LSP_Kevin Posted March 6, 2022 Share Posted March 6, 2022 Looking good, Chuck! For what it's worth, Mr. Surfacer (all varieties) shrinks a fair bit while it's drying, creating a bit of a "shrink wrap" affect, and generally pulling itself out of any surface detail. The upshot of this is that it's actually quite difficult to obscure surface detail with the stuff, unless you're brushing it on. Kev Anthony in NZ, chuck540z3, TAG and 1 other 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Troy Molitor Posted March 6, 2022 Share Posted March 6, 2022 Looking good Chuck! I really like the slightly sanded effect you're doing. Love Maui also. Where did you stay? Kind regards, Troy chuck540z3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chuck540z3 Posted March 6, 2022 Author Share Posted March 6, 2022 5 minutes ago, LSP_Kevin said: Looking good, Chuck! For what it's worth, Mr. Surfacer (all varieties) shrinks a fair bit while it's drying, creating a bit of a "shrink wrap" affect, and generally pulling itself out of any surface detail. The upshot of this is that it's actually quite difficult to obscure surface detail with the stuff, unless you're brushing it on. Kev Thanks Kevin. I am now a fan and will likely use Mr Surfacer a lot more often. I most certainly will use it on the landing gear after Mr. Metal Primer, because the brass set I'm using is also a bit rough in a few places. Cheers, Chuck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brahman104 Posted March 6, 2022 Share Posted March 6, 2022 Very nice work Chuck! Looking very sharp under the coat of primer Cheers, Craig chuck540z3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JayW Posted March 7, 2022 Share Posted March 7, 2022 Chuck if I can paint half as good as you can, I'll be more than happy. Beautiful! chuck540z3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeMaben Posted March 7, 2022 Share Posted March 7, 2022 Welcome back Chuck, fyi , if you like the 1200 you might also like the 1500. https://www.amazon.com/Finishing-Surfacer-1500-Black-Bottle/dp/B00BG4U4BY chuck540z3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TwoHands Posted March 7, 2022 Share Posted March 7, 2022 That coat of primer and sanding really did the trick on that skin texture. I'll be doing that on my 'cat for sure. chuck540z3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael931080 Posted March 8, 2022 Share Posted March 8, 2022 Spectacular job on this Hellcat Chuck! Love looking in on it every time you post, so much more to see and learn from you with each posting. chuck540z3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
F`s are my favs Posted March 9, 2022 Share Posted March 9, 2022 That oil canning with the combination of the light is.... faaaan-tastic! Lovely! Oldbaldguy and chuck540z3 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rocat Posted March 10, 2022 Share Posted March 10, 2022 Great progress chuck540z3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dutchplanebuilder77 Posted March 10, 2022 Share Posted March 10, 2022 Great work. Respect. chuck540z3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chuck540z3 Posted March 11, 2022 Author Share Posted March 11, 2022 (edited) March 10/22 Finally, a big leap in progress! Of all the tasks in modelling, I find painting to be the most rewarding, because it shows you what the model will likely look like when finished. If your painting is good, so will be the model. If not, well….. After letting the Mr Surfacer 1200 dry for a day or so, I applied Tamiya White (TS-26) to those areas that need to be white, like the insignias and numbering. While I generally love MRP paint, I find their MRP-004 White to require many, many coats to cover, while the Tamiya lacquer is good after only 2 coats, so it’s a lot less work. I then applied the DN Models mask set, which are vinyl and caused me some significant problems, unlike Kabuki masking tape masks which I much prefer. I applied these masks according to the kit decal instructions which was simple enough, and they are nice and sharp. Like all “decaling”, some of them needed to be removed and moved a bit, which was easy and no glue was left behind. Thin Tamiya tape was used for the boarding locator stripe. And for the tail where no vinyl masks were supplied, same as the kit decals. The results after painting with MRP-014 Sea Blue looks terrific from a bit of a distance, but this is after a big fight with the vinyl masks. A bit closer, the registry is a little bit jagged but not terrible, which is OK since the insignias and numbers/letters on the real deal are a bit crude to begin with, no doubt because they were painted on board aircraft carriers at sea. The problems I had were with the mask removal, because the edges of each mask left a gluey mess that was almost impossible to remove. This glue was very soft and greasy and nothing I tried would remove it completely. I used more of the vinyl mask itself to pull it up, along with masking tape, rubbing with a cloth and micro-brushes, trying to roll it up into a ball so that I could pull it off. Micro-brushes worked the best and I got off about 80% of it after many hours working on each masked area. Paint solvent on a rag would have worked very well, but with a lacquer paint finish, that was a non-starter, because it would have removed the paint as well. Having said all that, if you use straight acrylic paints, the clean up of this glue would be easy with paint solvent (not rubbing alcohol), so this is not a criticism of the DN Models masks per se. With MRP paints and likely many other solvent based paints, however, this could be a problem like I had. So why did this happen? I highly suspect that solvent in the acrylic lacquer MRP paint reacted with the glue along the edges, changing its composition, because the glue in the central area of each mask pulled off easily. Combined with the blue paint, it created a bluish gooey mess, which looked terrible when wiped across the bright white paint, so I had to re-paint a few areas to get rid of it. The final clean-up after micro-brushes was with rubbing alcohol, which picked up the remaining glue without harming the underlying paint too much. After wiping off each problem area with a clean cloth with a bit of rubbing alcohol, there was a bit of blue paint on the rag, so you needed to turn it often so that you wouldn’t get any of it on the white paint. Now a bit of a walk-around on the results which look good to my eye now, despite the problems above. As you can see, some of the rough plastic remains. For the walkways, I just made a guess on what they probably looked like. They are usually dark grey and stop at the rear of the windscreen, but sometimes they are light grey and go all the way to the front of the wing, with the rear flap included most of the time, but not all of the time. Since I painted the rear flaps, I installed all of them, which don’t need glue with a tight fit that was modified before painting. The ailerons are only dry fit, since they will need glue when installed at the end of the build. My masking of the front firewall worked really well, with very few touch-ups required. The other side… Since I have a bunch of stencil decals to apply and want to weather this model quite a bit, I sprayed a protective coat of Tamiya clear acrylic X-22 mixed 50/50 with Tamiya lacquer thinner, followed by a flash coat of straight thinner. A gloss coat reveals all flaws, and here you can see some remnants of the rough plastic on the sides of the fuselage. Unless you want to sand it down completely and remove the stressed skin (SK) look, you just have to live with a bit of it. Again, the fuel tank pylon will cover that seam in the middle. The SK look is still alive and well! So how much weathering am I going to apply? Here is my subject. And this is generally my template for weathering. I will show a lot of pics of the real deal in future posts, which are dominated by extensive exhaust stains down the sides, sometimes all the way to the tail. This should be lots of fun! Cheers, Chuck Edited March 11, 2022 by chuck540z3 BiggTim, jgrease, Greg W and 33 others 35 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bdthoresen Posted March 11, 2022 Share Posted March 11, 2022 Nice work, Chuck! I like the results of the masks…….looking forward to the weathering! -Thor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kwagmyre Posted March 11, 2022 Share Posted March 11, 2022 Beautiful!! I'm curious how you'll be weathering. Will you be doing salt weathering again or something different, like you did on your spitfire with the filter? chuck540z3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrish Posted March 11, 2022 Share Posted March 11, 2022 That’s just plain (plane?) gorgeous chuck540z3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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