LSP_Kevin

Excellent paint work, Dave. Kev

I managed to tear myself away from the 777-shaped distraction long enough to get some work done on its smaller sibling. Wings and tailplanes painted in Light Grey, and Coroguard panels masked and painted on the upper surfaces. I've also taken possession of some replacement resin wheels from Bra.Z, but was a little alarmed when they arrived: I was expecting full wheels, especially in this scale. These look like a nightmare to free from their respective casting blocks and assemble. I appreciate that they were probably done this way to ease painting, but I've never had an issue painting them as whole wheels. In any case, this is what I have, and they're surely better than the white metal kit parts, so I'll tackle them soon enough. I think my original goal of getting it done by the end of the month seems a tad optimistic at this stage! Kev

I might have to get some of these for my 21st C kit, as they're terrible in that one! Kev

Excellent work, Chuck! Kev

Lovely work, Denis! Kev

Wow! Kev

Cool! Kev

He never did, as far as I'm aware. His outfit was Mastercasters. But since he's presumably in jail now, I figure doesn't own anything any more. Kev

Howdy folks, Just a tiny little What's New update this week. Enjoy! Kev

Great to see you back, John! Kev

I'm finding myself really drawn to this build at the moment, so I figured I'd better take advantage of its organic momentum, even if that means other projects stall for a while. Besides, there's enough glue and putty drying wait time ahead on this one that I can easily rotate back to at least the 757. Anyway, setting aside the conundrum with the livery, I forged ahead with the fuselage assembly, first by adding a set of alternating tabs along the inside of the fuselage join: You'll notice I've also added some nose weight. I gave up fixing lead weights (fishing sinkers, in this case) with CA glue long ago after a couple of bad experiences, and switched to using Blu Tack: Yep, Blu Tack. Not only is it safer than CA, and quicker than epoxy, but in my opinion it's also more effective than the former. Believe it or not, it creates a really secure encasing for the weights, and also prevents them from interacting with the kit plastic or any other chemical compounds used in the area. I've had weights secured with CA come loose in a model before, but never with this method, and despite the disbelieving responses, I preach it wherever I go! (Yes, I'm a right pain at parties.) The tabs made it difficult to knit the fuselage halves together neatly along both top and bottom joins, and I realised that I probably made them too wide. After a bit of a struggle, I got there eventually, and ended up with this: I reinforced all the joins with thin CA, just to be sure. Another issue caused by the tabs I'd used was this undulating effect along the join: I'm not completely certain if this is caused by the tabs being too wide, or the alternating pattern I deployed them in - or perhaps a combination of both. Since the effect is much more prominent on the top (shown in the photo) than the bottom, I'm thinking it's more the latter, as for the bottom I used fewer, longer strips to form the tabs. So on my next vac fuselage, I'll experiment with using narrower strips that are as long as possible, and perhaps using thinner plastic that will conform better. But that's for another day! I'd previously joined the two small tail end pieces together, but when I offered them up to the main fuselage, they were too narrow. I made the rookie mistake of not joining each half to its respective fuselage half, instead of making a separate unit out of them. I ended up cutting open the front section and shimming it with some styrene stock, which resulted in a much closer fit: I finished off this round of fuselage work by highlighting the seam with a permanent marker. This will help me spot the low points as I sand the join back, and show me where I need to add filler. I've also been working on the engines, with one going together with a minimum of fuss: With the other, however, I managed to create some asymmetry in the plastic parts, meaning they didn't meet in the middle like they're supposed to: I shimmed the gap with some Evergreen strip, and will let it set up firmly before moving on with it: Suffice it to say that both engine pods will need their share of filling and sanding! Lastly for today, I added the resin hot ends to the previously assembly pylon/engine assembly: The instructions are a bit unclear with the assembly here, and I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to remove the plugs at the front of the resin pieces so I could butt-join them to the plastic, or make cut-outs in the plastic to accommodate them as inserts. For the bottom assembly, I tried the latter approach, but the plugs are really too wide for the resulting hole, even if you remove all the plastic. You can see in the photo above that I managed to split the plastic trying to fit it in. So for the second one (top in the photo), I removed the plug and went the butt-join route, which was about the same amount of work, but with no split plastic. Again, plenty of remedial work ahead! Kev

Tamiya lacquer thinner! Or Mr. Color Thinner - whichever one you have to hand. Just don't use hardware store lacquer thinner, as will be almost guaranteed to damage the plastic. But honestly, unless I'm feeling fussy about surface details, I'm often happy to just go over the existing paint after a quick sand to knock it down a bit. Kev

It's just paint, so sand and respray, or strip it entirely. Kev

Nice work, Craig! You'll have to change the image in your sig, however, as it's way too large. I'm surprised the forum software even let you use it, as they're set to max of 400px wide. Kev

LEGO bricks are so handy for this kind of thing, and while I have a bunch of them, I've never been able to find the square plates to use them on! Kev