Hello again all of you in Lockdown Land. This is Big Bro pulling another oldy but goody from the "LillteBro" Storage Box. You may have been following Bob's posts on building a 1/48 Betty, so I thought it interesting that he had built a smaller version some 45-50 years ago. His abilites had grown in his later youth, which will be seen later on, but despite the relatively good condition of this model it still needed a rehab. Time and Grime are no friend to our styrene creations.
Hey, this doesn't look too bad, so whats the big deal? Well let's start with dirt (you will see better later with some before and afters). As usual there are various tid bits that have gone AWOL. Notice the one exhaust missing from the starboard side, the small windows in the nose, not to mention other windows, masts, pitot tube..... You can't see in this picture but none of the crew are in their seats. They are rattling around in the cockpit somewhere!
I was able to pop off the canopy and free our crew from their plastic prison. My brother must have done some masking as the canopy looks better to start than any other rehab I have attempted.
Compare with above and you can see that not much cleanup was needed. The same is true of all the other "glass".
Yep, Bob had the instructions saved for this one too! You can see how rudimentary the plans were back then - "glue parts A, B and C onto part D".
Now comes the really interesting part (NO, not the grimy blue bottom. We'll take care of that later)! I quized Bob about this and he recalls that since the landing gear was inserted into receiving holes in the nacelles, they could retract! So why did the wheel well doors have to be static and glued in place? So before gluing the nacelle halves together he fabricated, with wire, door mechanisims, so they could open and close. In my opinion, ingenious even today - and they held up for almost 50 years. All I did was "spot weld" all the connection points with Loctite gel (there were a couple wires that had broken loose from the door).
They close amazingly well!
But there was a problem to solve. At some point the starboard gear had broken and Bob had inserted a pin to which he glued the gear to. So could I come up with a way to afix the gear to this pin in order that it could retract like the port side?
I took a piece of 26 gauge wire and contorted it such that it was glued into holes I drilled in the gear and made a loop over the end and bent such that (I hoped) it would snap into place over the existing pin!
Well lookee there, I was able to snap it on! To quote Bob, "ENGINEERS RULE"! Ok, enough with the pats on the back, I don't want to hurt my arm!
Back to the dirt that I promised - yuck. The existing yellow wing edges flacked off easily with not much coaxing. I ended up doing the same with the old flaking decals, since G4M1, 1/72 decal sets are readily available.
What a difference a good cleaning makes! A two edge sword for me is the color of the mold. The kit is molded in the dark green used by the Japanese on many of their aircraft. All Bob did was give it a flat coat spray. My job is now to protect the color to the max. extent while repainting the wing edges and applying new decals etc. before another trip to the dullcoat spray booth.
Let's backtrack a bit. Notice that I have used the Testors Window Glue to skin over the small missing glass parts. This worked quite well to the point where, when dry, I prefer it to the molded clear styrene.
This UFA (Unidentified Flying Aircraft) is now ready to be extensively masked in order to apply a correct gray to the bottom side to cover the $0.19 Testors Blue of the 1970s (which, as you know, is a $1.99 today)!
Masking took more that half a day. Props and spinners are easy to paint after coming out of the spray booth. The wheel well doors close - so no problem there. It is those tiny windows that have to be covered as well as the inside of the engine cowl that is fiddly and takes time. Now to the booth. Check in later to see how this rehab turns out.
Ooops, almost forgot, I am attempting to highlight the ailerons etc. with a black wash berfore spraying. In the meantime I have to fabricate the missing tail wheel (thanks Bro. for the 1/48 tail wheel photo).
Well, hello! Today is August 27. Yesterday we spent the day at our granddaughters "Proctoring" her through her "remote" school day - she is in first grade and does well with remote learning, but is asking why teachers get to go to school and kids don't! She loves school and wants to be with her classmates. We totally understand as does her mother who IS a Teacher! She has to be at school and daughter has to learn from home - how is that supposed to work?? Ok, enough of the soap box, this is a modeling blog. We came out of the spray booth pretty well; however, I caution against leaving any surface uncovered that is not to get paint - overspray is the Devil!
See what I mean? Fortunately the overspray is very light and I was able to remove it with thinner and a Q-Tip. While she was in the booth I worked on some details.
I tried to give our crew an oriental appearence. I also worked on fabricdating the missing tail wheel.
A piece of gauge 26 wire bent to shape and filled in with window glue, a leftover 1/350 - 40MM Bofors gun barrel and a foam Dot (provided by the lovely Mrs. BigBro). Add a bit of paint....
Not too bad. Then, while looking at the cockpit I realized - no instrument panel - another AWOL part. I checked the instructions, sure enough there was supposed to be one (sigh...). A piece of heavy stock will have to do.
Now I have to add the fiddly cluster! At least I know what it is supposed to look like.
More later.
Back to the work table this afternoon and - Uh-oh - after dot painting my makeshift control panel, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer? Wrong, Bomber Breath - it is my (supposedly) missing kit part which I found under my chair - AHHHH! Now what?
I think I may go with my homemade creation. Not an ego thing, but rather a detail and visibility issue. Green and size and proximate duplication of the Eduard panel.
Although I had the well doors closed, some of the gray snuck it's way into the wheel well so I had to do some touching up along with the repainting of the spinners and propeller blades. I can now put the crew back in the cockpit and install the instrument panel and tail-wheel but that is about all I want to do until the decals arrive, but wait a minute....
......Bob found a modeling magazine article of a 1/48 Betty that had a nice detail interior. So I thought that I might incorporate some of the ideas into 1/72 detail. I started with a floor (heavy stock - same as I used for the instrument panel)
Then the painting of the floor and seats. I touched up the control yokes, inserted the scratch instrument panel and also added a small piece of foam and inserted small pieces of wire to form a console for engine thrusters etc. Here is the result.
I forgot to mention that I added back masts and the D/F loop. The masts are heat stretched left over sprue, While awaiting decals I will paint the masts, install the tail wheel and the nose and canopy (to be masked for the final dullcoat).
I'm back. I forgot what day it was. The cockpit interior I accomplished yesterday, Aug. 28, but this morning (Aug. 29) I got it into my head that I was not happy with sticking a piece of wire onto the nose and calling it a machine gun. I remembered that my brothers IJN seaplane project called for guns that were a variation of the British Lewis with the round ammo drum. Could this be what is used in the Betty? I checked out a cut away view online and sure enough! I heated a sprue and stretched it.
I cut and trimmed the thick end for a receiver and stock, then sliced off a round mold point with the xacto saw blade for the ammo drum.
Pulled off the old wire and drilled thru the bubble so I could insert the gun barrel. I painted and glued and here is the result....
All this mention of the 7.7mm gun and no mention of the fact that I did drill out and replace the broken rear gunners 20MM cannon barrel! I must remember to include a photo later showing the rear - maybe when I install the tail wheel?
I attached the nose and the canopy after mixing up some green and black to finish the edge mullions and the radio masts. Now I have to wait for the decals.
I couldn't help myself - here is the tail showing the non-retractable tail wheel and 20MM cannon barrel I had to add. The Pitot tube is all that is left to replace.
It is August 31 and decals have arrived, but the first thing I notice is that there is more painting suggested. Anti Glare black in front of the canopy and on the inside of the nacelles. So I mask and paint. Not that easy to see due to the dark green, but it's there!
Now for the decals. It is Tuesday, September 1st and the first applied is the Hinumaro over the round access door on the port side. I realize later that this is a good choice since the upper right cuttout for the window is part of the decal and helps me line it up just right.
Next I went to the opposite side but my attempt to line up the square in the mirror image immediately went FUBAR and had to be scrapped. Fortunately there are two red balls the same size (as an option for other schemes), so I was able to easily mask the fuselage to put the white square in the proper position. I now have two chances to center a red ball! Note, if to do over again I would always mask and paint the white square and then deal with the more easily applied circle!!
The upper wing balls went on easily; however I did put down a piece of tape so that I knew, horizontally along the wing just where the ball should go according to the instructions.
So far. so Good, but the proof really is how my red ball goes on the painted square.
Well? Pretty good. Now I repeat my recommendation above. Paint the squares and apply the red balls. As Bob noted this will also eliminate the decal over decal problems you may be having.
Horizontal stripes off the decal sheet are used to create a hybrid tail number. A little historical research here. In April 1943 the US had intelligence of Admiral Yamamoto leaving the base in Rabaul for Balalea Airfield near Bougainville to pump up the troops after Guadalcanal. Halsey and Nimitz plotted to intercept and shoot down the notoriuos Japanese Admiral. They did so on April 18, 1943 with a flight of P38s out of Kukum Field on Guadalcanal. The crash site of Yamamoto's G4M1 Betty shows the tail number 323. While the decal set does not contain that tail number there are a sufficient number of 2s and 3s to create it,,,,,,,
,,,,,but first I applied the TWELVE itsy bitsy propeller decals - Ugh. Today is Wednesday, Sept. 2 and normally would be our day to proctor our granddaughters remote schooling, but some interesting changes occurred which put me back on the work bench.
The individual 3s and 2s were cut from the various tail number choices. I had to score and scrape areas for gripping with tweezers to allow the numbers to slide off. It worked, but was an anxious operation as I had only 4 - 3s of this size and type so I had no margin. Port was first......
.....followed by Starboard. Ok, decals are complete so now I have to mask all "glass" areas for a final flat spray coat. The other thing is adding some additional detail to panel lines (ailerons etc.) and install monofilament radio wire.
I used my dark brown water based acrylic.
I think you can see the radio wires to the vertical stabilizer - harder to see the front masts wire.
To the BOOTH!
Out of the BOOTH! It took awhile to unearth from the "glass" masking.
Something unexpected but welocome is the reveal of paint stress. Apparently the unintentional result of all the splattering I was unknowingly doing during the build. This has been a long and challenging process so I will greatfully accept this unforseen blessing. How many other words can I come up with starting with "un"?
I reinstalled the tail wheel that fell off somewhere in the process - Unbelievable! (See, there is another one). Thanks all for looking at this post and final completion pics.
Stay safe out there and keep on Modeling!
