfactory, so I masked again and sprayed
again until I get the desired results. At last I made
some little touch-ups with a fine brush.
Click on
images below to see larger images
The next step is to build the Bristol Hercules Engines. I
decided to display the engines opened. By the way, the aim of this project was to build a Beaufighter
maintenance diorama. The detail level of the kit parts was not enough for this purpose.
So I bought Cutting
Edge's resin Bristol hercules engine set.
After the general assembly of the engine block and cylinders, additional detail was added. Solder wire
was the perfect material both for its perfect size and workability, to be used as
exhaust pipes. Two pipes
from each cylinder, 28 pipes for 14 cylinders in one engine. I also had to drill the cylinders to fit the
pipes inside. Then 2 pipes coming from one cylinder meets, and leads into the cowling making a
counter-clockwise turn. I cut the wires from desired places, and attached with super glue. This process
took about a night to complete.
Click on
images below to see larger images
To display the engine doors opened, I cut the cowling using Tamiya's modeling saw into 3 pieces. One
should be careful during this process since the pieces become very fragile
near the end of the cutting
process.
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After that I added 5 other cables around the motor
block, indicated by the cutting edge. Engines were painted to semi-gloss black and the
exhaust pipes into
rusty brown. A little dry brush to show the cylinder texture.
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Then added the spark plug cables, coming from the
center of the cylinders. 2 cables for each cylinder. I used copper wire as cables.
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At last I added the crankcase
cowl-stiffeners to give a
more detailed look. I used stretched sprue for this purpose. Drilled the cowling from desired points and
fixed the stiffeners with super glue.
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| I added some more detail after that:
Tail Aerials,
using the spare parts from the kit.
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Another little aerial at the nose.
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And some other aerials, antennas, etc. After removing
the masks from the clear parts, I attached them in the opened position. I also used the bulged wheels
from a resin set which I don't remember the name now.
During the building process I also finished a diorama base to display the model better, and added some piece
of equipment from Revell's WWII ground support equipment set. I also converted the bomb carrier from
this set into a torpedo carrier. It is not an accurate conversion but does the job for me visually.
Here are final pictures. After these last
pictures I have painted the aerials and antennas flat black, sorry that
they are not seen in the photos. Also sorry about the general quality of
the final photos.
Happy Modelling Everyone
Ceki
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