1/32 CF104 Italeri

[MikeA]

Thanks for the comments guys. Much appreciated! The foiling is actually quite satisfying and much more friendly for my wife than Alcad is. 

 

Thanks for the the additional tips Brian. Fortunately the rear wing roots on the Starfighter proved not too bad. I did look at the Renolds Heavy Duty foil, as I got a roll especially for the job, but

it almost seems too thick. It’s proving useful for subjecting to the destructive staining process though - bleach and lead. Still need to work out how to get a darker gray however..

 

Cheers,

 

Mike

[Out2gtcha]

The thicker the foil the easier it actually seems to got around the harsh curves. I usually load up that panel with Vaseline when burnishing on extreme curves, it really seems to help with tearing and wrinkling.

 

If you want more greys, you can try the boiling egg shell water method, or you can reduce the number of pennies in the bleach/lead/penny solution to get more greys. This is the last batch of foil I made for a friend using the egg shell method, then the bleach method for the more green/gold /reds:

 

 

 

 

[MikeA]

That's truly an impressive array of colours there Brian! In the end I pretty much got what I needed through a combination of fishing weights in bleach and the egg shells. I certainly found that the heavy duty foil was much easier to work with when staining and gave more consistent results. I should probably have used the heavy foil on the large middle panel at  the rear, as the thinner foil was difficult to work over the contour.

 

Anyway, my first efforts at foiling have now been completed, except for the rear under fuselage strake / aerial panel. My effort to foil it went horribly wrong and I ended up stripping the Canadian grey panel on it as well, so it will have to wait until I break out the grey paint again, and re-foil it. For a first effort, I'm fairly pleased. There are still some bubbles to deal with, but nothing major. I found it to be much more satisfying than painting, which is probably the most important thing. Now I can clean all the foiling tools etc off my small patch of the table and get back to the cockpit end of the airframe. There's all the detail inside and around the canopies to do now, as well as painting the glare panel and the odd bits of Canadian grey which are required.

 

I have been pondering the stencils in particular which are to be scattered across the fuselage. I do not wish to clear coat the foil so I wonder how the foil practitioners out there (Brian in particular!) go about protecting the decals once they're on. I figure that I will have to trim as many of the decals as I can closely to the print to avoid any clear film, but this will be very difficult with the stencils. Which leads to a second question: how do you hide the film? I am contemplating putting clear on the panels containing stencils, but would rather not.

 

Anyway - a couple of photos of the fuselage as it is now. I think I will be putting some weathering on it, but I will not be polishing the foil. It's plenty shiny enough, except at the rear where it's not supposed to be. The patchwork effect and colours at the rear matches the several photos I have of the particular aircraft that I am doing. I did end up overspraying a small section of Alclad Jet Exhaust on the very rear as this shows as very dark grey on the photos. Apologies for the soft focus in the first shot - it was difficult to photograph in terrible lighting we have at the moment.

 

 

 

 

Thanks for looking.

 

Cheers,

 

Mike

Edited August 26, 2018 by MikeA
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[alaninaustria]

Damn, that’s impressive Mike!! Really nice!!

Cheers

Alan

[dmthamade]

Dang!!! Looking like the Zip at the Rockcliffe Museum in Ottawa!!

 

Don

[Kagemusha]

Great work, thanks for sharing.

[LSP_Kevin]

Very impressive stuff, Mike!

 

Kev

[LSP_Ron]

Great stuff!

[MikeMaben]

On 8/19/2018 at 7:35 AM, Out2gtcha said:

                  I usually load up that panel with Vaseline when burnishing on extreme curves,

 

Brian , this has me puzzled    using the vaseline sounds like a fine idea,

but how do you use foil adhesive ? Is the vaseline all that's needed to hold

it in place ??

 

          

 

 

[Out2gtcha]

That looks awesome!!! The graining is really looking good along with the contrast between the panels.

 

Mike,

The Vasiline is strictly for the outside only. It's just for preventing the burnishing tool from catching on the foil and tearing it. 

MicroScale foil glue is what I found works the best for me having tried everything from Elmer's white, to RC 56, to gold leaf size, to every conceivable spray adhesive out there. Like Mike, probably starting out applying by brush, and moved on to applying it by airbrush thinned down.

 

As to decals, and specifically stencils, I've found that if the decals have a clear backing around them like stencils tend to, I usually will dip the back of them in Future and apply them letting the Future seep out from under them.

You can then soak up the excess with a paper towel or cotton bud and press/blot the stencil down in place.

[MikeA]

Thank you for the feedback guys! It’s much appreciated, especially being aware of the considerable skills you all bring to the bench.

 

I did also tend to use Vaseline on cotton buds to do the initial smoothing of the foil over a panel. It was that initial process which was almost always make or break for me in terms of the foil not wrinkling etc. Beyond an initial trial, the only times I have brushed the glue on was either to do the few patches I needed or to repair where the foil lifted or bubbled. Spraying the glue was a dream, but it does, for me at least, require alcohol to cut the glue with to get a completely smooth foil. 

 

Future floor polish, or its replacement, is not something I’m aware of in Australia. I used to have some in NZ but it is long gone. I might experiment dipping the back of some spare decals in acrylic gloss and applying them to foiled spare parts and see how it goes in hiding the film. The Canuck decals I’ve used so far certainly did not require any Microsol to settle into detail, but there is definitely clear film around the stencils. I am still a bit worried about how robust they’ll be without a protective layer on top.

 

Cheers

 

Mike

[Gerhard]

Wow Mike!!!  Mind blown, that is super impressive. 

[Out2gtcha]

Like you, I tend to not want to clear over any foil, as it does indeed change the sheen of things and tends to destroy some of the grained look. Generally I dont overcoat any of my decals unless Im going for the super beat up and flat look.

So far so good, on that as I have found that the decals generally do ok without an overcoat of clear. Im not sure how you could really clear them without messing with the look of the foil, save masking the decal itself off and shooting a clear over it. 

I have a foiled Has P-47 that I made back in 2008 or so that has none of its decals cleared and it still seems to be doing ok on my display cab all these years later. 

[MikeMaben]

17 hours ago, Out2gtcha said:

         The Vasiline is strictly for the outside only. It's just for preventing the burnishing tool from catching on the foil and tearing it. 

 

         

 

         Duuhhh  

 

 

[MikeA]

Maru, thank you so much for your comments!! I'm really only assembling for the most part, and taking a damn long time at that. I am pleased with the foiling despite there being ample room for improvement from my first time at it.

 

I've pretty much finished the cockpit now and have started on the canopies, which need a fair bit of work. These photos just show the final touches around the cockpit sill. I ended up cutting the Eduard part apart that fits around the electronic boxes. It had the latch bases, the hatch hinge line and the seal, or sill or whatever it is, all on the one piece. In fact they sit at different levels. The Eduard sill part around the cockpit only provided the right hand side, so I used some whisky bottle foil to make the other side. These were attached using the foil adhesive backed up after fitting with some white glue. A very fiddly job! 

 

The canopy knife holder is a kit part supplied in heavy brass which requires delicate folding. The piece must be heated up in a gas flame to soften it sufficiently to allow the required folding.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This next photo shows the seal around the electronic bay and the latches to the left and the hinge line to the right all cut apart.

 

 

Off to catch a local blues muso now. Thanks for looking

 

Cheers,

 

Mike

 

 

Edited September 1, 2018 by MikeA
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