With all the smaller parts now washed, I could start making up some of the smaller assemblies such as the landing gear. As you can see in the first pic there are quite a few parts (none of which are labelled or numbered by the way) and the instructions are very very basic. I started by hacksawing all the large bits of flash off. I’m truly shocked by the amount of wasted resin you get with the Thunderhawk.I then scraped all the moldlines off with a craft knife.
Once the pieces were tidy and moldline free I did a quick dry fit to make sure I had the unlabelled pieces on the correct left and right side before gluing the pistons together. I didn’t glue these hydraulics to the underbelly, Instead I used pins to hold in place. I want to be able to detach these sub-assemblies and paint separately.
Come back tomorrow for the second part, when the feet are added and the beast stands on it’s on three legs for the first time!
It's great to see you really going through this project step by step along with great detail shots. It's not every day that you get to see a Thunderhawk so this is rather interesting.