Considering a Catalina - tinting & turret issues

[Guest]

Was idly considering taking part in the Group Build starting January. Prob won't happen, but will continue considering it at least! I was thinking I might try to do a 1/48 build of the Catalina Society's G-PBYA (http://www.catalina.org.uk/our-catalina-g-pbya) in its current format. A cousin of mine has supported the Catalina Society for years with her late husband. Would be a lovely gift to her if I could make a decent job of it.

I've two issues here, though, that might seriously challenge my current modelling abilities!

First potential problem is that in its current form, the blister windows in the fuselage are quite heavily tinted, and of course they won't be in any of the kits available. Further, the modern blisters seem to be of a single piece construction, the originals having lots of aluminium framing and smaller panels.

• How easy would it be to sand off and polish the raised frames on the original part?
  
• How can I go about tinting the windows to match the current quite dark shade? (See link above)
  

The second issue is the nose - as far as I can tell, every single kit ever issued includes the nose turret. Unfortunately, most of the surviving Cats (incl. G-PBYA) removed this post 1945 for, e.g. SAR, cargo or fire-fighting duties.

• How hard would it be to fashion up a nose without the turret? How would I go about it? Or, as a relative newbie, does this make it a non-starter?
  

[Guest]

Just a couple of points, the frames can be carefully removed with wet and dry, going down to around a 2000 grit. Then you can paint them with Tamiya acrylic smoke to get the tint effect. Air brushing would be better. This will also settle out any remaining abrasions in the surface and should give you a nice shiny tinted bubble.

Make sure that you wrap the wet and dry around a flat surface though so you ensure you remove only the frame and not the surrounding glazing.

[Ian M]

The nose should be easy to sort out with a patch and a bit of filler...

Go for it Alasdair

This is exactly one of the reason for the GB and themed builds all helping eachother sort the problems they run into.

Ian M

[Guest]

Thanks for this - Richard sounds like I need some finer paper, it's going on my Xmas list...

Ian, your "should be easy to sort out" is the bit I guess I'm most worried about! Really not sure how I'd go about it or what I'd need, seems to me like a fairly daunting job, sorting out a complete re-shape of the nose.

Here's the nose, from the top - the real Cat on the left, and a complete model on the right.

[ATTACH]73575.IPB[/ATTACH]


And here's the nose/bow from a different angle:

[ATTACH]73577.IPB[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH]73578.IPB[/ATTACH]


How does one even start to go about re-shaping the nose in a case like this? (And am I asking this in the wrong forum?)

[ATTACH]73576.IPB[/ATTACH]

[Guest]

Personally I would fill the turret hole with a piece of styrene sheet cut to size (yougart pot will do for the sheeting) then either rescribe the details back in to follow the original lines.

or if its raised details use paint brush bristles laid on and secured by thin glue (that idea has just come to me so don't know if it'll work)

For the front edge its a simple case of a blob of miliput or similar and sand down till yo get the right shape.

Hope this gives you 'some' ideas .... ''Proper'' aircraft builders will have better ideas no doubt

[Guest]

Cheers, Colin. If you're using styrene/yoghurt pots, would you for instance heat them to get curved surfaces, etc?

[Guest]

Boiling water would help for excessive curves i would imagin, but for the most part I've just rolled the bits over a cylinder to get a curve .. Or..scored with knife to get a sharp bend.