Uphill Battle!! Tamiya/CMK F4U-4 Corsair.

As you all know I am trying to get this conversion to work, and it has been more work than I had planned on. The resin center wing section was a bit small in areas. I think it may have been due to shrinkage. The aft section is about .070 inches short, and the wing chord was short as well, and the bottom trailing edge of the wing did not match up to the Tamiya upper wing sections. Therefore my flap well looked terrible as you can see in the first picture.


After thinking very hard on how to fix it... This is what I came up with:
I cut the aft trailing edge off of the Tamiya wing section that was being replaced by the new resin section. I put a new sprue from another Tamiya cosair kit in the picture to illustrate what I cut off.


I then flused the rear section of it off and glued it to some styrene sheet to thicken it up so that the trailing edges would match up.


I then trimmed it up.


Then I glued it to the rear section of the resin piece.


I then attached the Tamiya upper wing section, and it looked prety good. Now I have a much more managable seam.



Now I primed it all up to look for defects. It looks pretty good, and a only a few areas need to be addresses around the oil coolers in the leading edge where I had to fill with plastic strene and filler, and a couple areas on the bottom, and rescribe some lines. The seams in the flap well will be hid by the flaps. I am happy with the outcome.




To address the fuselage section I added some styrene due to the resin section being too narrow and short. I then rounded off the original areas so that the can be faired in to look like part of the fuselage. I hope it looks ok when done.



I then put on the resin section behind the cowl and taped it all together to look at mw fuse to wing gap. There is a gap, but it is managable, as well as the join at the front.






I think once that is done and looks good the rest of the build will go quickly and smooth. Still lots of wok tho, and I do not plan on finishing it by the deadline. I want to take my time and try to have this one look good. I still have alot more of the battle to go. Plus I am headed out tomorrow for a week and a half stay out on the USS Trumman to support training of our future Naval Aviators. JET FUMES AND NOISE HERE I COME!!!!! YEHAWWWW!!! Love the trap and the cat shot tho!! See ya'll soon.


Brandon