Whoa, been six weeks since I last posted an update, bench time has been scarce lately and what time I have had was spent questioning my sanity for trying to replicate the innards of this beast. By my calculations I probably would have been done by now if I had passed on the interior. Ohh well, on with the show.
First up I needed replicate the blotchy coloring of the inside of the fabric covering, after some experimentation I decided to go with oils as I had better luck controlling the effect. Once I had the areas between the framework filled in I used a Prisma Color fine tipped paint marker and highlighted the framework. This worked OK on the center areas but the relief was too shallow above and below to make it practical so I decided to leave it alone. The framework as depicted on the model is way to shallow as it appears to be nearly three inches deep on the real thing. Anyway, with that much done it looked like this...
All in all a bit too stark so I over sprayed it with a thin wash of light gray to tone it down...
Still not great but considering it's not visible from the outside, I'll live with it. With that done pieces part begin to go in. Not much to show on the starboard side...
All the goodies go on the port side...
One of the things I like about this hobby is learn about things, when I think of waist guns the picture that comes to mind is a gun on a mount with handles on it and a guy standing behind it, however, not the case on the Wellington. The gun mounts to a sliding carriage. The operator uses a pair of handles resembling bicycle handlebars. Sliding the handles left and right moves the gun left and right and moving the handles up and down does the same for the gun. Looks clumsy to me but the view out the waist window was poor at best and this set up allowed the gunner to get closer to the window as well as keeping the two gunners out of each others way. Trumpeter did a pretty good job of duplicating this setup.
The turrets need to inserted prior to gluing the fuselage halves together, not the best in my opinion but we'll see what happens. The front turret is very nicely detailed, other than adding some hydraulic lines it's pretty well complete. I deviated from the instructions and went with interior green rather than black as I wanted to highlight the details more. I have a war time color photo of a BIII with the front turret in green so they apparently weren't all black inside. I added a few more lightening holes to the assembly but the rest is stock...
In case you are wondering I cut all the gun barrels off and drilled then to accept resin barrels which I will install near the end of assembly as I knew they wouldn't survive otherwise. The rear turret was rather sparsely appointed compared to the front so it got a black interior and I did not take any photos of prior to installing the glazings. It also was one of the few assemblies to date that I had any fit issues with, it turn out to be a real pain in the axe !
With the turrets in place, one last look before the fuselage gets buttoned up.
I have been test fitting as I go but so far everything is playing nice together. Next time we'll see how it went.