USAF F-35A

[dmthamade]

Haven't had fisheyes in a while, i have had some complete sprues that felt oily due to mold release on them. They got an extended cleaning, and no problems. I'm going to steal your paint stand idea, mine is similar but yours looks much more stable.

 

Don

[themongoose]

Thanks Don! If it's of any value I drilled out the end that's in the exhaust with a spade bit. The sharp pointed lead on the bit worked well for centering the cone on the flame holder.

[themongoose]

A little bit of progress tonight. I sanded down the wing tips where i had adhesion problems and resprayed them. All but the vertical stabilizers glued on. I'll do those after i paint the red on them this weekend. I taped it up to do the brighter white color on specific features based on the lockheed Martin pics.

I decided on 3:3:5 pale jet exhaust, duraluminum, copper for the exhaust. If its still a little too coppery after matt varnish i may spritz it with some brown to tone it down.

[themongoose]

BIG progress tonight, red striping is complete!

In the promo renderings certain parts of the plane are a brighter white. I masked those off and shot the same MCW white through my Sotar airbrush at 10psi. This gave a distictly brighter finish than the Paasche single action I used for the large surfaces.

 

Maketar paint masks arrived today and i put them to good use. I noticed after removing them that there is a much finer demarcation line between layers, better than 3M fine line pinstriping. Maybe half as thick i would guess.

 

I made the masks by first taping tracing paper to the plane, sketching the curves i wanted, and then transferring those to a light piece of cardstock. I used the cardstock to layout the pattern on the Maketar masks and cut them out with a fresh #11.

 

 

After applying the mask I lightly sanded the white with a 600 grit pad to rough it up a little so the red would have something to stick to. RCW recommends painting the clear coat, or next paint layer i would assume, within 8hrs and since it had been longer it needed some prep i thought.

 

 

[Dragon]

That's looking really good! Looking forward to seeing the finished paint job.

 

Mike

[ClumsyDude]

Looks AWESOME. Love an air show bird, and particularly one with custom masks.

 

Jim

[Out2gtcha]

Neat!    I guess maybe I missed it, but I assume its going to look like this when done?

 

[themongoose]

Neat!    I guess maybe I missed it, but I assume its going to look like this when done?

 

Yep, sure is. I downloaded all the pics from Lockheed and Popular Science who posted the promotional pics.

[themongoose]

Every build I've followed always talks about how much time is spent on masking. Now I really know what they went thru! I've got 6hrs invested in what you see here. Probably another 3hrs to go. Maybe I'll have the blue on by Wednesday. That's 3M fineline tape I'm using; 1 piece is for the color and the other 2 set the border so that the pin stripe starys a uniform width.

 

 

[dmthamade]

Lots of work, but it'll be worth it!! Looking forward to the unmasking.

 

Don

[ClumsyDude]

Haha, I am so stoked to see another worshipper at the temple of complex masking ... it rocks my world that you spent 6 hours on that, I did the same on my hornet. You will be so pleased when the masks finally come off ...

 

Cheers

Jim

[Out2gtcha]

Not unlike rigging I take a certain sick pleasure in masking. I usually try to make paint masks if I can, but there is almost always some hand work to be done.

 

Looks great!

[themongoose]

Hey Gang, here's tonights progress. I'm getting excited about this now, you can see the silhouette of the Thunderbird really well now!

I laid the exhaust nozzle in there for effect. Another day before i can spray the matt varnish on it.

 

Edited December 12, 2017 by themongoose

[TimHepplestone]

Thats a seriously impressive masking job. Really looking forward to seeing how that pans out 

[LSP_Paul]

Very Cool! 

 Cant wait to see it with the paint.. it's going to look really impressive. 

Keep up the good work.

 Paul