themongoose

He’s a great guy! Converted one of his 1/48 aggressors up to 1/32 a few years ago for me.

No, I will have to look into that. I like his masks.

i 2nd this one. The new kit, had the Texas ANG was great to build

I just love how your paint went down! Superb looking

Like origami! Superb looking work. Those electronics bays are going to be a real eye catching add!

Another EPIC build!!

Mike you do some awesome work! I always stop in to see your builds man

I’ve had great luck with them too. The masks and the numbering are great. I find the painting order the opposite of what I would normally do but that’s a lot of personal preference as well. They have you do the dark color down to the light color sometimes depending on what the camouflage pattern looks like. Because you paint a color, mask it, then paint the next color.

You’re gonna love this… I didn’t look at who wrote this, but I thought oh my buddy is looking for the boosters and fuel tank and I never thought about looking for a 3-D printed version. I need to tell him to look for that. Then I realized it was my buddy asking ha ha. so i went and checked out a guy i like, cults3d, and here is something to consider https://cults3d.com/en/3d-model/art/space-shuttle-rocket-booster

Target, remember this acronym - LEA, lacquer, then enamel can go over that, and acrylic can go over both. there are some exceptions, use that paint mule to figure out what is possible. Always go back to LEA though to be safe, just like drunk calling an ex girlfriend lol Now i don’t think you can avoid the varnish, or clear coating in general. Next, my experience has been that the clear coat (varnish if you’re painting acrylics) needs to be COMPLETELY dry before putting a wash over it. Just me, but I’ve had some bad experiences where the wash won’t come off the paint and it ends up looking dirty, dirty, dirty. then the type of clear coat you use, satin for a bit of a dirty look because the roughness will hold the wash, you’ll never clean it all off, but that’s by design in this case. Gloss if you want a relatively clean surface, with most of your wash staying in the grooves. maybe just me but i think people confuse “washes” with “pin-washes”. A pin wash always requires a gloss clear. That’s what allows it to wick through all the panel lines. A wash is an overall coat across a large surface and you then wipe the excess off in the direction of airflow (generally) until you are happy with the level of “dirt” left on the surfaces. You can use gloss/satin and even flat for this depending on how dirty you want it. For additional information try the article i wrote on weathering in the IPMS magazine. Here’s a copy https://www.cincyipms.com/weathering-the-ah1z

I was thinking, That baby blends in really well with the woods in the background. Then as i got to the end i went, hey wait a minute, that’s a seaplane! Cool title, really drew me in. Glad i stopped by as this is a beautiful build!

That’s a superb kick-start after 10 years. Going to be a great display. Do you have a display idea yet?

oh just beautiful work as always!

Love it! Plus i never knew it was orange underneath, go figure! That lower fuselage looks good, man orange is hard to spray.

i do this by printing 2 sets of masks, an inner and an outer essentially. I make alignment “marks”, just open slots in the surrounding mask material, so that i can place one directly over where the other one was. Works great for outlines. Tougher tho to do a 2 color letter over a 3rd base color. For instance - place a positive mask around the entire lettering area, paint the inner most prominent color, place masks for the lettering centered in the positive mask, then spray the outline color. This way you never have to try and cut out or place that thin outline. If i do this again tho i would be tempted to place the inner letters 1 at a time by hand. Even with the alignment marks there were some offset letters in the middle of my words that needed corrected. edit- also, i used tamiya masking material for letters exclusively. The vinyl stretches too easily and it’s harder to get the spacing and alignment even.

Tom every time I look at your styrene work i could swear it’s a virtual image from a cad package!! You do some seriously clean and straight work my friend!

Will you be selling printable files at the show or just exhibiting?

Hmmmm, so for my next experiment i’ll wait 30 sec and then try to hit pg2. If that doesn’t work then i’ll use NigTT’s method because search is useless otherwise. chris

Anyone else run into this…? when I search, specifically works in process this time, I cannot select page 2 of 5 for example, without getting an error message saying I have to wait before I do another search. Anyone know how to get around this, so that I can look at more results than just what is on page 1? Please wait 11 seconds before attempting another search

I’d be honored! Thanks Ray

STUNNING!

You know you do this to yourself every build is better than the last and you keep ratcheting up the result!!

Oh so pretty!

Yep probably have some of both. Will look when i get home tonight! sharp sharp design and paint work my man! Love your build

Have you thought about making the template from tamiya masking? Something that would conform to the canopy sounds like it would help consistency.