The eighth week of the Eagle I continued with assembling and detailing the interior and the cab. Before I go thru the work done on the interior and cab I need to do a look back at the front bumper. The item on the driver side that I noted as a large light is not a light. This is a Federal Q siren. This is the very loud siren that is heard when rushing to a fire. I do not know why Trumpeter has a clear lens when they could have just added a photo etch piece to replicate the screen. To correct this I removed the lens and installed a screen. For the outer ring and the Federal logo I printed these on clear acetate using my laser printer. These were then trimmed and glued into place. The outer ring was then painted with the chrome paint pen.

Moving back to the interior I made the decals representing the SCBA tanks and added them. While making the decals for them I also made the decal for the silver helmet that is in one of the reference photos. While waiting for the seat belt buckles to be delivered I applied all the cab decals and clear coated with a high gloss clear to seal them. I then painted the chrome trim and the aluminum plate on the back of the cab. There are a few more details on the cab that need to be painted but I will do those when I start adding the external details on the cab.

The photo etch seat belt buckles arrived on Wednesday so I started making the seat belts, SCBA tank straps, and the SBCA harness straps. The photo etch buckles are very nice and easy to work with. It provides four different styles of buckles and latches and ten of each style. The seat belts were painted gray and the SCBA belts were painted black.

This coming week I will add all the external details to the front section and assemble/mount it. I am hoping to have it completed by next weekend!

You can see all the photos and details from the start in the build log at: https://davidsscalemodels.com/build-log/1-25-american-lafrance-eagle-fire-truck/