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Italeri CF-104 Starfighter "Kicked up a Notch": KLP Publishing eBook now Available!


chuck540z3

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Chuck, this is not an F-104 or rivets but it is from a US fighter of the same era. This is from the Phantom canopy that's sitting in my garage. They are Phillips head screws but they are flush. The metal is 1.5mm thick. Basically all you have is a dark circle especially at model scale.

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December 5/20

 

 

Ding, Ding, Ding, Ding, we have a winner!  I am going with the HGW water transfer rivets after all.  I thought I should decide this early while I re-scribe panel lines and re-punch rivet detail on the fuselage halves.  I always like to try new things in my builds and sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t.  As a matter of fact, I think that TWO of my little experiments worked out as follows.

 

First, how do you create that scratched look on the top of these jets, but keep it to scale?

 

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And second, how do you create that very tight rivet pattern of flush rivets?

 

 

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Using a spare Academy F-18 tail, I sprayed it with my usual Tamiya gloss black lacquer (TS-14).  Quality control of finish wasn't a priority for this experiment.

 

 

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In then scratched up the gloss finish a bit on the right with a sanding cloth, to see what it would look like after Alclad.

 

 

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Next, I applied a strip of 1/32 double HGW decal rivets parallel to the rivet depressions on the tail for comparison.  The spacing on these rivets is pretty tight at 0.8mm.  I then let them dry for about 20 hours, which I have always had luck with.

 

 

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After peeling the film off, I thought I had a bit of a mess, since some of the rivets lifted.  I forgot to burnish the decal down with a Q-tip, which is a must with these types of decals!    The decal film left behind was then wiped off with warm water.

 

 

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After painting the tail with Alclad Polished Aluminum, I realized that while a few rivets had lifted, almost all of them were still there.  What had lifted in the pic above was the silver color on some of them, not the resin itself.  Note the scratched look on the right.  I think this will look great on the dorsal portions of this model.

 

 

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I don’t know about you guys, but I think the HGW rivets look the part more than conventional recessed rivets.  From a few inches away, you can still see them, but they are quite subtle.

 

 

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So I just ordered a boatload of these rivets, but single lines this time.  The good news is that they are quite cheap at only $5.95/package, which is a lot cheaper than other decal rivets out there.  The new game plan is to enhance the kit rivets and add a few more of the major fasteners as recessed ones, then after paint that is scratched up in certain areas, add about a thousand or two HGW ones!  This will be a lot of work, but it seems to be quite popular in this forum these days, so I’m in good company.  Thanks to Fenous for pushing me in this new direction.

 

Cheers,

Chuck

Edited by chuck540z3
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  • chuck540z3 changed the title to Italeri CF-104 Starfighter "Kicked up a Notch": Dec 5, A Few Experiments
3 hours ago, Oldbaldguy said:

Ha!  Finally.  Decisions!  Now that all this is behind us, we can move on to enjoying days and days of Chuckmagic.  Love these airplanes. I am so looking forward to this.

 

Exactly, although I'm not so sure about the magic part.  :rolleyes: 

 

Had these decal rivets not worked, at least for me, it would have been many hours of adding sunken rivets right now while I'm currently cleaning up the fuselage halves.  Lots of issues there, which I will soon show.  Now it's many hours of adding slightly raised rivets much later in the build after some paint. I know, some of you out there still think raised rivets are stupid on this particular jet.  Keep in mind that my pics above are SUPER close.  To my naked eye, I can't see that the rivets are raised at all, which is exactly what they should look like.

 

Cheers,

Chuck

Edited by chuck540z3
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20 minutes ago, AlbertD said:

So, those rivets work just like the regular HGW wet transfers? Those and you scuffing look very convincing to me.

 

 

Yes, the very same.

 

Now I would like all of your feedback please.  I just received both praise and disdain (off line) from a few fellow modelers I respect very much, about my decision to go with HGW vs recessed rivets.  What do you guys think?  I haven't committed to anything quite yet, so can still go in either direction.

 

Cheers,

Chuck

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I'm part of the "offline haters" club =D

 

Recessed and washed contrast metallic to trick the viewer OR no rivets at all OR pencil in the rivets with an off colour metal pencil.

 

Justin

 

edit: we can see the rivets because they're not the same material - not because they have any dimension

Edited by FunkyZeit
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1 minute ago, FunkyZeit said:

I'm part of the "offline haters" club =D

 

Recessed and washed contrast metallic to trick the viewer OR no rivets at all.

 

Justin

But the rivets are not a different color. They are made from aluminum just like the skin. All you really see is a small ring on the surface.

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