Another Hasegawa FW190. I FIXED IT!

[LSP_Kevin]

Nice work, Woody. I have one of these kits in the stash, but have never built one. It seems they're not quite as much fun as they look!

 

Kev

[D.B. Andrus]

Factory fresh scheme:

 

 

 

[Martini_Man]

On 1/9/2022 at 3:03 PM, Archer Fine Transfers said:

After a lot of thinking about how best to fix the cowl/fuselage alignment issue this is what I came up with.

 

I figured that in order to retain the hard to re-scribe panel lines it would be best do all the blending in areas easiest to re-scribe so I added a piece of .010 styrene to build the upper fillet to act as a dam for the filler as well as providing a clean panel line. Again, not wanting to sand the cowling down to meet the low fillet I cut that part off and glued to flush with the cowling and blend at the easy to access areas. (The white tube is temporarily attached so I could securely hold the part in place.)

 

As seen from the top

 

Here’s the roughed in finished repair including the only re-scribe I had to do. The white tube in the background is for the gun camera.

 

Here it is from the top.

 

 

My next step will be a coat of primer and I’m sure a lot of sanding, touch up, more primer, and more sanding followed by more of the same until she’s ready for paint. I had made up my mind that if I couldn’t pull this repair off, the whole project was headed to what some guys call the “Shelf of Doom” but I call the trash can. This was supposed to be a quick, fun build and perhaps if I had known about the kit’s “idiosyncrasies” ahead of time it would have been so, but I waded into this build all fat-dumb-and-happy. As of now, I’m encouraged and looking forward to moving on.

 

I also did a couple minor things while I was waiting for putty to dry but no pictures of that stuff today.

 

All comments and critiques are welcome.

 

Looks already quite flush! After sanding it should be totally smooth

 

Are you planning to produce your own decals for the Fw190; e.g.cockpit placards or maintenance stencils?

 

Best

[Woody V]

On 1/12/2022 at 2:20 PM, Martini_Man said:

Are you planning to produce your own decals for the Fw190; e.g.cockpit placards or maintenance stencils?

 

Not sure how I missed this, but to answer your question - no plans for any decals for these. I plan to mask and paint the major markings and will use currently available decals for everything else. 

 

Woody

[Woody V]

Nothing exciting to report, just more sanding. There’s a lot of things going on in my life recently what with end-of-year taxes, business aggravations and trying to sort out this photo stacking thing doesn’t leave me with much bench time. Regardless, I’m plugging away at it and this is where I am now.

 

I started by putting a coat of thinned Tamiya White putty on all the seams and sanded that off to reveal any issues. I did find a few.

 

I also removed that microscopic bump on the rudder that I guess is supposed to be a light and added a piece of stretched sprue tubing. A proper light will go here.

 

Fairing it in with Tamiya White putty is shaping up to be a bit of a challenge. What you see here is my second coat of putty and part of the finish sanded fuselage.

 

See, I told you there isn’t anything exciting to see. YAWN. 

 

There’s a few more things left to do like replacing the antenna post, mounting the outboard guns before I can get on with more sanding then a coat or two (or six) of primer and finish sanding before I can get some paint on this one.

 

Edited January 25, 2022 by Archer Fine Transfers

[Woody V]

And the Hasegawa vs Vondracek test of wills continues.

 

This is where the wingtip light is supposed to go so this has to be fixed too. GRRR!

 

I cut out the surrounding area and glued a piece of round stock in to fill the hole. I added some melted sprue to fill in the gap too - not shown in this picture.

 

Then I sanded it down and in the process squared off the surface where the light is supposed to be.

 

Hasegawa gives you a locator guide on the inside of the wing so you know where to make a hole where the outboard guns are supposed to go. Unfortunately it’s not centered in the panel, and it’s like this on both sides. Why they didn’t just provide this part contoured to the wing so you don’t have to carve out a hole is a puzzlement. I’m just going to fill the panel line and fasteners and see if I can fudge this later, but I’ll probably just let it go as is.

 

The white stuff in the surrounding panel lines is just dust from the sanding, and I’m not planning to use the kit guns  - I just used them to help with alignment. I’ll cut them off and they’ll make it easier to locate and drill out the fairing for brass guns.

 

Man, do I love this Perfect Plastic Putty! I thinned some with water and slathered it around the seam and there’s no need to be careful either which my spastic hands appreciate. You can see that I thinned it so much that even wicked into some of the surrounding panel lines.

 

Easy, peasy, lemon squeezy. I used a stubby brush and a cotton bud moistened with water and in no time, with no effort, the seam is filled perfectly. In case you’re wondering, I’m building with flaps up and these are from the Revell F8 kit. They fit just fine, the tabs even lined up.

 

 

That’s it for today kids. Hard to believe but the next step is to get everything masked off and hit this thing with some primer (or a hammer) and more sanding.

 

Thanks for watching. More laughs and groans are on the way.

[MikeMaben]

On 1/28/2022 at 11:25 AM, Archer Fine Transfers said:

 the next step is to get everything masked off and hit this thing with some primer (or a hammer) and more sanding.

 

Looks good Woody, I recommend the primer. 

[Scale32]

Looking good..... funny how the Revell flaps fit so nicely .

 

Cheers Bevan 

[Woody V]

Since I wound up with some deep scratches and some dubious blending of the outboard gun fairings, and rudder light I decided to try something new in hopes of getting a smooth finish.

 

I’ve had this stuff for quite some time so I figured I’d give it a go. It comes in two “flavors”, one is what as known as a high-fill primer (marked S) meaning it has a high concentration of solids and will fill deep scratches. The other (marked F) is an extremely fine top coat primer to get an overall color. Both of these are pre-thinned with xylene so they bite into styrene. (The P-51 in the background is my test mule)

 

I started by spraying the high-fill over all the seams applying extra on the problem areas like the gun fairings and rudder light.

 

Then I sprayed a thin coat of black over the primer to act as what is known as a guide coat, so named because as you sand any low spots will appear black. Sand until the black is gone and you know you’ve not missed anything.

 

As you can see here the black areas are low but with the high-fill you just keep sanding until the black is gone, resulting in a perfectly smooth finish. This stuff is VERY easy to sand which means you won’t be removing any styrene and it feathers beautifully.

 

The process is pretty time consuming but I’m pretty happy with the results. Except for a few minute spots everything feathered out to my liking. Next step was to wash out all the sanding dust (I hate wet sanding), clean up some panel lines and let it dry before applying the top coat primer.

 

So this is where I am as of now.

 

 

Once this is all dry I’ll finish up the remaining details in the cockpit, mask off the canopy, glue it on and hit the whole thing with a primer top coat.

 

Of course all this sounds good, but never having done this on a model the whole thing may blow up in my face as work progresses. It be like that sometimes.

 

Edited February 6, 2022 by Archer Fine Transfers

[monthebiff]

Looking very good indeed!

 

Regards. Andy 

[Alain Gadbois]

Hi!

On the back of the fuselage, between canopy and fin, there is a panel line that is exactly where the kit halves join. It is very slightly off-centered to the right.

 

Alain

[Woody V]

6 hours ago, Alain Gadbois said:

Hi!

On the back of the fuselage, between canopy and fin, there is a panel line that is exactly where the kit halves join. It is very slightly off-centered to the right.

Alain

Thanks, I'll look into it.

[Woody V]

The struggle continues so where to start?

 

I don’t consider myself to be a great model builder, so I’m not dismissing the possibility that I’m either partially or entirely to blame for the issues I’m having with this build. I guess if you’re familiar with the “idiosyncrasies” of these Hasegawa FW kits you know what you’re in for, but I walked into this build all “fat, dumb and happy” and I’m paying the price.

 

Latest on the “Now WTH is this?!” list is the engine/cowling fit. Just three simple pieces, right? Child’s play - not. The part of the engine that supposed to fit into the cowling slots is way too thick so it has to be thinned just to get it in. However, the tabs on the engine do not fit the slots in the cowling. You get a choice of one side or the other and if you guess wrong the engine is not centered in the cowling so you wind up with this mess.

 

At first I was just going to let it go, but the fix is relatively simple. I cut off the post for the prop and modified the fan so it can be glued off-center to the engine but centered in the cowling. This photo will give you an idea, but when it was taken the post for the prop had not been cut off yet. At this point I was just trying to get the fan back farther because I felt it stuck out too far.

I'll be more specific on how I centered the prop later.

 

Moving right along…

 

Once I got that idiosyncrasy behind me it was time to figure out what to do with the outboard guns.

 

Needless to say my original plan didn’t work out and by the time I had that butchered my brain just went numb, so I removed them - and the bulges on top of the wing. I guess this kinda makes it an A-whatever but at this point I couldn’t care less.  I just want to get some paint on this soul-sucking thing so I have an example of the rivet skins to show.

 

Things have now moved beyond the “drop a cement block on it and call ‘er done” stage now and we're kinda’ moving in the right direction.

 

I used my patented, homemade, spectacular Monkey-Business-Universal-Canopy-Mask and masked the canopy. This got me thinking that I should have a contest to see who can guess the number of individual pieces of mask I used to complete this. Once I think of an appropriate prize for the winner I’ll let y’all know.

 

Also got some bits painted WOO HOO!

 

And discovered that you don’t have to mask the oleos on SOW legs - just paint the whole thing and scrape the paint off with a cocktail stick. I used the scissors (?) from the Revell kit because they already have the holes and daddy ain’t in the mood for drilling out the Hasegawa parts.

 

SHAZAM! Primer on! I’ve never been a fan of primer thinking it’s just another coat of paint, but it sure blends all the different colors of primer, filler and styrene together. Since I’m going to use our control surface decals I brushed a couple coats of Future on the control surfaces, masked them off and hosed on a coat of the aforementioned Model Master primer. Don't hold your breath waiting for close-ups of the wing root/cowling fix, you'll just have to trust me when I say it's passable.

 

Despite all my P&M this is actually beginning to look encouraging.

 

So I started applying the control surface decals and this is where I am today.

 

Oops, I forgot to mention that when I went to install the gunsight it fell into the cockpit tub and then somewhere into the bowels of fuselage. I turned the model every whichaway trying to get it out before some diety in heaven took pity on me and plunk, it fell out and saved my sanity.

 

Stay tuned for more thrilling adventures as your intrepid host boldly goes where he will never go again.

FW-190s hate me.

Edited March 26, 2022 by Archer Fine Transfers

[chrish]

That....has been quite an adventure in modelling! Glad you stuck with it till now. Aaannd nice to see someone else have more trouble than me!

[Citadelgrad]

Glad im not the only one who has….excitement (?) with what is supposed to be a fall together Hasegawa kit.  
 

also glad to see you pressing on.