When looking close at the surface, I discovered that troweling on the clear flat had unforeseen consequences. Look at all those crazed lines:

In addition to the crazed surface, also notice that each of the decals has a border that doesn’t match the paint. Between the two, that has to go (actually, either by itself would be enough).

And go they did…ALL OF IT:

And that’s how I spent most of February…rubbing things down with alcohol and sanding. And the end result after painting it again is this:

Okay. This I can work with. Next is to put down (reworked) decals again. But this time I think I’m gonna try something a little bit different…

Okay…I see a pattern here. I do some work, I get to what I think is close to the end, and then I suggest that maybe the next post will be the last. Yeah… I see the pattern and at this point, I shall not declare the next post may be the last one. I’ll just let y’all be surprised.

Obviously, I thought this would be the last post on this build. The underside was painted, the topside was primed, all I needed to do was to paint the topside with color-corrected paint like this:

I had the decal paper, I got both sets of graphics (the decals that were printed on clear paper and the decals that were printed on white paper) sized and printed out, and then I started putting the under-decals (printed on white paper) where I wanted them. I started with the refueling receptacle and discovered that the white decal paper was fairly tough; had I treated commercial decals as roughly as I did this one, I’ve no doubt it would have ripped:

And then I realized that I didn’t have quite all the decals I need. There is the crest for the “AF Logistics Command” on the vertical stabilizers (and what the hell the Logistics Command had a Blackbird for I’ll never figure out) that I didn’t have. I went to my reference photo and copied that section of the photo and started converting it from a photo to a graphic for decals:

Once I’d taken care of that, then I was able to continue. When I started laying down the decals with white backing, I noticed that where I’d cut the decals from the paper, the white of the paper showed at the edges:

Once all the white paper decals were down, I used paint to cover the white edges of them:

The decals I’m using were from the kit’s decal sheet that I scanned into the computer. So that means that this decal was wrongly sized at manufacture:

In the process of producing two sheets of usable decals, I managed to make several more (of both types) that were not usable. That meant I had extra decals that I could use to do what Italeri evidently didn’t figure out (and Testors evidently never noticed):

Instead of trying to wrestle with the long decal on the top that delineates the no-step area, I cut it into four easier-to-manage sections. Finally, all the under decals were in place on top (I’ll do the underside once the topside is all finished):

Until this point, I was pleased with myself for having figured out how to avoid using old decals in uncertain condition. As I was putting the under decals down, I thought that maybe they were a bit on the thick side and hoped that a coat of clear matte would take care of that. As I started putting down the color decals, my hope gradually vanished.

As soon as I started putting the color decals down, I realized (after approximately ten minutes as I tend to be somewhat dense at times) that the red decals were not exactly the same size as the under decals! I have absoLUTEly no idea why that happened. I used the red decals FOR the white ones, the only difference being the color ink that would print. But nope…the red decals are just slightly smaller. That meant that for the top decals of the no-step markings I cut the “no step” away from the stripes and aligned them separately:

As you can probably figure, this did not please me. At. All.

Once all of the color decals were down, treated with decal setting solution and solvent, I let the model sit overnight and the next day put down a couple of light coats of Tamiya TS-80 Flat Clear from a rattle-can to cover the decals, create the degree of light reflection I wanted, and blend in the decals.

The decals did not blend in.

The decals did not REMOTELY come close to blending in.

Once panic had subsided (and after a dozen phone calls to friends, hoping I could convince one (or more…I’m adaptable) to stop by, take my shotgun, and put me out of my misery) (none of whom stepped up, in case you were wondering), I thought of a fix. And a fix was desperately needed because if these decals didn’t work, I’d have to strip the top down to bare plastic (and resin and putties), repaint it, and then…and THEN…

::shudders:: Use the old kit decals instead. I cut out one of the decals from the old sheet that I knew I wouldn’t use and tested it.

It came off in three pieces (threatening the entire time to shatter). So that showed me that the decals were probably just over the line separating usable from unusable. That means I HAVE TO make these decals work.

After an inordinate amount of time (most of that time spent whimpering, whining, gnashing teeth (both of them) AND wringing my hands) I figured out a method that just might save things. Saving things was good because the alternative was a nicely built (I hope) SR-71 without any markings. The solution was to cover the decals in a very thick coat of flat clear. Once the clear had dried, sand down the raised areas (stopping before sanding decals) in the hope that with enough paint on there, I can fill that stepped edge of the decals and make it look as if it’s flat.

To make the coats of flat clear any thicker, I think I would have needed a trowel (note the panel lines…there is SO MUCH PAINT on this thing that the panel lines look like something usually found on a die-cast model):

I started sanding with 2000 grit paper; I didn’t want to blow through the paint and dig into decals. When that seemed to take forever (seemed to because the 2000 grit didn’t seem to be doing anything), I went to 1500. Then 600. 400. Finally 320 started doing what I wanted…taking the paint down before I ended up being moved to an Assisted Living Facility.

Note the difference between the left side of the photo under the canopies on the side of the fuselage where things haven’t been sanded, and the right side of the photo where they have been:

And the panel lines really did look like die-cast panel lines. I remedied that by, starting with 320, sanding up through the grits to 2000 (rescribing as necessary along the way):

Whew.

Yes…in several places I not only sanded through all the clear flat, I also sanded through the black paint, and then through the primer right down to plastic. But two things: The panel lines now look like PANEL LINES and not trenches, and once all the decals are done on top, I can repaint the black once I’m done:

WHEW!

At this point, I came about six inches from complete disaster.

I have reached over, under, and around this model for many, many, months and hundreds of hours. No problem. Evidently, I was saving up all the small problems of reaching over, under, and around this model for ONE REALLY MASSIVE PROBLEM. While returning my arm to a more usual position after having reached over the model, my cuff caught it and knocked it clean off the workbench.

I caught it, falling toward an oak floor, landing gear down (of course), SIX INCHES from the floor. I would have sworn that my ability to move that fast had gone away forever a few decades ago (three, if that sort of thing matters to you). I caught it by the outside wing on the right side (right side because I caught it and if that doesn’t impress you, you are impress-proof). As I caught it, I heard that little “snick” that indicates that something formerly adhering to something else had ceased any sort of adherence. Indications were correct. Where the outer wing met the curve of the nacelle was a plastic-to-resin join of superglue. It cracked, requiring regluing, sanding, etc.:

What REALLY impressed me with this almost-disaster what not having to change any undergarments because shock and horror did not affect any sphincters adversely. (Something else I’m inordinately proud of.)

Since I have to finish troweling on the clear flat and sanding away the steps created by too-thick decals. It’s a lot of sanding and I’d rather not have to sand everything. I masked the areas of the upper surface with tape I don’t want to coat under a very thick layer of clear. Once it’s dry, I’ll start sanding and rescribing.

Again.

There are still more things that need to be attended to before I can begin painting the overall build. I started by painting the inside of the landing gear doors:

In addition to paint, there are decals (lots of decals) that need to be addressed. The kit came with decals…and if the kit is old, so are the decals. I have no idea how the kit, and decals, were stored. I’ve been surprised by decals that looked in good shape, but when wet, they fractured into many tiny, unusable, shards. I’ve already ascertained that decals for this aircraft are preciously rare (and not what I need), so I have to use these decals. But since I don’t want to use these decals, something else has to be done.

I started that “something else” by making a 600dpi (25.4 dpmm) scan of the decal sheet. Then I digitally reworked the image for sharpness and clarity, which I then printed onto plain paper so that I could scale the digital scan to the required size. My intention was to print the decals onto decal paper and use those decals.

Of course, things aren’t quite that simple. Inkjet printers don’t print white. Where white is needed, the printer just doesn’t print and lets the white of the paper take care of that. Fine for documents, not so fine for multicolored decals, of which one color is white. The work-around for that is to print decals that require white on white decal paper and then use those white-paper decals under the colored decals.

Not all of the kit’s decals will be used, so I copied the ones I will be using and separated them into the under-decals (printed on white paper) and top-decals (on clear decal paper):

Being INKjet, the ink is the usual ink and will smear when wet. And since decals get wet, something has to be done to keep that from happening…something like coating the inked surface with a clear fixative:

So far so good. So far, though, only goes so far. When I cut out a decal and applied, it, however, things just went immediately into the crapper. IT’S TOO FORNICATING THICK:

Okay, so let’s try using this stuff on it:

And then this stuff:

And they didn’t have much effect:

An hour later, not much more of an effect:

And not much the following two hours:

Well. THAT didn’t work…and I had to scrape it off and repaint it, too:

And since I’m going to continue to try to get these INTERCOURSING DECALS to work, I did what I should have done at the outset…make a decal test plate from painted styrene:

One thing I ascertained with certainty is that the red ink on the black background means the decals will be invisible. That means I have to double up on all the decals because they all need white backgrounds to be seen. So I had to make another set of decals in white to put down under the colored decals:

Next trick was to put down the white decal and then the colored decal, and then align them:

In this part of the adventure, I learned a couple of things. If I thought one decal was too thick, two are TOO THICK. The other thing I learned is that the more I moved the colored decal around, the more ink I removed with the cotton swab.

Not acceptable.

Here I stalled for a few days. I had no idea on how to proceed and even considered saying a prayer (and thereby risk being struck by lightning) and use the kit decals. Then I found out that LASER jet printed decals don’t require a fixative layer! This is good news for a couple of reasons. First, not throwing a layer of essentially clear paint on top of an already too thick decal makes sense to me as each decal will only be half as thick…and each decal needs two. Secondly, fixative isn’t a decal. Not being a decal, it doesn’t respond to solvents while the decal under the fixative does, resulting in that uselessly wrinkled result. My hope is that the laser jet printed decals will be useably thinner AND respond positively to setting and solvent solutions.

Laser jet decal paper was ordered and once it arrives, that particular hurdle will be gone at again. In the meantime, there are other things to do.

Things like making the hydraulic struts from paper clips and then attach the doors to the fuselage…which I was in the process of doing when I noticed that the damned doors are too narrow, so THAT had to be fixed, puttied, sanded, and installed:

Then I needed to attach the linkage rods from the main landing gear to the doors (using .010″ [.254mm] strips):

To keep masking tape from adhering to anything I don’t want it to (which is often the only thing it will adhere to), I wrapped the delicate bits in cigarette rolling papers, then stuffed the bays with cotton (to keep air out and the paint the air is carrying) and finished off with tape:

And then I painted the underside using Tamiya TS-6 Matte Black rattle-can:

The upper side I covered with Tamiya’s light gray Fine Surface Primer:

And just like that, I’m at the painting stage! (And today the laser jet decal paper came in, so more about that in the next, and hopefully last installment of this build.)

With the corners of the vertical stabilizers sharpened, it was time to add them:

There isn’t a lot of surface area to bond the stabilizers to the nacelles so instead of adding green putty, which isn’t structural, I used epoxy putty, which is:

While the epoxy putty was curing, I pulled the parts out that needed to be painted and painted the landing gear parts:

When possible, if I have to replicate a steel part, I try to use steel instead of steel-painted plastic. The difference is evident. The upper parts are the steel-painted plastic, its lower counterpart is steel. The large cylinders are landing gear parts (using steel welding rod), the smaller ones on the penny are for the canopies (using straight pins):

Then I needed to attach the control surfaces in the slightly-drooped position. Doing this offers more visual stimulation but I really dislike the task itself (frankly, I’d rather scribe lines) (spits). Once I had the inner control surfaces in place, the gaps on the lower sides had to be filled; I used styrene to do that:

I am SO GLAD when they are all done and added:

At this point I looked at where I had masked off the clear sections of the canopies. Then I realized I’d masked them in August of 2017. Oh bugger. Masking tape tends to separate paper from adhesive if the tape is left in place too long. Sixteen months qualifies as too long. It would be better for me to attend to that now before paint is laid down:

With the masking tape removed, a cotton swab dipped in lighter fluid dissolved and removed the stuck on adhesive left behind:

The next bit of masking tape won’t be there as long:

When I started to add the inlet spikes to the engine intakes, I was only half successful at first. The port (or left, if I’m not trying to impress) spike went in fine (or so I thought at the time…later on I discovered it had drooped a little before the glue set…and now there isn’t any way to fix that, so the next spike would have to have the same, inaccurate, droop). The starboard (or right, if I’m still trying to impress), however, managed to dismount its connecting point as I was pushing it into place. I thought I had that assembly well-glued, reality indicated otherwise. Aside from the obvious, the part that came completely disconnected is inside the nacelle:

I was wroth and most vexed. Oh, and I was COMPLETELY LIVED as well. I came up with two possibilities that could fix the problem. The first was the most complicated (of course), involving cutting open the nacelle behind the spike mount and gluing it in place from inside. The second was simpler, involving taking a 1/8″ (3.18mm) brass rod and putting a 90-degree bend in it and using that to pull the mount forward into contact with its attachment point. I decided to try the simpler fix first this time, figuring that if it didn’t work, I could always cut the thing open later. I don’t know it it was exactly luck, but so far it seems to have worked. The inlet spike in the foreground is the one where its mount came loose (and by the way, isn’t this thing starting to look like an SR-71?):

The next step was to attach the landing gear. Along the way, I’d dry-fitted the landing gear several times and each time I had no problem with fitting the trunnions into the landing gear bays. So with everything inside the bays painted and the fuselage parts all permanently attached, of course the sodding things won’t fit inside the openings; neither main landing gear does:

As there was NO “Plan B” to fit these things, my only option was to cut a notch in the fuselage to allow these parts to sit inside the bay, then to plug the gaps I’d have to cut…and so I did:

And fit they did. Here’s the beast standing on its own legs for the first time. That is a major milestone. The fly-filled ointment (hmmm…I wonder if I could use that as a filler…) is that evidently the cross-bar of the front landing gear, the part that the tires mount to, isn’t precisely perpendicular to the strut. If you look closely at the first photo and the left landing gear tire, you can see that there’s just a little bit of daylight under the tire that’s not supposed to be there:

With the major landing gear components installed, the lines needed to be attached to them as well as the extension/retraction cylinders. The notion to allow the extension/retraction cylinder mounts to rotate and for the rams to slide a little worked perfectly:

At the absolute tail of the fuselage are the fuel vents. The Blackbird had to deal with a weight limit on the amount of fuel it could have for its takeoff roll. If it had too much fuel on either its take-off roll or landing, the tires showed a disconcerting tendency to come apart explosively. Since this tends to be a specifically bad idea (not just for stability but because the early wheels were constructed of magnesium and magnesium burns MOST intensely…which tends to be bad for the paint job), takeoff fuel weight was limited to 80,000 pounds (36,287.39 kg) or less. Conversely, when landing, the weight limit was still the limit so if the aircraft was approaching with too much fuel aboard, the excess was dumped out of the fuel vents. The model has that section molded solidly, so the first task was to flatten the rear tip of the fuselage. Then I constructed this section out of .005″ (.127mm) styrene:

Another small detail was to add a fin-shaped antenna under the port nose (or left, if I’m not trying to impress):

Since I’d done so much work on the back of the fuselage from so many different colored pieces, a coat of primer showed me the few areas that still needed some attention:

At this point, I realized that all I need to do is to attach the landing gear doors, mask the landing gears, and this thing is ready to paint!

Oh my…this thing is almost done…

With the engine nacelles mostly done, it was time to permanently attach them to the rest of the model. Before I started that process, I knew that there would be much handling because (and here’s a surprise) there are substantial gaps between the engine nacelles and the inner wing panels. And because my case of laser-focus frequently likes to gnaw on me, I knew that the edges of the fuselage chines (those VERY THIN edges) wouldn’t fall within the scope of my laser-focus and would get bumped on the workbench…probably on the worst part of the workbench, the hard, unyielding, and unforgiving edges of the workbench. As I’ve already discovered, any bump leaves a divot at the point of contact on the chines, meaning I would probably spend many hours chasing my inattention and rebuilding each of the (probably many) divots.

This time I manage to get ahead of my inattention and fixed the problem before it became a problem…wrap the forward fuselage in bubble wrap:

Subsequent events proved that this was a good idea.

With no more little tasks to distract me, it was time to pull the trigger and glue the ill-fitting (he says as if this is a new thing) nacelles to the inner wing sections:

I was quite generous with the styrene cement and before it set up too much to move the nacelles, I aligned them and used tape to hold them where I wanted them…then let things sit overnight:

The next day, with the glue as cured as it will ever become, the tape was removed and I looked at the gaps (you can click on the photos and zoom in on them if you’ve a mind to, although to me they look like they should be visible from orbit):

I used epoxy putty for its strength and additional adhesive properties to hold the nacelles securely in place. I laid down masking tape to keep the epoxy putty from going places I’d rather it did not and ran a strip of tape around the edges of the fragile resin intakes to protect them from nicks:

The epoxy putty takes about 24 hours to cure just about completely. With the gaps stuffed full of the putty, this was set aside overnight. In addition to filling the gaps, the putty was also going to enable me to fix the misalignment at the leading edges of the inner wings where they met (sort of) the nacelles.

The next day I sanded the putty, starting with 100 grit, working my way through 220, 320, 400, and 600. I was QUITE PLEASED with how well I was able to get the leading edges and nacelles to play nicely with each other:

I used Tamiya’s TS-6 Matte Black rattle can as a primer to check surfaces and, with a few minor tweaks still required, found myself very pleased with how this problem was resolved:

With the afterburners painted and assembled, I wanted to keep paint from infiltrating the interior. I stuffed a cotton ball into the interior and taped over the ends:

With the afterburners glued in, the fit problems and gaps become evident:

Again, the epoxy putty does double duty; it fills the gaps and adds more attachment points for the assemblies:

Filing, sanding, and scribing gets me to this (these?) point(s?):

The vertical stabilizers/rudders were assembled, puttied, and scribed. Then they were dry-fitted to see how things are going (and they’re going…and they’re going just as everything else has been…fit problems):

While fitting, filling, and sanding the vertical stabilizers/rudders, I noticed that three of the four corners of each part were not as sharp as reference photos show them to be; the corners each had a radius that shouldn’t be there, the corner should be sharp. I cut all the corners away (for uniformity) and .060″ (1.524mm) styrene blocks were added:

Filing brought down the excess plastic and sharpened the corners nicely and the acrylic putty filled in the small seams:

A bit of sanding and now all the corners are nice and sharp:

Next step is to attach them to the nacelles.

One of the areas that I thought would give me problems were the replacement resin engine inlets.

Each assembly is comprised of four parts. Fitting them requires that the leading edges of the engine openings be cut back and that the insides of the engine nacelles be sanded/filed away so that they would fit inside the openings. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy that part of the build went:

The round openings in the center of the inlets are where the shock cones attach. Here’s one dry-fit:

While the superglue was curing, I reworked most of the PE grills for a better fit. In the process, a friend of mine informed me of an acrylic putty that he suggested might work well for fine filling jobs:

This product is intended for the autobody trade. It certainly works well for certain applications in modeling!

The green putty works well for filling medium to small voids and depressions, but it doesn’t “feather” out well. When the coat of putty is sanded very thin, it tends to break off at the thinnest sections. I needed something very fine that would adhere strongly to styrene and this 3M stuff does that well:

So now I have three grades of putty, very fine (3M acrylic putty), medium but non-structural (the Squadron Green I’ve been using), and strong and structural (Aves Aepoxy Sculpt):

So, now that I have the resin engine intakes in place, it’s time to fit them. As is evident, the plastic doesn’t quite match the resin:

To start to fix that, I filed and sanded down the areas that are too high. Once done, I used the epoxy putty to bridge the gaps and to fill in sections of plastic that were below the edges of the resin (and it does double duty by being adhesive):

After the first application of epoxy putty and working it down, there were a few places that needed another application of the stuff:

Once the putty had cured and been filed/sanded, there were several places where I needed a fine putty that would feather well…which I just happened to have, now:

Once the acrylic putty was sanded smooth, all surfaces met perfectly:

Then I replaced the pitot tube/yaw sensor with an AMAZING piece. This part is so fine that it looks more like a needle, an actual needle, than it does a model part. It’s comprised of three parts, all of which fit within each other to produce an incredibly detailed part. Once assembled, I cut off the kit part, drilled a socket into the mount, and got the drooped angle of the pitot/probe where it belongs:

With the intakes of the engines taken care of, I turned my attention to the engine outlets. My initial thought was to use the PE afterburner (AB) vanes:

I like the level of detail and the scale dimensions. Unfortunately, the vanes attach to the kit part (shown above between the copper of the vanes and the tan of the resin). What’s unfortunate about that is that there is a curved interior detail that’s missing from the kit parts but present in the resin parts. Yes…I could modify the kit part accordingly, but the technical phrase for this job would be, “a bitch.” Had enough of “bitch” jobs, thanks. Yes, the resin vanes are also going to take some work to approximate what I’m after and the ends of them will be thicker than I’d like, but it’s still less work than filling in the kit parts and then getting that filled section’s profile correct inside a cylinder.

If you look closely at the vane sections below, you’ll note they’re slightly oval. Hot water and fingertip pressure will fix that (in addition to cutting away the excess resin):

Once free and reshaped, the edges of the vanes needed to be sharpened up. To support a fairly thin resin part (the vanes), the vanes were attached to their mount (compare the part on the left, which has been reworked, to the one on the right, which has not):

Then the notches that appear between the vanes had to be cut out (done vanes on the left, unstarted on the right):

And of course, that was done again on the part on the right:

Along the way, I discovered that (with the exception of the epoxy putty, which just would not work for such tiny fixes…not enough surface area to effect a good bond) none of the putties I have bond to this resin formulation. That meant I had to use small fragments of the resin pour blocks that had to be removed to fill the small bubble holes:

I dry-fit the components to see how they fit and, mostly, they do, but later on there will be some fitting to get the resin parts to match the kit parts at the nacelles correctly:

Yeah, so, I like what I see! If I can paint this correctly, the parts should look tres chic! So I started by laying out the colors with the parts they’re going onto:

And then I got the paint onto the parts:

Now painted, pastels created the sense of reality. The inside of the vanes was painted Tamiya’s X-32 Titanium Silver and over painted with Tamiya’s TS-80 Flat Clear (rattle-can) so that the pastels would stick. The inner surface of the afterburner body and the conical flame holder were painted Vallejo’s Model Air 71.132 Aged White, and the turbine blades were painted a mixture of Mr. Hobby’s H76 Burnt Iron and Tamiya’s XF-2 Flat White before having the blade edges dry-brushed with silver. Once the paint all dried, I used dark orange, medium gray, light gray, and black pastels to create the “cooked” look:

Before and after:

Then black paint, Tamiya XF-1 Flat Black, needed to go on while I still had easy access to the parts:

Once the paint had dried, I scraped off just enough paint from the face of the “fins”  for the vane mounts to have some surface to glue onto:

And then I’m reminded of why I generally do not do any work in the morning until the coffee percolates upwards into where my brain used to be.

I dropped one of the assemblies and took a nick out of one edge:

Y’know…the edge that was painted and had pastels applied. That edge.

Ever quick on the uptake (yeah, right), I finished my coffee. Silently. No cursing, screaming, or scared cat kind of quiet. I knew it was time to fix the nick once I figured out how to fix the nick. Glue a small piece of resin into it:

Then use a SHARP knife to whittle the resin into obscurity (because dull knives tend to tear plugs out), add a dab of paint and a touch of pastel (the inside of the former nick is in the second photo):

From every photo I’ve seen of the Blackbird while it’s parked, either at active airfields or in museums, the control surfaces at the trailing edges of the wings droop slightly. I cut the inner control surfaces away from the inner wings so that means I have to do the outer wings:

This time, I added a sheet of .030″ (.762mm) styrene to the inside of each wing. Before adding them, I scored the length and bent them along the scored line to the approximate angle I want the control surfaces to droop:

I like the way that worked so well, I’m going to do it to the inner wings as well.

Again, I’d done SO much work fitting parts and pieces that I was losing sight of the state of my work. This time, instead of using proper primer, I used a rattle-can of Tamiya’s TS-6 Flat Black rattle-can to check fit and if I can paint this without packing up the grills I spent so much damned time fitting:

Yep…worked just fine… Very glad to know I can get those grills to display!

After taking August off and away from the bench, I’m back at it. And since the fuselage isn’t finished, yet, I’m back at that, too.

I’ve done so much work on sections of the fuselage and, more importantly in terms of my ancient eyes, have used so many different materials that my ability to see the surface has diminished. To work around that, cue the primer! Normally I tend to not use primer as each coat of paint (of whatever type) fills in details, some of which I have labored to include. But this time, what the light does as it reflects off a surface that is mostly black, some white, and the green of putty, makes getting things correct has become a struggle.

Sod that…grab the rattlecan of primer (Tamiya Medium Gray):

Once under a uniform gray coat of primer, areas that still need work become evident (for me, the most important part of priming). These areas still need further sanding for filled areas to become invisible:

Some areas need just a little bit of filling (the holes will show you where they are):

Not everything needs more work, though:

And one spot needs just a little tweaking (note how a thin coat of primer, just enough to cover, has almost completely filled the two grills at the bottom-center of the photo):

After sanding and another touch of primer, one spot still needs more work:

Putty takes care of the small holes and surface imperfections:

With those small sections attended to, I wanted to check the…well…”fit” isn’t quite accurate, but it’s the least foul word I can think of…of how the engine nacelles and outer wings…well…yeah. Look closely. Where the nacelles attach to the inner wings has a LARGE GAP and those sections are supposed to meet:

Yeah…that’s going to need some work (and it’s going to take enough work that in contrast, I didn’t even mention the gap that runs the length of the attachment point between nacelle and wing). But before any fitting of these parts can happen, there are a number of details and modifications that have to be done to the nacelles/wings, first. It will be MUCH easier to do the work and make the modifications before these parts are attached.

About this time, the upgraded engine afterburner sections arrived, giving me a sincerely appreciated break from the ongoing fuselage diddling. The white conical parts (fuel spray assemblies) are 3D printed parts (something I expect I’ll be seeing more of as that technology becomes more affordable and commonly used) and the remainder of the parts are nicely cast resin:

I checked fitment of the provided parts and I like them much more than the modified kit parts I had done. It’s interesting in that I like the PE afterburner feathers much more than I do the resin parts that came with this set and they fit the kit parts more precisely. When it comes time to add these to the nacelles, the combination of both AM parts sets and kit parts will really dress up the business ends of the engines.

One of the things I wanted to see was how easily (or not at all) the engine intakes are going to fit. That AM set is very nicely cast resin and requires a bit of modification to the nose of the engine nacelles. For the resin intakes to fit, the molded-on lips had to be removed and the leading edge of the intakes cut back (the AM set provides a new, more accurate, part).

These are the intake parts:

The resin parts were cleaned up and everything fitted, then glued into one unit (twice):

With the resin parts assembled, it was time to cut, carve, and sand the nacelles to slide these things into place. The nacelle on the left is unmodified, the nacelle on the right has had its lip removed:

Once I had one side cut back and cleaned out, I slid the resin parts into place to see how they fit. There will be some work required (big surprise) to make them fit correctly but the overall effect is good:

I cut, carved, and sanded the other nacelle and the other intake “fit” equally “well”. Each side is specific to its location and I dry-fitted the shock cones to see how it all worked together. Again, some work required but the end result will be worth the effort:

There are replacement grills to add. Looking at references show that these panels fit flush with the surface on the Blackbird. That means I have to socket them into the nacelles. I started by taping the grills in place, tracing them with a needle, and then using a chisel blade to remove plastic.

This is what the kit parts look like:

I determined where the PE grills needed to go and taped them in position, then outlined the exposed grill with a needle:

Then I added tape to the exposed end:

And repeated the tracing process:

This is the result:

Now that I know where it goes, it’s time to cut plastic, leaving me with this:

Which enabled me to glue the grill into position:

Yeah…there’s a gap around the grill. I taped over the subtle surface detail and applied putty:

There are eight places on each nacelle where this had to be done. (Some of them came out better than others, requiring varied ways of filling gaps around them.) After seeing how easily the grills packed up with paint when I applied a light coat of primer under the nose, I wonder just how much of these details will be visible once everything has been painted. But having started this process, I saw it through until all the molded-in details had been replaced.

Scribing panel lines is an annoyance. I don’t like it. One little oops and things have to be fixed. (“One”…that’s funny!) In the process of socketing the grills and panels into place, I needed to scribe the panel lines of the nacelles. One little oops and this line isn’t quite straight:

Panel lines. ::heavy sigh:: If they’re correct, they’re mostly unnoticed. If they’re not correct, they’re as obvious as a hooker’s wink. To fill that one little oops with putty will result in the putty breaking out when the area is re-scribed. To avoid that annoyance, instead of using putty to fill the bobble(s), I use stretched sprue. It’s the same material as the surrounding area and the scribing tool cuts plastic, not putty and plastic. So a piece of stretched sprue gets glued to the bobble and let sit for a couple of days to be completely hardened:

Once that’s completely hardened, the sprue is trimmed and then sanded so that the surface is smooth:

A straight edge is laid down to connect the grooves and this time no bobble occurs:

The area is sanded through progressively finer grits until it looks like this:

Yes. Each time I bobble a scribe (something that happens MUCH MORE than I like) (hell, once is more than I like!) in a spot that will need to be re-scribed, I go through this process. (I also curse a lot.)

When I assembled the upper part of the nacelle/wing to the bottom part, the gaps were substantial. Also, note that the panel lines below the corrugated sections in the photos don’t match, so that had to be fixed as well:

MUCH FILING AND SANDING ENSUED. The white plastic I used to fill the gap below was .015″ (.381mm) thick. The step from the trailing plane of the elevator to the body of the elevator was a LOT more severe than the above photo showed. I didn’t measure it but it was about 3/16″ (4.76mm). “Was” is the operative word, here:

While I was making the two surfaces evenly meet, I kept looking at the trench between the strake (leading edge of the wing along the side of the engine nacelle) and the nacelle. The gap was huge and my initial intent was to stretch more sprue, fill the trenches, and spend many hours sanding, filling holes, and more sanding. I really wanted a structural putty, but making my own by partially dissolving styrene scraps in plastic cement resulted in something a lot more porous than I wanted. “Gee,” I thought, “I wish I had structural putty.” Milliput would work, but it doesn’t store well after opening the package and goes hard, so that was out. And then I remembered I’d purchased some epoxy putty to do something with the Gemini build that I ended up doing differently. I put the epoxy putty in the drawer and promptly forgot about it. Well, if you need epoxy putty, allow me to mention Apoxie Sculpt.

The gaps and spaces in the two nacelle/wing parts have been filled with Apoxie Sculpt and it works VERY well. It’s structural, bonds well, and thin sections don’t blow out or lift up. Once hardened (overnight, though you could work it after a couple of hours for general shaping), it’s hard:

Apoxie Sculpt saved me tens of hours of work to fill the trenches and I suspect it’s going to save me a metric (or Imperial) butt-load of work getting the wings to meet the nacelles properly!

I let this sit for a couple of days to be certain that the glue had completely cured before I finished it off:

I don’t know what they are, but I know what they look like and where they go. There’s a couple of blisters under the nose/cockpit area. They’re triangular in shape with a recess in the front. After flipping through the various reference photos, I put down some masking tape and outlined the places where they go:

Then it was a matter of finding the styrene that stood off from the surface far enough and transferring the dimensions; as you can see, I used .040″ (1.016mm):

Then two were cut and glued in place:

Adding tape, removing tape, working the surface, and so on, will certainly show the builder where something wasn’t quite glued on properly, so yeah…that got redone:

At this point, I needed a break from the tedium. I figured since I was just about done with the fuselage (sometimes I crack myself up, I’m so funny), I’d turn my efforts to the next tasks which will be the engine nacelles, the outer wings, and the varied details that need to be added and upgraded. The first step is to see how bad the fit of parts will be.

Well, the fit isn’t exactly the best, and adding a couple of decades of sitting around in a box, migrating between shelves, has caused just about every part IN that box to warp, which is what is keeping the two surfaces at the top of the next photo from meeting:

In addition to having warpage to deal with, well, there’s also the “fit” that’s been an ongoing feature of this kit, too:

The nacelles attach to the main wings. So that they would align later when it’s time to attach them, I used the main wings as my gluing jig (MANY other things aren’t going to fit, but at least where these parts attach to the model will) (and my goodness didn’t later experience show me how naive that comment is!):

While I was gluing the upper outer wings to the bottoms, I got a little bit too enthusiastic with a clamp. The curved line in the photo below is where the glue had softened the plastic sufficiently for the clamp’s pressure to flatten out the curve that’s supposed to be there:

I was far too thorough gluing these parts together. As I was trying to separate them, it became obvious that the amount of damage I’d do to this section would be significant. Having a second kit, though, provided me with the parts I needed to redo this section properly:

Even Dick Bong, Chuck Yeager, Erich Hartmann, Glenn Cunningham, Robin Olds, and Gordo Cooper wore parachutes…

With that oh-god-damn-it moment passed and dealt with, I decided to work a few PE parts and I started with the nosewheel landing gear bay doors. That started by cutting the parts away from the frets and folding them:

With both sides folded, alignment is checked (I love these flat-jawed clamps):

Satisfied, soldering flux is applied, and then the solder is cut (the lines of the cutting pad are in millimeters):

Then the parts are realigned, clamped, and thin slices of solder laid along where I want the parts joined:

A quick pass with the butane torch liquefies the flux, melts the solder (which follows the flux), and it’s attached (and yes…I had to file off a small bit of solder that wandered):

A couple of more VERY tiny parts are added and the doors are done:

While I was on a tear, I decided I’d do the “turkey feathers,” the movable vanes at the engine outlets, of the afterburners next.

Well, once again “confidence” rose and bit the body part I use to sit on. “Confidence” can sometimes diminish the caution and care that must be taken. While I was trying (unsuccessfully) to solder the exterior afterburner vanes into a truncated cone, I smelled burning plastic.

Unless intended, which this was not, burning plastic is never a good thing. I followed the line of the torch, since that was the only heat source around, and discovered this:

“This” is the edge of the fuselage chine. At least I didn’t smash this thing. I turned off the torch, apologized to the cat (wherever she’d run off to in panic) for screaming, and went off and did something else for the remainder of the day.

So. The next day, I put the soldering stuff away and decided that this time I’d use superglue to hold these [MANY DELETED EXPLETIVES] together. Getting the curve gradual and even was quite the chore. Twice. And then I had to do the INside. TWICE. As if that wasn’t enough fun, I had to fit the inside parts to the outside parts. But I got it done and I’m mostly satisfied with how it all fits.

These are the brass PE parts compared to the kit’s part(s):

And here are the tail feathers in place against where they attach:

When I dry-fit all these things together, I noticed that the depth of the internals was off. If assembled as molded, these things will be too shallow. So I fiddled and figgered and realized that .75″ (19.05mm) PVC extension collars from the plumbing supply department would work with a little bit of modification.

I chucked one into the lathe and started turning it to dimension where it needs to fit inside the bases that the turkey feathers mount to:

With the body of the afterburner section lengthened, I had to remove the fuel sprayers from where they were cast on the kit part so I could move them to the inner end of the PVC. I didn’t have a boring tool that would fit. And then I realized (again) that this is plastic, not any sort of metal, and that I could use the back of a #11 blade to cut the section out:

Worked fine:

And then I did it all again for the other side. What I ended up with looked a lot better:

And…then Loki and Eris showed up. While I was online looking for something entirely unrelated to this build, I found that Lonestar Products has a resin set to bump up the accuracy of the engines:

So those parts are on order. ::sigh:: Once they arrive, I’ll cut/fit what I have between made and purchased parts to see which combination of bits gives me what I’m after.

With all that done and/or pending, it’s time to fix the melted plastic. (The cat came out of hiding a few hours after my scream. Food does that. To both of us.)

The fix started by cutting out the melted area:

Then it was time to add plastic, which in this situation was .080″ (2.032mm) sheet, to the bottom:

Then the hole was filled with more .080″ (2.032mm) and clamped together:

I waited a few days before I went back at it to allow the glue to cure. The first step was to knock down the excess with a Dremel tool (yeah, I got sloppy and gouged the area above it…perfection still eludes me):

That was followed with a lot of scraping, filing, and sanding, ending with panel lines being scribed (and putty being added):

Having no (good) excuse to avoid working the fuselage again, I went back to it and discovered that one (VERY ANNOYING) section of the underside rear had snapped free, so I had to reattach it, fill it with plastic and putty, then sand, sand, and sand:

With all that done, I’ll be going back to those mystery triangular blisters under the nose. I’m hoping that the coming month does NOT have any more ugly surprises for me. But since I’m not perfect, I’m not betting on that…

I ended the previous post with “whew.” I was premature. Putting all the parts together was one (very small) step of a long walk. Now that the parts (sort of) fit, I have to make the parts fit. And I also have to get everything to look integrated, smooth, and have all the gaps filled.

One of the things I noticed when I was at the NASM was that the triangular sections of the wings were actually raised, so .005″ (.127mm) sheet was fitted and putty used to blend the ones that need to be blended:

Naively, I followed the raised lines on both sides of the wing. The problem with that is that the alignment of the lines on top did not match the lines underneath. Of course I didn’t notice this until I’d glued the plastic to the bottom, so I removed the panels on the underside and made sure to align them to the panels on the upper side:

When I separated the upper fuselage from the lower, a section of the elevator ripped out. That needed to be repaired and adding new plastic was the easiest path:

At this point I started scribing panel lines. Though I still don’t figure I’m good at scribing panel lines, I have gotten better at it (and this is good because I have SO much room for improvement!). One of the things I’ve learned with this build is that yes…adding sprue to fill large gaps can be good, and it can also be bad. Unless otherwise shaped, the sprue is round. This isn’t a problem as long as the removal process doesn’t remove more than half the diameter of the sprue. If it does remove more than half the diameter of the sprue, a gap is revealed (hopefully it’s obvious – there’s only supposed to be one line here). I cut away the dodgy section and replaced it with scrap sheet styrene:

Something I didn’t realize at the time is something I will now draw your attention to. Look in the middle photo of the three previous. See that dark, short, line in the area I’d cut flat? That’s a void; there’s nothing there. As I later found out, leaving a void in an area that is going to be both thin and scribed won’t work well. The scribing breaks through the thin plastic and has to be filled. Again.

Sometimes scribing panel lines can be interesting. This is a raised panel line in an interesting place:

That line need to be recessed. To do that, I had to remove the line so that I could scribe the area:

That had to be done again on the other side.

I thought I had already addressed a fit problem but where things actually went after assembly required me to rework the fuselage between the main landing gear openings (the added plastic was filed/sanded to fit smoothly):

One thing I noticed when I got the ill-fitting fuselage section to fit was that there were gaps. The procedure for this build is fill with plastic, shave plastic down, fill smaller gaps with putty. But this time to get access and to rework the elevators and fuselage, removing the elevators (something that was on the to-do list since the elevators droop as #972 is displayed) was called for:

These photos show how far from meeting the surfaces that are supposed to meet are:

Scrap styrene acts as both wedges to keep surfaces aligned and fill for the gap (a file was used as a wedge to hold the surface in alignment):

I also added flat styrene to the elevators to close the ends since they’ll be visible once in place:

Lots of plastic needed to be added and then puttied over:

After these steps, days and days of sanding, adding putty, sanding, adding more putty, MORE sanding, ensued. I’m still not done yet and here is where things stand presently. All the white plastic areas are where I added plastic:

I haven’t even started on the engine nacelles and outer wingtips yet…

Before I do something as “big” as assembling the fuselage, “big” because once that’s done, there isn’t any “going back inside and fixing something” that can happen easily…if at all, I’ll sometimes sit and stew (or ruminate, for those who are adults) for days. But unless that “big” something isn’t done, the model will never be, either. In short (finally), I started at the nose and put the sodding fuselage parts together.

One (of many) thing that really does torque me out of true is when thin parts break off; it doesn’t matter if it’s during assembly or once it’s finished. I wanted something that would prevent that from happening with this one. What I came up with was to make the nose-probe (which on this bird was the pitot tube and a sensor) easily removable…as in, hit the thing hard enough to snap it and it’ll just fall off unbroken. I decided to hold the probe part on with magnets.

The first part of that involved getting the probe TO FIT tightly. Once that was taken care of, I wanted to socket a piece of steel sheet into the base of the probe. That started by cutting a piece from an old can, cutting the recess, then gluing the steel in place:

Next was to fill the socket where the (now removed) locating pin was to seat and then drill holes for the magnets to sit (kjmagnetics.com, part number ZD12, 1/16″ (1.28mm) x 1/8″ (3.18mm) rare earth magnets):

Works just fine (the clunky kit-supplied probe will be replaced with something much nicer):

Before I could start closing the fuselage, I needed to finish painting the landing gear bays and glue the nose bay into place. I misted Tamiya’s X-32 Titanium Silver over the flat black, and then touched a few connectors/caps on the spaghetti plumbing with Tamiya’s X-23 Clear Blue:

Okay, I liked how that came out, now to attach the nose gear bay. Since this model has some heft to it, I wanted to be certain I had enough surface area to support things. The first step was to get the bay in place. The vise on the right is supplying pressure to get a good bond in an area that wasn’t really fitting all that well (and there really wasn’t enough material left there to diddle around with):

I added some scrap .080″ (2.032mm) stock to both sides of the box to increase the surface area the glue could act on:

And then I noticed that the box was too narrow. If I knew how that happened, it would not have happened. The bottom edge in this photo doesn’t quite come out to the edge of the opening:

My “fix” was to add a strip of plastic to move the edge of the opening inward…and with how far out of true the underside of this nose is, that little strip of plastic isn’t the worst of it:

Time to put these parts together:

Putting these parts together required a bit of sincere persuasion:

About the time I got this far:

I noticed this broken part sitting on my cutting mat:

Those broken parts (because investigation showed more than one broke) came from here:

Not. Remotely. Pleased. The broken part was reassembled (almost completely…a very tiny part of it was never found) and glued back into place. NOT. FORNICATING. PLEASED.

To keep some moron (me) from blindly stuffing his finger into the bay again, I covered them all with excess plastic from a vacuforming session:

I also noticed the numerous places where “fit” would need work to FIT, in addition to numerous places where plastic needed to be added to fill gaps. Flat .010″ (.254mm) fitted into the gap found in underside of the nose:

And where the edges of the nose had gaps took some thicker scrap styrene:

Thicker stock filled gaps near the main landing gear bays:

And where fuselage sides met wing roots:

And where the fuselage met the fuselage…in other words, any place something with the fuselage met (or was supposed to) something else with the fuselage:

Some places I filled with sprue:

At this point you get to see the “Right Proper Scare” mentioned in the header. I turned the fuselage onto its back and discovered that THIS part doesn’t come anywhere near close to fitting:

Well. That did fascinating things to my blood pressure.

Yeah, that’s going to require some sort of magick or some sort of trick or some sort of SOMETHING SODDING CLEVER on my part because if that ISN’T made to fit, I either end up with a 3/16″ (4.76mm) step where there IS none:

OR I end up with a small hole like this:

I spent a few days considering how I could explain to the person that this is being built for that he wasn’t going to (ever) get it. I also spent a few days considering how I could fix it. I realized that fixing it was going to be easier.

If you look at the lower left corner of the photo above, you’ll see there’s a section missing from the edge of what is the elevon (yes, that’s actually a word…it’s the combination of an elevator and an aileron). That’s because I split the fuselage parts aft of the main landing gear bays. The fuselage part that doesn’t fit was added to the underside (mostly because that’s where it’s supposed to go), the glue allowed to set up for a couple of days (because there’s going to be SOME FORCE applied here, dammit), and once I was satisfied that the part was as bonded as I could make it, I started bending things a bit (as well as more than a bit) (and in one place a lot), until things actually lined up.

That required me to hold the upper and lower fuselage sections apart while the glue set up enough for me to release it:

But I got it to fit:

“Fit” is a relative thing, sometimes… (And can be the difference between someone who assembles a kit and someone who builds a model. It’s only when things head for the crapper does it become an indicator of the builders’ skills. If it all goes correctly, it’s all easy.)

Now I had to reattach the bottom of the fuselage to the top and get all that to fit as well. As things turned out, this problem, even though it scared me to borderline incontinence, actually solved a different problem I had been concerned about. Having to bend and force things to fit the underside piece properly actually straightened out the warped fuselage parts and that will end up making it much easier to attach the engine nacelles:

Whew…recovered:

One of the things I noticed when I was at the NASM was that there were a number of fuselage panels that weren’t butt-fit but overlapped instead. The first place I noticed that was where these panels sat higher than the ones adjacent behind the leading edge of the wings:

I used .005″ (.127mm) sheet to raise them:

Once all the panels were added to the tops of the wing roots, I needed to blend one panel with putty:

And since I had the putty out, I added it underneath to make the part I’d forced to fit blend without any ridge (and I did more panel scribing while I was under there):

When doing a large area like this, it’s not uncommon to need to add putty here and there. Several thin layers to achieve the desired result is better than trying it in one, thick, pass:

Unsurprisingly, most of that got filed, scraped, and sanded away.

There was a lot of filing and sanding to smooth surfaces where plastic was added. Actually, there is a lot more filing and sanding to do yet, but much of what has been added has been smoothed:

And there is more to do yet, such as this repair when a chunk of the elevator tore loose when I split the fuselage:

There are more .005″ (.127mm) plastic panels to add, more fit problems to fix, panel lines to be scribed, and no shortage of work left. This is the underside with that gaping hole cleverly (and laboriously) filled and some of the panel lines scribed:

Did I mention “whew” yet?

For all the work that was done this month, I don’t have a lot to show. I have, however, gotten both the main landing gear bays AND the main landing gear completed! All pronouncements of “completed” come with the caveat, “for now.”

Having constructed the basic landing gear, it’s time to detail them. The first part of that was to make a bracket for Mystery Bits to attach to and I went to .005″ (.127mm) copper shim stock for that, cut out both pieces, and soldered them together into one bracket:

I don’t know why these lines are coiled, I just know that they are and they are visible, so, the coils get added to the bracket (I used solder for ease of manipulation) and the bracket as well as a junction block on the left side get added to the trunnion wings:

There is another Mystery Bit on each strut that evidently serves as some sort of distribution block for what I assume are hydraulic lines (they also provide mounting points for the linkages that the landing gear door attaches to, which I will deal with later on). Those had to be made and are comprised of about 10-12 pieces each:

Setting those aside, I wanted to paint the compressible section of the struts before I populated the parts with more details. I used Humbrol’s Metal Kote Steel, #27003, which is my go-to paint whenever I need something to look like steel and I can’t put steel in (and yes…I thought about it). It’s a buffing paint; once cured, it buffs to a very nice representation of shiny steel. (And I didn’t take any photos of that; you can find how #27003 looks after being buffed in the Sherman M4A3 build as I used it frequently.) But what I really need is anodized aluminum (and note how well the landing lights on the nose strut turned out!):

The NASM has #972 on display and they have it up on stands that attach to the landing gear. The stands keep the weight off the tires. To keep the oleos from compressing as the seals dry and stop sealing, collars are attached to the compressible sections. To my eye, they look like anodized aluminum. To replicate that, once the steel paint had been buffed and cured, I coated that with Tamiya’s X-27 Clear Red. It’s not aluminum, but the effect is close enough:

While the red is still easy to access, that area was masked.

[EDIT: Yeah, well, that red didn’t last very long. The initial plan was to model #972 as it’s displayed at the Smithsonian. That mean making the smooth cement floor, the stanchions, ropes, and lights (operational lights, of course) just they way they are at the Smithsonian. The person this was for was going to make a display table with a glass top to display #972 under. And then that plan changed at his end, meaning I didn’t have to make the Smithsonian display and probably saved me at least a hundred hours…perhaps…probably…more. I used acrylic thinner to remove the red and buffed the “steel” and that’s why in later photos you won’t see any read on the oleos.]

I started the pre-shading process by painting the inside of all the landing gear bays Tamiya’s XF-1 Flat Black:

There are circular blast shields inside the main landing gear bays. Evidently the tires got hot enough to sometimes explode and given how many hydraulic lines and how much wiring is in the area, Lockheed’s engineers decided to protect them. Those were also painted flat black and then glued in place:

Then I added all the details I could to the main landing gear (the yokes are spread so that I can put the center tire in place once the landing gear has been painted):

My next task is to take a mental-health break while I figure out what the next step will be. I’m thinking it’s time to start putting the fuselage parts together. This will require me to glue the nose landing gear bay in place, fill MANY GAPS where the fuselage goes (relatively) together, and scribe panel lines…

This was finished in ’91 and then boxed and stored shortly after it was finished…for about twenty-four years. I figured some bits would break off, which they did. I just thought more would have come off. For thirteen of those twenty-four years this was stored in an unheated and uncooled attic.

When it was built, I did a bit of detailing (not a lot). The canopies were vacu-formed (as were their inner frames), the pilot figures were modified from a Tamiya AM set, the oxygen and G-suit lines were made from guitar strings, some details were omitted from the cockpits (the Navy F-5s didn’t have on-board radar so I cut the radar screens off) and some were added (the hydraulic rams of the rear canopy hinge look like steel because they are – they’re straight pins), the formation lights were made from translucent toothbrush handles, hoses and lines were added to the landing gear (and the gear doors were scratch-built), and this was my first (somewhat poor) attempt at scribing panel lines.

Since I was taking it out of the box to display again, some fixing was called for:

This isn’t the first time the front landing gear has snapped here, so this time I added a pin to help keep it where it belongs:

This will do for now. The nose probe is still MIA; the paint that I used in this area is no longer available. (I’ll have to do something about that at some point.) For now, it’s ready to display again:

Photos taken shortly after it was completed in ’91:

Something that was done back in the late 80s, essentially OOB:

Every so often I get to a point where in order to do this, I need to do that first. Sometimes I find myself where in order to do either, I have to do the other one first. Since either approach has problems with it, it turns out not mattering; cut the knot, Gordon, and proceed…and that’s where I’m at presently with this.

With the landing gear started, I decided to start adding things to the bays. I have no idea what this Mystery Bit does, but it’s visually prominent so I copied it, one for each bay:

The hydraulic cylinder that extends and retracts the landing gear mounts on a cross brace which rotates to maintain alignment:

I made both of them and discovered during the trimming process that I’d made them too thick. I made them again, just more appropriately sized:

With the cross brace done, I needed to make the hydraulic cylinders. However, in order to make them to the correct length, I found myself far too short of hands. I had to brace the landing gear strut in place, and I had to hold the cross brace in position, and I had to align the cylinder. Right… Since I couldn’t think of a way to do all that with only the usual quantity of hands, I decided to make the cylinders so that I could adjust their lengths later when the landing gear was permanently attached, just the way I did for the hydraulic cylinders used with the canopies. That started by drilling out the plastic rod being used as the body of the cylinder to the diameter of the plastic rod being used as the ram:

This will allow the ram to slide and enable me to adjust length. Added a few details and here are the hydraulic cylinders next to the kit-supplied part:

Somehow, the trunion broke on one of the landing gear struts, so that will get fixed:

I started adding the various lines and as I was doing so, I realized that I was going to need to mount the cross brace about now because care would be needed so that I didn’t put things in that would prevent me from putting the cross brace where it should be. But I couldn’t do that because I only have two hands. What I needed was some way to mount the cross braces temporarily, but allow them to swivel so that they can be aligned relative to the angle (and length) the hydraulic cylinders need. My way around that particular problem was to hold the cross braces in position, drill through the side of the landing gear bay and the end of the cross brace, and that would allow me to put a pin (or wire…this isn’t that large) in there to hold the cross braces in place and allow them to swivel so that later on I can add the hydraulic cylinders with the alignment I want (and, hopefully, that’s correct). Once it was drilled and the wire pins in place, I used tape to keep the wires from falling out:

So yep…they swivel and by being in place, define where I can run lines and stuff:

And I ran lines and stuff:

With the bays done for now (yeah…there’s more to do, just not quite as much), I started making the extension limiters for the landing gear. I got to make them a few times since it seemed my Eyecrometer was out of calibration:

Eventually, I got the parts sized correctly and started making the mounts to get them onto the struts:

During this part of things, I discovered that the epoxy I used to fasten the yokes to the struts didn’t really hold well. I used superglue to reattach the yokes and (so far) things seem to be attached.

Needing to take a break from this stuff for a bit (more like a week), I wanted to address something that’s been nagging me since I started.

Decals that could easily be forty years old. I looked for AM decal sets and the only one I found, though they look really good, aren’t what I need. I do NOT want to try to wet the kit’s decals, the kit’s forty-year-old decals, and have them come apart. There are no replacements so if these things don’t work, I’m [DELETED EXPLETIVE]. Proper [DELETED EXPLETIVE].

I read a suggestion online that seems to offer me a way out of this situation. Scan the decals into a BMP file, edit and clean them up, then print them myself onto decal paper.

Well. Let’s talk about pixel-by-pixel tedium. I started with this scan of the kit decals:

Note how IMPOSSIBLE it is to see the white ink. I made a copy of the file and diddled its contrast and brightness:

At least now I can see where the white ink is.

And a word about white ink. My printer (and most, excluding Alp) doesn’t print white ink, lazy git that it is thinks (because don’t all inanimate objects think?!) that white paper is enough when white is needed. Yeah, not this time. So when white ink is needed, I have to use white decal paper. I had to cut and paste the decals that need to be white into a separate file, and then surround the white part (after editing the hell out of them) with a contrasting color (black, in this case, since that’s going to be the color of the fuselage*) so I can see the sodding things:

Then I used the low-visibility markings that #972 sports and copied-pasted-edited them into another file that gets printed on clear decal paper:

Once I’d done all the markings #972 requires, I diddled around until I got the scaling correct so that when these things are printed out, they’ll be the correct size.

If this works as well as it’s looking it might, I think I have solved the “old decal” problem…and could end up with the capability of making my own decals!

*There will be some fiddling and color adjusting needed to make the decals’ black surrounds disappear. The black around the decals is BLACK; the black of the model will be color-corrected so it will actually be a dark gray. Should be “fun.”

At a certain point (and too often, an uncertain point) I get to the “chicken or the egg, and where do I start” point. I need this to do that, and I need that to do this. To start filling the bays with stuff, it would be handy to have the landing gear, or at least part of the landing gear, constructed. But, to build the landing gear, it would be equally handy to have the landing gear bays filled with stuff.

Hmm… I have a VERY worn 1926 Peace silver dollar in my wallet that I use when I get to a decision that’s evenly (and/or oddly) balanced between two choices; heads I do, tails I don’t.  At the “chicken or the egg, and where do I start” point, it’s time to bring out the Morgan. This time, heads meant I start on the landing gear.

I cut a piece of quarter-inch (6.35mm) brass rod to an approximate length, leaving enough length to get the part as long as I want it and still enable the lathe’s chuck to firmly hold it without having to cut too closely to the chuck’s teeth to pose a hazard:

Lots of spinning and cutting as well as center-drilling the end for a pin I’ll need to install later and I ended up with this (which will be cut off at the shoulder on the left…I used the kit’s landing gear struts on all of the landing gear struts to establish the new parts’ overall length):

Okay, that’s what I want. Next trick is to do it again…and I did (sorry the photo is blurry…my vision was equally blurry and I didn’t notice at the time):

Originally I had purchased a set of metal landing gear from Scale Aircraft Conversions (#48067). All they do are landing gear sets from what seems to be a lead-based alloy. For a large and heavy model, it seems a good idea. Not faulting their process or business model, what I ended up with were copies of the kit part, only in metal. Great if the parts are accurate to being with…which they aren’t.

One of the things that have been nagging me is just how am I going to do the yoke where the center tire mounts? Any idea I came up with was either impractical or far too complicated. The idea I went with was the most simple (a concept that I need to keep in the forefront of my mind); cut the yoke off the SAC parts and glue it to the brass struts (that’s why I drilled the struts for pins). The nice thing about a lead-based alloy is that it can be easily cut with a razor saw (there are other benefits as you will see later):

As with the nose gear, the top of the main struts have cast trunnions. As with the nose gear, these have to be built. .080″ (2.032mm) styrene is about half as thin as I needed. I laminated two pieces together, curved the ends where they attach to the strut, and glued them in place (if you look closely, you’ll see the pencil lines where I have to cut away unneeded material):

Once the wings were cut to their basic shape, the inside of them had to be carved out:

Some carving, some puttying, and I could add the pin. The size of this model called for the use of metal struts and I wanted to use a pin that was also strong. So I used a pin and then trimmed it:

Then there was carving and puttying on the next strut to do:

With the pin in place as the trunnions shaped, I center-drilled the yoke.

A word about that whole “center-drill” thing… It’s a genuine ass pain to do; ONE way to do it correctly, and an infinite amount of ways to get it wrong. Since my eyes (or pretty much any part of my decrepit body) aren’t what they once were, I’ve figured a way around my limitations. I drill the hole the pin will socket into slightly oversized. This way I have a built-in fudge factor in the likely event the hole isn’t PERFECTLY positioned. I countersunk the hole because there’s usually a slight bubble of glue where the pin meets the surface. Countersinking the hole (done at this size by using a larger bit than I need for the hole) allows the two parts to fit FLAT against each other:

Dry-fitting the strut and yoke show that they do indeed fit snugly. Satisfied with the fit, after this photo was taken, I used 5-minute epoxy (for strength) to join the two parts:

Some putty is needed to create the illusion that the top of the strut is one casting, not a part with two other parts added. I got a little carried away when I carved the one trunnion, so that got puttied while I was at it:

I’m using a set of resin wheels and tires from Fisher Model and Pattern (part #A-4806) for this build. The details of the hubs are far superior to the kit’s “details.” Even as nicely done as they are, they still need some attention. All of my reference photos show that the contact surfaces of the tires are smooth and don’t have the treads Fisher has modeled into the tires. The contact surfaces are also supposed to be slightly convex, not slightly concave:

I roughed the surfaces of the tires hoping that this would offer more bite for the putty added to round the contact surfaces. If the putty wouldn’t work, the alternative would be to sand the corners of the tires away completely. Well…it worked, sorta. The putty wasn’t entirely interested in sticking to the resin (yes…I washed the parting agent off). I managed to get the putty to stick by almost sanding the putty down to where I wanted it and then soaked the putty with superglue. Once the superglue cured, I finished sanding to shape and it all worked:

I encountered another problem with the nose wheels/tires. The profile of the tires is definitely rounded, not squared off. Files and sandpaper fixed that problem:

The last modification to the resin parts was to drill out the mounting holes so that they would fit onto the landing gear. The axle stubs of the yokes I’d added to the main struts also had to be trimmed down; initially, they were intended for hollow plastic parts.

With all the tires modified and fit, I wanted to get them under paint. The nose tires were painted with color-corrected Tamiya XF-85 Rubber Black. Then I LIGHTLY misted white onto the contact surface of the tires to replicate dirt and wear:

As they were curing, I mixed four parts Tamiya XF-16 Flat Aluminum with one part Tamiya X-18 Semi-Gloss Black. The tires of the Blackbird are impregnated with aluminum powder to facilitate heat dispersion and the flat aluminum alone looked too bright to my eyes so I added the semi-gloss black until it looked correct:

The hubs of all the tires were painted with a color-corrected coat of semi-gloss black. While I had the semi-gloss black in the airbrush, I had to check a couple of things and to do that I hit them with a coat of it. The first thing I wanted to check was how the trunnions turned out. Not quite perfect but certainly within 90-95%. I also have to spread the yokes to get them to accept the center tire (and there’s that other benefit to a lead-based part…it would bend easily). I didn’t know if I could bend them far enough without causing the paint to crack. Ideally, the acrylic paint would be flexible enough, I could get the tires in there, and I wouldn’t have to figure out how to paint the sodding yoke with the tires in place. Luck was with me and it worked:

For the rusted surfaces of the brake disks, I dry-brushed a mixture of two parts Heller Flat Rust (#9113) with Italeri Flat Rust (#4675AP). To my eye, the Heller flat rust was too brown and the Italeri flat rust was too red. The surfaces of the brake disks don’t appear to have an even layer of rust on the surfaces so I used a very small brush and dry-brushed the mixed paint onto the disks:

So…having decided which to start with, I’ve started with it. The next trick is to start making the stuff that goes into the landing gear bays and stuffing them with the stuff.

This is what the kit provided for the main landing gear bays:

Yeah…it’s pretty sparse and not very accurate. I keep reminding myself that when the dies for this model were cut, the Blackbird was TOP SECRET. So rather than beat up the designers over what isn’t accurate, they deserve credit first for making it at all, and then for making it accurate enough that some maniac (me, obviously) 40+ years later has enough to work with.

As with many kits in this scale, there is a major difference between the provided landing gear bays and how they should be. Primary inaccuracy for the openings is that the bay is not defined by the openings; the bay is recessed back from the openings. The first step is to remove the inaccurate bay bulkheads. Multiple passes with the hooked scriber enables me to get a slot started that I can insinuate the edge of a razor saw into:

Once those are cut away, my favorite chore of making a perpendicular surface fit the inside curve of a surface is next. I roughed them in using 3″ (76.2mm) x  5″ (127mm) index cards for templates. There was MUCH fiddling and diddling to get them close (or at least I thought they were close at the time):

Large pieces of plastic stored snugly into a box and then left to sit for several decades doesn’t do good things for the dimensional integrity of the parts. Things are bent and because they stay bent, they stay bent. The curved surfaces aren’t supposed to be curved and since I wasn’t sure how the warped plastic would affect the build, I wanted to get the parts a bit straighter.:

I have some aluminum channel that I used as the straight edge and used clothespins to attach it. I’m hoping not to scald myself during the straightening process, getting my hands out of that process can only help with that:

The hot water here is HOT. It’s certainly hot enough to make me whine like a five-year-old. But it’s not hot enough to enable me to get the parts straighter (a situation not improved by the sink itself acting as a cooling fin):

I filled a glass pan with water and ran it through the microwave. A lot. (I wasn’t sure the glass would hold up to being placed directly on an electric stove.):

Though I wasn’t able to get the water to boil, I was able to get it to about 190 degrees (87.77C). The parts were placed in the pan until the water temperature fell below 180 (82.22C), and then the process was repeated several times. And though not perfectly straight, they’re a lot better than they were when I started:

Having delayed and put off the tedium of fitting these bay bulkheads as long as I could, there was nothing to do but to fit the damned things. I had thought my cardstock templates were accurate, which wasn’t the case. So there was a lot of filing, sanding, cursing (never miss an opportunity for that) until things fit, then the first two bulkheads were glued on:

While the glue was curing, I decided to get another potentially fiddly task out of the way. Create the blast shields for the landing gear.

The tires on this aircraft GOT HOT. It was determined that taking off or landing with more than about half a load of fuel was too heavy for even aluminum impregnated tires to withstand and evidently they would blow up. These aren’t low-pressure tires and if they exploded in the bays, those large chunks of rubber moving at high speed did nothing to the hydraulic lines or wiring that anyone wanted to have done. The solution was to create circular blast containments that would surround the tires when the gear was retracted.

To make those, I staggered around the house, garage, and basement, looking for something the proper diameter that I could heat form cylinders around and use to make a buck to vacuform the caps over. Turns out that a 3/4″ (19.05mm) wooden dowel was just what I needed. To form the plastic, I needed to curve flat plastic (.010″ [.254mm]) around the surface and hold it as snugly as possible. Rubber bands didn’t hold it tightly enough, so I went with cable ties:

I left the dowel/plastic in boiling water for about five minutes (might have been able to get away with less time, one of these days I’ll have to experiment to see) before taking it out to let it cool. While those parts were cooling, I chucked another piece of 3/4″ (19.05mm) dowel into the lathe and turned the flattened dome of the top, then glued it onto a pedestal and attached it to my vacuum molder:

Done twice, I ended up with both the caps I needed:

When I snipped the cable ties, I found that they did indeed hold the plastic tight to the dowel…tight enough to impart cable tie impressions to the outside and wood grain to the inside (something I must remember…because I could use that texture to scratch-build ammo feed chutes with ammo or a corrugated surface texture!). Not ideal but also not a deal-breaker, either. The caps were trimmed and glued onto the cylinders, then the ends of the cylinders glued closed (later the openings in the blast shields will be cut into the cylinders and take away most of the seams):

A quick test fit showed that the dimensions work:

Time to putty the impressions of the cable ties:

Sanding putty on these parts was sort of like doing body work on an eggshell.

The first two bulkheads went in with some fitting. Yes…I got the tops and bottoms to match the interior curves of the upper and lower fuselage halves well enough. Getting the distance between the upper and lower fuselage halves required some more fitting. And then I tried doing the next two bulkheads. As it turned out, I failed to notice that the front of the landing gear bays is narrower top to bottom than the rear of the landing gear bays are. Once again, I found myself with a couple of parts that I couldn’t use as they turned out (he says as if these things made themselves). I needed to add plastic back to make them fit properly.

So I did (you will see that I had to add plastic back more than once):

Since the joints are visible, they were puttied and sanded:

My initial plan was to use the top of the fuselage from the spare kit as the inner top of the landing gear bays to make use of the details there (the top of the fuselage over the landing gear bays is also the inner top of said bays). When it was time to make this clever plan a reality, I realized that there would be A LOT of sanding and filing to thin these fuselage sections to a usable thickness. The company I buy my plastic stock from (Evergreen Scale Models) also offers corrugated flat stock. I checked the measurements of the corrugations and though I couldn’t find an exact dimensional match, I bought a sheet that came very close. I cut sections to fit and glued them in place:

With the basic boxes made and installed, it was time to add some of the structural details:

When I was looking for the corrugated plastic, I noticed that Evergreen also has preformed stock. Making the c-channels took a long time, mostly spent waiting for glue to cure so I could work the parts. There are some stiffening ribs I wanted to add and instead of taking a couple of days on a small detail, I decided to buy T-section extrusions and use those instead:

As I was readying myself to start adding more of the cylinders, lines, and wiring that goes in next, I noticed that the c-channels don’t extend all the way to the outsides of the bulkheads. ::sigh:: Okay…those get trimmed to the correct length:

It’s not necessary to sand the areas where the c-channels were removed to absolute flatness; most of those areas will be populated with cylinders, lines, and wiring which will obscure the surface. One last check with the fuselage panels in place to make sure I’ve gotten the look I want:

Yep…that’s about right (he says hoping he’s correct this time). Time to start filling these boxes and the major reference point is the landing gear.

Time to make the landing gear.

While waiting for the micro-lathe to arrive, and having no shortage of things to do, I attended to a couple of fuselage details that were annoying me. The PE details for various surface grates are very nice. Mistakenly, I took the two grates that most closely fit the molded on grates and installed them. The grates on the Blackbird are flush mounted (makes sense, considering drag slows an aircraft down and the Blackbird isn’t famous for going slow) which meant I had to align them, outline them, and then scrape away enough plastic to socket the grates flush:

One of the interesting things I noted while at the NASM was that the fuselage panels on the belly of this beast aren’t butt-fit (meaning that the edge of one panel meets the edge of the next) but overlapped like shingles. To replicate that, I laid some .005″ (.127mm) sheet down to create the lip of the trailing edge:

While I was waiting for the cement to cure, I noticed that there are two grates that go towards the front of this belly section. Then I noticed that I’d already used those grates…in the wrong place. The grates I just socketed into place don’t go there, other larger grates go there. ::sighs:: With heart in mouth (which I’ve discovered makes breathing a bit difficult), I slipped the edge of a chisel blade under the edge to pry them away from the superglue and out of the putty. Damned if that didn’t work just fine. Not having a clear photo of this area, I made the decision to place them where I did. The larger grates were held in place and I scribed around their edges with a needle:

Satisfied that maybe now I was on the right path, I repeated the scrape, glue, and putty cycle with the correct grates in the (relatively, I hope) correct location (after one false start, evidenced by the lines at the left  of the left grate below):

With that mistake recovered, the multiple thin layers of putty I laid down at the leading edge of the .005″ (.127mm) sheet had set up, allowing me to block-sand the putty flat:

Satisfied with the outcome, I repeated the process on the other side, using thin strips of masking tape to keep the putty from getting into places I didn’t want it to get into:

Things occur to me when they do. With this blog, I can present things as if these things occur in a linear manner…but they don’t. The most recent example of this occurred the next morning, propped up in front of the bench, and when the coffee finally wet my neurotransmitters sufficiently for them to propagate a spark, I wondered, “Do I need to add nose weight for this thing to sit properly on its landing gear?” Rather than do useful work so soon after that initial daily spark, I taped all the major components together to see what the weight distribution looked like. I placed the supports directly under where the landing gear parts are going to mount:

Two things became evident. 1) No, I’m not going to need to add weight. 2) this is going to be a big model.

And then my new micro-lathe arrived! I spent the rest of that day unpacking, cleaning, lubricating, and getting to meet my new tool. It’s not as accurate as an old Unimat. It also cost about half of an old Unimat. Since I am not a watchmaker (or work in 1/72 scale), I don’t need the degree of accuracy an old Unimat provides; this one will work well enough for my purposes.

After getting comfortable with how the new lathe works, I turned the second landing light from a quarter-inch (6.35mm) clear acrylic rod:

Landing gear on large aircraft is more like a very strong shock absorber and they’re called an “oleo”. They compress under load and extend when unloaded. Something has to be attached to keep the oleo from overextending and those extension limiters are triangular (generally). That’s the type used on this landing gear. I used .005″ (.127mm) copper shim stock to make them and that started by laying out their basic shape and punching two lightening holes in each part:

Once laid out, I cut the parts out using a sharp pair of scissors and then annealed the parts to make the bends easier and enable a smaller radius:

Naught left to do but bend them (he says as if it was easy…the first bend was easy…the second, well, not quite so much):

The extension limiters join at the small end. To replicate the hinge, I used a 22awg copper wire. The really interesting part of this was soldering them together. As most of the rest of the world, I only have two hands. To do this easily I would have needed at least three of them (or four, if you’re into bi-lateral symmetry) (I’m not judging). I used locking tweezers on stands to align and hold the two parts with just a little bit of overlap. This overlap created a “saddle” that I could place the wire on so that soldering it in place was at all possible. Using a butane torch would be challenging because the force of the torch’s gas flow could easily blow the wire across the workbench. To successfully solder this without causing the wire to go elsewhere, I approached the join from a fair distance away and worked the flame back and forth as I (SLOWLY) brought the flame closer. Once the flux melted, I knew I was close. Then the solder melted and I quickly moved the flame out of range. Whaddya know…it worked (I trimmed the wire to length once everything cooled):

The extension limiters mount to the top and bottom sections of the front strut. I replicated that using small diameter styrene rod, superglued the rod across the wide end between the bent lips, and glued the extension limiter to the strut. (And where did that nice brass landing gear strut come from? I turned it on the lathe starting with quarter-inch [6.35mm] brass rod and without taking any photos of the process. Hopefully I don’t do that with the main landing gear struts):

Flying if not high, at least off the ground, on my sense of accomplishment (that soldering job was very finicky and I did it successfully), I chucked a quarter-inch (6.35mm) brass rod into the lathe and turned the extension/retraction hydraulic cylinder, then added the hydraulic line. The restraining straps were made from aluminum duct tape, the line itself from 22awg wire. I amazed myself again by soldering the rounded mount at the left end of the cylinder in place (I filed the part round after soldering to ease the soldering process):

With the hydraulic cylinder done, I added its mount to the landing gear using .040″ (1.016mm) styrene and then checked its general fit:

Yeah…that gets it.

The front landing bay has three doors. The linkage for the rearmost of the three landing gear bay doors attached to the fuselage (wow, some surprise, there!) and to the nose gear strut. I constructed the door using .005″ (.127mm) sheet for the main section of the linkage, punched holes and connected them, and then added the connecting rods using 24awg wire, flattening the ends on my jeweler’s anvil with a hammer before gluing them into place (keeping in mind those will probably needed to be trimmed for correct fit later on):

I formed the landing gear door from .010″ (.254mm) sheet, curved it to match the curve of the fuselage, and then added the inner support structure using .040″ (1.016mm) styrene scrap. Once shaped, I blended the structure with putty. This may not be totally finished so if I need to add more detail later, later it will be added:

Stepping back from the landing gear construction, I fixed the errors of the mid-air refueling socket. The ramp that leads down into the fuselage is actually a hinged panel that swings up to close the port. The kit molded it incorrectly. It’s not supposed to be more narrow than the opening. The face where the refueling socket is looked correct to me, even if the socket itself wasn’t exactly a socket:

I drilled that out and widened the hole to the diameter I wanted with a rat-tail file. The closest styrene tube to that diameter was just a little bit too large in diameter and also needed to be drilled out to a correct inner diameter. I chucked it (GENTLY) into the lathe and turned it to diameter, and then drilled out the center. I cut a plug from .020″ (.508mm) styrene and inserted it into the drilled out center and glued it before gluing the whole thing into place:

I cut away the molded-in structure and added the new structure. I started with the hinged ramp using .020″ (.508mm) styrene. I cut it to the dimension of the now-open hole and used the top of the fuselage (and HOT water) to form the ramp/door to the correct curve. Once satisfied, that was glued into place. I used more .020″ (.508mm) styrene to form the sides:

A little bit of putty, a little bit of sanding, and the result looks much better, now:

One prominent feature of the front landing gear is a large casting that forms the trunnion. I started with .060″ (1.524mm) styrene, shaped it, and then got to deal with the VERY FIDDLY alignment. I’m not sure I believe how long it took (over a couple of days, because sometimes stepping away to refresh the eye is a good idea) so I don’t expect you to. But eventually I got the parts aligned and (finally) glued:

The trunnion casting has a specific shape that I wanted to replicate. To do this, I started with an outline around the area I needed to carve a recess into and scraped the depression into the face:

I started adding the plastic that would give this part its shape:

Luck plays a factor in a build. If it’s bad luck, colorful invective is exercised, and if it’s good luck, well, I just take it and motor on. Funny (sometimes hysterical) thing about good luck is that sometimes it presents itself as bad luck. In the course of holding this assembly while I carved and scraped, the crossbar (that I spent HOURS getting aligned) snapped off.

In addition to all the colorful invective produced thereby, I also realized that this was probably a good thing. If that crossbar snapped off now, that meant it wasn’t soldered on well. That means if it didn’t snap off now, it would probably do so later after this thing was painted and finished. Fixing THAT would be…well…I don’t know as I have a pejorative foul enough. “Not easy to do” is a gross understatement. So my seeming bad luck turned out to be good luck.

That good luck was not quickly evident. Soldering, which is what I would need to do to get the crossbar reattached, involves heat. It involves enough heat to melt styrene. There is more than one piece of styrene on this part, one of which is much too close to where heat needs to be applied for my comfort. But without the crossbar attached, this piece is useless. If I screw up and melt plastic with the soldering job by using too much heat, then I’ll redo the plastic parts. Since it’s 100% useless as is, even with slim odds of soldering the part back on without melting anything, “slim odds” are better than “100% useless.” My journey into jeopardy started by snapping/cutting the extension limiter off.

This time I soldered the bitch on properly (twice, as the first attempt ended up with the crossbar misaligned) and didn’t melt anything! (I made sure of this by trying to wrench the thing off with pliers. Nope…it’s on there.):

There, just like it was never broken and repaired:

I added .040″ (1.016mm) strip around the upper and lower edges of the trunnion to complete the shape and filled out the surface with putty to replicate the casting:

The nose wheel steering is electrically operated and as such has a housing of a particular shape. That needed to be built (I left the “handle” attached so I could manipulate this bloody small part):

Once built, superglue attached it to the strut (well, I attached it to the strut…the superglue holds it there):

Now that I have the basic structure of what goes into the front landing gear bay…:

…maybe it’s time I should check to see if this thing fits in there:

Well, whaddya know…it fits like it was made for it!

Now that I’ve shown myself that I haven’t wasted the last two weeks, I can finish the nose wheel strut by adding all the other stuff that goes there (yes…there’s more). I started by making the landing light mounts. The mount for the larger light is on the right side of the strut and was made from .005″ (.127mm) shim stock. The smaller light is mounted centrally and was made from a drilled out piece of .030″ (.762mm) scrap:

I placed the lights in place to see how they line up. For the most part, they do, I just needed to snap the central mount off and move it further down on the strut:

I needed to add the wiring conduit and wires. I used 22 and 24awg wires as well as .015″ (.381mm) solder and a pair of 40awg wires. Then I placed the hydraulic cylinder in place and took the next photos to show the differences between the kit part and what I cobbled together:

Clearly, though laborious and tedious (with a side order of frustrating), I think the improvement over the kit part was worth the time. Not counting the tires, of which there are two, this assembly required sixty-one separate parts to build.

One landing gear bay and landing gear is done, only two more to go. The “good” news is that I started with the more difficult assembly to make.

With the springs for the latches wound, I made a simplified version of the shock absorber that slides into them. I punched out a couple of discs, glued rod to one, then slid the spring down, trimmed the rod, and added the second disc:

After wrestling with the alignment of the second disc, I realized these discs don’t have to be opaque…I can use clear styrene which will make for much easier alignment. And since these things are so small, I used a piece of rolled masking tape to hold ’em while I glued the second disc on:

There is a lever that attaches to the latch that one end of the spring is attached to. I made those and added the levers and the springs:

With both latches made, they were glued together:

Then I had me some fun. When I tried to fit the assembled latches into the nose gear box, they didn’t fit. They didn’t fit by a great deal, but not fitting is not fitting. Much scratching of head, kicking of cat, being clawed by cat, wandering around muttering ensued. Once that was out of my system (temporarily), I realized that rather than modify one area/section to enable this sodding thing to fit, if I took a little off each area it just might fit in there (the alternative was major surgery in a cramped space). So file, sand, pray, dodge lighting bolts created by praying (and thereby giving away my position), fit, file, sand (avoiding prayer…I can learn), and repeat several times until the bastid just fit…but fit it did:

Whew…

Now that I have all these bits, it’s time to stuff them into place. So that these things would go in at all, it was time to add the nitrogen tanks:

Then the spaghetti panel:

Then tie the spaghetti panel lines to the tanks:

The next step is to start scratch-building the front landing gear strut, but before I can do that, I have to wait for my new micro-lathe to arrive. Having NO shortage of things to do, I put this assembly to the side and did something else.

Tail #972 doesn’t have camera ports and the kit does. I used the clear ports as plugs which will get painted over. That started by gluing them into the openings and then gluing the nose halves together:

While the glue set up on the clear parts, I added sprue to the LARGE gaps between parts (evident on the right in the photo):

The rectangular ports are in the wrong position, even faired over. I scribed new panel lines to the left of where the kit put them:

Since there was to be a lot, A LOT, of sanding to this area, and I was going to have to do it anyway, I screwed up my courage (or the bravado that passes for courage) and started scribing panel lines:

There are probably those out there who just scribe, re-scribe, and add scribed panel lines as a matter of course. I ain’t one of ’em. Since I really am so poor at this aspect of modeling, I take my damned, sweet, time with it. And even THEN there are numerous oh-goddamit moments where the scriber (in this case usually needle) skips and adds a groove where I don’t want a groove…which then needs to be filled. If I get lucky, the oh-goddamit groove isn’t where I have to scribe over it. In that case, I can just add putty. If I do need to scribe over it, then I have to add sprue. Adding sprue means I have to let it sit overnight before trying to work it. Rushing it results in the scriber running into plastic that’s still gooey and that leads to more oh-goddamit moments…and tasks.

So there I am, merrily (merrily?!) scribing away. Pity I didn’t check references first. Some of the panel lines are in the wrong places (which of course I scribed in before noticing that). So I added sprue in several places as well as  puttying the oh-goddamits and gaps between the clear part and the rest of the nose:

While that was all curing, I flipped the nose over and scribed lines and filled in large sink areas with putty (as well as filling a TOTALLY blown panel line with sprue):

Then I went and watched snow melt while the glued sprue cured.

Back at it the next day, I noticed that the panel lines under the nose where the big camera window would be was flat out wrong. So all of that got filled with sprue:

While those areas were curing, I sanded the top of the nose:

Then next day I filed/sanded down the sprue:

Finally (which is actually a joke…”for now” is probably more accurate) checking references, I saw where missing panel lines had to be added, incorrect panel lines filled, so I started that and found a conundrum. Nothing is quite lining up! Yeah…these two lines go here. And they’re supposed to line up with this part of the nose gear bay opening. So why don’t they line up?!

They don’t line up because when the dies for these molds were cut, someone was either having a very bad day or the supervisor had an apprentice make the cuts. They don’t line up because the ENTIRE opening is about 1/8″ (3.18mm) to 3/16″ (4.76mm) of an inch TOO FAR TO THE RIGHT! The [DELETED INVECTIVE] is off center. The tape added to the fuselage section is centered to the wide end of the opening:

All sorts of depraved fantasies traipsed through my mind, not the least of which was to reposition the opening. Uhm…NO. No, no, NO, no, no!! The landing gear box I made is dimensioned to this opening in this position and to relocate the opening means making a new landing gear box! Y’know…I think I’ll pass on that one. It means I have to jigger a few things that come next, which means they won’t be entirely accurate, but I think my 90-95% mandate covers this.

One of the things that had to be jiggered is a sensor port in the belly that the kit didn’t model. It’s supposed to be centered between the panel lines I had to add, and sit right on the center line of the belly. Yeah. Well, it’s gonna be one or the other…unless I put this port just a little off center. I realized that if I centered the port, it would be off center of the scribed lines. That misalignment is more obvious than the port being off center of the fuselage. Right…centered to the lines it will be. Mostly.

It started by drilling a small pilot hole. I took a section of clear sprue and chucked it into a variable speed drill set on LOW speed, and used files, emery boards, and sandpaper to reduce the sprue’s diameter slightly. I decided which drill bit to use relative to the diameter of the sprue and widened the hole in the fuselage. While I still had the sprue in the drill, I used a smaller bit to replicate the detail in this area, then stuffed the sprue into the hole, glued it from the inside of the fuselage, and started trimming, filing, sanding, and polishing:

I back-painted the sensor using three parts Tamiya’s Chrome Silver (X-11) and one part Tamiya’s Flat Yellow (XF-3) for the surround and Tamiya’s Flat Black (XF-1) for the center:

Several days of chasing oh-goddamits, scribing, RE-scribing, deepening scribed lines, sanding, puttying, sanding some more, and finally this section is done (I think):

And as I was wrapping this up (I think), I got a notice that the micro-lathe I ordered from Grizzly Tools (part #G0745) arrived! Oh goodie…more insanity on the docket!

Nope…I’m not supplying references anymore.

Sometimes I repeat myself often a lot over and over… Here comes another (again some more). The smaller the details, the longer they take me to do. With the cockpits done, I turned my attention and effort back to the nose gear bay…which will be full of very small details.

Sometimes instead of plastic sheet, I’ll make details from copper shim stock (.005″ (.127mm) and .010″ (.254mm) because that’s what I have on hand). There is a small “C” channel and rather than try styrene, I used .005 shim stock. To get tight bends, I’ve found that if I anneal the copper prior to bending, I can get much tighter and sharper bends. Once the copper cooled, I took out my PE bending brake. I used a needle to score my bend line (not because it actually scores it but because I need an alignment line to follow), fiddled with the copper until I had it correctly lined up, and then used the razor blade to make my ninety degree bend by slipping the edge of the blade under the copper that sticks out and lifting it up:

Worked well so I did it again and got this:

I had to make and add pulleys to one of the assemblies that populates the “C” channel. I used the punch and die set to knock out the inner part (.005″ (.127mm)), the outer parts (.010″ (.254mm)), and then assembled the pulleys and added them to the mount I made:

The “C” catch and its arms were also done with .005″ (.127mm) copper, its mounting done with little bits of scrap styrene, the pulley mount fleshed out, the connecting arm done with stretched sprue, the pulley added, and all of that added to the “C” channel:

So before I either dropped it and broke it, or just broke it without the optional drop, I glued that assembly into the nose wheel box (the capped vent tube was .093″ solder [2.38mm] added earlier):

I had already built the liquid nitrogen tanks and was going to start adding lines to them. When I went to dry-fit them I realized that when I put them together, I didn’t have these sheets of insulation in place the way they are now:

Each sheet of insulation was made from .030″ (.762mm) styrene, which meant that the nitrogen tanks I built were .060″ (1.524mm) too wide, now. ::eye roll and forehead smack:: I had to saw them apart and put a thinner spacer between the ends. And just for the novelty of it, I checked reference photos. Some of the SR-71s have two oblong tanks, but the main references I’m using show only one tank being oblong; the other is round. Since I’m going to have to disassemble ’em anyway, I decided to do one oblong and one round just for the eye-candy aspect of it. I would rather do what tail number 972 has but I couldn’t get under the kite to see what’s in there so I decided to go with one round tank:

I added the various lines to the oblong tank using solder, copper wire, and stretched sprue. The discs were punched out with the punch and die set:

TOTALLY out of sequence (mine, of course), I decided to try an idea that had been rattling around under my (profoundly sparse) wig for a while…

I do NOT like trying to replicate a clear item with opaque paints. (That’s sort of like getting drunk every night to promote sobriety.) There are two very prominent landing lights attached to the strut of the nose gear and the only parts on hand are opaque. Gah. I chucked a piece of clear acrylic rod into my lathe and turned a section down to the diameter and shape I wanted. Then I used progressively finer grit sandpaper to remove the steps left by the cutter and then polished out all the marks left by sanding paper. Once satisfied, I cut the work from the acrylic rod, which left a small stub on the end. Instead of cutting that off, I decided to use that to drill a SMALL hole (.0135″ [.343mm]) to replicate the bulb. I dipped the tip of a needle into black paint and stuck it in there, then used Molotow’s “Chrome” pen to create the reflector. So far I’m very pleased with the results (only time will show me how the “Chrome” accepts the black paint it has to have on the exterior):

A very prominent feature on the starboard wall of the nose gear bay (that’s the right side, if I’m not trying to impress) is a panel full of plumbing, pressure regulators, and other varied Mysterious Bits and wiring. NObody makes this part, either*, so, I started by making the panel. I used a scribing template to be able to make consistent size/shape cuts. Well, not “cuts,” exactly…I used a needle to make repeated passes until I was able to cut through (as you can see below, I tried a couple of different techniques, starting with “outline, drill, connect the holes, pout, discard, try something else”):

The scribing-through worked the best:

And…as that turned out I was a bit incorrect. There’s only two of the upper ovals, so I cut the offending hole off:

And now that this panel isn’t long enough, I added back what I had to remove:

Next was to start making the various parts that live on that panel. I started with a mounting bracket for what appear to be pressure regulators. I used .015″ (.381mm) styrene for the mounting bracket and .005″ (.127mm) styrene for the pronounced lip:

With it done, the bracket was glued to the plate:

Due to their shape and small size, rather than use styrene to make these mounts, I went with .005″ (.127mm) shim stock, annealed and bent as earlier, with holes punched out:

Now I need to populate the brackets. I started with (what I assume to be) the pressure regulators:

Since adding those fins to such a small piece was such a joy, I figured I’d use the thermo-mold compound to make molds and cast resin parts:

Yeah, well, no. I was reminded that the thermo-mold compound gets HOT. And styrene melts when things get HOT. Which is just what happened. Okay, so, I’m not going to be able to mold the entire part. But I can mold the hardest area to make which is the finned base, and that’s what I did. You’ll see below that one part is resin (the darker of the two), the other part the master that had the small details melted off and was fixed. You’ll also see where I added other Mystery Bits and had to add to the plate AND fill in most of the two oval cutouts in that addition:

I added the copper colored box on the upper left of the plate (body is .005″ [.127mm] copper and the face with the oval cutout is .010″ [.254mm]), added wiring (eight strands of 48awg copper wire), wiring connector, and plumbing connections:

As I’m merrily (medications help) adding various lines, it occurred to me that maybe I should dry-fit this to see if it fits before I get carried away (further) with it…and yeah…it fits:

I kept at it, adding solder (.010″ [.254mm], .015″ [.381mm]), wire (26awg, 24awg, as well as more 48awg), and sprue (Eyecrometer-approved diameters), and figured that this will do (the lines that aren’t connected to anything will get connected to the nitrogen tanks):

And THAT all took some of October and all of November!

Inside the front landing gear bay are two large latches/supports that grab/support (which is what “supports” do, one supposes) the main strut of the nose gear. I copied the shape (and hopefully the size) to the adhesive strip of a Post-It pad. Doing it this way means I can trace around the template without the frustration of trying to hold something SO small and, well, paper thin, in place (a lot). Tracing onto the adhesive strip allows it to stick. I used a piece of .005″ (.127mm) copper as my working template (the hole was punched out):

Having the shape in copper made it easier to file the shape to its final dimensions:

Right after the above photo was taken, I picked the copper template up with my tweezers and PING…it vanished, never to be found again (of course, my cat will find it, eat it, and maybe I’ll see it again after the vet digs it out of whatever part of her alimentary canal it decides to puncture). So I made another one. Again, I traced around it with a needle until I worked through the .015″ (.381mm) styrene:

The original part on the aircraft is cast (probably titanium, but I’m not sure) and has an evident lip (sorta like I do) that goes around the periphery. I added that using a strip of scrap .015″ (.381mm) styrene:

I sanded the exterior lip and filed the interior lip to get the thickness I wanted. On parts this small, where things need to be filled, I don’t use putty (there really isn’t enough of it to hold to itself or the plastic). I add small scraps of styrene and cut, file, sand, them to shape once the glue completely cures:

Right after the above photo was taken, I realized I put the lip around the round inner section of the right clamp/support on the wrong side of it. Yeahwellfine. I cut it off and redid it on the proper side…then I went and had more coffee. Once the coffee had calmed me down and made my approaching-ancient hands so much more steady, I took 28awg copper wire and wrapped it around a needle to make the springs that these latches will get:

I am SO looking forward to making the shock absorbers to fit inside those springs… (Remind me again why I don’t work in 1/72 scale?)

*Well, nobody made the parts when I started this build. Of course, once I had this section of the nosewheel bay built and installed, I discovered that Metallic Details (if memory serves) (yeah…like THAT ever happens) does make most of what I scratch-built in resin, now… ::eyeroll:: (Then again, I think what I made looks better.)