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Lukgraph SBU-1 Corsair FINISHED


ericg

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Wow you are absolutely cracking on Eric. Can't help noticing, you manage to work two concurrent builds faster and better than I do with one!

Cheers

Jim

Hi Jim,

 

I actually have 3 builds on the go at the moment, there is a Eurofighter that is at an advanced stage of completion at the moment as well. I find that I work on what I am inspired by at the time, whether that is a day to day thing or from one hour to the next. It keeps it very interesting and ensures I don't become to stale on one build.

 

Eric.

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Eric,

  Absolutely perfect. :wow: I'm going to assume that the stripes on the top of the wing are painted on. Decaling over them even with several heavy coats of clear, never works for me.

Joel

Hi Joel, yes the stripe is painted on. I made up a mask for it using my silhouette as well.

 

Eric.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Onto the detail painting and decals.

 

It is quite a hard task to work out how to weather these models as all period photos show very well maintained and clean airframes. I guess there would be modellers that would have the model looking as if the aircraft had spent the last few years in the boneyard, just weathering for the sake of weathering, but I prefer to keep my models `operationally realistic'.

 

As always, I have encountered some problems with the decalling stage (remembering the Fisher X-1A kit a year ago with the extreme decal issues there!!), which I will detail later once I have devised a fix. I intially used the kit roundels but immediately ran into some issues where the cowl roundel would not conform to the curvature despite repeated attempts at trying to get it to soften with Microsol. I then noticed that the top wing roundels had some slight bleed through of the yellow through the white star. I contacted Lukgraph who sent a new set of decals to me. A quick phone call to my modelling guru Simmo enabled me to borrow his set to keep the momentum going whilst the new ones showed up. I then took the offending decals off the model with some masking tape and painted white circles on the top wing in preparation to accept the new decals to prevent the bleed through. I re-applied the nose cowl and the same issue occured. Simmo also sent a set of Yellow wings roundels from the Dauntless, which were significantly darker than the kit decals, and the decision was made to take off all of the kit roundels and go forward with Yellow wings decals. Sourcing a few different sizes from his sheet and some from my spares I was able to keep the show on the road remembering that our local show is only 2 weeks away and I would like to have it on the table for that. I was then quite shocked to find that the Yellow wings decal also had problems conforming to the cowl. For such a simple shape it is certainly putting up a fight!

 

I should point out that I have completed a fairly major modification to the model since my last WIP post whereby I shifted the top wing forward by 5mm. During the fitment of the forward cabane struts, I noticed that they had to be swept back significantly to fit into the kit locating holes. Upon further investigation, I noticed that the top wing was much further back than what was depicted in reference photos. Considering that I had drilled and located the interwing struts into the kit holes, it appears as though it my be an issue with the kit. I broke out the interwing stuts and re-drilled the holes on the bottom wing as far forward as I could (approx 2mm) before re-glueing them. I then re-positioned the holes in the top wing approx 2mm rearward, and then bent the interwing struts slightly forward to give the net forward movement of 5mm. The area that this modification is most noticeable now is the position of the leading edge of the wing over the cowl flaps and also the far less swept look of the forward cabane struts. If you have this kit it is definately worth doing this.

 

First up, some overall views.

 

IMG_0755-X3.jpg

 

IMG_0758-X3.jpg

 

IMG_0760-X3.jpg

 

Some very light post shading is evident here, along with the scratchbuilt sway braces for the bomb, and also the new flaps that I made up from plastic card. I did this because the kit called for using photo etch part, which lacked detail. I was able to use my riveting tool for these parts.

 

IMG_0762-X3.jpg

 

Some shadowing was applied to the rudder and elevators with a highly thinned mix of dark brown and clear.

 

IMG_0757-X3.jpg

 

I burnished some bare metal foil into the landing light. Visible here is the the issue with the cowl decal. More on this later.

 

IMG_0761-X3.jpg

 

I replaced the kit tail hook bar with some brass rod and also made up a new fairing for it.

 

IMG_0763-X3.jpg

 

Alot of time has been spent getting the stance right for the model. I place a sheet of 600 grit sandpaper on my bench and move the model around on it to flat spot the tires until it looks like it carries some weight.

 

IMG_0756-X3.jpg

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Thanks for the input guys.

 

So I was locked in a stalemate with the cowl roundels. Both decal solutions had failed and a solution was required pretty quickly!

 

The Mask cutter has saved my arse a few times now and it was time to put this into action again. I guess some of the reluctance on doing it sometimes comes from the fact that whilst the finished product looks a bit better than decals most times, the process and implementation is quite arduous, and messing it up is very time consuming to fix!

 

First, a decent JPG image of the required roundel was found online, and that image was opened up as a new project in Studio (I am still getting used to using screenshots on my computer, so bear with me here!)

 

roundel-X2.jpg

 

I then used the select trace area to define what I wanted the program to cut for me. The yellow lines are where it thinks it will cut.

 

roundel%202-X2.jpg

 

The roundel JPG was the pulled away from the trace area to leave the red lines. It has done a pretty good job.

 

roundel%203-X2.jpg

 

To ensure that the resulting shape was as accurate as possible, I clicked on it and selected edit points. This then shows all of the points that the program has used to define the cutting path. There are lots here and it could do with some simplification.

 

roundel%204-XL.jpg

 

I deleted as many points as required to give the simplest cut path. ( I am yet to work out if it would make any difference, but I guess it just looks better)

 

Simplified with the minimum amount of points. 

 

roundel%205-XL.jpg

 

If I was to leave the mask in its original round shape, I would have ran into the same issues of conformance as before with the decals, so I stretched the shape vertically slightly to account for the curvature of the cowl. on the right is the outer mask used to paint the white circle on the cowl, almost .5mm higher than it is wide. The star was stretched to fit this.

 

Capture6-XL.jpg

 

A very handy feature for small shapes and fonts is to tell the cutter to under and over run each line slightly to force the cutter to pick up and set down the blade rather than try and rotate around. Imagine how hard it is trying to keep a pencil on the paper if you were to draw a star, without lifting it off. It is easier to start each side of the star fresh by drawing straight lines. This is achieved through selecting the line segment overcut option to ON and then specifying the distance, in this case 0.1mm.

 

Capture%207-X2.jpg

Edited by ericg
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Once the white circle was painted on the cowl, I carefully placed the star over it.

 

DSC06884-X3.jpg\

 

Dark blue

 

DSC06887-X3.jpg

 

Pink Tamiya fine surface primer

 

DSC06888-X3.jpg

 

Done! Looks much better than a crinkled decal!

 

DSC06890-X3.jpg

 

I have been adding some small elements of weathering to blend the decals in a bit, on the left roundel is some Tamiya smoke that has been sprayed over each rib that is covered by the white star. Looks a bit better than the one on the right

 

DSC06892-X3.jpg

 

I used an Eduard 500Lb bomb, suitably painted and weathered to replace the kit part. Here it is being dry fitted with its cradle.

 

 DSC06893-X3.jpg

 

DSC06896-X3.jpg

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Fantastic work Eric - perfect all around! I find your builds very inspiring for a newbie like me and a lot to learn from.

 

But I do have a question. What are the two pins for in the wheels?

 

Cheers, Peter

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Hi Peter,

 

The pins in the wheels are to hold them off the ground. I just painted the flat spots of the tires as they were bare resin after I sanded them flat. Due to each wheel being cambered from the vertical axis it was necessary to paint them and then glue them to the model before sanding the flat spots to ensure alignement with the ground when the model is complete. I wanted the weathering of the tire to extend all the way around and completed this process tonight. The pins will hold them away from the ground, preventing the paint from becoming damaged whilst it cures. Due to me working fairly fast on the mode, I don't want I have to wait for this to happen, so I can move the model around as I see fit! The .5mm brass pins are tightly fitted into the holes now but will be removed when I have completed the model.

 

Long answer but it probably needs to be explained.

 

Eric.

Edited by ericg
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