nicely11b Posted July 8, 2013 Share Posted July 8, 2013 Hello everyone! This is my first WIP build on the forum, though I've posted my latest 1/48th build in the Non-LSP forum. I've been dying to get started on my X-1 and finally got into it tonight. A little background on the kit...this is the second release of the Revell kit and the biggest upgrades are gray molding and a nicer rocket motor. There isn't much to the sprues after cutting the fuselage and wings off. I posted a topic a few weeks ago with some reference photos and full pics of the sprues out of the box. There is some slight warping in the wings, but I think they will be fine once the wing halves are glued together. The fit of the fuselage and wing/fuselage joints seems to be pretty good. There is a small gap at the wing root that will need filling, but it is small and some sheet styrene may do the job nicely. The fuselage halves are a little off at the front wheel well, but it also shouldn't be too much of a problem to fix. The one downfall that I've found is the complete lack of detail in the wheel wells. I'll be adding some plumbing to make it a little more interesting, but I have no reference photos to go follow. So I'll be making it up as I go along. Oh, and I'll be building this as Gen. Yeager's plane "Glamorous Glennis" (s/n 6062) after the sound barrier breaking flight. I'd actually prefer to do something a little more interesting, but I'm making this for my daughter that was born in February. She shares a birthday with Gen. Yeager and I want this to be something that she can hopefully connect with as she gets older. I may build a NACA version later on. Thanks for looking and I hope you enjoy watching the build as much as I'll enjoy building her. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Kevin Posted July 8, 2013 Share Posted July 8, 2013 I for one will be following this one avidly mate, and for reasons you're already aware of. I must confess to some selfish motivations too, as I'm still hoping you might be able to cast me a copy of that revised exit pipes piece! Kev Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nicely11b Posted July 8, 2013 Author Share Posted July 8, 2013 I for one will be following this one avidly mate, and for reasons you're already aware of. I must confess to some selfish motivations too, as I'm still hoping you might be able to cast me a copy of that revised exit pipes piece! Kev I'll do my best, Kev! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Mike Posted July 8, 2013 Share Posted July 8, 2013 I'm glad to see this as well, I have the same kit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nic C.D. Posted July 8, 2013 Share Posted July 8, 2013 Ow how I wish that Revell would bring this one on the market again... One of the key-aircraft in the history of aviation! I will be watching your progress with great interest ! Nic Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nicely11b Posted July 8, 2013 Author Share Posted July 8, 2013 Ow how I wish that Revell would bring this one on the market again... One of the key-aircraft in the history of aviation! I will be watching your progress with great interest ! Nic If you're looking for the kit, Nic, it has been readily available at Squadron. I bought this one a few weeks ago when they were on sale for 11$. They were still listed at 17$, I believe, the last time I looked. If that's still the price when I get paid next week, I'll be picking up another one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nicely11b Posted July 9, 2013 Author Share Posted July 9, 2013 Well, what do you say we do some work on this beauty? I was sent a scanned copy of the drawings out of the Aerofax book and I've blown that up to scribe the wings. As I said before, I don't have any diagrams or anything of the bottom of the wings, so I'm just "winging" it and scribing the lines that are already on the wing bottoms. You can see in this picture that the flaps and ailerons are incorrectly molded. The flaps are about an 1/8th inch too long and the ailerons too short. The hinges are also out of position and too small. So after sanding off all of the raised lines, I drew new ones and scribed them. After scribing the lines, I puttied over the incorrect spots with Tamiya white putty. I was thinking about using super glue, but I was doing this at midnight and didn't feel like taking the time with it. Same process on the bottoms of the wings. Scribed and incorrect lines filled with putty. This pic was taken before I cut the lines for the hinges of the bottoms, so no putty on them at the time. The main wheels are also glued together but I'm really not liking the look of them. The wheels themselves look ok, but the rubber has the wrong tread for what was on 6062. Actually, there isn't any tread on them, just some lines that go long-ways around the tire. They should look like this: So I may have to see about getting some AM wheels if I can find something that matches. Anyway, tonight I plan on sanding the putty and cleaning up the wings, then getting the halves glued together. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Kevin Posted July 9, 2013 Share Posted July 9, 2013 Good work mate! You may well inspire me to get back to mine, but it's really the rocket exhaust issue that's holding me up. Kev Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nicely11b Posted July 9, 2013 Author Share Posted July 9, 2013 Good work mate! You may well inspire me to get back to mine, but it's really the rocket exhaust issue that's holding me up. Kev Hopefully I'll be able to help you on that front Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Kevin Posted July 9, 2013 Share Posted July 9, 2013 Hopefully I'll be able to help you on that front Appreciate that mate. If not, is there a possibility that we could get a third party to cast a couple of copies? Ideally I'd like to buy a second kit, but I've only ever seen the boxing I have, which obviously has the original version of the part. I want to build Yeager's bird (like you are), but also one of the later white ones (I've got the CE sheet for this). I guess I'm thinking that if I can get a couple of resin copies of the newer exhaust part, I don't need to restrict my search to the newer version of the kit. Anyway, just thinking out loud. Really looking forward to your progress here mate! Kev Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nicely11b Posted July 10, 2013 Author Share Posted July 10, 2013 Appreciate that mate. If not, is there a possibility that we could get a third party to cast a couple of copies? Ideally I'd like to buy a second kit, but I've only ever seen the boxing I have, which obviously has the original version of the part. I want to build Yeager's bird (like you are), but also one of the later white ones (I've got the CE sheet for this). I guess I'm thinking that if I can get a couple of resin copies of the newer exhaust part, I don't need to restrict my search to the newer version of the kit. Anyway, just thinking out loud. Really looking forward to your progress here mate! Kev If there is someone able to cast it, that would be awesome. The second release of the kit has been on Squadron and I believe I also saw it on Sprue Brothers. I'm not sure what other options you have there in the outback . I actually have the exact same plans with wanting to build a white NACA bird after this one. I'd like to do an X-1E also but I'm not sure if there is any conversion kits out there and I'm already going to be pushing the limits of my scratch building abilities with this one. After looking through the Smithsonian book, that rocket motor would make a really cool big scale scratchbuild in itself Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nicely11b Posted July 17, 2013 Author Share Posted July 17, 2013 I finally have a little bit of an update today. I did a little bit of the cockpit painting with Vallejo acrylics. I normally don't use acrylics, but I bought a cheap gravity-feed airbrush and figured I would try it out with something that is easy to clean up. Painted the panel flat black and the interior is medium green. From everything that I've read, the interior should have been interior green, but Vallejo's medium green matched the color photos that I have much better than interior green. By accident, I found a nice little trick for detailing the panel. While holding the panel with a pair of tweezers to test fit, some of the paint rubbed off the bezels of the panel. So instead of drybrushing, I rubbed the teeth of the tweezers, lightly, over all of the bezels. I think it looks a lot better and gave me more control of the effect. The kit decal for the panel looks terrible. I'll still be doing some detailing on the panel and a wash, but this is where it stands now. I began some scratch-building on the hatch. The kit hatch has no detail at all and it's way too thin. This is the only reference photo I have so I'm basing everything on it. I started by sanding the inside of the hatch smooth and added some sheet styrene to thicken the door. I bent some wire for the handles and cut some sheet styrene for the latching mechanism. This is the very first scratch-building that I have ever done and I'm really happy with how its turned out so far. The latch would look a lot better with some PE, but I have no idea how to make my own photoetch. I also don't have a lot of stock to work with so I gotta make do with what I have. Any tips would be very much appreciated though! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
csavaglio Posted July 18, 2013 Share Posted July 18, 2013 Great work so far! I love seeing older kits get some love and old school style modeling back when you had to scratch it if you wanted better than out of box. C Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Kevin Posted July 18, 2013 Share Posted July 18, 2013 Yeah, that's good stuff mate. A more reliable and controllable method of doing the instrument faces like you're doing is to use a cotton bud, ever-so-slightly moistened with alcohol (I used metho), and use a technique similar to dry-brushing to remove the black paint from the raised bezels. Of course it pays to paint the underlying plastic white first! Here's an example from a Hasegawa 1/48 George kit I built a few years ago: And here it is installed: Pretty effective I reckon, though I haven't tried it in 1/32 scale yet. Kev Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nicely11b Posted July 18, 2013 Author Share Posted July 18, 2013 Yeah, that's good stuff mate. A more reliable and controllable method of doing the instrument faces like you're doing is to use a cotton bud, ever-so-slightly moistened with alcohol (I used metho), and use a technique similar to dry-brushing to remove the black paint from the raised bezels. Of course it pays to paint the underlying plastic white first! Here's an example from a Hasegawa 1/48 George kit I built a few years ago: And here it is installed: Pretty effective I reckon, though I haven't tried it in 1/32 scale yet. Kev Ohh that is nice. I remember reading something like that not too long ago. I wish I would have thought about it before doing this. Might have to strip this and retry it. Or just order my other kit and swap panels. Hmm... Oh, my casting supplies will be on their way today so hopefully I'll have a motor for you in the next few weeks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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