R5 - B17G 'Little Miss Mischief'

Aug/Sep 2016

Revell - B17G 'Flying Fortress'

Completed: Sep 2016

Skill level: 5

My rating: 9/10

I’ve been building a few Revell models lately and this one was the most challenging yet.

It certainly warrants the Level 5 skill level if only for the sheer number of parts involved (186 and that’s not including the decals).

Overall i'm very pleased with this final result. (Looks cool over Berlin huh?) I added some weathering effects on the wings and pin washing really helped bring out the panel lines.

Was going to award my first 10/10 but the undercarriage does tend to sag a bit under the model weight.

Tricky to fix mind.

Interior

The fit together of all the components is very good in what is a fairly complicated model.

Many moveable parts are included (wing flaps, wheels, top and bottom gun turrets which rotate, props) which is a nice touch but does require some precise application of cement to avoid any seize ups.

A pro cement applicator would help here.

Detail

Unusually the interior is as detailed as the exterior and it is tempting to spend a lot of time finessing this.

As ever virtually nothing is visible in the finished model so I only did some basic painting and resisted any wear and tear effects.

My favourite’s are the little swivel chairs in the nose cone and the window mounted machine guns in the rear cabin with their swirly bullet belts – ingenious.

More detail

Revell have really done a super job with this mouldings. For example the radial engine detail is really superb. The cooling lines on the cylinder blocks are some of the best I have seen at this scale.

Again this detail dissapears once the the engine fairings are put in place. In the end I decided to leave the cover off on one engine.

Masking

There is a lot of masking to do on this model. Having thirteen machine guns and a crew of ten means lots of windows. The top and base rotating gun turrets were particularly fiddly (I can see where George Lucas took his inspiration from now!).

Up till now I have been using Bare Metal Foil for masking off windows. This works very well and easily shows the underlying edges after a little rubbing down. However, it can be a PITA to get off again.

It sticks a bit too well in places and just refuses to peel off tending to just crumble. This tends to result in the glass becoming scratched when using a knife to get it off. Next time I will just use some decent Tamiya masking tape.

Panel Lines

Very pleased with the result.

I did have problems with this which began when I used a silk varnish as a top layer. The wash just would not flow along the lines and eventually ate right through the varnish and melted the metallic paint. A real mess.

The solution was two layers of gloss varnish allowing at least 48hrs to fully harden. After that it was straight forward. I used an piece of cotton rag just barely damp with thinner. It helps to give this a good squeeze to evenly distribute the thinner. Less is definitely more.

NB: An alternative method.

Smoke and oil

Just about all of the reference photos I looked at showed very distinctive exhaust fume markings on the upper and lower wings. I just used a denser wash for this adding in some brown to simulate dirt.

I work with brushes and found the best technique was to draw a dense fairly thick straight line.

This initially gives a 'hard' edge to the paint stroke. Once this had dried off for maybe 10 mins I then used a small brush with a tiny amount of thinner to 'melt' away the hard edges. You can control this quite well with a little practice.

It will never create as smooth a gradation as an airbrush but I hope to refine this technique further in future builds.

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