Bulldog - Work on fuselage

I decided early on that I was going to add a bit of interior detail. The kit doesn't really have any, except a seat and a pilot and a sort of notional cockpit floor. But I decided to follow the example of the newer 1:48 Airfix release by building up a section of the framework and dropping it into place. So a bit of prep work was needed before I could do that.

Also, I decided to add some detail to the fuselage itself, mainly by cutting out apertures here and there. This always helps to bring the model to life and to counteract the impression of a solid lump of plastic. The main features bringing life in this way are:

• Cartridge ejection ports below the gun breeches
• Link ejection ports level with the gun breeches (I think that's what they are)
• Gun troughs
• Handholds at the rear of the fuselage
• Openings to the rear of the tailplane. These seem to accommodate the rear spar of the adjustable tailplane.
• Vents at the rear of the engine bay
• Openings for the plumbing of the Vickers Potts oil cooler
• Various new location holes (some of the existing ones will get filled once the fuselage halves are glued together). 

I ended up carrying out both these jobs in parallel and alternating between the two.

And then, there was the question of panel lines. The kit has raised panel lines, and ideally they should be rescribed, but I'm not very good at this and was reluctant to try it, so I had a bit of a conflict on my hands. You can see the result of that conflict below.

Anyway: to work!

Before doing anything else, I needed to remove the location lugs for the notional floor moulding. In the photo below, I've made a start on the port side.

After this, I sanded down the interior to try to reduce the thickness of the moulding a bit. I was going to have to reduce the size of the framework slightly to make it fit, but I wanted it as close to the scale dimensions as possible. At this stage, I also started opening up some of the apertures, particularly the cartridge ejection ports. This helped me gauge how much thickness was left. (Holding the pieces up to the light helps as well.) Here you see the process under way. The starboard side is further advanced than the port side; look how nice and thin it is at the cockpit opening.

When most of this work was complete, I decided I could not put off the question of the panel lines, and so I took the plunge. I decided to start with the access hatch for the W/T equipment and then review progress. But fundamentally, I was not convinced it was a great idea, so the following ensued:

1. Started out with the wrong frame of mind
2. Didn't take much care planning how I was going to do it and just plunged in
3. Made a mess of it
   

 There were a couple of obvious choices after this:

1. Fill the gouged-out panel lines and try again. But in my experience, if you try to do this, the filler just flakes off when you try to scribe over it. At least, this is what happens with Milliput, which is what I always use.
2. Buy another Bulldog, and start again with the port fuselage half. But this would be wasteful, and perhaps go against the spirit of building my Christmas present.

In the end, I went for another option: cut out the access panel and make another from card. Pretty drastic, but then again (I reasoned) I could always fall back on option 2 above, Christmas or no Christmas. This is the what it looked like after the initial butchery:

 

Then neatened up:

With new hatch cover in place:

Phew! I think that's just about OK.

This is what the fuselage halves looked like at the end of this stage. You'll see I also fabricated the little panel near the link ejection port on the port side. It's well above scale thickness, but an improvement on the moulded item.

Anyway, that's enough excitement for one post, I think.