Blue Moon's "Wishbone" Fighter I wonder what that name refers to... Wishbone Parts
Stated scale:	1/48
Actual scale:	unverified
Overall length:
Material(s):	resin, metal, styrene
Number of parts:	26 resin + wire and T stock
Stand included?	no
Decals included?	yes
My Source:	Starship Modeler
Cost (w/o s&h):

11/27/2007

On a whim, I pulled this off the shelf and started cleaning up the resin flash and other irregularities. There aren't many. I assembled the vectoring rings and exhaust assemblies using superglue, and installed the cockpit bucket and instruments. Also attached the aft and top-aft detail pieces to the main body.

12/1/2007

Snowstorm Day! Perfect for watching movies and building kits.

I attached the engine mount crosspiece with 5-min epoxy and drilled holes for aluminum reinforcing pins in the main body, droid module, and cockpit module.

I assembled those three modules with 5-min epoxy. No, really, they are all ortho - just an oddity of the camera lens below.

12/5/07 - More drilling, more metal pins... the engines are epoxied on.

The kit includes styrene T-stock to connect from the engine modules to the vectoring assembly (VA). Call me wacko, but I'd like to get some metal stock for that instead (success! see below). I've started cutting little T-grooves into the attachment surfaces on the engines and VAs so there's a better connection for the T-stock. 

12/22/07 - The off and on puttying / filling / filing / sanding continues. I found some brass T-stock to replace the styrene stock. Special Shapes makes it in 36" lengths; I found it at Hub Hobby in the Twin Cities.

1/6/08 - I primed the engines and engine wells before epoxying the engines in place. Note the detail added to the engine piece forward of the exhaust cowl. This is styrene strip stock in half-round, rectangle, and H shapes. And while I was at it I primed the cockpit tub too.

1/11/08 - I used a bandsaw to cut the brass T-stock to the proper length.

I began by attaching one strut to each engine using superglue. I scored a small T into the resin at the fore end of the strut so it would have a bit of something to grab onto. I aligned the struts parallel to engraved detail lines on the engine and did a whole bunch of eyeballing.

I also scored a T into the rudder housings for the aft attachment point of the struts. I tried using rubber bands to hold all the struts on an engine in place and aligning them before gluing them down, but that proved too unwieldy. So I glued things on each engine in this order:
2. Struts 180° around from the first strut.
3. Attached rudder housing to the two struts, carefully aligned them and then glued.
4 & 5. Dry-fit the other two struts into the engraved Ts and then superglued them down.
In a few cases I had to flex the brass a bit to get a good fit to the housings. I still need to putty in and around the brass-to-resin attachment points.

1/16/08 - That one little nagging thing finally nagged me into action. Those detail areas fore of the brass struts are one place where the kit could have benefited from having more parts. I'm going to make a set of parts to replace the muddy detail here between the banded rod thingies. Each area will have two of these rods flanking a short piece of 1/8" T-stock.

I sawed out one of these areas (top of image at right) and trimmed away resin from the sawed-out piece until I had isolated a banded rod (bottom of image at right). I puttied over the trimmed surfaces to begin rebuilding the banding detail on the rod. So, now it's off to the molding/casting bench...

1/20/08 - Just call me Bender Bending Rodriguez. Last night's 'fun' included sizing and bending the piping bits for the Ywing. I started out just bending and sizing to match the illos on the sheet. But...when I test fit #1...  oh... those aren't full-scale illos. Good thing the 3/64" piece they included was longer than necessary. OTOH, the single piece of 1/16" stock they included wasn't quite enough to get all the larger pipes done, so I scrounged for some - all I had was some steel clothes hanger stuff. Yeah... fun to cut and bend. So that's why #s 6 and 7 look non brassy.  I'll be painting the piping separately and adding them after the rest of the thing is painted.

2/7/2011 - hmm... 3 years this had been on the shelf, untouched. I thought I'd make up a mold so whenever I have some extra resin from another casting (which at this point happens to be the Franz Joseph Transport container parts), I can cast a replacement strut for that muddy detail on the engines. I first tried this just making a mold of the strut by itself, but that was prone to having air bubbles stay in the mold and making incomplete castings. So, I made a U-shaped master where I can pour resin into one hole that will flow down and fill the strut mold from the bottom up and force air out. That master is a cleaned up strut super-glued to some styrene sprue. I poured RTV around that, then cut the mold open to remove the master. Castings from this are bubble-free. I had at the muddy detail with nippers and x-acto to clean out those 8 areas in prep for the new detail pieces to go in.