1/24 Airfix F6F-5 Hellcat "Kicked Up A Notch": New eBook Now Available!

[discus]

That's one amazing built !

[Ironwing]

Chuck

Ive just caught up with what youre doing. As always, pristine and exacting work with an excellent tutorial. I dont know how you do what you do but you sure are good at it,

Best

Geoff

[chuck540z3]

On 10/21/2021 at 9:12 PM, Wolf Buddee said:

Wonderful work so far Chuck!
 

I’m following along with keen interest as I’d like to make the Hellcat my next build once my current project is done. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the Aerocraft cast landing gear set. I have just about everything I need for my build now but haven’t decided whether the kit gear is good enough or if the Aerocraft gear warrants the extra cost. 

 

Cheers,

Wolf

 

Answer below Wolf!

 

 

November 18/21

 

 

I’ve been away a bit and real busy at work, so not much modeling lately.  I did, however, get much of the landing gear figured out.  I’m using the Aerocraft brass landing gear and Barracuda tires and wheels and it’s a good thing for the latter, as you will soon see!

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have used brass landing gear before on my Academy CF-18B and while it’s very strong, it can be tricky to clean up.  Here is the left brass leg compared to the kit part, which shows some significant imperfections that need to be removed.  To be fair, the right leg was much cleaner.

 

 

 

 

Kit parts aren’t without their challenges either, which is usually a long seam line that crosses a lot of fine detail, which makes it hard to remove completely.

 

 

 

 

To fix these brass imperfections, I have the perfect power tool, which is a David Union “Router” as they call it, which is really just a smaller high precision Dremel Tool.  This tool is very well made, perfectly balanced and you can adjust the speeds easily from almost not moving to extremely fast. 

 

 

 

 

Coupled with a variety of cheap diamond bits I bought on-line, fixing the major imperfections was easy.  I bought this tool from our own Troy Molitor who sells them, along with a David Union 400 mini-sander several months ago, but I haven’t had much of a chance to use it- until now.

 

 

 

 

After using the router to get the big stuff smoothed out, the brass parts were further smoothed and polished using ordinary sanding sticks.  This takes a lot of time, but the smooth finish is worth it.

 

 

 

 

Here is the kit leg dry fit to the gear bay, which appears to be super strong with a wide rectangular anchor, so I wouldn’t necessarily say that you need the brass legs due to weight so far.

 

 

 

 

The brass legs do, however, just look a lot better and are more accurate, including the proper location of the hydraulic brake line.

 

 

 

 

With the super dark landing gear bays, where it is quite hard to see anything within without a flashlight, this is all the plumbing detail I’m going to add- which is nothing more than the brass parts.  Lazy or smart?  Probably a bit of both.

 

 

 

 

The rear wheel, which is solid rubber on the real deal, fits on an axle on the kit parts in the upper right.  The brass part has no axle of any kind, so you have to make one out of brass tubing and a pin, which I would have done on the kit parts anyway, for ease of painting.

 

 

 

 

Dry fitted wheel

 

 

 

 

I'm not sure if this is common, but my rear assembly was bent quite a bit and needed to be straightened in order to fit in the rear gear bay properly.  Since it’s so strong, I had to heat it with a lighter and bend it with pliers, which left some scuff marks that I had to remove later.  I bet I spent at least an hour to get it right, before I even thought of cleaning it up.

 

 

 

 

After a lot of fiddling, it dry fits quite good now.

 

 

 

 

With the gear door on, you can really only see the sides.  Note that the black wash I used earlier confirmed that the fuselage seam line was filled with CA glue and left no obvious flaws.  All that shows now is some blue paint trapped behind the glue- or at least I hope so!

 

 

 

 

Overall, I’m pretty happy with this result, which is quite strong.

 

 

 

 

So I decided to start working on the front wheels and tires and show how the Barracuda versions compared.  Well guess what, more “Short-Shot” molding from Airfix, again on Sprue F!  Tell me I'm the very first and only guy to experience this? 

 

 

 

 

Thankfully with Barracuda resin wheels as replacements, I don’t care this time, but it’s still annoying that I’m paying for the delivery of flawed parts, which have yet to arrive.  The Barracuda wheels are a bit narrower and taller- and I’m really glad I won’t have to fix that kit seam line on a diamond tread.

 

 

 

 

The back view, which is much more detailed on the Barracuda resin.

 

 

 

 

With the narrower wheels, both the kit and brass axles are a little bit too long and interfere with the outer wheel, which is not mentioned in the Barracuda instructions.

 

 

 

 

This is an easy fix with the kit plastic, but also the brass with the David Union Router.

 

 

 

 

With the “hubcap” dry fitted, to show the excellent depth to the wheel.  This wheel is different than the kit wheel and after digging around, I found photographs of both types, and both on F6F-5’s, so I’m not sure which wheel is newer or more “accurate” for a late Hellcat.  Anybody know?  In any case, this resin wheel blows away the kit wheel for detail.

 

 

 

 

Dry fit on the front, without the rear supports.  Very nice!

 

 

 

 

Checking the wheel alignment which has enough play in it to make it perfectly straight with CA glue later, a light bulb turned on in my head.  On my Kitty Hawk Harvard build, I got the front landing gear perfectly straight with the model placed on its back, but when I flipped it over, one of the gear legs sagged a bit at the axle, putting the wheel slightly out of alignment.  Very disappointing, especially at the end of a build, but with brass landing gear like this, this will never happen, so I now highly recommend these Aerocraft brass parts as replacements for kit (sometimes flawed!) parts.  Did you read that Wolf!?

 

 

 

 

Another look at the inside of the wheel.  No more hydraulic lines necessary in my mind.

 

 

 

 

One last memory I had of using brass landing gear parts, is that I had a hard time getting paint to stick to it properly and I was always touching up chipped paint whenever it got banged around a bit.  This stuff is supposed to do the trick, so I will report on how successful I am a bit later.

 

 

 

 

That’s it for now Gents and thanks for your continued interest in this sloooww build.

 

 

Cheers,

Chuck

Edited November 18, 2021 by chuck540z3

[Scale32]

Very nice progress Chuck, you really are the perfectionist.  Always look forward to your updates.

 

Cheers Bevan 

[zaxos345]

Usual Chuck!!!! 

 

John

[Anthony in NZ]

Yep another great update.  My word that Aerocraft brass in super impressive , then you take it to another level.  Beautiful

Edited November 18, 2021 by Anthony in NZ

[nmayhew]

amazing blog - wonderfully informative and clearly presented, pack full of so much information

 

you seem on top of everything so I don't think i have anything to offer apart from suggesting a different Mr Hobby product for priming metal (and photo etch)?

give Mr Primer Surfacer 1000 a whirl - thinned something like 1 part MPS1000 to 3 parts Mr Levelling Thinner and sprayed on of course.

I have generally found superior results to their Mr Metal Primer which you show.

Anyway, maybe something for a trial / next time etc.

 

the brass gear is tbh a bit disappointing - that's just too much clean up for me requiring specialist equipment

the obvious comparison is with Synthetic Ordnance Model Works (resin wrapped around steel) - i can't recall what, if any, 1/24 they do but their products seem much higher end 

 

re Airfix, yes that's also disappointing

however, the cynic / comic in my would however point out that your blog is probably putting people off rather than encouraging them to buy this kit!

it's certainly had that effect on me - it's just too much work to make it look good

 

thank you again, and best wishes for the rest of the project

Nick

[dodgem37]

Well done!  Good show, Chuck.  

 

Sincerely,

Mark

[chuck540z3]

8 hours ago, nmayhew said:

you seem on top of everything so I don't think i have anything to offer apart from suggesting a different Mr Hobby product for priming metal (and photo etch)?

give Mr Primer Surfacer 1000 a whirl - thinned something like 1 part MPS1000 to 3 parts Mr Levelling Thinner and sprayed on of course.

I have generally found superior results to their Mr Metal Primer which you show.

Anyway, maybe something for a trial / next time etc.

 

 

Nick

 

 

Thank you everyone!

 

Nick,

 

Thank you very much for this tip and for once I actually have the product(s) recommended.  I normally don't use a primer of any kind and focus on plastic preparation first, then go straight to the paint color since I use enamels or lacquers that have no trouble sticking to the plastic.  For this model, however, the plastic is quite rough on the large parts, which is most of it, and I didn't want to sand off too much of the "oil canning" that makes it look so interesting, so I bought Mr Surfacer 1000 and 1200 as shown below.  While I polished the brass fairly well, there are still some small blemishes that I can't remove, so I may go with 1000 on the landing gear and 1200 on the rest of the model- and it appears that your 3/1 ratio of thinner to primer is popular with others as well.

 

BTW, I'm really happy with my new photo booth, which has kicked up my photography a notch as well!

 

 

Cheers,

Chuck

[Hawkwrench]

Chuck, wanna sell the blue backdrop?

Seriously!

 

Tim

[chuck540z3]

14 hours ago, Hawkwrench said:

Chuck, wanna sell the blue backdrop?

Seriously!

 

Tim

 

Sorry Bud.  I gave the whole shebang away to a friend, Funkyzeit here on LSP.  Shipping to Ky probably would have cost the same amount as a new one anyway.

 

Cheers,

Chuck

[scvrobeson]

Do you brush on or airbrush the Mr. Metal Primer? I've got a bottle of it, but haven't figured out the best way to apply it.

 

 

 

Matt 

[Hawkwrench]

1 hour ago, chuck540z3 said:

 

Sorry Bud.  I gave the whole shebang away to a friend, Funkyzeit here on LSP.  Shipping to Ky probably would have cost the same amount as a new one anyway.

 

Cheers,

Chuck

That's ok. No biggie Chuck.

 

Tim

[JayW]

The LG are going to be awesome Chuck.  Caution - the ribs on the inner wheel half need to be be between the spoke holes, not coincident with.  

[chuck540z3]

14 hours ago, scvrobeson said:

Do you brush on or airbrush the Mr. Metal Primer? I've got a bottle of it, but haven't figured out the best way to apply it.

Matt 

 

You can brush it on, but it's better if you spray it with 2 parts thinner.

 

12 hours ago, JayW said:

The LG are going to be awesome Chuck.  Caution - the ribs on the inner wheel half need to be be between the spoke holes, not coincident with.  

 

Thanks for the tip Jay, so is this right or wrong?

 

 

I was trying to get the ribs behind in the center of the openings, which you can barely see in this pic.

 

 

Thanks,

Chuck