Brett M

Here's a bunch of photos of the "pretty much finished" marathon tank build that's cured me of doing any more 1/16 tanks and any vehicles with interiors...done-dun-dun..LOL.  Enjoy the photos and as always, comments are welcome.  NOTE:  No further narrations of the photos...these are just photos.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 

It's 99% done now.  Just some touch-ups, a couple canopy hold-open rods, and a good dusting to go.
 
I learned a lot during this project, but man, that was a lot of work.
 
 

 

 
 
 

 

 

 

I have the cockpit roughed in and am printing up the small bits.  I've made the front panel, pedestal and pedals all one piece.
 
 

 
I've decided to make decals for the instruments, so they'll be 2-dimensional.  The left console will have the throttle designed in, but the rest will be decals.  I'll wait for installation until after the exterior is painted.
 
 
I know one of the big chores when making a vacuform model is getting the wings and tail surfaces the right thickness, and giving the trailing edge a sharp edge.  Judging by the amount of work this process has already required just for the rudder I don't think I'll have the patience to shape the wings.  So, alternate plan is to cut off the trailing edge and either scratch build or print new ailerons and flaps.  Either way will work.  Printing them will be less work but will weigh more (and they're behind the CG).  I'm inclined to print just because I like repeatable processes, but I've discovered that in the vacuform world the printed parts are all designed to fit the current model - and I don't think I could make the vac parts the same way twice.
 
By the way, the more work I put into the rudder the more likely I'll just cut it off and make one as well.
 

 
 
The drawing seems not quite accurate.  From photos I've seen the aileron leading edges aren't swept - they go straight out just like Tigger molded them.
 
EDIT:  I later found out I had installed the upper halves of the wings on the wrong sides!  Oops.

Work on the fuselage is progressing.  I've printed a new nose.  Getting it to fair in nicely with the fuselage will take some putty and sanding.  Part of the problem is that the kit fuselage has a flat belly, whereas the real airplane has a rounded belly.  I'm not going to reshape the belly, so I'll just make it work with the putty and sanding.  In this photo the nose is installed and the cockpit opening is roughed out.
 

 
 
In the mean time I've been working on the other small bits.  Shown here are the seat, drop tanks, pylons (right wing only for now), missile launcher rails, sidewinder, and tip tanks.  The launcher rails (LAU-7, I believe) are taken from my KH OV-10 kit.  The sidewinder is from Brassin. 
 
 
 
 
 
Funny thing about the Honey Badger is I've seen photos of it sitting on the ramp with all gear doors closed.  I've also seen it with some or all doors open, so I'm still trying to decide how to pose the airplane.  I've decided the nose gear door will be closed, but I haven't yet decided about the main gear doors.
 
The drop tanks are each made of two halves, top and bottom, just as you'd expect from an injection kit.  That keeps the weight down but adds the difficulty of getting the seam just right.  For the tip tanks I decided to print them solid, accepting the added weight.
 
 

 
 
I am a bit concerned about the weight because the landing gear will be 3D printed as well, and I'm not sure how much weight they'll be able to hold.  All three gear have a trailing arm design which makes it even more concerning.  On the plus side all three gear can be inserted into holes in the airplane without glue, so if they break it'll be easy to remove them and replace them with gear printed with a different resin.
 
 
 
 
 

Peter, that's a fantastic looking bomb aimer's window. I'll have you remember that approach if I ever need to do something similar.
 
My B-24 is almost done. Maybe this week. Thankfully no NMF for me. 
 
 
 
Carl
 
 

So. It was time to bite the bullet and work on the bombardier’s sighting windows. Couldn’t do more of the stringers till I knew what that area was going to look like.
 
Here’s the left side with the Nav windows and the stringers done. You can see I went a little caddywhompus on one of the formers…it’ll still work. More important that it gives the representation, as there will be a bombardier hunched over his Norden, so not everything will be completely visible.

 
Before the Prowler, there’s no way I would’ve attempted to make the windows, but not now. Still pushing my limits, but getting comfortable with the process. @airscale Peter Castle had recommended using resin instead of the basswood buck, and this was the perfect time to try it. I used some white glue to attach all the clear parts to the nose and then kneaded up some silicon casting putty and wrapped it around the nose. At first I just put a piece of styrene in as a dam and poured the resin…hence the “Great Resin Disaster of 22.” Good lord, I had resin everywhere! Comical actually. But I actually got a good cast, so all’s well that ends well! (In the pic, the silicon dam was added afterwards, in case my part didn’t work out)


Here’s the resin buck after sanding/smoothing and you can see my clear piece in the background. I just heated a piece of clear plastic over the stove and smashed it over the mold -it’s a really simple shape so this process was easy.

 
Here it is just laying in place. You can see a LOT of the interior, even without having polished the clear bits yet.


And a side view. It’ll need a smidge of putty, but that shouldn’t be too big of a deal as the nose profile with these windows is a bit different than the standard J model. Also, most of the seams will be away from the edges of the actual windows, which will allow me to   glue, sand and finish without fear of fogging etc.


and the other side…

 
Now back to the stringers so I can work towards getting the nose compartment done. Will need to figure out how I want to do the crew as well. More as I plug along, but certainly happy to have this major stumbling block solved! Future ones are the A3 “High Hat” turret and the enclosed waist windows. More on those when the time comes!
-Peter

Ha!  This is so much fun!  This has to be the true definition of a group build - one model and a whole group of guys from across the planet trying to work on it.

Yeah - I think that is the trick Brett.

Maybe use masking fluid over your silver paint instead then? Primer, silver, fluid applied with sponge chunks, yellow green, more fluid for yellow only chips, then top coat? You should be able to rub the masking fluid off afterwards.

Oh wooooooow. Almost a year with nothing, slacking off a lot. I can at least blame a LOT of house renovations for most of this. Hardwoods throughout our main floor, main bath remodel, master bedroom remodel, model room remodel. Busy times!
 
Not a lot of progress, but I'm trying to get this back going so that I can have something done. Fuselage is together for the Trojan, with the majority of the cockpit work done. There is a type of HUD to go in later, but it's PE so that can wait till I'm ready to attach the windscreen (which, doesn't fit). I've yet to tidy up seams but hoping to get to that soon. I did start on the engine as well and, for now, am planning on using the kit wires. They don't look bad so far as I work on cleaning up the flash, but we'll see if they need replacing with lead wire after some paint goes down. 
 
Anyway, pictures to show progress and hopes to keep me on track/make progress! I've got a F-105G, a F-4C and F-16CJ, all Wild Weasels calling my name.....thought a P-51D/K might come first. 
 
Push me on, all!
 

 
Now I see the past year hasn't been kind. Missing throttle in the rear cockpit.

 
 
 

 
And here I made a mistake and placed the weight too far forward prior to checking panel fit. Grinding away with the Dremel....
 

 
Hopefully, more updates in the next week.....not the next year! 
 
Thanks for browsing
 
Brett

I’ve never tried soaking mine, but I have de-tacked them by stickying them on some other media, remove, repeat a few times. It’s helped where I’ve had paint lift previously.

I’ve never tried soaking mine, but I have de-tacked them by stickying them on some other media, remove, repeat a few times. It’s helped where I’ve had paint lift previously.

Maybe use masking fluid over your silver paint instead then? Primer, silver, fluid applied with sponge chunks, yellow green, more fluid for yellow only chips, then top coat? You should be able to rub the masking fluid off afterwards.

Perry - you and a few others seem to like the bare aluminum look!  Well, it's a cool idea but it comes too late:
 

 
She is completely covered in green self-etching primer.  That coat is only a day and a half old.  I'll give it another day or two before I do some light sanding.  I will wait longer still to apply the next coat, whatever that may be.
 
I have made three test panels so far; with confusing results.  Each panel got a paint lifting test with masking tape, and a chipping test associated with the hairspray method - 
 
Panel "A":
 
 
 
Paint sequence for panel "A":
 
1.  Self-etching primer
2.  Tam AS-12 bare metal silver (rattle can)
3.  Tam XF-4 yellow green (air brushed)
4.  Hair spray
5.  Tri-color topcoat (rattle can)
 
Result - failed the paint lifting test, curiously only with the dark blue.  The yellow-green resisted paint lifting.  Chipping resulted in exposure of the AS-12 silver, very little exposure of the yellow-green (the overhead lighting makes the silver color look orange).
 
 
Panel "B" - not made.
 
 
Panel "C":
 

 
Paint sequence for panel "C":
 
1.  Self-etching primer
2.  Tam XF-4 yellow green (air brushed)
3.  Hair spray
4.  Tri-color topcoat (rattle can)
 
Result - failed the paint lifting test, curiously only with the dark blue.  The yellow-green resisted paint lifting.  Chipping resulted in exposure of the self-etching green, the yellow-green layer went away with the tri-color even though it was under the hair spray.  WTF??  No bare aluminum was exposed.
 
 
Panel "D":
 

 
Paint sequence for panel "D":
 
1.  Self-etching primer
2.  Hair spray
3.  Tam XF-4 yellow green (air brushed)
4.  Tri-color topcoat (rattle can)
 
Result - passed the paint lifting test.  Chipping resulted in exposure of the self-etching green, the yellow-green layer went away with the tri-color.  Any exposure of bare aluminum was from scraping.
 
 
OK I have some comments:
 
1.  The self-etching primer is doing a good job of resisting paint lifting. 
2.  Unclear why two (not all three) panels failed the paint lifting test.  The panel that passed had both the yellow-green and the top coat over the hair spray.  The panels that failed had the yellow-green under the hair spray.  ??
3.  Not real pleased with the "chipping".  I did this with warm water and a toothbrush.  Took some elbow grease to get it to respond.  Any ideas?  
4.  Were I to choose from the three, I would pick panel "A" even though it failed the paint lift test.  It is the only one that didn't expose the green self-etching primer; instead it exposed the silver, with perhaps a little yellow green - which is what I was after.
5.  I wonder if other modelers on LSP have experienced paint lifting with the hairspray method.  
 
I should also state that except for the self-etching primer layer, all paint layers were done in one day.  I wonder how the results would change if I allowed the paints to cure longer....  I also wonder if the results would change if the tri-color were applied with an airbrush rather than the rattle cans.  The Corsair will receive top coats from the airbrush.
 
Let me know what you think.
 

Apparently I can't count. What I thought was 80, turned out to actually be 60, so tonight I made it my mission to finish the other 40. What you see here is now 100 pieces even, enough for one side of the vehicle. From this experience, I now suspect it'll be quite some time before I tackle the 1:16 Panzer IA!
 

More underwing stuff being added.   Both drop tanks are installed (see previous post way back on my painting and detailing).   I grunged up the bottom of both of them with some Flory washes.   Also added one of the nose gear doors.   Used a bit of lead wire to replicate the power cable to the lights, still need to add the linkages that secure the door to the nose-gear.    
 

 

 

 
This picture really demonstrates what a beast the F-4 was.   I'm surprised it was able to fly with all this stuff hanging off the aircraft. 

 

 
That's it for now, thanks for all the feedback, see you next time! 

Oh wooooooow. Almost a year with nothing, slacking off a lot. I can at least blame a LOT of house renovations for most of this. Hardwoods throughout our main floor, main bath remodel, master bedroom remodel, model room remodel. Busy times!
 
Not a lot of progress, but I'm trying to get this back going so that I can have something done. Fuselage is together for the Trojan, with the majority of the cockpit work done. There is a type of HUD to go in later, but it's PE so that can wait till I'm ready to attach the windscreen (which, doesn't fit). I've yet to tidy up seams but hoping to get to that soon. I did start on the engine as well and, for now, am planning on using the kit wires. They don't look bad so far as I work on cleaning up the flash, but we'll see if they need replacing with lead wire after some paint goes down. 
 
Anyway, pictures to show progress and hopes to keep me on track/make progress! I've got a F-105G, a F-4C and F-16CJ, all Wild Weasels calling my name.....thought a P-51D/K might come first. 
 
Push me on, all!
 

 
Now I see the past year hasn't been kind. Missing throttle in the rear cockpit.

 
 
 

 
And here I made a mistake and placed the weight too far forward prior to checking panel fit. Grinding away with the Dremel....
 

 
Hopefully, more updates in the next week.....not the next year! 
 
Thanks for browsing
 
Brett

Thanks. I have to agree on the fit, nice and tight so far, just some minor flash. Appreciate the suggestion on additional weight, I’ll stuff some behind the engine before I attach the nose panels.
 
Brett

I thought I'd show what the smaller decal sheet looks like. I can use this, but please JET MADS just heh ask Cargotraf do the decals. 
 
04


Some edges are fuzzy, and it would help to cut them straight with a sharp blade. The P95 decal could be reduced to a black circle to look better I think, cutting of the not-in-register yellow ring on the outside. I wonder though, I suppose it might be possibe to touch up the decals here and there, with a tiny, tiny brush to sharpen them in places, after having applied the decals to the model. I think the white moose is a little fuzzy, though I don't yet know what decals would go on my ideally silvery JA-37 Viggen, presumably an early production model. Not to be confused with any AJ-37 jet.

Btw, I had a look at the main part for the ejection seat and I am happily surprised how nice it looks. Using thin metal files w. thin self-adhesive sanding paper on them, I can really get to sand various details flat. I think the ejection seat will look really nice in the end, so that's a nice start.

I started adding diluted Vallejo putty on the rear 3d printed part, as the stepping pattern is most noticeable there I think. I have to avoid filling in the rivet holes, but I can probably re-create them if there is a hint of their position I think should I make the mistake of adding any putty into them. 

I plan to add some Vallejo primer paint on various parts, to better get an idea if the surfaces are then adequately smooth. I will try wipe the resin with alcohol, very gently before airbrushing on primer.

How the whole thing should come together that I really have not a good idea of yet.
 
Edit: Looking at one of the photos I collected of a Viggen with metal skin (lengthened fuselage, presumably an JA-37 and not an AJ-37)), this one with "39" on its tail, doesn't seem to have any of the larger decals seen in this small decal sheet I show above, so I might not "need" to use these decals for my build I think now.

Edit2: The manual shows a painting guide option for this one silvery jet with "39" on the tail, so it looks I am on the right track here.  In that case, it looks like none of the decals from the small sheet, will be required. Nice. This have me wondering though, I would guess that the wheel wells on the silvery jet would be metal color, and not "olive drab" as indicated in the build guide.

Oh wooooooow. Almost a year with nothing, slacking off a lot. I can at least blame a LOT of house renovations for most of this. Hardwoods throughout our main floor, main bath remodel, master bedroom remodel, model room remodel. Busy times!
 
Not a lot of progress, but I'm trying to get this back going so that I can have something done. Fuselage is together for the Trojan, with the majority of the cockpit work done. There is a type of HUD to go in later, but it's PE so that can wait till I'm ready to attach the windscreen (which, doesn't fit). I've yet to tidy up seams but hoping to get to that soon. I did start on the engine as well and, for now, am planning on using the kit wires. They don't look bad so far as I work on cleaning up the flash, but we'll see if they need replacing with lead wire after some paint goes down. 
 
Anyway, pictures to show progress and hopes to keep me on track/make progress! I've got a F-105G, a F-4C and F-16CJ, all Wild Weasels calling my name.....thought a P-51D/K might come first. 
 
Push me on, all!
 

 
Now I see the past year hasn't been kind. Missing throttle in the rear cockpit.

 
 
 

 
And here I made a mistake and placed the weight too far forward prior to checking panel fit. Grinding away with the Dremel....
 

 
Hopefully, more updates in the next week.....not the next year! 
 
Thanks for browsing
 
Brett

Just to prove this hasn't already been forgotten <cough> USS Franklin <cough>, I wanted to share what I've had time to complete so far. This is 90% decal so far, then touch up with paint and some dry brushing. The side panels have yet to get any Tamiya flat to even the sheens out, so don't hold that against me....it's rough in places. Hopefully work will slow down a bit and I can spend more time than 30 minutes a few times a week!
 
Comments, critiques, the normal......have at it gentlemen!
 

 

 

 

 
 

Just to prove this hasn't already been forgotten <cough> USS Franklin <cough>, I wanted to share what I've had time to complete so far. This is 90% decal so far, then touch up with paint and some dry brushing. The side panels have yet to get any Tamiya flat to even the sheens out, so don't hold that against me....it's rough in places. Hopefully work will slow down a bit and I can spend more time than 30 minutes a few times a week!
 
Comments, critiques, the normal......have at it gentlemen!
 

 

 

 

 
 

Afternoon all,
 
A long overdue update on the Hornet - I think I’ve won the battle!
 
No more in-progress pictures but there’s been lots going on since I last updated this. I’ve finished the main building and rescribed all areas where sanding and filling took place. Gear has been assembled and fitted - this was tricky but perseverance is the key here. Once installed properly it’s actually plenty strong enough but it took a long time to get there!
 
Cockpit has been installed and completed - I broke the windscreen as it was a very tight fit and had to wait for a replacement. Kudos to Revell for their customer service!
 
Next was paint - all went well until I it came to removing the masking from the black spine - the paint came away bringing lots of the upper grey with it, despite priming etc. The whole lot had to come off and a repaint commenced - it nearly went into the bin at this point but I thought I’d got so far…

Decals were one of the kit’s strong points and were superb - really lovely and settled well with some Microsol. I’ve given it a quick coat of matt varnish this morning and it’s dulled everything down nicely. Here’s a few quick camera phone pics…
 
 
 

I’m currently working in the pylons and weapons, and finishing off the wheels, etc. Then it’ll be the final aerials and a bit more weathering and she’ll be done!
 
Regards to all, 
Tom

looking good. I finished this kit last week, built as a Fennec (amended the gun pod to 2 guns in each pod and built the air scoop for the aircon on top of the nose). I was really impressed with the fit, hardly any filler used and painted in natural metal it looks fantastic (not my modelling skills but the surface details).  Be sure to add extra weight as I don't think the OOB weights are enough due to the location. I used the space between the engine and bulkhead.  From 50 years of modelling, I think this is my favourite - such an enjoyable build for me.

Oh wooooooow. Almost a year with nothing, slacking off a lot. I can at least blame a LOT of house renovations for most of this. Hardwoods throughout our main floor, main bath remodel, master bedroom remodel, model room remodel. Busy times!
 
Not a lot of progress, but I'm trying to get this back going so that I can have something done. Fuselage is together for the Trojan, with the majority of the cockpit work done. There is a type of HUD to go in later, but it's PE so that can wait till I'm ready to attach the windscreen (which, doesn't fit). I've yet to tidy up seams but hoping to get to that soon. I did start on the engine as well and, for now, am planning on using the kit wires. They don't look bad so far as I work on cleaning up the flash, but we'll see if they need replacing with lead wire after some paint goes down. 
 
Anyway, pictures to show progress and hopes to keep me on track/make progress! I've got a F-105G, a F-4C and F-16CJ, all Wild Weasels calling my name.....thought a P-51D/K might come first. 
 
Push me on, all!
 

 
Now I see the past year hasn't been kind. Missing throttle in the rear cockpit.

 
 
 

 
And here I made a mistake and placed the weight too far forward prior to checking panel fit. Grinding away with the Dremel....
 

 
Hopefully, more updates in the next week.....not the next year! 
 
Thanks for browsing
 
Brett