P-51C Mustang Tail Wheel Continued

I cut apart the kit piece so I could scavenge the pulleys from them. When you don't have a punch set, cutting small circles is the biggest pain. This saved me a lot of work.

 

 

 

The pulleys are mounted on arms. My first attempt at making these arms sort of worked, but the final assembly ended up being too wide to be scale, so I had to scrap it.

 

 

For the second attempt, I cut the piece from .005" plastic and sandwiched them together. The best way to make these little pieces is just to assemble them from really small, really thin pieces of plastic unless you have a photo etching system. Maybe one day I'll get one and try it out. This picture shows all the remaining little pieces that had to be made. This makes me glad that I'm not detailing the entire strut.

 

 

The locking mechanism was made from thin plastic and a thin strip of soda can aluminum bend in a "U" shape and glued on with epoxy.

 

 

The pulley mounts needed to be raised higher for a scale look than the arms on the kit piece allow. This was accomplished by adding a little .040" shim and then filing it to shape.

 

 

 

All the pieces were then carefully glued into place. If your hands are shaky, you might want to wait until you can calm with down or you're going to want to pound your head on the wall after a while. I purposely did not glue the spring in position because it needs to keep its natural metal color. I will glue it down along with the cap that will hold it in place after the strut has been painted.

 



 



Another obstacle overcome. Time to start working on the engine