Well if you were at the pack up of our show, you may remember I decided to take on the task of building the BV 138 for Ted Winkler - a good family friend of the Ketley's - after initially shying away from it. Ted had asked if anyone was willing to put it together and had in fact provided 2 kits, one to build for him and the other one for whoever built his. There were several factors behind me stepping into the breech; 1. I know Ted quite well and would be pleased to help him out by doing this. 2. I really needed to get building kits again to give my confidence a boost. 3. I didn't have a BV138 in my collection yet. Last night, after a good sort out of my bench, I decided to make a start. I would build mine first and use it as a learning experience for Ted's, hopefully not making the same mistakes twice!
The BV 138 is a twin boom, high set wing, tri-motor seaplane with one engine at the front of each boom and the third in a nacelle mounted centrally above the fuselage pod. It is nicknamed "The Flying Clog" for obvious reasons. A picture of it is attached for illustration purposes! The 1/72 kits I have are by Super Model. The plastic is light grey, reasonably soft and with sufficient sharpness to cause me no sucking of teeth. No flash, sink holes or ejector pin marks were evident and the seam lines were mild. I have no research material at the moment to comment on the level of detail but if I enhance anything, it will be scratch built as I am not a fan of spending 5 kits' worth of money on after market parts for 1 kit. The clear parts were clear with decent framing - the clear gun turrets are of the type that come in 2 parts, joined vertically together so I will be asking for some advice on how to best do this and not get an obvious line. The decals seemed in good nick for the age of the kit (I did have one a long while ago and think it dates back to the 1970s). I was pleased to see the inclusion of swastikas on the sheet and can never understand the refusal to provide them, being as they are as much a part of the historical accuracy of the kit as the machine guns or bombs! The instructions are not too clear on the location of parts so plenty of dry fitting and common sense is called for.
The one I opened had already been started - presumably Barry was going to do this for Ted. The outer wing sections with the twin booms had been glued together and the hull sides had been glued to the fuselage pod. Filler had been applied but needed to be sanded down. The whole thing is covered in raised panel lines which I thought I would probably get rid of and scribe recessed ones using the other kit as a guide. A beaching trolley is included in the kit and so I thought I would build that first, to get a feel for the plastic and also to provide a stand for the kit to rest on as work progresses. I spent a deal of time first checking to make sure all the parts were present (apart from one propeller blade being missing from each of the 3 bladed boom engines - the central one is 4 bladed - all was there) then test fitting the main parts which had already been assembled. The fit was good and so I relaxed even further. Tonight, work begins in earnest, assembling the trolley and doing a little research on the interior colours so I can get that painted and to see what I could do to improve details.
Pictures will be posted when I have taken some (tonight) but I figured that if I at least made a start on an article for the web site, there would be the motivation to get on and actually build the thing(s). If nothing else, it's got my bench sorted out - a long overdue task. To be continued - SOON.
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