1/48 Tamiya Brewster F2A-2 Buffalo

[Grant Barr]

My next build is an addition to my Yellow Wings collection - the Brewster Buffalo from Tamiya. I scored this kit from ePay a little while back not knowing much it. Turns out the kit itself is quite old. The date on the sprues is 1974, which I am assuming will be the original mold block creation date. A cursory review of the instructions and other printed bits on the box reveal a copyright date of 1992, so I think the kit dates from around then. The other thing I noted is that the kit was manufactured in the Philippines and not Japan (cheaper labour I assume...).

I don't have any after market decals for this aircraft, so have elected to go with the colour scheme included in the kit for US Navy VF-2 based on the USS Lexington. I am hoping this scheme will make what was a universally unloved aircraft into a decent looking model.

Using the kit decals is going to pose some issues. As you can see they have deteriorated significantly with yellowing of the carrier film, and what is not as evident is a lot of drying out cracks on all decals. The yellowing I can reduce by leaving the sheet out in the sun for a short period of time and the cracks I am hoping to resolve with a few coats of clear varnish to stop them breaking up when being used.

As for the kit itself, it has the old Tamiya silver styrene (I'm not a huge fan of this old plastic - flaws are harder to see on the silver surface). There is quite a bit of flash and the mold seams are quite pronounced - the molds were probably quite worn by the early 1990's, especially if the blocks were not well maintained over the intervening 20 years.

I happened to have on hand a Metallic Details R1820 resin engine, which I will use in this build. If you look closely at the kit engine you can see why I decided on this - it's pretty crappy. It looks like the kit engine has been "thinned" longitudinally to allow them to place an engine "bulkhead" well in front of the wing root. Looking at cut-away diagrams of the Buffalo reveal it is not positioned there, hence the squashed up engine. The after market replacement will therefore require some "adjustment" to the kit, removing and replacing this firewall further back to accommodate the proper engine depth. This is probably going to get very messy...

There will be a lot of clean up required on kit parts for this one. I've already done most of the clean up work, just don't have any photos prepared as yet to show this work. Once downloaded from the camera and reduced in resolution I'll get them uploaded.

I am hopeful that I can complete this kit in a more timely manner than some of my previous efforts. Please feel free to leave comments or feedback. Cheers!

 

[Wurger]

 

[Vic Balshaw]

I have a soft spot for the Buffalo and it looks like you've set yourself a challenge with this one Grant, just the thing for all these rainy days were having this summer.

 

[Grant Barr]

Thanks Vic - we certainly are getting a lot of rain this season. Not sure what is the story with the El Nino, doesn't look like it is a strong one as yet.

Hoping to have more pics of progress posted this evening - have a few more chores to do before I am allowed back at the workbench Feels like I am a teenager again some days....

 

[Grant Barr]

Chores done!

The clean up of the major parts has progressed without too much of a problem.

One of the things I will do is to remove the locating pins and sand flush all the mating surfaces on the fuselage and wings. I've elected to do this after inspecting the surfaces and finding that they have some significant lumps and bumps. Clearly the molds were not in good nick! Anyway, no big issue to set up some paper and sand everything back flush - it will also make for a good bond using styrene glue.

The other thing I noticed once I unboxed the Metallic Details engine was it had a broken pipe on the exhaust ring so I bent a piece of heated styrene rod into shape and fixed in place via a short length of brass rod.

More progress and pics to follow later.

Thanks again for looking in.

 

[Vic Balshaw]

Nice Grant and your scratch exhaust is much better than the rest of the exhausts.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Gnomey]

Nicely done so far!

 

[DDonSS3]

One of my favorite kits, IMO it was well ahead of its time. I've built two of them over the years and really enjoyed both. Looking forward to seeing how yours turns out.

 

[Crimea_River]

Looks like a challenging project to kick off the new year Grant. Looking forward to seeing what you do with this.

 

[Norman]

Use " Yellow Wings Decals" for this kit. An extensive choice for the kit.

 

[fubar57]

Man, I have missed so much this week. Good choice Grant. I did a newer version (2004) for GB 21 and had no problems

 

[Grant Barr]

Took me a bit longer to get back to this kit than I planned - no stress, got back to the workbench in the end...

Progress has been made - the main components have all been cleaned up ready for paint or initial assembly.

So the mating surfaces of the fuselage can meet flush, I removed the locating pins and sanded the surfaces back until they were nice and even. To make sure the halves go together properly I have added a bunch of plastic tags to make sure it aligns along all three dimensions.

I have removed the original bulkhead from behind the engine and fabricated a replacement from 0.5mm plastic card. This has been attached to the RH fuselage half about 1mm back from the original bulkhead and will allow the full thickness resin engine to be mounted. I don't believe there is a bulkhead/firewall in this position at all on the actual aircraft and did toy with the idea of doing it properly, creating a engine mount cradle from plastic rod and putting the firewall further back where it really appears. That idea lasted all of 10 minutes once I realised exactly how much work that would be and almost none of it would be visible, plus I had no engine supercharger parts for the rear of the engine and no exhaust ring etc. to make it look the part. Anyway, onwards and upwards as they say.

The next couple of shots show the cockpit partially assembled and painted. I managed to revive the two side panel decals and set them into place without too much difficulty.

One job I also did was to remove the raised panel lines and re-scribe the majority of them. Tedious work, but I think it will be worth it in the end.

I've also assembled the main engine components with only the plug wiring ring and a couple of oil lines to put in place.

Finally, once I glued the fuselage together I noticed that the shape of the new bulkhead has slightly pushed the fuselage out of shape - only apparent when the engine front cowl ring is put into place. I have a fix in mind for this, but it will require a bit of pushing and shoving to resolve. Job for some future bench time.

That's about all I have for now. With any luck I will have some more progress to report over the coming days.

As always I appreciate people looking in on my ramblings. Cheers.

 

[Vic Balshaw]

Nice little update Grant, look forward to the next installment.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Airframes]

That's looking good and progressing nicely.

 

[Gnomey]

Nicely done so far!

 

[Crimea_River]

Great work Grant. That must have been an interesting ten minutes mulling over the engine detailing. Neurons flashing everywhere.

 

[Grant Barr]

Great work Grant. That must have been an interesting ten minutes mulling over the engine detailing. Neurons flashing everywhere.

Hahahaha - you mean neuron in the singular Andy? Not too much flashing going on up there....

Thanks for the feedback gents - it has been good to get back to the work bench. I have managed to do some more work - mostly on parts clean up and little bits of scratching here and there.


First up I have now added all the various resin and PE components on the engine, very fiddly but I am pleased with how it turned out. I've also managed to clean up the mold seams on the prop and reshape it a bit where it was a bit thick and the inner boot panels looked out of shape. There is a small joint line around the spinner which was a raised ridge so I removed it and scribed a clean line around the spinner. Should look good once I get a layer of Mr Surfacer sprayed on and cleaned up.


I took some time to revise how the front engine cowl ring fits to the fuselage - adding some packing spacers to the side locating tabs. Not super thick but just enough to push the fuselage sides back out to better match the profile of the cowl ring. At the back I have added the horizontal stabilisers and the rear tail fairing. This work, combined with a bit of judicious trimming on the bottom of the rudder produced a much better fit than I anticipated - happy all round!


The next thing I did was to throw the supplied exhaust outlets into the spares bin and scratch build some replacements from styrene tube. I think the diameter is probably about 0.2mm too big, but it still looks better than the dinky exhaust pieces as supplied - they look nothing like the real thing. I also added a bulkhead panel just at the very forward edge of the cockpit, where it will align with the rear of the wheel well section so it will at least make it impossible to peer up into the cockpit from the wheel well openings.


Finally, I have added the plug wires to the engine and painted it all. The colour is according to the Tamiya paint card, but I am pretty sure it is wrong. Not too concerned either way as only 10% of the whole thing will be seen once installed and the prop/spinner added out front. Apologies that the photos appear a bit dark - not sure what happened with the camera, but I just could not get it to measure the light correctly (operator error I am positive!).

That's about all I have at this point. The next couple of days look a bit busy work and training wise, but am hoping to get back to the bench later in the week. Thanks for stopping by!

 

[Vic Balshaw]

Certainly some good bench time spent here, good mods and the engine looks great.