Aug 26, 20232 min read

AH-1Z Body Work

After the two halves of the fuselage were glued together I cut the rest of the body work from the sprue. I essentially wanted to get the basic body made up so I could tackle all of the seam work at once.

The tail in two parts, requiring additional work

A couple of alterations had to be made before I put it together. First I removed some pin marks from the inside of the air-intakes with a grinder. Second I added some bolt heads to the frame that attaches to the skids.

A 0.5 mm punch and die was used to create the bolt heads.

Nine bolt heads inside and out for each bracket, seventy two in total.

It then all went together, intakes, engine, skids, wings, boom and tail. A couple of areas I drilled were on the wing pods to allow the missile rail to be mounted and the loops on the skids needed to be opened.

Drilling 1 mm holes for the missile rails.

By building the basic body I could get all of the unwanted seam lines filled all at once. Filling them with Tamiyas basic type putty. I used three varying grits of sandpaper to remove the excess and then polished with a 2000 grit sanding sponge.

Next I added the smaller details. Sensors, cameras, alert systems and mounting loops.

I had a photo-etch detail set which I used instead of some kit parts, first I removed some of the molded on detail that I was to replace using a fine chisel, then sanded it smooth.

A 0.2 mm chisel removed the bulk of the material.

Eight of these rectangles had to be removed.

I then preceded to add the PE parts. They were mostly grills and vents (which there are a lot on the AH-1Z), some wire cutters, some pulling rings on the skids and a cage on the underside.

These round vents were quite a challenge, the fins on them could only really be moved once as the metal around them was so thin. I took my time and they turned out very nice looking.

A toothpick with Blue-Tac was used to position the grills into place.

I moved on to the Gatling gun, which I had an upgrade set from Def. Model of brass turned barrels and some photo-etch parts. It was a pretty straight forward graft onto the kit parts. I removed some of the inner detail that holds the barrels with a Dremel tool and then replaced it with two ptoto-etched disks with fine detail and pre-made holes.

Through those holes I drilled into the kit part to accommodate the brass barrels and they were secured in with CA glue.

Drilling 1 mm holes to accommodate the barrels.

Next were the supports. The first one I secured a tiny disk onto the front and then it was bent into shape. It was then put over the three barrels and positioned half-way down the length . The second, was in four parts. One central tiny bolt to which I Fed the other pieces onto, glued them and then put the set over the tip of the barrels.