1/32 Trumpeter SBD-5 Dauntless

[wbill76]

Love the gasket leak detail. Engine looks right at home in the cowl.

[doogsatx/]

More slow progress - last night turned out to be warm, humid, and the first great bug attack of the year so I spent most of the night distracted and swatting at moths and crane flies. Grr.

Anywho, the cockpit continues to come together.







The real heartbreaking thing with the Dauntless is that, thanks to the shape of its fuselage, so much of the wonderful cockpit detail is completely hidden from view. It would be even worse if I were going with the pilot's map tray extended, but I've sliced that part down to pose it closed instead.

[deafpanzer]

The cockpit is looking great! Surprised how the rear seat is so tight...

[doogsatx/]

Apr 12, 2016 11:42:15 GMT -5 deafpanzer said:

The cockpit is looking great! Surprised how the rear seat is so tight...

Tons of legroom though!

[doogsatx/]

More progress last night - getting closer to being able to close up the fuselage. The big thing standing in my way is the PE back brace for the turret seat. I will admit I've been procrastinating there. Time to stop that.

Up front - I finally unmasked the instrument panel and added the gauges to the backside last night. Still not thrilled with how Trumpy engineered things here (clear part where you have to mask off each face), but damn do acetate gauges look great.

[deafpanzer]

I think the instrument panel came out GREAT!!! You probably did it with eyes closed...

[wing_nut]

Crap engineering aside that looks pretty damn nice. The whole pit looks great. Nice detailing in that kit.

[John Everett]

Some careful photo editing and that could pass for a real panel. It's a shame also that much of even the panel detail will be hidden once it's installed.

[wbill76]

That's a pretty sharp looking IP, no question about it!

[Deleted]

You sure are a Craftsman!

[Rick]

Best office decor I've seen in quite some time Doogs. The crispness of the detail on this kit looks really good, in spite of those pesky engineering frustrations. Great work!

Rick

[doogsatx/]

So close to being able to lock away all the cockpit detail in the fuselage...flat coated last night.





Still need to finish off the backrest for the turret seat - that's literally the only thing holding me back from closing up the fuselage at this point.

Also went back and addressed the cold air vent at the bottom of the instrument panel. Trumpeter put a weird bump there, so I drilled it out and tossed in a disc of acetate as the valve.

[jsteinman]

[afvfan]

Extra fine work.

[panzerjager2]

REALLY NICE WORK

I'm keeping an eye on this

[doogsatx/]

And then the fuselage was closed. Despite the hassle of getting all the side-load elements in the cockpit to align, once I did, everything closed up very well. Even the firewall and the paneling around the accessory area aft of the cowl fit well.





Now I have to deal with the wingroot gaps...

[doogsatx/]

Time to sort the wings!

First, I decided to glue the upper wings the fuselage. Both the upper wings and fuselage have some nice vertical slabs to ensure dihedral, and there's an "up and under" tab things to lock the wings in close to the right position. Using these plus a few strips of styrene sanded to the right thinness, I was able to solvent weld the wings where they needed to be and keep the gaps to a minimum.





Not perfect, but way, way easier to clean up.

Next - the lower wing. I'm glad I thought about the PE flaps before I glued it down, since the whole center flap portion needed to be cut away. Hello JLC saw! This also gave me room to use a piece of sprue to wedge the lower fuselage at the proper angle for welding shut.



The rest was a cinch. Starting at the outside and getting the wingtips aligned, the more central portions toward the wingroot fell into place, though the fit on the port side took some, uh, persuasion. I've got some leading edge overbite to clean up, but it's nothing too bad.

[John Everett]

Looking forward to the PE flaps. They always look better than even very good plastic.

[M1Carbine]

Doog- Looks awesome!

Bob

[wbill76]

Apr 18, 2016 14:34:35 GMT -5 John Everett said:

Looking forward to the PE flaps. They always look better than even very good plastic.

For sure, especially given how prominent a feature they are on this bird.

[doogsatx/]

Apr 18, 2016 14:34:35 GMT -5 John Everett said:

Looking forward to the PE flaps. They always look better than even very good plastic.

They're amazing on the 1/48 kits - 1/32 ones are just jaw-dropping. Though I won't lie, I'm intimidated as hell about making them up. Not the flaps themselves - they're easy enough - but the actuators.

[John Everett]

I think the actuators will be a breeze compared to getting the interior surfaces of the flap painted in their (?) zinc chromate (?) without wrecking the paint in getting the final sheet attached to the unit.

If you can pull it off it will be a huge bonus to the model.

[doogsatx/]

Apr 19, 2016 20:56:21 GMT -5 John Everett said:

I think the actuators will be a breeze compared to getting the interior surfaces of the flap painted in their (?) zinc chromate (?) without wrecking the paint in getting the final sheet attached to the unit.

If you can pull it off it will be a huge bonus to the model.

Interior surfaces were red! So others in the flight could see them, I believe.

[doogsatx/]

These beauties showed up yesterday



I'm planning to solder them - but I haven't soldered anything in, oh, fifteen years, and back then it was wiring. So gathered some supplies and did some practice runs on scrap PE.



Want to get a bit cleaner than this, but it feels about 85% of the way there. Now the fun part is going to be figuring out how to solder the main flap panels, which fold over on each other. Things at angles don't really freak me out, but that flat-on-flat...

[panzerjager2]

Looks like this "slow but deadly" will soon be targeting the Rising Sun's navy......... Oh look there's the Akagi now.....

[wbill76]

Apr 21, 2016 9:27:30 GMT -5 doogsatx/ said:

Want to get a bit cleaner than this, but it feels about 85% of the way there. Now the fun part is going to be figuring out how to solder the main flap panels, which fold over on each other. Things at angles don't really freak me out, but that flat-on-flat...

Maybe just solder the angle joints that you need for strength/handling and use CA or similar for the flat-on-flat portions? Not sure how practical that is given how they may or may not actually go together but a hybrid approach could make life a little easier for you in that particular instance.

[doogsatx/]

Dauntless has been in a bit of a holding pattern lately - but we're back on the go again!

First up - Eduard PE for the wing bomb racks - a bit fussy but really pretty cool!





Lots of work has also gone into fitting the upper-center dive brake housing to the Dauntless. Ugh. Next time I do a Dauntless, I think I'll leave that portion in plastic.

Now that it's installed (ain't pretty...don't have pics yet), I've been working on the rest of the brakes.

The actuators are tedious! Thankfully Eduard provides way more than the 30 needed.



The brakes themselves fold over onto themselves. So one side has outside texture, the other side has interior texture. I decided to fix these with epoxy, but needed a way to keep them flat while they cured. Clamps etc weren't working, so...

I sandwiched them between two sheets of glass



And added bricks for good measure.



Moving on the the details of the flaps...Eduard would have you fold these long strips of PE...but strip styrene does the job just as well.



Center flap more or less done. Fitting and gluing the supports takes a lot of small alignment and thin CA work.



Up next...rest of the flaps and getting closer and closer to paint.

[John Everett]

Keep at it! (Glad it's you and not me.)

[wbill76]

Glad to see you back at this one, those flaps are going to be real nice once finished even if it does cost your sanity in the process.

[Rick]

Glad to see you back on this one again. I knew there was a reason I avoided PE flaps and I think I've just seen it. No doubt these will be beautiful when their done Doogs.

Rick