Minor update. I spent most of my Saturday working on the guns for the Fokker Dr. I. This ended up being alittle more labor intensive than I thought it would be. As mentioned in my previous entry, I had to fill the sink marks on the gun body and sanded them smooth. Luckily all the detail had to be removed so it this process easy. I then cut off all the PE pieces and cleaned off the nubs.
Sine the cooling jacket had to be bent into a circle, I tried something new. I held it over a candle until the coating cooked off then set it aside to cool off (do not put in water to cool off). This will allow the PE part to bend much easier and reduce the spring effect. It work well and the cooling jacket did resist from springing apart. Roden included a “nub” so that the jacket would slide on with ease – watch the alignment because if the cooling jacket sits too far forward the front piece is hard to put on (I found out the hard way).
The gun charging mechanism is simple – just fold in half and then glue on a plastic rod. Lastly place on the rear gun sight.
I started using 2-part epoxy to glue PE parts and I like better than CA glue. It seems to provide a stronger bond and you can clean off the excess reality easy.
Below is a comparison between to the two guns – the solid jacket provided by Roden and combo Roden and Eduard PE gun. I do have to admit that the solid cooling jacket is the best version I have scene to date. Again, I have to applaud Roden for including both options.
Below is the assembled guns with their respective feed belts and ejection loops along with padded crash pads. I decided to build them prior to painting to check alignment and determine if there would be any fit problems. So far, so good. The only problem I ran into was the cockpit support beams were not enough to reach the guns and had to add a small amount of plastic rod. Tomorrow I will sand them down and paint them.
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