Airfix 1/72 Hawk T.1

I made a start on the undercarriage this morning and while cleaning up the nose gear, I noticed that the wheel was not round. It had a flat-spot on one side and the tyre was noticably thicker on one side too and because the wheel was moulded integrally with the gear leg, the tyre appeared to be curving up where it met the fork at the top;

I tried to sand it to a rounder shape but it didn’t work so I made a new fork out of a block of plastic sheet;

Cut roughly from the block of plastic, it was sanded to shape with 1mm diameter rod added to the ends of the forks. Holes were drilled into the end of the gear leg and forks and a length of wire was superglued into the forks to strengthen the joint;

To replace the front wheel, I have ordered a set of Reskit wheels so they should turn up mid-week. I didn’t really want to add any more extras to the model but once I saw how mishapen the front wheel was I just had to replace it.

The front undercarriage doors for the kit are pretty poor too so I binned them and made new ones;

So not as straight forward a build as I was hoping but it is getting there.

Published by andyk21

I've been a modelmaker for a verrry long time and still show no signs of growing out of it after 50 plus years. I mainly build tanks, aircraft and paint figures but generally do whatever takes my fancy whether it's historical, Science-fiction, a 'what-if' or because it has pretty colours and looks nice. I'm hoping that you find my blog interesting and useful, particularly if building a model that I have built and documented here. View more posts