Bristol Blenheim Mk.IF

Bill Gilman
I'm watching this one! I have the SH Blenheim Mk.IV and was just about to try and buy this Mk.I kit off of eBay and then Airfix announced a new Mk.I. I'll probably wait for that. But your work on this one will come in handy when I build my Mk.IV.

Kelly Wellington
It will be my first Special Hobby kit. To date, I've never had to assemble props or the like. I've never dealt with photoetched parts, either. I'll have resources I've never dealt with in a kit....a real 'learning situaiton'.

Bill Gilman
Ah, I see. SH kits can be a bit, how should I say it? Finicky maybe is a good word. I don't know about this one, but some others I've built needed some extra preparation, sanding, loving care, etc. Learning experiences are good! 🙂

Gordon Sørensen
I have always liked the look of these aircraft. I will wait for the Airfix one though...

Kelly Wellington
I rather consider them to be the predecessor to the Beaufighter. I guess the toll of Blemheims was horrific in mid-war, by which time they had been rendered largely obsolete. I much prefer the look of the 'short nosed' version over that of the longer nosed with the step profile on the cockpit/observation deck. To me, the latter has the look of a pelican.

*Trepediations*

Hey...I gotta start with the SP somewhere; I bought enough of them because they have hugely interesting subjects (for me, at least).

Bill Gilman
I probably have more SH kits in the stash than any other brand for just that reason - interesting subjects that you usually can't find anywhere else. I'm working on a Skua right now, which you don't see Tamiya or Hasegawa (or even Airfix) standing in line to mold. I had two choices in 1:72, SH or Pavla. Pavla had terrible reviews, and the SH kit is going together like a dream. Not true of the SH Sea Vixen I did a couple of years ago...
britmodeller.com/for..2-tt-172-xtrakitmpm/

Kelly Wellington
I hope it's not as 'finicky' as the Amodel Linusov Li-2 Night Bomber kit. I set that aside after joining the fuselage but before I had to deal with attaching the landing gear in the wing roots....it did not look promising for a novice like me.

Bill Gilman
I'm not sure anything is more finicky than an Amodel kit! 🙂

Kelly Wellington
A Mach2 perhaps? Well...it looks like I'll need more paint and at least one new tool, a fine snip for the small parts and the photoetched parts. Then, there's the PUR parts...some of them critical, like the propeller hubs. How do I deal with those? They are attached to blocks; how do I separate them? Then, how do I attach the propeller blades, which are plastic when there don't seem to be pockets on the PUR parts for the blade bases? There are no guide pegs and pockets for alignment. Trepidations....

I had a minor anxiety attack and opened the Minicraft PBM-5A Mariner kit to calm myself down.

Kelly Wellington
How do I attach the tail horizontal stabilizers without pegs or slots?

Bill Gilman
I use a razor saw to remove resin parts from their pour blocks. You have to securely hold the part, and then saw through. You can leave a little excess, and then sand it off. Once you've done it, you'll get the hand of it.
You can build a small jig or fixture to help hold and align the blades while you're attaching them. Superglue or epoxy will be necessary as liquid cements and other glues meant for styrene won't work with resin.
One of the hallmarks of a short run kit is the butt-joints for the horizontal stabilizers. Many folks drill small holes into the stab, and into the fuselage, and then insert a section of a small brass tube, essentially creating a peg and hole system. For me, I'm lazy. If both stab and fuselage are styrene, I just carefully align it and use liquid cement around the joint line. For 1:72 this should be fine, just don't try picking the model up by the stabilizer. In larger scales you probably want to use the brass tube (or plastic rod) method.

Kelly Wellington
Thanks, Bill.

I also dropped by my local hobbyshop and spoke to my favorite staffer there. He gave me a couple of hints, sold me a razor saw and square blades for detaching the photoetched parts, along with paints. He, of course, was concerned that I be sure to get the right pitch on the blades....um...what is the 'right pitch'? I suspect that it is not flat with the plane of the hub rotation and the blades need to be 'turned' to achieve a pitch, but how much?

Now, usually I gripe about detailing the interior and note that not much of it will ever be seen. The thing is with the Blenheim in the Mk.1 version, the whole forward compartment is a freaking greenhouse. It makes it worth putting some fussy detail time into the flight deck and interior spaces. I don't think I got crew figures with it, though.

Kelly Wellington
Oh..Every kit I have is 1/72 scale. I have not worked with any other scale.

I use SLO-ZAP thick CA for my adhesive. I think that's a 'superglue', right?

Phil Marchese
Apart from jigs to set pitch, there is an easy visual method. Draw a half " or 1.5 cm line on a piece of paper. Bisect it at 30 to 40 degrees. Tape it down. Align your prop hub and stem along the axis looking down from above. Attach each blade in turn along the angled line looking down from above as a visual reference .

Kelly Wellington
Thanks,Phil...so basically 30 to 40 off the plane of the blades' spin, if they were flat. The hobby shop staffer suggested trying modeling clay as a temporary 'jig' to attach the blades to the hubs. I should be able to slice the pitch into the blade rest trough in the clay, no?

Barry Lloyd
I think if you use a razor saw to detach the PE parts, they'll probably get damaged. Best to use a sharp knife but work on a hard board but not a cutting mat as this will deform the parts. Alternatively, use an old glass shelf but it must be a strengthened glass with ground edges for safety.

Bill Gilman
Good advice, Barry. I've never tried a razor saw on PE, but it sounds like a disaster waiting to happen. I use either a sharp single edge razor blade with the PE part on a hard surface like you say (you can hear a definite "click" when you've gone through) or miniature scissors that are specifically designed for PE. Once you've detached the part from the fret, it can held securely with small needle-nosed pliers (or something similar) so you can remove anything that's left of the attachment point. If you cut close to the part when removing it, this little stub won't be very big and will sand off easily with a medium grade sanding stick.
Kelly, "CA" is an acronym for cyanoacrylate which is commonly called superglue.
And, as with most hobby techniques, there is always more than one way to do it! Scalemates is a great forum for getting tips from modellers - I learn something new all the time! 🙂

Kelly Wellington
Heh...I suspected as much. Thanks for all the pointers. I already have plenty of xacto blades. Another suggestion I got was putting down doublesided masking tape on a clean ceramic tile and placing the work pieces on the tape to hold them secure and then use a new single xacto blade to detach.

Kelly Wellington
So...I proceeded on. Reinforced with better information, I have decided attempt the complete assembly. I detached my first resin piece from a block, the floorboard of the flight deck is resin, while the back wall and the stowage area up and back of the flight deck are all styrene. My questions are, 'Why do this in two variant media? Why not just do all pieces in the same media? What is the attraction of the resin pieces over the styrene ones, any way?" Here, I have no option to choose between a provided styrene piece and an additional bonus resin pieces; it's resin pieces or build it without.

Phil Marchese
Kelly, I will predict again, 3D printin. g will push resin molds to the wayside soon. It is already passe'

Kelly Wellington
Okay...My firstest foray into 'photoetched' stuff. I did okay with the hanging straps. I have not yet dealt with the unbuckled stool belts. While fumbling with the first pilot pedal, I dropped it.....the carpet monster got it. *sigh* Will anybody ever see it anyway? Well, maybe, but most wouldn't recognize it as gone if they could see it.

Phil Marchese
At the risk of looking terribly old fashioned (and obvious) for something so small and interior as a pilot's pedal, paper is a perfectly good option.

Kelly Wellington
The flight deck is done. Pix soon. I have desprued the fuselage halves, prepped them with minor flash removal and glued them together. The front portion is 'sprung' with a tiny deformation. I'm on the third gluing of that portion. It seems to squeeze together just fine. And I think I got the glue on the requisite surfaces, so I'm hoping I'll avoid a major headache.

Kelly Wellington
Fight deck pix up...along with the fuselage assembly.

So...I adhered a control box and panel to the port side of the clear nose piece and gave the interior surfaces a couple quick coats of RAF interior green. I forgot to get pix of the halves of clear nose assembly going together, but it was surprisingly easy. It was the clear saddle piece, just aft of the clear nose assembly, that was a beart. It took lots of fussy trimming and sanding just to fit half way decently and then had to be handheld during the initial glue into place. The greenhouse on the front of this thing is going to require some more than usual fussiness with masking....*sigh*...not a strong point.

Barry Lloyd
Looking good. I see this is one of those aircraft where you have to spend time on the cockpit, being that it's got half a greenhouse at the front!

Kelly Wellington
Hrmph....In the process of detaching from the sprue, I misplaced one of the tiny landing gear extension bars. I'll do one more search and then resort to stretching some sprue. Luckily, it was a straight, unadorned piece.

Kelly Wellington
Heh...Stretching sprue was a dud. I'm no good at that. So, it was off to the hobby shop, where I picked up some tiny styrene rod. That served the purpose admirably, as I'd eyeballed the right size rod. The landing gear was finished off and both inserted in to the lower wing wells and then the wing halves were joined. They are now drying.

Fiddly bits on the trailing edges of the wing roots when joining the wing halves.

Kelly Wellington
The assembled wings did not fit well in the fuselage recepticles for them, as a fair bit of extra empty space was left in the root wells and had to be filled with putty. The tail went together surprisingly easily.

Kelly Wellington
So...Everything else went together. Sorta. Mostly. But that still leaves the the propellers. The first day of my clay jig went well...until today, when I extracted it and started cleaning it off. Two props fell off. Back to the block.....*purses lips*....*narrows eyes*....*mutters*

Gordon Sørensen
Looks like the plastercine block idea worked well, too bad the props didn't stick to the hubs. Everything else looks good!

Kelly Wellington
I just posted up the pre-decal pix, complete with assembled props. *snort* Well, I've a ways to come with the whole propeller assembly gig. Plus, once I got them assembled and painted, I put them in place...they're a little loose and tilt, but worse is that because they can spin, it becomes obvious that the blades are too long and they bump up against the glass cockpit....*facepalm*

Phil Marchese
.?Do feel badly, I just built a pair of Curtiss Electrics for my XP-50 ASSUMING THOSE TO BE A STADARD SIZE...Nope! too big.

As for the wobble or tilt,there is a simple fix. Coat the shafts with some white glue and let it soft set. Before it hard sets rotate the props trough from the hubs ( not the blades) . this will boundary the shafts a degree thicker removing the play.

Phil Marchese
Water if needed if the set is harder than wanted.

Kelly Wellington
I'm not too worried about the propellers, but I was worried about the decals.

However, the decals were probably the most satisfying aspect of the kit. Nice clear crisp insignia which slid easily off with 15 seconds of soaking, held together, and were amenable to modest shifting of position to get the right one. Plus, three or four different options were provided. I went with the earliest.

Kelly Wellington
Very pleased with the final result of their decals. It has to survival the final steps, but there's no silvering whatsoever. Bright and clean!