¹⁄35

Henschel of the Eastern Front

Assembly of the upper and lower wing halves went together well followed by clean-up of the seams.  I attached the main wing struts to the upper wing and the cabane struts were attached to the fuselage to ease assembly later on.  To ease painting, the upper wing wasn't attached until final painting was complete but now is a good time to discuss the problem I had with attaching it.  When ready to attach the upper wing I found there was about a 2 mm gap between the mounting pads on the underside of the upper wing and the guide pins on the top of the cabane struts.  What to do?  I had a couple of options-leave it as is but that wouldn't look right, thicken the mounting pads on the upper wing or sand off about 2mm from the bottom of the main wing strut.  I choose to go with the latter because it had less impact on painting that was already done.  I ground off the 2 mm with a sanding disc in my motor tool and then inserted a small brass pin in the bottom of each strut that would engage the hole in the upper wing where the strut attaches.  The resulting seam where the main strut and lower wing join was filled and cleaned up with white glue.  Overall this method worked pretty good but in hindsight I probably just thicken the mounting pads of the cabane struts if I were to build this kit again.  Either way, crisis averted and everything came out ok in my opinion.

Joining the lower wing assembly to the fuselage was straightforward but seam cleanup around the wing roots and along the compound curves under the front of the wing/fuselage joint had to be done.  It took a little filler and some careful wet sanding but I got the seams to buff out nicely.