Sword Models Curtis P40 Kittyhawk III - Part II

Well, I'm starting to believe that "limited run" is hobby's shorthand for "Just so you know, this puppy will fight you every step of the way and be general pain in the arse". At least that's what I was pretty convinced of as I've got through the dreaded step of putting the cockpit together and closing the fuselage.

Why dreaded, you ask? Well, I don't know how other model builders think about this step, but for me this stage is always a bit unnerving - not only is everything (ideally) supposed to fit perfectly together (which it never does), but correction of any mistakes or misalignments can be a bit of a problem. Thus, this is always this stage of building process that requires for me take a deeeep breath before I get on with it.

In this particular case, as soon as I was dry-fitting the instrument panel, I knew there would be problems. I don't know how the designer imagined for it to work, but in my opinion there wasn't enough surface to glue together. There is about one square millimeter on each side of the panel and on the sides of the cockpit to work with. I know, super-glue is the obvious answer. But only the normal plastic glue was an option here, as I felt I needed time to adjust position of the panel, if I didn't get it right from the start. That in itself provided a problem of its own - as everyone knows, plastic glue actually melts plastic... which, in this case were the minuscule sections I tried to fuse together.

Needless to say, things went rather badly on first try and every attempt to get the panel into place only made the situation even worse. In the end, I 'spot-welded' the part to the cockpit in a rather crooked position. Only couple of days later I came to think of proper solution for the problem - all I had to do was to glue small extensions out of scrap plastic to the sides of the cockpit! Oh well, chalk this one up as part of learning process. :(

Rest of building process went surprisingly smoothly. Fuselage of the model fits together rather snugly, although care needs to be taken to align the parts together. Wing assembly was a bit more demanding, with upper parts of the wings not fitting with the lower part. The cause - surprise, surprise - the imprecise assembly of wheel wells. Well sides had to be filed down rather significantly before I achieved proper fit.

I don't feel I'm the right person to judge whether the fit between the fuselage and the wings is 'bad' or just 'demanding'. In any case, some additional work with filler and sanding sticks had to be done before I found the fit to my satisfaction.

Once past that last hurdle and having all main components in their intended places, I did have in my hands an lump of plastic that really did resemble a tiny Kittyhawk. It was time to bring out painting equipment.