...and this is what's in it (save only the two decals) after being washed.
As I said "last time" (hey, Space Angel was a serial cartoon
), there was a fair bit of flash to clean up, which wasn't much trouble. What was, however, was separating the starboard wing from the casting block. The port wing was no problem that way, as can be seen in the above photo, but the starboard wing -- the one with all the flash along the leading edge -- had a rather dodgy casting, and the root and tab for the fuselage slot were effectively one big slab that incorporated the casting block! It took a lot of work with a razor saw, knife and files to detach it from the block and grind it down to something like the right shape, and even then the wing root was quite uneven, as you can see. Against that, the leading and trailing edges of both wings and fin are remarkably thin -- and thus prone to damage. Just as well the roots will be covered in filler.
I did a quick test fit of the fin and the port wing, and they weren't too bad. The fin was a bit twisted, but the old hot water treatment sorted that out, though I may have to do it again. The port wing took a bit of fettling, as I'd suspected because the slot in the fuselage is none too big. Still, she looks good.
Now, on the other side, it was much more of a battle to get wing and fuselage aligned. The tab was oversize and the slot undersize, so it was out with files, wet-and-dry, et al. in an attempt to get them together. It wasn't all that successful, especially once I glued everything together, but I was expecting to use a fair bit of filler, so there was a limit to how much I was prepared to do. The photo below shows the ship after main assembly.
I was surprised with the fit of the exhaust nozzle. When I test-fitted it early on, it sat out of the hole in the back of the hull rather like the depiction on the box lid, but when I added glue (superglue) and fitted it, it went in more than that, and now only projects about 2 mm from the rear of the hull. Since the nozzle is not actually visible in the cartoon, AFAICT, I'm not worried; if I could be bothered to argue the point, I could claim that it is more screen-accurate as is.
At the other end, the two small canards were not something that I was (or am) looking forward to dealing with. I'm putting them on last in order to not have to worry about them getting knocked off all the time; they are both small and thin -- not sure if you can tell, but the resin is thin enough to be translucent -- and the only thing indicating where they should go is a pair of very shallow grooves. Making a butt joint, and holding one of these tiny things in place long enough for the glue to grip, is not going to be fun, so I had an idea: using a standard hole punch (the red thing in the picture below), I cut out a pair of discs to mount the canards on from a sheet of thin plastic card -- and there they are. Hopefully, this will be a lot less hassle when the time comes to put them on. It's also vaguely realistic in terms of how the canards might be made to move, which pleases the engineer in me.
With the fin and wings on, it's time to fill the gaps at their roots. ISTR someone suggesting using masking tape to limit the spread of putty prior to sanding, so I thought I'd have a go. Here she is with the tape on and a load of Perfect Plastic Putty in the gaps. I used wet cotton buds (Q-tips) to smooth the putty down, and it remains to be seen what sort of surface finish I'll get with it, and how many PSR cycles may be needed.
This last shot shows the puttying on the underside, and also demonstrates that she'll stand comfortably on her "landing gear" -- because that's how the Starduster landed on planets. She would dock with space stations (especially her home base, the Evening Star) in a horizontal attitude, but for soft landing on planets, etc., she was a tail-sitter. As a small item of trivia, the control room was fitted with pivoting seat-control panel units, thereby anticipating Thunderbird 1 by 2 or 3 years!
Why is this image the wrong way up?
Please imagine it in a vertical attitude. [LATER: As it now is, for some unknown reason... ]Next step is sanding, after which it'll be PSR until I'm satisfied. I'll keep you posted.
The first decal I put in water promptly tied itself in knots! 