Building a 50 year old Comet P-40 Kit

getback wrote:What he said ... The old kits are old and need the extra patients that it takes to put hem back together , But can bee frustrating. And please remember to tell me this when I build a oldie but Goldie model    Looks like a silk job would have been well easier than all the panels but would not bee original .  

Silk was an old technique even on planked surfaces, and done correctly is extremely light, lighter than Monokote and very strong, strengthening a stick build framework.

You are correct, Eric.  I need to get back to my 1959 Berkeley Impulse kit build. Have it all framed, just need to complete fuselage upper and lower planking, join wings & cover, clean up fuselage elevator installation (hole for it is rough cut not exact) and radio installation with controls.

Berkeley is perhaps one of the worst earlier kits to build around. The wood cutting and quality makes the earlier Guillows and Sterling kits look deluxe. But, because I wanted it to be representative of what one can do with the kit wood, I proceeded.

I'd never seen die cutting that was crude enough to require considerable re-adjustments to make it work. The wood looks like that rejected by Guillows, Sterling and Comet.  

Now I can understand why Duke Fox only retained them for a short while in the early 1960's, until they were basically bought out by SIG. SIG redeemed the situation and brought out better quality in the kits, renaming the best of the designs to Craftsman Scale series half-A F/F kits.

This is part of the reason why I miss the old SIG company under the late Glenn Sigafoose. When I was about 10, my father would order balsa from them, even made a scratch build rubber powered biplane from their wood stock. When in high school, I made orders from SIG on to my adult years. Their balsa, ply hardwood and music wire were always top notch.

Legacy continued under his wife, Hazel and Maxey Hester, IMO. Ah, the bygone days ...

I don't fault the new owners, times have changed and they need to maintain profitability in order to survive. I'm afeared that those days with SIG and their legacy supplies are now long gone.