Inspirational stuff mate - keep up the very good work.

Stuart

Thanks for the response.
Your explanation makes sense. Strength makes a ton of sense. I was just thinking that the CA would make some assembly a bit easier. With the delicate nature and need to stay together with test fits etc does lend itself to welding.

Hi Patrick you asked for it
Honestly there is nothing particularly difficult about it..
I picked up a metal sheet that I had left for another fret and put the first cross section on it while pressing slightly. on the right hand I first picked a brush and applied a large amount of flux, then I put my iron with some solder on it and the bond was good a first try. then I soldered the 4 other cross sections.


then to have an even space between each cross section, I applied one of my horizontal cross section across the whole construction. After 2 of those the thing began to be more or less solid and even!
Each horizontal cross section further applied set the construction tougher
I think the work is well seen here

really the trick is to use some good material, good flux and good solder are essential!

Dave, "a foot or two" !! you work for a metal fabric?!! The stuff is incredible, do you know I managed once to do a Gaz AA circular fender (well, the metal piece above the wheel) only by bending some lead foil! All the crumpled pieces in my boats are always done out of this really cool material.. Thanks for the offer

Thanks Stef, that's appreciated.. i have my airy colleague Dolly above in the forums that recently said how he was happy that his stuff was considered as art etc.. Well, that's fine for him, but for me Art is all about trying to meet God, not doing planes model kits. There is too much death and blood in what I do, I think one day I will try and succeed to sort of "purify" what i am doing, but in the meantime I don't consider what i am doing as art.
but that's my personal opinion and I thank you anyway

Thank you Stuart! this is all what this SBS is about, to be inspiring

Yep Scott, really once more the trick is to have the good material. Remember my Sokol diorama? all the photoetch was glued and that was a *complete* nightmare to manipulate and some of the finer stuff was destroyed before the painting started. On the other hand Galilée is solid as a rock, I could drop the whole thing on the floor!

In the end with radio guy roof, you get this..


Well anyway my life long feud against mail orders part two

-Some unnamed mail-order from FRANCE that took a mighty 3 weeks to get me those browning tubes, but the guy apologized and sent me a Revell P-38 model, well i guess i will build that with Mr son when he comes of age..

So i took the Aires one because I needed the "bodies" of the Browning, but there is a slight warping of the tubes which is annoying.. maybe I should ALSO have buy the metal JB Models ones, but those would have make pretty expensive for my diorama..



So I built them, but the photoetch was visibly designed by somebody who enjoy having trouble with his neighbours, there is absolutely nothing to help you bending the stuff at the right place! At least the resin is of good quality..
I have been sticking the guns with some green stuff inside the hull.. I also use this green stuff to make the cartridges ejection hole (but that's only viewed from outside)



viewed from outside the guns are pretty impressive!

Pretty damn impressive JB. Question: what is the diameter of the ball turret you have made?
Somehow your photography skills lead me to think it was larger than depicted in the last photo.

The fuselage portion of the B-17 is fantastic.

I am still trying to envision the finished piece....do you have any sketches (not showing the complete concept, just the B-17 section w/ball turret

Cheers,
C.

hey Charles, the ball diameter is 35mm or 1, 3 inches. No sketch honest, all the thing is in my head and I have been dryfitting the whole quite a *a lot* of times, angles are pretty important in the composition of the final piece and those were not easy to set!

Your too much JB!
I would probably have reams of sketches and poorly done figuring just to allow myself to feel comfortable starting this type of project.

Eagerly awaiting further progress.......
Cheers,
Charles

Interesting ... hmmm, propably irellevant and out of scale but a ping pong ball has a diameter of 39 mm ?

I will keep lurking around

Cheers/Jan

Stunning JBA, STUNNING!

Hi JB,

I'm following this one with great interest. Your build is absolutely great to follow. Your scratchbuilding skills are great and with such a pace... I like the way the lead foil is used. The tears and rivets are impressive.



Jelger

nice fuselage mann...looks really graet... lolololol welding pe is one skill i have masteres...but my soldering iron is broken... anyways.....my offical guess is a little child stumbling on a b17 wreck in a stream in france. any dead bodies to go along with this one? horrfyed children maybe? lololol me with my sick mind

JBA,

INCREDIBLE!!! I am in awe.

I think if you had a styrofoam cup and a toothpick, you would add some homemade PE, some other items that people slap their foreheads in consternation for not thinking of first, and you would turn it all into another wonderful piece.

You.................are...................an...................ARTIST.

JBA,You said you were impressed by the brownings, they may be impressive BUT your work is what is impressive. I just discussed this SBS with my wife and even she is impressed. Heck, even my dog knew something was up as we were both glued to the screen and didn't pay attention to him. Absolutly amazing work. No doubt, you are a master of masters. bob d

Thanks Charles! Usually i also draw some sketches, but well not this time -just a small one at the start but the project turned out to be different. I can't draw anyway

thanks for popping in Jan, Oh i know this about diameters -actually the ball turret in 1/32 is exactly the same diameter as a baby-foot ball

Thanks Martyn too -hey I could still be failing everything when the painting will begin

Thanks Jelger -I also spot your diorama the other day and will pop out one of these days -btw, it's no problem your building broke in two, there are always some big cracks on old building and what of a better way to succeed those. A too flat building is boring to look at

Erik, honestly an iron is not the most expensive thing in diorama making but kids in that diorama? no no no usually kids in my dioramas are sort of mine you see, no way I would like them to see that

Jeff, i appreciate thank you ! i think that's all about having "the diorama mind", which is a sort of inner sickness that makes you see every object you come across as some suitable stuff for diorama making

Bob I don't know what to say except that i am deeply flattered, and that really yours and all other answers more than justify the time and high schedule I put in this SBS

Okay, so as the Aires kit was suitable for 4 Brownings, I supposed I could as well model the radio operator one.
Now it looks like the system is much less documented than the ball turret. I saw there was at least 2 different mounts for it -some early type for E or F versions, and a more "advanced" one for B-17 G.
From what i could understand, the gun rolled on this circular axis! No way i could take some in -between shots, so what you see is the final work which comprises some plastic, bits of photoetch, the handle of an old Tamiya Browning (in dark green) the Aires Browning.
I had quite a bit of troubles to fix the small wheels on the round axis to tell the truth!

The quality of the shots is not always tops -looks like the autofocus begins to take a bit of age..

JB, my dear friend, I am SPEECHLESS; that is one AWESOME series of updates !!!!! Thanks for the photo of the mail-bags; I've always wondered what one looked like in real life and you have satisfied my curiosity . Like the others have already mentioned, the fuselage looks very realistic at this point in time, "crooked" rivets or not ! You've made my day, JB, and I will be keeping a really close eye on your next set of update images. Cheers !
Kenneth .

lolololol the "QICK COVER YOUR EYES KIDS!!!!" sorta thing....lmao. the reason i havent boubght a new iron is that i am absolutly terrible using the big regular irons....ihad a buetifull two pronged iron that had tiny little spot welds...beutifull and i just cant get used to regular irons....maybe im just goin crazy....lololol

Thanks a lot Kenneth my friend! I will try and take a better pic of those bags, but they are actually of a very white colour, with 2 big blue stripes, and then you've got the eagle on them. Funny thing there was also a US Army mail bag in the cellar, but that one ripped of when I too, it and ended up in the dustbin!
Happy to see you still ike the Womb, I can see painting at the horizon..

Thanks Erik! It will be really a dryer diorama in that the only human presence will be the guy in his Turret, it will not be one of those eerie dioramas, but more -I hope-an attempt at being dry, though I have some light effect in mind that should not lead the diorama to be that dry. So well, really i don't know yet

I'm through with plastic, metal and mastic building, here are all the pieces of the diorama primed
Some of those like the seat or the upper part of the turret I didn't insisted in the SBS as they were quite uneventful building.

JBA,

Stunning group of little pieces!! I am still curious as to how you will incorporate the turret into the fuselage piece? Is the piece in the photos going to be mounted as you have it on the small base? Or is it sitting on that base for the purpose of painting? I really like the upper, "Christmas tree" section of the turret. It came out very nicely.
I am not only in awe of your artistic abilities, but the fact that you make daily progress in such leaps and still have time to document and photograph the piece.
Awaiting the paint phase.............
Cheers,
Charles

Ahh, the big moment of priming everything!
That's the moment where you can see if you did something good, well, no doubt here!

Superbe travail Jean Bernard!

Claude

Thank you very much, JB, my friend, for offering to take better pictures of the German mail bags; however, not at the expense of your daily updates on the "womb" please ! Have to agree with Charles there, your ability to model and do an active update online is truly AMAZING . I myself can barely find the time to do modelling per se, let alone doing an online post on the project . Looking forward to the painting phase, my friend. Cheers !
Kenneth .

JBA, you knocked me out with this progress, you can manage to make the finest stuff my friend. This is something !

Wow, JBA, you have done a lot since I was here, how many hours has your day? Excellent job, budy, almost nothing cracking left for me to show, ´cause everything is shown here already. But what can I do now, looking so small, I am giving up my hobby and going to the garden to grow carrots
Cheers
Libor

i think the primer may have revealed some imperfections on the turrt and the fugure...i dunno may jus be the photo? the camera makes all seams10% more noticeable

hey Charles, happy you are *still* curious of what will be going on! Nope the base is just there so that i don't have to handle the fuselage bit with my bare hands -the tiny metal bits are very fragile and I already broke a couple.
To be honest -if you exclude the time I took designing the fret, it only took me a couple of hours to do the fuselage. the ball turret was much more time consuming. 10 mn for the seat as it was planned in the fret etc.. honestly it comes from having thinking about the dio so much during my holidays, when you follow a well planed err plan, it goes rather fast

Thank you Claude, yep, apart from some small details, everything is there! i love the moment when i take those pics because it's some landmark for me in the diorama making process

Kenneth my friend, actually Mrs André leaves me 1 hour every evening and then i can grab 2 or 3 hours on week-ends while our son sleeps after lunch, so you see I have the time to work. It comes from having a dedicated garden shed, and also this excellent fruit diet that gives me energy even after 1 full day of teaching computer things to people who for some, don't care

Thanks Guy friend! I still don't think i progress at the same speed as you are

Well Libor, I think that if YOU had done the ball turret, the openings would be more round, the rivets would be more evenly spaced etc etc etc, coming from you this is indeed a compliment

Erik, all hail the wreck builder! that's what is cool about building things that are broken, you actually search for natural and convincing bumps! Indeed the ball turret once primed revealed some small depressions etc, but some of them were indeed quite good looking, some others I had to fll, I still have both halves to glue and to sand because there will be quite a big joint in the end! Indeed priming is a very good way to see those bumps! the figs will be 4/ 5 hidden in the end, so basically i only took a real care of the feet up to the waist, the rest could be completely black and that would be okay

Time to do the base!
Just plain plaster

.. yet to adda bit of grain, a bit of water over it and then pour some extra plaster like you would with flour on a cake..


okay good it added a bit of detail, but ooooh wazzat? i am sooo careless! this is some extremely diluted plaster that i spilled over and that ended in drying in a very thin cat over the garden table! let's take it!


Let's pour some extremely diluted plaster on the base and just throw the small bits over it..


let's be further realistic in trimming all bits that are out of the plaster surface..

Amazing work and some great scratch building!

Thats base is also fantastic, it's really interesting watching this gradually take shape! Thanks for sharing!

mighty work!