Bishop Hobbies

6-18-08

I purchased this model several years ago and it has been patiently waiting to be built. My brother mentioned that he would love a B-25 model – so here we go.

The B-25B was the a/c model used by the Doolittle Raiders – the raid against Japan. This was a very daring and almost suicide mission to bomb Japan in 1942. It was a great morale booster for our country and a blow to the egos of the Japanese military who said that their country would never be violated. As a young kid I remember reading Ted Lawsons’s book – Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo. This model will be of his plane – the Ruptured Duck.

If you are interested in reading the after action report on the raid by General Doolittle himself – GO HERE.

I have thus far painted and assembled the sections that make up the a/c interior. I’m now gluing them to the fuselage. I’ll take some pictures of the completed interior before I glue the fuselage together.

6-24-08

You might notice in the picture above (the one of the forward end of the fuselage) – that there is a plastic part just to the right of the cockpit (note – I have lost that pic in the server crash and the above pic doesn't show the part – so don't spend too much time looking for it – lol). That is part of the nose gear that had broken off. I thought I would just glue that back on using some brass wire to pin it. That would have worked if I had not wiped out the rest of the nose gear while I was sanding down the seams of the fuselage after I had glued the halves together! The two halves went together well and I used some Tamiya primer to fill in the seam gaps and used a wet sanding stick to sand that down. I will have to go back and restore the panel lines and rivet detail later with a scribing tool. While I was examining my handiwork I noticed that the nose gear was gone – oh well. Tomorrow I will send off a fax to Accurate Miniatures for a new nose gear part. That will come in a few days. I’m not going to glue that on till much later in the build as it is rather fragile.

6-29-08

I’ve assembled the front navigator/bombardier section and glued that on too. I had to use more Tamiya primer to fill the seams and rescribed lost detail in this area. I’ve also restored rivet detail in the seam areas that was lost. Next the tail sections were glued together and then the wings were assembled. They will need to be cleaned up and the seams sanded smooth. During all of this I realized that the bombsight had gone missing. That was an excuse to clean up my workroom until I found it lurking on the floor. That went into a small paper cup along with all of the rest of the small parts that had fallen/broken off.

7-6-08

I’ve now assembled the engine nacelles and glued them to the wings. Some seam puttying had to be done on the wing bottoms where they meet the nacelles. All of the panel lines and rivet detail has been restored to the nacelles. I now have to clean up the nacelle/wing juncture. The engines have been assembled and given a coat of Tamiya gunmetal.

7-10-08

Received the new front landing gear and decal set from Accurate Miniatures. The decals date from 2006 and are a newer and more refined. I’ll use this sheet for the model. I’ve also sprayed the fuselage, wings, engine cowlings and tail with Tamiya fine primer to prep the model for painting and to revel any surface imperfections. Since this primer is an oil based paint I used Microscale Micro Mask (see pic):

I’ve had this bottle setting around for a while but have never used it because it isn’t recommended for water based paint. I figure that it will work here tho. I used it over most all of the fuselage windows because I found the supplied masks to be too large. It went on very easily with a paint brush. The only problem was I kept putting my fingers in the painted areas and had to clean up the smears. If the model masks for the cockpit and nose glass are too large I’ll use this stuff there too. I’ll just shoot the first coat in a dark green enamel to replicate the interior paint and then follow up with the olive drap top coat.

7-13-08

The fuselage and wings are now in an acceptable state with respect to their seams. The panel lines and revits and been restored using an eraser shield and a combination of an x-acto knife and a scribing tool. I’ve sprayed everything again with Tamiya fine primer to check everything. Next the larger clear parts – the canopy, nose, top turret, and rear canopy were dipped in Future and then left to dry on paper towels under a box to keep out dust. They came out really nice and clear. I had to drill a small hole in the nose glass to accept the forward machine gun. I then painted the top of the instrument cowling in the cockpit scale black and touched up the nose area with dark green. The nose area had their parts re-attached that had come off (seat and bomb-sight). Another small seat was glued in on the forward bulkhead in the nose and painted and the forward machine gun was stored under that. I then glued the cockpit canopy and the nose glass onto the fuselage using Arleene’s tacky glue. It dries clear. I’ve never used it for this before so we’ll see how it works out. Everything was set aside to dry before masking. I also reamed out the engine cowlings as these are too small. I opened them up about 1/16 inch to 3/4 inch. This should be more to scale.

7-14-08

The tacky glue seems to work fine – at least so far. The clear plastic seems to be holding fine. The canopy and nose glass were masked off using Micro Mask. I hope it will do the job as the supplied kit masks were just too large. I will be using acrylic paint (water based) and this it contraindicated for Micro Mask – so it will be interesting to see how it turns out. If it doesn’t I will have to order new clear parts and start over.

9-7-08

Sorry about the lapse – I’ve been busy with my youngest daughter’s wedding, vacation, and repainting the kitchen cabinets. Ok – to catch up – I’ve painted the main parts Model Master Light Ghost Grey on the bottom and Model Master Olive Drab on top. There were still several seam gaps that I’ve filled with Aleene’s Original Tacky Glue – it seems to do well for small gaps, but not for larger ones since it tends to run. It really can’t take the place of putty or CA. I’ve taken pics and if I can get them to load onto my computer I’ll post them. That’s all for now.

9-17-08

Ok- I’ve glued the wings and tail pieces onto the fuselage. I’ve also added the decals and painted the red danger stripe on – the decal silvered and painting was easier than fixing. I also installed the landing gear – almost finished. On to the pics;

9-20-08

I’ve done some more seam filling between the tail and fuselage – then had to restore some panel lines. It looks better now. Then I had to respray that area. The Tamiya masking tape lifted up one of the stars on the fuselage side – I had spares tho. So that was fixed. Then I removed the Micro Mask on the clear bits and added the main gear doors and entrance ladders. I also re-glued the nose gear after it fell out. So this is what it looks like now:

10-18-08

Well – at the Fremont Hornets model show today – the competition was stiff – but I managed to win a third place in it’s category for the B-25b. Following is the picture:

Here are some more pics:

I remember several years ago watching the Blue Angels from work as they practiced for their show the next day. I’ll never forget how fast the F/A-18’s could rotate – you could actually see the vapor on the wings as the boundary layer separated. Very cool.

I must say that I’ve never been a fan of the F/A-18 appearance wise. It just looks ungainly. The Academy kit however is a must have for anyone who loves big models like yours truly. There are several reviews on the net for this model, but here are my experiences….

The kit cockpit is ok – but I wanted something extra so I purchased the Cutting Edge cockpit (CEC32115 ) to add to it – the tub and ejection seat are much more detailed than the kit and do show up quite a bit with the canopy open. I also bought the Eduards Placards which are pre-painted and very nice – but the kit has most of the placards in decal form. For decals I got the 2Bobs Operation Iraqi Freedom “Knuckle Shampoo”. Assembly went together well – pretty much without a hitch. There were minor problems with the intakes which had to receive some putty. I use some stuff called Porc-a-seal which you can purchase at Home Depot. It dries quickly and sands really well.

I printed a lot of pics from the web and detailed the landing gear with thin solder and Bare Metal Foil. The landing gear in the kit are really fantastic and are quite robust with metal inserts. You better get them in right and glued solidly as this is a big rather heavy bird. Do not sit the bird on the gear till they are really really dry. One of my wheels is a little skiwampus – it didn’t show up till later – too late to fix.

The canopy is molded with a small seam down the center that can be removed with the edge of a #11 exacto knife and finished off with 1200 then 8000 grit sandpaper – and finaly a bath in Future Floor Polish. I decided to fold the wings because I’ve never done that before and it does save some room on the shelf – and with this big bird you need a lota space.

I used Model Master, and Tamiya paints and started by preshading with black. Colors followed those suggested in the 2Bobs decal sheet. I weathered with thinned grey and black then coated with Future. Decals came next followed by a final coat of Microscale flat. Other weathering was accomplished with oils.

Ok – this is what really happened – I did preshade the model as described above – then I sprayed it with the suggested colors on the decal sheet. I then put the paints away so they would be together for future reference as I got involved with something else. When I came back to work on the Hornet several months later – of course I couldn’t remember where I had put those paint bottles. As a result I just used what I had on hand so the paint job is a mismash of several different shades of grey. A few months later I found the paints in an unmarked storage bin. Lesson to learn – write down important information you will need when you resume a model build. As for the final weathering. I like large models – your eye will tend to get lost in looking at the whole thing and you can get away with some flaws – which is good for me as I seem to go from one goof to another. On this model I had decals just fall off in my hand – they came off with masking tape and I made them disappear with overspray. I had parts fall off, break off, disappear, and just plane put on wrong. Now with weathering you can cover a multitude of sins from messed up decals to bad paint jobs underneath. This was the first time that I tried oil paints and found them to be another medium to cause grief. The stuff gets on your fingers – then onto parts of the model that you don’t notice till much later. You really have to watch yourself when you are a klutz like I am. I did manage to mask off a few panels and weather them with the oils – which I thought turned out nice.

Now as for the twin tail. I glued them on as they just push in the slots and seem to settle down at a preferred angle. All seemed well but there isn’t any head on pics of the model in the instructions to enable you to get the angle correct on the vertical stabs. This little fact was made known to me at the last meeting – he was discrete tho – “you know you got the tail wrong don’t you?” And he had pics to prove it! I am appreciative to him for this as I then was able to fix it. All you have to do is bend the vertical stabilizers till the glue brakes – simple right?

I elected to build it with the nose cone open so the radar unit could be seen. If you do this you better build a case for it. My son had a friend over one day – later I noticed the nose cone had broken off and was sitting next to the model. Why oh why do people feel the need to touch touch touch? I glued it back but didn’t get it fixed right. It’s hanging off at an angle now and will have to be fixed again. I’m tempted to use a big wood screw this time and be done with it.

I finished the a/c with 2Bobs decals depicting the Cag’s bird which went on very nice – they settled down nice – but I had trouble with a couple coming off – maybe I just used too much Microsol and Microset. The walkway decal on the canards looked just too black. On the real bird the walkway paint wears off over time and I wanted to depict that. This was accomplished with diluted paint that was airbrushed carefully over the decal. I toyed with the idea of masking off the area and painting it that way – I’m sure it would look great – but I guess I was too lazy. And I figured I would find a way to screw that up too.

Many of the 800 odd parts deal with the really complete set of weapons loads – decisions decisions – I finally put on a load that seemed logical and looked good. I did end up masking off many of the items to spray the rings instead of using the decals – the sprayed on paint looked much better than the decals. I still have enough stuff left over to outfit two more planes at least! Finally I added remove before flight tags by Verlinden. The sheet I used had 1/32, 1/48, and 1/72 scale. The 1/32 looked too large – so I used the 1/48 scale. Now where to put it – and how do I keep the dust off?

Wanna see more pics?  GO HERE.