SBD Dauntless - Midway

[beav1013]

Hey everyone. Finished my Dauntless over the weekend. Worked on it for over a month due to lots of time being at the beach on the weekends. Overall I am pleased with the way the kit came out. It is the accurate miniatures version, SBD-3 Midway. However, I'm not sure I would recommend this kit over others. The SBD is one of my favorite planes, so I may do another one at some point, I think I'll try another company the next time. The instructions I thought were very vague and confusing in some spots. It was referencing mislabled parts and even missing parts in some cases. And the pictures for the decal placement was basically useless. i think the picture of the plane that is used for reference on the instructions is about 1.5 inches long. My biggest gripe was the canopies. The Dauntless has a 4 or 5 piece canopy structure (they sometimes left the furthest back piece off due to the machine gun. But the pilot canopy and the multi section tail canopy basically all collapse on top of each other in the middle. No matter what I did, sanding, filing, bending, different alignments, I couldn't get all the canopies to fit on the plane. So I ended up with just 2. It gives the illusion of a couple canopies from a distance, but it still bugs me.

In the end however, the kit did go together very nicely and I think looks great. And for about $25, can't really complain too much. But if you end up doing this kit... good luck with the canopies and instructions.

Hope you enjoy the pics.

View attachment 36689

View attachment 36690

View attachment 36691

View attachment 36692

View attachment 36693

View attachment 36694

View attachment 36695

View attachment 36696

View attachment 36697

View attachment 36698

 

[Centurion3RTR]

Awesome build there Jim, the weathering is outstanding bud. A big five stars from me.

Have fun, John

 

[beav1013]

thanks john. i appreciate it.

 

[yak face]

Hi jim, Absolutely superb paint job!! The weathering/fading is faultless and the colour modulation and mucky streaks are fantastic. It might have been a swine to get together but it looks the business now and the canopy looks fine, as you say a lot of the time crews took off the rear section . 5 from me too , cheers tony

 

[beav1013]

thanks a lot tony. i get really annoyed when little things like that happen though, i guess it's just my personality. I almost had a heart attack when i put the decals on. The star insignia ones on the fuselage sides were not cooperating at first. I had a huuuuge air bubble on the right side one. i had to poke it with a knife and slice it up in strategic places to get it to lay flat. then i micro sol'd the hell out of it. when it was partially dry, i took a took pick and rubbed on the creases/ridges to smooth it out, then micro sol'd it again, and repeated. that combined with a couple coats of klear, and you can't really see it unless you're looking for it.

i just started using klear and i love it. the quick drying time and self leveling amazes me. i love it.

 

[T. van Vuuren]

A super build!

I am a tad put off by the fact that you had so much problems with this kit, I have the yellow and silver one in my stach and from what it looked like in the box I thought is was an outstanding kit.

I will start building it soon and see how it turns out.......

Theuns

 

[beav1013]

Thanks Theuns.

Hopefully you have a better time assembling it than I did. Just take your time and do a lot of dry fittings inside the fuselage and with the canaopy.

Good luck.

 

[noble]

Hi jim wow mate beautiful piece of work, the paint job is just right five from me too.

scott

 

[beav1013]

thanks scott. i appreciate it.

 

[treyzx10r]

Sweet looking build Jim and the weathering is perfect,5 star build fo' sho'

 

[beav1013]

thanks trey. glad everyone likes it.

 

[Vaughan]

Hi Jim very nice build love the weathering.

Vaughan

 

[spanner570]

Lovely build Jim, really nice piece of work.

I remember you commenting on my 1/48 Dauntless a while back. With a bit of fiddling and filing I just managed to get the rear canopies to 'fold' into each other....Just!!

Big 5 from me too.

Ron

 

[beav1013]

thanks vaughan and ron. ron, i really love the dauntless's look. even with the one tone paint scheme i still think it really stands out as a great looking bird. i'll have to go back and look for your dauntless.

you'd think they would include 3 sets of canopies for this plane: 1 for a fully closed one (which it came with, all one piece), 1 that was for having the canopies open, each one separate and didn't fold into each other (came with again), and a third one that would look wrong if you placed it out on the plane in their true position, but folded in on itself and you couldn't tell about the augmented sizes due to the fact that they're all collapsed.

thanks again for the compliments.