Hobbyboss 1/32 il-2m sturmovik

[Jmart95]

Hey everyone, here's my current build, the hobbyboss sturmovik. So far it's proven to be an excellent build, so hopefully that trend continues.

here's the paint scheme I'll be doing, early vvs green and black camo over underside blue


the seem for the outer/inner wing sections is going to need a little work , especially since I believe it's not an actual panel line.


and the bottom, I left of some of the details for the machine gun since it won't be seen after paint. The clear parts for the gun covers and cowling will get a coat of liquid glue to give it the texture of the grey styrene(fortunately the canopy frames are frosted over). The holes that the intstructions have you drill have been barely drilled through by twirling a #11 blade from the inside, so the hole can easily be opened from the outside to accept the locating pin(I've had a few kits that have had the wrong size whole called out so it's just a preventative measure so I have less filling to do)


Here's the mikulin am-38, left the wiring(which is beautifully rendered in styrene) off to make painting easier, and the sub-assemblies are not glued yet either. Looking at pictures of the real engine, their really doesn't appear to be any details that need to be scratchbuilt.

The cockpit is nearly done, just a couple pieces need to be added to the gunners station, and some wiring and I can then button up the fuselage. Gotta love the simple soviet cockpits.



One thing I noticed while looking over the kit as that the rivet detail is just about gone at the top of the fuse by the gunners station, so I'll have to go in and do that myself. Since I don't have a riveting tool, I'll experiment with the exacto and see how it goes. And for anybody else with this kit, theres also a large seem where hobbyboss converted the single seat fuse to the 2 seater, from just behind the pilots seat to about an inch behind the gunner. Easy fix, but it's easy to miss while your building it.

The bomb bays have some nicecly detailed photo-etch panels, the front and back panels fit perfectly, but the side panels were too long and needed to be cut down.



and I couldn't help dryfitting the parts together, looks like a stormovik now!

So that brings us up to where I'm at now, I'll probably get the gunners station done tonight after work and get the fuse closed up. So far this kit has been a real treat, and fortunately the wing to fuse joint looks like there will be no issues. I'm building this one pretty much out of the box, but I'm going to try my hand at scratchbuilding a few missing details, we'll see how that goes. The big issue with this kit though is that it has an all metal fuselage, when the real one was wood behind the gunner. An easy fix, but I haven't decided if I'll change it or not. Feel free to make any critiques as I go along, whether it's a build error or a wrong color, etc. Thanks, and enjoy!

[JediBoer]

It looks like a brilliant kit! Great job!

[Jmart95]

Thanks, so far it has been pretty fantastic straight out of the box, much better than expected when I read the kit reviews of their il-2 family in 32nd.
I messed with the setting on my phone, pics from this point on should be considerably better.
The cockpit still felt a little bland, added one more light layer of grey drybrushing, I don't want it too worn looking as not many stormoviks lasted long enough to get to that point.



I also got the air intake/firewall assembly built together, and the tailwheel assembly(minus wheel), and got the fuse closed up now and the wings attached. I'm leaving the tail wheel assembly unpainted, because of the scale painting it after the planes been airbrushed will be easier than masking it off. I'm leaving the air intake and firewall unpainted until I can find out what color it should be or until it hinders progress(the il-2m of the flying heritage collection uses underside blue, here, but being a restoration, I have no clue how correct that is). Keep in mind, I have yet to do any filling or sanding, and the sprue nubs on the wings and fuselage have only been removed where the parts mate up so far.


I read that that wing root was problematic for some modelers, but it was as nice as any I've had to deal with, just needs a touch of filler to make it matche the other panel lines


the underside is definitely more problematic though. This is that same spot that gave me grief with the accurate miniature il-2, I'm thinking the only option is to mask the wing at the seam(so the detail doesn't get damaged) and layer thin strips of styrene on the fuselage to get the two parts level, then sand and fill until they're even. Unfortunately I don't have any styrene at the moment, so that'll have to wait for now.



there was also some weird texturing from the mold on here, hopefully just a coat of primer will be all it needs to sort it out


That's all for now, time to get back to the bench

[Jmart95]

Guess who just dropped their kit in the middle of primering it...

Not too bad considering it fell from 5 feet straight onto concrete, fortunately the kit has a metal gear which took the brunt of the hit. Have to go back over the joint on the right wing and i think the cockpit tub shifted since the fuse doesn't want to align properly. So now its time to do some fixing, and then i ll make an update of last night and todays progress

[UKguyInUSA]

Nice work so far mate, the cockpit looks sweet! I love all these BIG birds that are being put together on ere at the moment.

Cheers,

Martin

[Jmart95]

Thanks Martin, and your right, some of the builds going on at the moment are absolutely killer
This one is a rather boring update. Last night was spent converting the fuselage from an all metal construction to the composite fuselage. I decided to do this using my normal method for filling, tamiya putty thinned with laquer thinner(thinned to the consistency of normal thinned paint), which pools up in the recesses without building up on the surface and is easy to control.
took about 6 coats, with light sanding after every other layer




and after a coat of primer



and I've started work on the bottom wing to fuselage seem that didn't match up. The plastic sheet was all I could find at the local hobby shop, and apparently is not styrene(wouldn't take tamiya extra thin, and is EXTREMELY strong, I was going to trim it with my exacto but it wouldn't even start to cut it). These pieces were sanded level with the wing(masking tape was used to prevent the sand paper from scratching the rest of the plane) and I'm using tamiya putty and sandpaper to blend it all together now.



Other than that, the day has been spent getting the seems eliminated on the fuse halves and upper and lower wings and putting the landing gear on.

I had to make a decision after it fell, the cockpit attachments got knocked out place, and the armor plate was going to stop the canopy from fitting properly. My options were to either take out the armor plate, seat, and fuel tank to trim them to the angle of the floor and hope it looked ok; and even worse, fill the fuselage seam and risk the glass not fitting properly. The other option was to clip the motor mount off of the firewall, and pull out the firewall and fuel tank to clip the right side attachment points for the cockpit. So now cockpit is back in it's original position, and the fuel tank and firewall are back in their respective places, but the motor mount is fubar so there's no point in painting the engine anymore. But considering the sound it made when it collided with the ground, I'm happy with just being able to continue working on it.

[Jmart95]

I finally go some noteworthy progress, got the last of the detail pieces(except the stuff for the gunner) on and started the painting process. I did some very light preshading for subtle tonal variations, but nothing fancy so it wouldn't look exaggerated in 1/32. I also masked the upper and lower surfaces, and then lightly oversprayed the upper colors to along the line to have an accurate soft transition.
before paint


The vibrant underside











thanks for looking!