Brett M

One of the wing sections (front Port) having it's mating surface with the rear section dressed off a la vacform, using 100 grit wet and dry.
 
When was the last time you saw such a coarse grade of paper used in modelling? 
 

 
Stainless steel rods to help reinforce the wing have arrived.
 
These are 2.5mm diameter x 600mm long - the largest diameter I figured I could get away with near the tip:
 

 
If I get time later, I'll cut the rebates in the wing sections to hold these - and may make a start on marking out the 2mm thick styrene 'wing spars'.
 
Iain

Well, I promised some airframe photos - so some 'quick and dirty' images on my mobile phone.
 
Yup, we appear to have a 1:32 Boeing P-8A Poseidon - or, at least, the start of one!
 
That's a 61cm/24" steel rule next to it - and tiles are 30cm square...
 

 

 

 
More when there's more - but for now at least, a major milestone arrived at!
 
Blue skies...
 
Iain

March 10/22
 
 
 
 
Finally, a big leap in progress!  Of all the tasks in modelling, I find painting to be the most rewarding, because it shows you what the model will likely look like when finished.  If your painting is good, so will be the model.  If not, well…..
 
 
After letting the Mr Surfacer 1200 dry for a day or so, I applied Tamiya White (TS-26) to those areas that need to be white, like the insignias and numbering.  While I generally love MRP paint, I find their MRP-004 White to require many, many coats to cover, while the Tamiya lacquer is good after only 2 coats, so it’s a lot less work.  I then applied the DN Models mask set, which are vinyl and caused me some significant problems, unlike Kabuki masking tape masks which I much prefer.  I applied these masks according to the kit decal instructions which was simple enough, and they are nice and sharp.  Like all “decaling”, some of them needed to be removed and moved a bit, which was easy and no glue was left behind.
 
 

 
 

 
 
Thin Tamiya tape was used for the boarding locator stripe.
 
 

 
 
And for the tail where no vinyl masks were supplied, same as the kit decals.
 
 

 
 
The results after painting with MRP-014 Sea Blue looks terrific from a bit of a distance, but this is after a big fight with the vinyl masks.
 
 

 
 
A bit closer, the registry is a little bit jagged but not terrible, which is OK since the insignias and numbers/letters on the real deal are a bit crude to begin with, no doubt because they were painted on board aircraft carriers at sea.
 
 

 
 
The problems I had were with the mask removal, because the edges of each mask left a gluey mess that was almost impossible to remove.  This glue was very soft and greasy and nothing I tried would remove it completely.  I used more of the vinyl mask itself to pull it up, along with masking tape, rubbing with a cloth and micro-brushes, trying to roll it up into a ball so that I could pull it off.  Micro-brushes worked the best and I got off about 80% of it after many hours working on each masked area.  Paint solvent on a rag would have worked very well, but with a lacquer paint finish, that was a non-starter, because it would have removed the paint as well.  Having said all that, if you use straight acrylic paints, the clean up of this glue would be easy with paint solvent (not rubbing alcohol), so this is not a criticism of the DN Models masks per se.  With MRP paints and likely many other solvent based paints, however, this could be a problem like I had.
 
 
So why did this happen?  I highly suspect that solvent in the acrylic lacquer MRP paint reacted with the glue along the edges, changing its composition, because the glue in the central area of each mask pulled off easily.  Combined with the blue paint, it created a bluish gooey mess, which looked terrible when wiped across the bright white paint, so I had to re-paint a few areas to get rid of it.  The final clean-up after micro-brushes was with rubbing alcohol, which picked up the remaining glue without harming the underlying paint too much.  After wiping off each problem area with a clean cloth with a bit of rubbing alcohol, there was a bit of blue paint on the rag, so you needed to turn it often so that you wouldn’t get any of it on the white paint.
 
 
Now a bit of a walk-around on the results which look good to my eye now, despite the problems above.  As you can see, some of the rough plastic remains.
 
 

 
 

 
 
For the walkways, I just made a guess on what they probably looked like.  They are usually dark grey and stop at the rear of the windscreen, but sometimes they are light grey and go all the way to the front of the wing, with the rear flap included most of the time, but not all of the time.  Since I painted the rear flaps, I installed all of them, which don’t need glue with a tight fit that was modified before painting.  The ailerons are only dry fit, since they will need glue when installed at the end of the build.
 
 

 
 
My masking of the front firewall worked really well, with very few touch-ups required.
 
 

 
 
The other side…
 
 

 
 

 
 
Since I have a bunch of stencil decals to apply and want to weather this model quite a bit, I sprayed a protective coat of Tamiya clear acrylic X-22 mixed 50/50 with Tamiya lacquer thinner, followed by a flash coat of straight thinner.
 
 

 
 

 
 
A gloss coat reveals all flaws, and here you can see some remnants of the rough plastic on the sides of the fuselage.  Unless you want to sand it down completely and remove the stressed skin (SK) look, you just have to live with a bit of it.
 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 
Again, the fuel tank pylon will cover that seam in the middle.
 
 

 
 
The SK look is still alive and well!
 
 

 
 
So how much weathering am I going to apply?  Here is my subject.
 
 

 
 
And this is generally my template for weathering.  I will show a lot of pics of the real deal in future posts, which are dominated by extensive exhaust stains down the sides, sometimes all the way to the tail.  This should be lots of fun!
 
 

 
 
 
 
Cheers,
Chuck

Day one of a long but fun build.  What an unbelievable kit. Very high quality stuff.  This should build fast until the knots start flying.
 
 
 

 

 

 
 

Super nice work, Larry. Placing the figures and running rigging, that had to have been a chore!
 
I vote the dozer for the next project, that’d be cool looking.

Beautiful work on the Missouri! That rigging would have crossed your eyes a few times I bet? 
As for your next project,  I personally would like to see the Meng kits go together.  Not a subject you see a lot of here

Quick update on where we are with the project...
 
The initial wing prints - inner Port - test fitted to fuselage:
 

 
And all the wing and tailplane prints laid out:
 

 
I'm going to need a larger photo table!
 
Hopefully, in the next week I'll be bonding parts together into separate leading and trailing edge sections - ready for reinforcement and spars.
 
Have fun,
 
Iain

Since I wound up with some deep scratches and some dubious blending of the outboard gun fairings, and rudder light I decided to try something new in hopes of getting a smooth finish.
 

I’ve had this stuff for quite some time so I figured I’d give it a go. It comes in two “flavors”, one is what as known as a high-fill primer (marked S) meaning it has a high concentration of solids and will fill deep scratches. The other (marked F) is an extremely fine top coat primer to get an overall color. Both of these are pre-thinned with xylene so they bite into styrene. (The P-51 in the background is my test mule)
 

I started by spraying the high-fill over all the seams applying extra on the problem areas like the gun fairings and rudder light.
 

Then I sprayed a thin coat of black over the primer to act as what is known as a guide coat, so named because as you sand any low spots will appear black. Sand until the black is gone and you know you’ve not missed anything.
 

As you can see here the black areas are low but with the high-fill you just keep sanding until the black is gone, resulting in a perfectly smooth finish. This stuff is VERY easy to sand which means you won’t be removing any styrene and it feathers beautifully.
 
The process is pretty time consuming but I’m pretty happy with the results. Except for a few minute spots everything feathered out to my liking. Next step was to wash out all the sanding dust (I hate wet sanding), clean up some panel lines and let it dry before applying the top coat primer.
 
So this is where I am as of now.

 

 
Once this is all dry I’ll finish up the remaining details in the cockpit, mask off the canopy, glue it on and hit the whole thing with a primer top coat.
 
Of course all this sounds good, but never having done this on a model the whole thing may blow up in my face as work progresses. It be like that sometimes.
 

And the Hasegawa vs Vondracek test of wills continues.
 

This is where the wingtip light is supposed to go so this has to be fixed too. GRRR!
 

I cut out the surrounding area and glued a piece of round stock in to fill the hole. I added some melted sprue to fill in the gap too - not shown in this picture.
 

Then I sanded it down and in the process squared off the surface where the light is supposed to be.
 

Hasegawa gives you a locator guide on the inside of the wing so you know where to make a hole where the outboard guns are supposed to go. Unfortunately it’s not centered in the panel, and it’s like this on both sides. Why they didn’t just provide this part contoured to the wing so you don’t have to carve out a hole is a puzzlement. I’m just going to fill the panel line and fasteners and see if I can fudge this later, but I’ll probably just let it go as is.
 
The white stuff in the surrounding panel lines is just dust from the sanding, and I’m not planning to use the kit guns  - I just used them to help with alignment. I’ll cut them off and they’ll make it easier to locate and drill out the fairing for brass guns.
 

Man, do I love this Perfect Plastic Putty! I thinned some with water and slathered it around the seam and there’s no need to be careful either which my spastic hands appreciate. You can see that I thinned it so much that even wicked into some of the surrounding panel lines.
 

Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy. I used a stubby brush and a cotton bud moistened with water and in no time, with no effort, the seam is filled perfectly. In case you’re wondering, I’m building with flaps up and these are from the Revell F8 kit. They fit just fine, the tabs even lined up.
 
 
That’s it for today kids. Hard to believe but the next step is to get everything masked off and hit this thing with some primer (or a hammer) and more sanding.
 
Thanks for watching. More laughs and groans are on the way.

February 1/22

EDIT:  the following steps turned out to be wrong.  Please refer to Feb 4 update.
 
Well, I did some major plumbing after all, and I almost paid the price for not leaving well enough alone, just as I was afraid of.  While fiddling with the engine fit to the firewall with all the new plumbing, I literally dropped the engine on the floor!   Aghhh!!!      Shelf of Doom after all? 
Thankfully no, because the engine fell on my soft slipper while I was sitting to break the fall a bit, then rolled off on the hard plastic chair mat at my desk.  Carefully picking it up, fully expecting some broken pieces, I was shocked and very relieved to find that other than a few paint scuffs, there was no damage at all!  There are so many little parts that fit tightly together, I guess the engine assembly is much stronger than I thought it would be.  Whew!
 
 
Anyway, back to the big plumbing, which turn out to be oil cooler lines.  The only decent pic I have of these hoses are on this Hellcat, where they are orange, while original hoses were black, or so say the instructions.
 
 

 
 
With one of the parts diagrams kindly offered above and another I had in my archives, I think I know where most of these hoses go now.  In this first pic, there are 3 hoses that come out of the oil tank on the bottom, with 2 out of a box on the bottom that are semi- horizontal and one that is vertical.  On the bottom, there is a cylindrical contraption just to the left side of the air intake, apparently called a “Oil Cooler Air Shutter”, that also has 3 hoses coming out of it, with 2 of them close to each other and a third hose that comes out of the cylinder at 90 degrees to the other 2.  One hose from the tank and one hose from the Shutter go to the engine, with the port side from the tank as an inlet to the engine, while starboard side has the outlet hose from the engine to the Shutter.  Note how both inlet and outlet couplings are triangular and face forward.
 
 

 
 
The only pic or diagram I have of the rear of the engine is this one which is low resolution, but it’s good enough to locate and identify where these hoses should probably go, as #12 Oil Outlet and #15 Oil Inlet.
 
 

 
 
So where are these located on the kit parts?  Well, they aren’t, but there are two circular features about where they should be, as shown by this earlier pic with the engine upside down, so the inlet and outlets directions are reversed.
 
 

 
 
So I made my own gizmo to sort of replicate the Oil Shutter, which I made out of styrene tubing and rod.  This is version #3, because version #1 was horrible, while version #2 was too wide, while trying to honor the location of the hose attachments from the diagram above.  #3 is a hybrid and not very accurate at all, but it works good enough and I also made a couple of drain pipe parts for the oil tank, which you will see below.  Thankfully I was able to remove the oil tank without breaking anything, even though it was glued onto the engine supports already.  2 rods were inserted into holes in the tank bottom horizontally and one was placed vertically.
 
 

 
 
To bend the tubing and electrical wire insulation I used for the piping, I used an ordinary log lighter and spent about 3 hours, trying to figure out how to bend the parts without burning them (and my fingers!) and making them look smooth and not wrinkled.  As you can see, the learning curve was very steep! 
 
 

 
 
Here is #3 with the styrene parts labeled and a PE brass cap that fit perfectly over the 4.8 mm central core, with a 3.2 mm anchor on the bottom, which fits into a hole I drilled into the firewall.  The base of each 2.4 mm tube fits over holes I drilled then inserted 0.88 mm rod, just like the ends of them, creating a very strong join, using plastic cement first, followed by CA glue to fill in any gaps and smooth things out.
 
 

 
 
For the pipes, I used electrical wire with the copper wires removed, which is fairly close in size to the kit part pipes on the firewall.  After stretching the inside of the insulation, the fit is fairly tight, so that glue is not necessary.  To get these pipes to bend properly, I use a lighter again, but found that I needed much less heat to bend them and shape them around other parts.  Heated, everything is very soft and pliable, but when the parts cooled, they recovered their original rigidity.
 
 

 
 
I have no idea what color one of the Shutters should be, likely green, so I went with Alclad Steel instead to give a little color contrast against the green firewall.  I really like that curved lip to the ends, which was created naturally by heating them with the lighter.
 
 

 
 
Note how tight they are and going in the same direction, to ensure they fit between the engine support and the big air intake on the bottom of the engine.
 
 

 
 
And here is how I attached everything, more or less like the diagram at the top.  First pic is upside down, to show where the pipes go more easily.
 
 

 
 

 
 
Top view from the side.  The hoses don’t jump out at you, but they definitely fill a big void to make things look a lot more busy.
 
 

 
 
There’s another drain and pipe that comes out of the starboard side of the oil tank, which is just aft of the center line and down a bit from the top.  More electrical insulation was used at the top to replicate a hose join.
 
 

 
 
I’m fairly pleased with the “spout” and drain on the port side of the oil tank, which was made out of more styrene tubing.
 
 

 
 
I then drilled some holes in the firewall for future linkages and lines, as well as a big hole for the Oil Shutter.  Note how tight it is between the engine support hole and the air intake screen/radiator, which used to be painted aluminum as per the instructions, but with the pipe over it you will never see it again.  The interior of the wings were also painted green, since much of them will be visible from the sides.  The black kit pipes are only dry fit, to make sure they don’t collide with the new pipes.
 
 

 
 
The fit of the engine to firewall is just fine- and I didn’t drop the engine this time!     Excuse the dust on the pipes....
 
 

 
 
A few more angles.  I will be adding many more lines and details later, but not until the engine is installed permanently.
 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 
Although tough to photograph, this pic shows why the Oil Shutter needed to be so narrow, so that it didn’t collide with the engine support and intake pipe.  If I was a car modeler with my new-found skills, I think I can now make a decent set of headers for a V8 engine!  That big air pipe, BTW, can be inserted after the engine is installed, which should make the installation of everything much easier.
 
 

 
 
That’s it for awhile guys, because I’m off to Maui for most of February to kick off my retirement and try to have a semi-normal life after 2 years of Covid.  
 
When I return, I’ll get into some serious painting!
 
 
Cheers,
Chuck

yes, it's peter
 
here you go..
 

Really nice ending, she’s a beaut!

Fantastic progress, Peter!
 
For future reference, here are some pics of the floor area (from a P40K), note the panel lines continuing across the span of the wing. 
 
 
 
Hope that helps!
 
Denzil.

Thank you very much for all the kind comments chaps, I am really enjoying this one
 
 
 
Well, it was progressing fine until I went to post last nights update - in doing so I was going to add a picture of the radiator area to show what I was doing - this one actually..
 

 
..it was then i noticed something and realised I had just learned (or re-learned as I have done this before) an important lesson...
 
..always check references...
 
I had used jumpeii Temma's plans as reference for the formers & layout around the nose and had spent all of yesterday buiding the intakes to those drawings
 
look at how they compare to the trace I took from a combination of photographs..
 
..look at where the vertical duct seperations are vs the blue overlay version.
 

 
I posted anyway and thought initially I could live with it - well you don't spend a thousand hours on a model and get the face wrong, so after sleeping on it, the whole lot was ripped out and another 6 hrs spent doing it all again today..
 

 

 
 
..you live and learn as they say...
 
Peter

hello everyone
 
No way of dressing it up, but I have changed subject again...
 
I will go back to the Fairey Firefly - this is it's second time of falling out of favour, but when you get the urge what do you do?
 
My new flame is the early longnose P40. I have always thought it would make a good subject for me and very nearly started one after my P51, but didn't fancy another American aircraft in quick succession.
 
It's easy to see why..
 

 
..beautiful lines, natural metal and technically interesting.
 
This is G-CIIO operated by The Fighter Collection who have said I can come and take at look at her once we are into the New Year and assuming there is no covid funny business preventing a visit...
 
I have spent the last month or so researching and finding out about the airframe and the differences with the later short nose P40s and the earlier P36 - of which there are many. I also liked the timing with the GWH 1/32 kit coming out as folks will be talking P40's for a bit
 
I had Jumpeii Temmas plans scaled and corresponded with Witold Jaworski who has digitally modelled the P40C and had done loads of research and analysis of factory drawings
 
One thing I really looked forward to was doing what I did with my P51 and getting stuck into those drawings to replicate everything part by part. This was always something that hindered the Firefly, I just don't like working in a vacuum, I like the research and knowing what I am making is accurate
 
An example like this - here is the tailwheel door in the parts manual..
 

 
..I can find the part number and in Aircorps Library, look up the drawings..
 

 
..then scale and copy the drawings to make up a set of photo-etch parts..
 

 
..I did this hundereds of times and now have the mother of all PE sheets at 28cm by 47cm with everything I thought I could do in PE represented..
 

 

 
i thought I would base the model on the 21st Century Toys 'model' as I did with their Fw190D -this was on the basis that while it is a toy, the 190 was dimensionally pretty accurate..
So a trip to ebay and £160 lighter, one turned up..
 
Once the 'model' arrived I set about destroying it into it's component parts - this involved sawing some of the nose elements in half so I ended up with effectively two fuselage halves..
 
cue the first plan comparison and a very deflated feeling...
 

 
..it's too short, too narrow, has what looks like the late chin profile and is generally all over the place..
 
..the rear fuselage is particularly out..
 

 
..now, I did toy with the idea of just getting on with reworking it, but the more I looked, the more work I found - in the end I was trying to justify it because I had spent the money..
 
In the end, I bit the bullet and decided to scratch build it - I have no excuse - I have great drawings and having just scratchbuilt a Hawker Fury so feeling pretty confident..
 
..first step was to get a sheet of perspex acrylic to trace out a 'keel'...
 

 
..I used a scalpel to score the perspex - you may juts be able to see some of the station lines here (on the red line)..
 

 
..once I had all the station points and outlines done, I used a jigsaw and a cutting disc to cut out the profile - with a big bit missing for where the cockpit is..
 

 
..this again told me how out of whack the 21st Century Toys model is..
 

 
..using Jumpeii's profiles I cut out all the fuselage station formers..
 

 
..and cemented them in place using a mini set square..
 

 

 
..then I soldered some square brass stock to get the dihedral right for wings to slide into - there is a little perspex jig holding it upright inbetween them..
 

 
..they were epoxied in place with the smaller sliding box sections in place so the angles and dangles can be seen and the positioning made correct..
 

 

 
..so there we are - thousands of hours of work to go, but it feels good to have something fresh on the bench and thats what it's all about right?
 
TTFN
Peter
 

Here is a project designed to scratch an itch composed of a few parts: 1) my fascination with spaceflight, 2) a box of random parts seeking a home, and 3) fun with miniature lighting effects. The result is the Deep Space Ship Chesley Bonestell, an interplanetary spacecraft one could imagine being built and operated many centuries from now. I'm not an engineer, but I've worked in the industry for many years and can play among engineers for a few hours before it becomes clear I am an imposter. 
 
This thing would carry a few hundred people to destinations within the solar system. It is powered by a nuclear engine, perhaps an inertial confinement fusion drive system. Tanks and so forth are located in the propulsion module, which is shielded from the forward and middle sections. The middle stretch is composed of microgravity labs and storage, possibly probes. The habitation module spins, something on the order of 1 RPM to generate just under 1g along the circumference. A dome of thick material shields the section from oncoming debris and radiation. I imagine the forward section having the capability to separate and move on its own in an emergency, so there are tanks and engines inside there, despite being difficult to see.

The model is composed of an old gundam kit I picked up for parts, an aspirin bottle, wheels from the crewed rover seen in the movie "Moon", parts of the 1/72 Saturn V kit, a nifty kit from China of the space station in "Wandering Earth," some antenna bits from Tamiya's 1/350 CVN-65 Enterprise, ping pong balls, and parts from a 1/72 Discovery kit (as in 2001: A Space Odyssey). The lights are from Evan Designs - excellent products and service, and I highly recommend that business for your lighting needs.

Hello,
Thank you!
I did some work on the alternator.
All the threads are made, the studs and other threaded rods put to the right length, the parts separated from their supports and prepared...
The cables will be added to the lugs and terminals as soon as the painting is done.
Everything is tested to validate this sub assy and move on to another... or to painting.
Here are some pictures.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next soon.
Pascal

Hi,
 
Something a bit different, but a dream machine: what else?!
… and a Large Scale!
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Tapping, cutting, drilling…
 
Studs and gasket
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Preparing, checking, testing…
Few parts of the alternator.
 

 
Voilà.
Pascal

OMG, that is brilliant!! So pretty....
If you took pics of this outside it would be hard to tell it apart from the real one. Truely an epic build that most of us will never see in the plastic, metal and everything else that's gone into this piece of automotive art. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks so much for the comments all! I am pleased that you all enjoyed the photos. Sorry it's been a long time getting back to this - work and then the festive season got in the way. However, it is now finished - just need to get a case and make some mounting pegs to hold her off the wheels.
 
The windscreen and rear window trims worked well in the end. it was just tedious works as the white glue struggled to hold the flimsy white metal and polished aluminium together whist I hand shaped the latter. The first photo shows the result of chain drilling to get the rough shape, which was then finished using needle files.
 
The remaining photos are all of the finished model. I left off the side mirrors which are mounted on the door window frames of the real car as I was concerned that these would be too frail. I also omitted the temporary speedometer which is mounted on the top of the transmission tunnel in front of the gear lever when the car is used on the road - it is not fitted for races, with the drivers being reliant on the large rev counter instead. In the end I couldn't get a clear enough photo of the dial to make it worth my while. The other major discrepancy from Nick Mason's car is the shape of the front grill which has a flatter lower edge on his car - way too difficult for me to change on this one. The myriad of small, and some major, changes made to the model to reflect the real one really did add to the experience of building the kit. I reckon these kits should be enjoyed at least once in a lifetime.
 
The custom number plates were made from 4mm and 6mm self-adhesive letter and number sets from BECC in the UK. The Pulse CD was tossed in as a nod to the role this car had for that Pink Floyd tour.
 
On with the photos........
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Thanks for following on the journey. It's a shame the engine is all but invisible, but the WIP photos show it very clearly. Such a gorgeous shape that car is though, so it can be forgiven.
 
Cheers,
 
Mike
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

And finished within a year! Groundbreaking like the launch of Sputnik-1 was
 

 

 

 
Kit boxes:
 

 
My thought was that this simple spacecraft would be an ideal starting point to get used to this kind of models and 3D printed stuff. Err, not so much. There are fine printing lines that interfere with the painting of metallic surfaces. I should have sanded the whole surface first, but I realised the problem only after I had added the antennas Now it looks a bit like fingerprints on the paint, but these are the 3D printing lines only. Well, I've learned something about 3D printed kits now.
 
Good news: Used carbon fibres for the antennas that worked well. They are strong, lightweight an flexible. The right stuff for these flimsy antenna mounts.
Also learned how to print large color photos on my printer
 
Hope you like it! Enjoy -
dutik

About ten years ago, I built Atomic City’s 1/12 Mercury kit. I am thankful that a model kit of this historic subject in this scale is available. Other kits, some of which were produced in the 1960s and 1970s, are in smaller scales and are of relatively poor quality. The Mercury capsule is a small vehicle, essentially a spacecraft built around a man. As such, it lends itself well to being represented in kit form at a larger scale, and 1/12 is ideal.
 
In terms of a review, the MRC/Atomic City kit is generally well produced. The outer hull, with the exception of the hatch, is molded in black, while most of the interior parts are molded in light gray. The instrument panel parts are cast in a hard clear plastic, which is a nice touch for those interested in back-lighting the dial faces and switches. The escape tower parts are molded in red. An astronaut figure is included, cast in vinyl, and is of excellent quality. A major drawback is the model’s lack of interior detail. It lacks, for instance, the forward bulkhead with hatch, helium tanks, tape recorder, interior hull details, and other parts. The interior arrangement that is provided is generic; it would have to be for simplicity sake in that each Mercury had a different capsule arrangement. Still, it is a marvelous kit to work from. In the end, however, I ended up only using a few kit parts: the outer hull, the forward recovery compartment hull piece, the backshell piece, parts of the seat, and a section of the kit’s aft bulkhead part. The rest of the model is scratch-built. For my collection, I built a representation of John Glenn’s Friendship 7 as it appeared shortly after reentry. I selected this subject because of its historical significance, and chose a post-flight configuration because of the opportunity to explore weathering and distressing techniques. Also, Glenn peppered the interior with all sorts of notes taped to the instrument panel and made various marks applied with a pen - I thought these would be fun aspects to reproduce.
 
Oddly, there is not much data on Friendship 7 readily available online. But the most important resource (beyond the actual vehicle, located at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC) is the NASA Project Mercury Familiarization Manual (NASA SEDR 104), November 1961. This document is similar in some ways to the kind of manual you might find for a car in that it contains many drawings of individual components and their placement, plumbing and wiring diagrams, and various other interesting elements that are invaluable to a modeler wishing to build a Friendship 7 model. Essentially, this was the only resource I used, occasionally supplemented by photos found online. I did not live in the Washington, DC area at the time. If I did, I would have visited the actual artifact and taken copious notes. As it happened, I got a few things wrong; for example, I did not build the correct version of the seat used for Glenn’s flight (I screwed that up royally, discovering this problem after the build was long complete). But no worries, as was quite happy with the result and enjoyed the journey!

Happy Blue Year everyone! (see what I did there), hope 2022 is a good one for your modelling mojo, I might even finish this one this year!
Finally got the main camo scheme down. Not a difficult scheme as its just Air superiority blue overall, but I love this scheme - shame they didn't keep it.
I've used MRP lacquer paints which are superb and give a fair amount of control in terms of colouration.

 
Tried to keep as much of the pre-shading visible as I could but its a fine balance between adding too much top colour (looks toy-ish) or too little (looks a boneyard wreck).
Interesting how the black-basing panel lines come out quite distinctive. Might have to tone those down a bit.

 
Finished off the airbrake and elevators while I was at it.

 
Underneath had a darker pre-shade but judging from this photo I may need to add a little overspray of the AS Blue to blend it all in better.

 
In  other news, the AIM-7Fs have been painted up and decaled. They are the Eduard versions should come up quite nicely with a bit of weathering.
Not that these birds flew with many live weapons for real but it should look cool all tooled up.

Back to the spray shop for some touch-ups I guess but hopefully then onto the final stages of painting.
 

So ..... a little later than anticipated (!) we finally have some pre-shading.
The journey to get here took a little (OK, a lot) longer than expected mainly due to my ineptitude.
In completing the main assembly I found it difficult to get a good fit which resulted in lots (and lots) of filling, sanding, priming, checking, tutting, filling, sanding .... you get the picture. Mostly it took time to get a smooth finish.
 

 
One of the fins got knocked as well which added significantly to the repair work. Finally the number of areas that needed re-doing reduced until it was time for re-riveting (if you hadn't already guessed there's a lot or re-everything to this build).
 

 
Some lack of skill and over ambition on my part resulted in a selection of riveting errors which naturally provided another opportunity to practise my puttying and sanding skills again.

 
Once the final primer update was complete it was time to add some colour! As before, I used lighter and darker shades of blue with some spot touches of brown to add enough variation that will hopefully show through the top layer coat of Air Superiority Blue.

 
I used a mix of freehand and stencils to vary the patterns choosing lighter colours on exposed areas or particular panels, and darker tones in recesses or to add contrast. Mainly it was just artistic license to give some depth to the single tone colour scheme.

 
It now looks very heavily weathered which I guess is sort of the point. Just hope I don't cover it up too much when I overspray!
 
 

Starting to organize the boxes in the new house that comprise the contents of my shop. Thankfully this resin casting survived the journey unscathed!
 
P