Lukas' build guide Pt III: HK Models' 32nd scale B-17 E/F Flying Fortress - Detailing the interior fuselage & sealing it up...

Lukas' build of the HK Models new E/F version of the Flying Fortress in 32nd scale continues apace. He has sealed it all up and already, and right now he is working on the wings, securing them to the fuselage. He has paused to take pictures along the way, and to write up another part of his step-by-step build guide to show you how he has got it to this stage.

B-17 E/F Flying Fortress Build Guide: the interior fuselage & sealing it up...

from Hong Kong Models
1/32nd scale
Model Number# HK01E05
The kit features 44 sprues
A resin casting ammo tracks
Photo-Etch parts on two sheets
Three markings on two decal sheets
Large format instructions included.
3.2kg weight - 989mm wide and 709mm long!
Price:$292 USD/ £217 GBP/ €249 EUR/ $367.93 AUD from Hobbylink Japan

Pt I: In-boxed: HK Models 32nd scale B-17E/F
Pt II: B-17E/F Build Guide: The Cockpit.

B-17 E/F Flying Fortress Build Guide: the interior fuselage & sealing it up...Welcome back to this multi-article build. Due to its size, it is absolutely impossible to fit the build into a few bigger articles and therefore we will be bringing these piece by piece. It has two main reasons behind it. I am the one who can quite easily lose focus so this keeps me always few articles ahead and second gives me fuel to keep going :) 

In the first article showed the In-box review, the second I showed you my approach to the interior, this part will be focused on the rest of the fuselage (excluding turrets, rear gunner and nose - those will continue in next two editions).  

Dry fitting became my least popular task, but at this size, I didn’t want to give it a chance to go wrong, as I feared that small issue will turn rather big later on. Dry fit twice - glue once!

This got me sidetracked from instructions (again) and I decided to glue bomb bay sides into fuselage half instead of doing it separately.

I thought about using the kit bombs vs not using bombs in the interior for quite a while, but I settled on to leaving the bomb bay empty and I will display them out of the plane on the trolley. 

I decided to replace the ordinance with the excellent resin US 500lb bombs from Eduard. Here is my W.I.P. on bombs 

To me, the main positives with glueing bomb bay sides into fuselage were that I could assemble the majority of the interior compartment by compartment as I went along. It helped as I only needed to remember to when I was actually glueing it. 

A negative (for some) would possibly be that they didn’t have one piece of the interior that will go into left half all at once. To each their own I suppose. With this size, it is always a good exercise to familiarise yourself far in advance with instruction sheet so you know what steps you want to do and why. You can also adjust it to whatever it suits you. I try to practice this and yet there is always something that surprises me :) 

The next step was to get all of the other parts for interior out of the sprues and get them ready for detailing. I only added few wires from the other side of the dashboard for getting some more action into quite a glassy nose (will be following this article). The biggest adjustment to inside was scratch building padded sidewalls in radio operators area. The nose will receive similar treatment.

So much for learning my lesson on overdoing it hey? This has been created from Tamiya epoxy putty and scalpel. However, I quite like the result when all painted up in place.

Front and back of radio operators compartment were painted and finished in the same pattern as the main cabin.

Here I am sorry as I realised that didn't take pictures of final piece before I closed it all away 😊

I believe I already referred to my weathering technique previously but will do a quick recap here too. All of my weathering follows the same order - A gloss-cote over the painted parts and then a pin wash. Here I found a new friend to replace my old dark wash. AK Interactive's set of paneliners - in this case, Paneliner for brown and green camouflage AK 2071 and the Paneliner for grey and blue camouflage AK 2072 - I received them in a set of five for other colour tones and they did exactly what I was after - replenished and replaced my previous dark wash that was running out . 

Seal this with Tamiya matt cote. Then I follow with flooding surface with a very thinned mix of white spirit, oil paint and drop of Uschi’s Dry blitz to help with drying. I usually do this procedure twice each time with different tones of oil paints. When It dries I seal it with matt cote again and dry brush the details to make them stand out. It gets to look like this 

After pilots area, the second most visible will be waste gunners section, there are only a few parts to put together. 

I have had a go with trying to get rid of ejector pins marks but I am not very impressed with my job. Luckily it won’t be too visible when painted and closed. 

Machine guns(at this point only installed without barrels)

Here also were the floor parts and extinguisher for both halves. I covered the back of magazines with plastic cards so then you look inside you don’t know it the original part was hollow

A very simple part but with a combination of wooden material, anti-skid floor material and gunmetal with aluminium in the background it still brings some interest.

This will hopefully bring the detail out even more, when with contrast with outer camouflage.

All parts for the main crew were ready to be assembled (link to first part and picture of the finished cockpit. Here it goes back to what I was referring above.

So here it goes again… it is going to get closed up very soon. 

I must say that so far I am rather impressed. Yes, there are things that will need to properly work on once I will glue it together and I will have to recover some of the lost details but considering its size and the fact that HK models are still rather new company I am quite excited what the next part of build brings to me. 

Well, one of it will almost certainly be building a display cabinet for it - to answer the question I have been asked so many times recently - how are you going to display it? Truth is that I don’t really know but I am sure I will figure that out as I am going along with this one. 

See you with next part! Nose section in focus next! 

Lukas Kasuba

Thanks to HK Models for sending this kit to us to review and build.