SPA Modeler

Stikpusher wrote: ↑Fri May 19, 2023 12:24 pm All those small details add up John. Your slow & steady progress is going to pay off handsomely Im sure.

Thanks guys! Now that the Jug is finished, I can hop back onto the Hien build.

The Wolf Pack conversion set came with a brass pitot tube. It looked a tad thick so I played with the kit part to see if I could get a finer result. I'll have to check with actual photos to see if this is appropriate or not.



After hemming and hawing about how to attach the wings, I've decided to glue the wing halves together and deal with the leading and trailing edge joints cleanly.



The landing light was punched from a thin sheet of brass and coerced into a dish shape. The light bulb is courtesy of a small sphere from the Brita water filter.


The clear cover was cemented into place using Tamiya Extra Thin and will be masked off. I think there is a mask for it on the Eduard mask set.


The conversion set also came with a different style of wing tip lights.


These were glued into place using black CA glue. Instead of sanding the excess glue, I used a cotton swab moistened with CA Debonder to remove the excess glue. This is a nice trick for filling areas adjacent to fine details that you don't want to sand away.


The wing fit on the bottom looks pretty good. Because of the joint detail on the bottom, I will concentrate on getting a good connection here and worry about the top wing root joint later.



The wing spar was doused in tube glue and I slid the starboard wing into place. Some finger pressure was need to level the joint at the front. I filled the joint between the resin nose and wing bottom with Black CA glue to help secure the glue bond so I didn't have to hold it forever.


There is an obvious joint on the top. It may be reduced with some pressure but I'm planning to bridge the difference with stretched sprue.


Using the same Debonder trick, the excess CA glue on the bottom can be cleaned up significantly without sanding.

I’m going to have to make a note of using black CA glue and using debonder for ease of clean up instead of sanding. Who knew? Now to see if my local HobbyTown has any Black CA a in stock.

Very nice! I'll have to remember that black super glue trick.

Truly Amazing Work I have the chrome 1/72 scale model w/decal camo, yours will be quite the bird when finished

A good debonder definitely gives new uses for CA glue.

A bit of clean-up has been performed on the starboard wing bottom.


The wing root gap on the topside is being filled with stretched sprue on the plastic-plastic portions and black CA glue on the plastic-resin connection.

I’ve heard of using stretched sprues for gap filling but never understood without photos. Now I understand it. What glue did you use for the stretched sprue.

Now sprue goo I’ve heard of, understood how to make it but never knew how it’s applied using… what?

I used Tamiya Extra Thin to weld the the stretched sprue into place. As the glue softens the plastic, I was able to push the stretched sprue further into the gap. I don't use sprue goo much anymore but the batch I made was in a bottle of Tamiya Extra Thin cement. And so, I was able to use the application brush that came with the bottle.

I've glued the port wing into place. Again, I used black CA to fill gaps and cleaned with debonder to minimize sanding.



The port wing root gap is bigger than the starboard side so I used a thicker piece of stretched sprue to fill it.



I used a David Union rotary tool with a small ballhead attachment to grind down the raised portion of the stretched sprue. This was then sanded down further with sandpaper.


Mr Surfacer 1000 is used to touch up the joints as appropriate. A shot of Mr Surfacer Primer 1000 is applied to check the joins.

John, I may have missed an earlier explanation by you, but how do you clean up the excess Black CA with debonder? Do you just swab away the excess with something soaked in debonder?