chaos07

Nice progress and problem-solving. Vac kits are a pure mystery to me, one day I'll give one a go.

I have no words . . . your work is incredible. the realism you manage to downsize and apply to the kit is amazing.

Incredible work as always. Your paintwork and weathering is immaculate and well done! OD can go in so many directions but can be a bear to pull off - and you certainly did so on this one.

One of my favorite airplanes! Awesome video.

The lighting looks awesome! I can second the Bandit Resin Factory stuff - I bought a bunch of his stuff earlier in the year, and it looks amazing in person.

A little further along. This round is the slight weathering inside the intake. My attempt at giving this some wear and accumulation of environmental staining. A mix of Lamp Blac, Ivory Black, Mixing White, and Yellow Ochre Burnt was used to make a color that when nearly wiped off has just a hint of brown, and gray. In the reference photos I've found, the intakes tend to turn a bit yellowish over time and in time can accumulate a little character along the way. The mixed color used is at the top right of the cardboard below. Below you can make out some of the staining, and an attempt at a rub mark, which shows up occasionally - at least in the references I've found. The PolAF birds tend to stay fairly clean, but a few do show some considerable wear. My goal is to show an in-use jet, but clean and well-maintained. My application method was to apply small dabs of oil with the brush, that had been dipped in lighter fluid first, across the intake trunk. A dry cotton bud was then used to work the oil into the surface in two directions - first in the direction of airflow, then perpendicular. After some time, another clean swab was used, dampened with lighter fluid, and flooded the surface. After letting that sit, the oil was worked in a pattern that mimicked the reference photos below. Of note, the long cotton buds that I used have a very dense and hard-packed head, which allowed me to leave the pattern used. In my test, normal cotton buds that had a softer head tended to just blend the oil into a muddy mess. The harder swaps left a pattern, and with enough thinner, I was able to control it some. A couple of screen grabs of PolAF jets that were used as a reference. Please note the rough skin inside the intake. This will justify the rather unsmooth finish I ended up with on the third round of painting these. . . . I'll take the win, though the texture was certainly not applied deliberately. OPR is a new skill for me, but I like the effects one can garner with careful application. I'm sure my skills will improve with time and more mileage. Thanks for checking in.

Nicely done! Especially the exhaust staining and patina in the overall paint.

Excellent. Your paint work is very tight and well done. Love the scheme.

Impressive build and diorama! The attention to detail is superb. The dirt and weathering is exceptionally executed and establish a ton of character for the scene you created. Well done.

Tail assembly is complete sparing some final sanding and scribing. The attachment of the parabrake housing was a little work, but not bad overall. My cuts on the kit tail strayed a touch from the panel line making the junction a bit out of square. Certainly, the resin was slightly out of square from the resin part removal from the casting block, so some adjustments were made. To make this easier a channel was hogged out of the forward section of the parabrake, leaving a contact area that was just oversized in width of the kit parts. This made truing the joint much easier and eliminated any doming of the resin while trying to make very minute adjustments. This task went much quicker and presented very few issues - I'll gladly take the win on this. The truing was done with some 220 grit sandpaper - intentionally rough to allow some bite with the adhesive. The initial attachment was done with VMS formulated for Resin. Not sure what the difference is between this and all the other "types" sold, but it works very well with resin. It is fairly thick - close to Medium - but the bond is instant. It is imperative that you get it right first off, or break out the debonder. After attachment with some CA, a bit of JB weld was mixed up to layer in from behind the part. My thoughts in doing so was to ensure there was a solid bond between the resin and plastic ensuring that an errant bump later on would not break the join. My experience and relationship with CA is strained to say the least, and I don't trust it for a permanent mechanical bond for such a large resin part. The benefit of JB weld over the 5-minute epoxy I've used in the past is how hard it gets, it sticks to anything, and clean-up with some IPA and a cotton bud or Q-tip is as easy as one could ask for. This permitted cleanup at the base of the tail that will straddle the kit part that holds the metal alignment pins. The opening at the base is also visible here, as mentioned in the previous post. The RWR antennas at the top of the aft section of the tail were somewhat soft. I measured them and they came in at approximately 1.5mm, which I could punch out of some .005 styrene. The part was sanded smooth to remove the original detail - this took a bit of attention to keep the facets straight and even. The new antennas were punched out and applied with some TET - the rapid stuff with the light green top. Due to alignment issues imposed by the builder (me) when this part was glued together, I lost some height on the lower surface over the rudder, when eliminating the step. This was corrected with a strip of .010 styrene and sanded back into the rounded profile, which closed the gap nicely. The assembly dry fit together after gluing on the parabrake housing. Full functionality was maintained with the rudder, and once finally assembled I'll have the flexibility to pose it appropriately when the time comes, and then lock it in with some TET. Until I get the base and corresponding position of the model I don't want to commit to a final position ensuring flight control position and the pose of the model look right. The RWR antennas look very oversized in these photos. They will be toned down slightly with final sanding and polishing before painting. Lastly, a PSA regarding securing the caps on ones bottles of TET - do it . . . . I must have left one just sitting in place for a few days and as a result, most of it evaporated. I'll gladly accept this over spilling a bottle - much easier to deal with. As always, thanks for checking in and your comments/suggestions/corrections - it makes the process much more enjoyable.

Pete, Thanks for the kind words - and the corrected terminology! Going back to the Jake Melampy Modern Viper Guide - sure enough - I saw EPU and replaced APU as a familiar term. Cheers.

This is going to be a cool build!

Those wire bundles are looking sharp. I need to grab some phone wire for my stash on future builds. I've also seen that the ribbon cables from older computers have some really fine wire in them as well. Great work so far!

That color came out nice. The amber coloration comes through quite well.

More forward momentum during the work week. Some Albion Alloys brass tubing was placed in a few spots under the fuselage. In a couple of areas, it was used to clean up some poor scribing on my part, and in others to add some detail. The opening on the forward side of the arrestor hook is found to be either open or with a large fastener in its place. I believe this is where the rear of the centerline fuel tank connects to the aircraft, and when not installed a plug is in its place. A smaller tube was filled with CA then slightly domed with fine sandpaper and placed inside to create this detail. Once some primer is applied, the final effect and whether or not it worked will be revealed though it does look decent in the rough form in person. There is an exhaust adjacent to the tail hook aft end, which is open. The tail hook will get a bit more detail toward the attachment end and is shown here with sink marks filled in and dry fit. Work on the tail has begun with the kit tail being trimmed and the parabrake housing is close to getting epoxied into place. I intend to glue the tail on permanently, but the poly caps will still be accessible with the resin parabrake housing installed and should assist in alignment. The tail will likely be added after painting to make the masking much easier - time will tell though. After punching all the rivet detail, and re-scribing the panel lines on both the resin and kit plastic, some styrene is in place to allow fine-tuning of the parabrake alignment and replace what the saw removed. The top of the fin was poorly aligned when I glued it, making scribing the panel lines that run parallel to the top impossible - so a thin sheet of styrene was placed on top, and will be sanded back. The cut-off of the kit tail was used as an angle guide for the rudder at the bottom. With any luck, all this will still be in alignment after final gluing, but if it is not, I'll trim off the bottom stud. Since this bird will be posed in flight I'm debating whether or not to have some very minor deflection of the rudder. There is still some time to sort that out though. The resin part from Grand Models has some great details on the parachute. Some work with a scriber, needle, and rotary tool with a diamond bit and I opened up the housing around the parachute. There is some detail yet to be added, and the opening needs some slight refinement as well, but I think it looks a bit better than with a very shallow relief around the parachute. In most pictures I've found, the parachute sits flush at the bottom, but in a few, it does not. I suspect that after a flight, or several, the parachute will settle in with gravity and any G's imposed on it in flight. The base was also opened up like the real deal - though that will be tough to see once assembled. Lastly some more drilling and tubing at the front of the fuselage. The APU exhaust was made with more tubing and the location for the Total Air Temperature probe was drilled out and a backer was glued in to allow for installation. The kit TAT probe is a bit rough with a large ejector pin mark on one side, and the base is thick and stands proud of the fuselage. I have a plan for a replacement and hopefully will be able to show that in the coming weeks. Drilling out this area will allow the replacement to be set flush with the skin, and the backer will provide a solid gluing surface and prevent loss inside the fuselage. The kit originally had a flat spot on this hole to register the kit part, so drilling it out now was much easier and less risky than after assembly. Hopefully some more progress this weekend. Hand surgery is on the near horizon and that will slow me down a bit for a short while.

There is something about the early mustangs . . . nice progress - looking forward to more!

Wow, it is something to see a master at work - it is amazing to see this come together. One day my mind may work its way around how to do this. Scratch building is a skill that when done well, is truly amazing.

Nice! Superb clean work so far - looking forward to your progress.

Wow - excellent start and what a unique subject!

Bill was awesome to work with when I bought mine. I wanted to get it powder coated/painted, and he shipped it without the standard decals and such attached to facilitate that. He does make some smaller ones too. This is huge, especially with the extension table in the front. Since it's made of heavy gauge flashing - the weight is not too bad, but it does have some flex so care is needed when setting it up. It did not come with any light bulbs, but some outdoor LED bulbs spewing out just under 3000 lumens each are more than enough light to work with - almost too much to be honest. I used some half-inch thick foam core to fill in the void underneath the main part and the extension, attached with double-sided carpet tape. This makes sure I don't dent up the bottom while working. I would have gone with the 24-inch model, but I do hope to get to a 1/32 C-47 or similarly sized kits in the next couple of years, and this booth will be just about big enough to handle parts that size. My setup is in the living room (the dog doesn't care where I work thankfully) and the air purifier I have set up does not detect anything when I paint with any type of paint. The older booth would not remove enough of the fumes, and the purifier would light up and go into overdrive. Good luck on the hunt for the perfect set up!

Thank you. The booth is a Pace Enterprise 36” deluxe. It is super quiet and moves some air - far better than the Pasche booth it replaced. With it running I don’t need to turn up then TV or strain to hear normal conversation. Before I pout it to use I did paint it with white enamel paint as the silver unfinished metal was a bit tough on my eyes.

Small update for the week. Moving slowly but surely. I think once I get done with the little details in the sub-assemblies after the fuselage goes together, this will probably pick up the pace a bit. My initial hand-drawn doublers for the navigation lights would have worked, but I didn't want to fuss with sanding tweaks to ensure both were the same shape. Aside from that, the PolAF jets have an asymmetric layout that was not initially accounted for. I found a good side shot that sowed the asymmetry and allowed me to trace it in Adobe Illustrator. After I printed them out in the scale size then glued them to some .015 styrene. After cutting out a matching pair and sanding to shape, they were attached with some TET and allowed to dry for a couple of days. I then sanded down the height to what I thought would be appropriate for scale, though they may be a bit too thick - but will remain regardless. In a future build, I'd use some .010 styrene for this, and pre-bevel the edges closer to the final profile. As shown above, the edges are blended to the intake, which I did with some thinned Mr. Disolved Putty then taken back with some sanding sponges. In the macro shots the putty looks pretty rough, but in the bare plastic, even under 2.5 magnification with my new stereoscopes, it looks quite good. There are some filled-in scratches (red) and on the next shot an errant line near the intake lip - that is filled with black CA. The extended light housing came with the CFTs from Grand Models, and fit the kit lights perfectly. Both were attached with some JB Weld. To ensure a more robust bond, I drilled some holes in the back of the fairings, and also into the intake. After the epoxy dried for a couple of hours, the squeeze-out was cleaned up with some 99% IPA and a pointed Q-tip. As can be seen above, and below, the fairings did move a slight bit after being "clamped" with several strips of Tamiya tape, but they are symmetrical from side to side and are almost dead level. Additionally, the doubler at the bottom of the intake was added with .010 styrene and affixed with more TET. This did cause the piece to wrinkle a slight bit, and those wrinkles were filled in with some 3M glazing putty and sanded back. The odd-shaped panel at the aft edge was something I didn't want to attempt at this point as a ton of sanding has been done so far, so I opted for an oval panel without the peak at the forward center edge. The 6 round panels were added per my references, and thought the rivets were a bit off-center, with normal vision they are pretty close. I need to improve my alignment for punching these. Lastly, before installing the cooling scoop on the fuselage, It was opened up with a drill bit and a diamond bit in a handheld rotary tool. The final cleanup was done with a #11 blade. The kit part lacks any sort of opening here. After a primer coat, the blending of these panels will be tweaked as necessary. The intakes on the sides of the main landing gear were thinned at the opening and the termination point on the aft edge. On the jet, these terminate flush with the fuselage and I may attempt to do the same here. The kit plastic was thinned to about .5mm - any thinner and I was worried the TET would melt the plastic and deform the edge. There was a good-sized ejector pin mark that prevented these from sitting flush, which when removed with a little scraping allowed them to fit very flush. Some light scraping made the openings look very thin and a rounded transition on the inside to the inside made the opening look considerably larger. I think this looks pretty good - it could be made from some thin styrene, but didn't seem worth the effort here. There are a couple of fasteners that will be added to the top aft edge of these scoops once I've decided whether or not to try and thin that termination to the fuselage. Wow - the zoomed-in phone pic sure makes some of the scribing look pretty rough. In-person, these lines look much smoother and straight. Finally, after adding a few more wire bundles and a couple more connectors compliments of the Anyz 90-degree connector set, some black paint was laid down to move this part along. A little dry brushing with dark gray and flat dark earth provides a basis for some light dust and weathering. More will follow toward the end of the build after the final paint is in place. With the canopy installed, I'll tweak the amount to show some dust accumulation, but not too dirty. Some MRP MATT Super Clear locked in the base layers as shown below. The ECS scoop was thinned with a #11 blade to make the edges as thin as I dared. Drilling the ends of the Anyz connectors was easy enough with my handheld rotary tool, and allowed the lead wire to get a good strong connection. Trying to do this drilling with a pin vise was fruitless as the printed resin is very brittle and resulted in the replacement of a couple of these connectors. Moving on, I'll be working on adding some final little details to add/enhance areas on the fuselage parts before they are permanently joined. Sooner than later I'll want to mock up the exhaust parts to get them fit around the brass tube and ensure the aft nacelle fits the fuselage properly. Once done, I should be able to close up the fuselage. The intakes will get a bit of weathering as well, before final assembly making that task a bit easier. Thanks for checking in.

Love the progress and attention to detail. The wing tip lights are very well done.

Cool subject!

This is an incredible build so far. Between your 3d design skills and modeling skills, the end result will surely be a phenomenal representation. This is one of my favorite threads to watch - truly amazing.