Nice workmanship Barry, said as one 'balsa & ply man' to another.Will you be making the transparent coverings from a Coke bottle as you described in another tutorial? I had great difficulty in moulding the gun turret for a Boulton Paul Defiant I made a few years back using moulding plastic from my model shop and heating it under the grill until it started to sag, unfortunately it got too thin on the top and holed. I finished up just moulding the curved top.
*** Thankyou Dave,much appreciated,I must admit that the mouldings are so large that they will be probably produced by a local school design technology department,I just do not have the space or facilities to produce them,a vac form machine would be very nice but to purchase they are quite expensive,I know that they can be made but once again I just do not have the space for one ! I did try making the parts in sections covering with some framework,it does work but tedious and needs lots of individual male & female moulds.As you can probably see all of my model building is fairly low tech,much prefer hand carved basic materials,my lathe is the electric drill chuck and my best friend is the bandsaw purchased at a car boot for £20,but this does not stop me getting the maximum fun from building,far from it as it brings out the ingenuity and you can still get results.
Regarding the pop bottle cockpits which do work well,one of the problems was getting bottles large enough,at Christmas Woolworths had some monster money box plastic bottles which are ideal for bigger cockpits on models.
