B17 G "Sally B"
The B17 "Sally B" is one of the last flight worthy B17's, Based at Duxford it is painted it the colours of the famous B17 "Memphis Belle" after staring in the film of the same name.
After visiting Duxford and seeing this magnificent plane I decided to make a scale model of it.
The kit is a Revell Monogram 1/48th scale B17 G.
To start with I wanted to show as much detail as I could, which meant opening the bomb bay and access doors, unfortunately the kit was made "doors closed" so armed with a sharp knife I set about correcting this. First the cockpit door was carefully cut from both sides and eased open, the last picture shows a bit of selotape to strengthen the hinge side (the back of this panel would require some scratch built detail as it would be visible through the open bomb bay doors).
Next the front access panel was opened up, this was more difficult due to the thickness of the plastic. Using a small grinder, the inside of the door area was ground away the and the door cut through from the outside to keep a clean cut. The door was cleaned and the inner fuselage was sanded to a more realistic thickness around the door area (the hinge was reinforced with plastic putty, which would be sanded down near completion).
The Bomb bay doors posed a slightly bigger problem, due to the kits design there was very little internal detail behind these doors, in fact one side of the fuselage had NO detail. So again Revell caused me grief, the missing detail would have to be built from scratch using stretched plastic and cut to fit.
The right shows detail (door cut open) the left none. First the longest strands are glued in place.
The shorter ones are glued in to replace missing detail.
To make the thin plastic strands.
First the plastic is heated over a candle (about an inch, depending on how thick you require the strands ) then gently pulled apart, this causes the plastic to stretch forming a thin strand, this is also the method for making aerials or rigging etc.( with practice you can stretch the plastic over a meter to the thickness of a human hair)
