A fellow from Austin recently posted a want-ad for a builder of several kits to hang in his son's bedroom, for decoration. I took him up on it!
The hourly wage stinks, but price per kit is not bad, and he is floating the cost of the kits as well as additional materials. At this time we plan on hooking up for a total of six different aircraft. I'm getting paid to build, and he (hopefully) gets a quality product for his son. A local hobby shop had a somewhat hard to find B-17, so I picked it up for him and started to build!
(and yes, damnit, the proceeds are going towards my New-PC fund)
The box:
Guts of the fuselage all laid out on the plans:
Close up. Each small notch had to be cut by hand, easily the most time consuming part of the kit. After that was done, things started to pick up in pace:
Two shots of the left half of the almost assembled fuselage:
Complete fuselage, standing on its' own:
Wings finished (rough) and attached, to check the fit (sitting on another recent project, a downdraft table for sanding, more on that later):
Wing close-up:
Right Aileron close-up:
Most of the above was done close to the 4th of July weekend. I had to pause with construction in order to go out of town for the second trip of the summer. The next chance I had to start work again was yesterday, and I was able to cruise thru most of the tail stabs in an afternoon.
Here's the outline of the rudder being laid down and cemented together:
Tail with ribs and moveable rudder completed:
Sanded and edges rounded off to a nice curve:
Here's the fuselage and rudder together, to give you an idea... It is starting to take shape!:
And the last major structure, the horizontal stabs for the tail:
More to come soon, hope y'all enjoy!
TX-Deck out.
