M-61

[Gondor]

Duering Kit Spackman's Martin Monterey MR1 build I suggested that the M-61 Vulcan gun he was building mat not be quite as difficult as he made out. Well I decided to find out if his comments were true or not, more fool me.

As can be seen from the accompanying picture, some of the etch brass is on the small side



The brass barrels are not particularly large either



And here are the first two items that I glued together, along with a couple of graduated items to give scale



The two rulers are: Above the items 1:1 mm ruler : Below the items 1/72 scale ruler in Feet and Inches

So far the whole build process has been in my head.



I read the instructions, or rather looked at them, then rehearsed and rehearsed how to assemble the parts in the easiest way so that there was no distortion, twist or missalignment at all 

First was how to secure the parts so that nothing disappeared when I was cutting it from the rest of the etch. The top image shows the etch on some double sided craft tape which I then applied a piece of sellotape on top so that the etch was sandwiched between the two. This is working well and have not lost any part when cutting it from the sheet 

I did however lose part One less than five minutes after I removed it. 

You all know how it goes, one second the part is firmly help in your tweezers, you look away for a second and when you look back, as if by magic it's gone! 

It took another twenty minutes to find the part but now that I have glued the small turned brass part to it I am less likely to lose it again, he said hopefully 

Next up is adding part three to the back of part one and the small centre part while keeping everything square in relation to each other and only then adding part two to the other parts. I might be glad later that they provide seven of these fin like part three's when only six are required. As a friend of mine says, "its footery".

Gondor

[scooter]

[Dizzyfugu]

Never knew that masochism comes in small plastic bags? 

Good luck!

[PR19_Kit]

I had a lengthy chat with Alastair about that this afternoon and he's definitely a glutton for punishment. 

I abandoned my attempts at assembling the Master kit and what's left of it is in the bin, but Alastair is using a much more sensible build process than I did. Best of luck with it.   

[chrisonord]

I bought one of these thinking it was a good idea too.....erm.....nah.
Chris

[Gondor]

Glueing the first two parts together was not much of a problem, Part One was glued to the "non gun barrel brass rod", its glueing the six parts around that rod that is the difficult part. I simply dont have enough of the right equipment to hold everything exactly the way I want to hold it 

Getting there I think, though I do need to unblock a hole I managed to fill with superglue and I do have a drill that is small enough, a 0.03mm drill bit will do the job nicly 

Gondor

[zenrat]

I bought a 1/35 PE minion* thinking to use the barrels as a 1/72 20mm ish gatling.
Having looked at the parts I then bought a 1/35 resin barrel set instead and used that.

*Autocorrect - should be minigun but it made me snigger so I left it.

[Gondor]

Not much progress at the moment as I am about to go out shopping. Hoping to be able to get another set of self gripping tweezers to help with this build. In the meantime here is a picture of how things may progress.



My girlfriend suggested that I use bluetac, and I thought    Idiot, why did I not think of that!!

I can adjust the height of the bluetac to match what I am holding in the tweezers when I position the parts together. Hopefully I can then run a small amount of superglue against the two parts thus bonding them together. Knowing my luck I will either nudge them apart or out of alignment as I apply the glue 

Gondor

[loupgarou]

Knowing my luck I will either nudge them apart or out of alignment as I apply the glue 

Gondor

Or glue the parts permanently to the blue tack....  

[chrisonord]

I shall be watching this with great interest Alastair, as I will at some stage get all brave and full of myself and attempt to build mine again
Good luck with it 
Chris

[Gondor]

Just had a little go at this build and managed to get rid of the excess superglue that I had covered one of the holes with 

I used a drill    and yes you can get them small enough 



I had envisioned lots of trouble clearing the blocked part, a few brief attempts prior to the holidays had been with me holding the 0.03mm drill between my fingers, this time I managed to find the hand vice that has small enough jaws to hold the drill and everything went very well indeed 

I'm not going to do anything else to it today, still recovering from not being well for the majority of the last week. However, the blockage has been removed so I can consentrate on getting the parts held together accurately prior to applying glue.

Gondor

[Gondor]

A little progress 

Managed to glue the front disc onto the short round part so I just need to add the six fins between them.... 

Also come up with a cunning plan on how to improve my handling of the smaller parts of the kit. Pictures will be available once I find the time to take them as I build the tool

Gondor

[AS.12]

That's awesome!

Even worse would have been if the US had adopted in the M61 in the original 0.6" chambering, the barrels would be like threads...

[NARSES2]

Also come up with a cunning plan on how to improve my handling of the smaller parts of the kit. Pictures will be available once I find the time to take them as I build the tool

Gondor

Be interesting to see what you've come up with 

[Gondor]

Items bought and purloined to help with this build

Bought.... for £1 from Target



which will have a piece of this metal shim braised onto the inner surfaces of the self gripping tweezers



This means that I have the hand control to open and releasing the part as I require while the shim will be cut to form smaller tips and thinner too means that I should be more able to have the finesse to get hold of the small parts.

I also thought I better include a couple of pictures of how far the build has not got!





Hope to get more work done over the weekend

Gondor