J&L 1/72 Vac J-29 Tunnan

[LSP_Kevin]

Well folks, I've finally decided to do it...lose my vac virginity that is. I've got a healthy stash of vac kits now, most of which have been made redundant by the release of IM kits in the interim. But until recently I wasn't sure which kit to tackle first...that is, until I read somewhere a very sage piece of advice (where and by whom I don't remember). Basically, if you're not sure how to start with vac kits, just take one, build it wheels up and canopy painted over and get it done. In other words, forget all that scratch-building and detaiing that keeps you procrastinating, and just break the ice.

 

When I first read that I thought, fantastic, what a great idea! So that's what I'm going to do, and the kit I've chosen is and ideal candidate. It's produced by J&L Aircraft Models, but its exact vintage is a mystery. It must be seriously old, as both the Matchbox and Heller kits came out in the '70s, and it must at least pre-date them.

 

It's a very basic kit:

 

 

 

At least there's a canopy lurking out the back there:

 

 

I'm planning just to paint the inside either a dark grey or blue, so no cockpit to worry about, no wheel bays or undercarriage to worry about. I scrounged some suitable decals out of my spares box:

 

 

The ones on the left are from an ancient build of the Matchbox kit I did decades ago. I'm hoping to use the ones on the right though (the provenance of which escapes me), as I'd like to mount the finished model in flight, using acrylic rod, atop a circular base that sports the Swedish insignia.

 

Anyway, this is a nothing-to-lose build that I'm hoping to have some fun with. Anybody got a source of acrylic rod in Australia?

 

Kev

[Radders]

Alright Kev, pleased to see this. When you cut around the plastic, make sure you use a marker pen to outline the kit part, I made the mistake of using a fine pen and it wasn't good enough once cut away, could hardly see where I was sanding up to!

 

Look forward to seeing it progress

[Lee White]

Good to see you jumping in!!

Edited January 6, 2013 by Lee White

[LSP_Kevin]

Thanks fellas!

When you cut around the plastic, make sure you use a marker pen to outline the kit part, I made the mistake of using a fine pen and it wasn't good enough once cut away, could hardly see where I was sanding up to!

I actually have the opposite problem mate. The marker I used has quite a thick tip, which failed to make it all the way into any 90 degree sections. I've tried to post some photos, but Photobucket keeps associating the wrong link with the photos. It's really playing up for me at the moment. (Time to look elsewhere I think.)

 

I've now removed, sanded and rescribed one tailplane half. Wow, what a lot of work! My technique for removing the parts from the backing sheet needs work, but that's what this build is all about.

 

Kev

[Guest Peterpools]

Kev

Great to see you getting into the vacuform build game. Nice plan of attack and a good way to test the wateres

keep 'em coming

Peter

[Radders]

Use www.flickr.com Kev, upload your first 200 photos for free. (You can upload more but you only 'see' 200 photos, to see more and become Pro it's about £10 / $16) Worth it IMO, I've been a Pro on there now for about 3 years. Image quality don't get effected either.

 

Can't wait to see progress. When I started my first vac this was how I done the tail planes. Just be careful not to end up with banana tail planes!

 

Consolidated PBY-2 Sea Wolf by Rainbow 1984, on Flickr

[Lee White]

I abandoned the sandpaper-on-glass method eons ago- It's difficult to maintain even pressure, and can cause "banana" parts, sanded too much in the middle. I use various sanding sticks, coarse to get close to the black line, a finer grit next,, and then a finer grit to finish, in a T-all, I think it's called, used by RC types to sand wings. It's about a foot long, razor straight, and trues up the parts beautifully. For wings and tailplanes, even before i start sanding, I'll use an X-acto knife, held perpendicular to the part, and scrape the knife across the trailing edge of the part- it will make a snowstorm of curly scrapings, but it will take down a lot of material, so when you get close, you can switch to sanding, and save some time.....

Edited January 6, 2013 by Lee White

[LSP_Kevin]

Thanks for the tips Lee. I've read an awful lot about building vac kits over the years, but reading and doing are obviously two very different things. I bought a Falcon Beaufighter off a guy at a swap meet a couple of years back, and he also advised avoiding the flat sanding method. His recommendation was a sanding block, which I have, but using it on small parts is not practical. For the tailplane part I ended up using sanding sticks, just as you suggest.

Anyway, I've uploaded the photos I referred to earlier to postimage.org ImageShack, so let's see if they load:

 

 

 

Success!

 

I was amazed at how much mess you create sanding the excess plastic off these parts. Mind you, I gave up trying to cut the part out around its outline, as it was going far too slowly for my tastes (I was getting bored!). Instead, I cut closely around the part with scissors and then sanded the whole thing back. This meant I had to remove far more plastic than necessary, and it took forever (so much for saving time!). Next time I'll be more persistent with cutting out the actual part.

 

Kev

[LSP_Kevin]

Well folks, some progress, but I've had my behind handed to me on this one already. I've got all the major parts removed, sanded back and glued together:
 

 
But I really buggered up the slot for the tail planes:
 

 
Even worse, I failed to realise that you weren't supposed to cut out the slots for the wings:
 

 
Since the wings were moulded full length top and bottom, I assumed you just glued them together and slid them through the slot in the fuselage. It's only when I tried to actually do that that I realised I was way off base! In reality, I was supposed to leave the blanking plates in place on the fuselage, and cut the wings into left and right 'halves'. And it was all right there in the provided diagram! I took one look at the dodgy instructions and dismissed them out of hand and took it for granted that I'd figure it out. Well, lesson learned!
 
Anyway, I have a cunning plan for how to sort all this out, so I'll post photos as I progress.
 
Kev

[Derek B]

Hi Kev,

 

You know that you are a real vacform builder when you no longer have any finger prints left on your finger tips!

 

I can understand your mistake in your eagerness to progress, but that is what this is all about - learning. You have made a terrific start (great subject) and as I always maintain, there is nothing that cannot be scratch built or repaired by using plastic card and filler. I know how I would repair the holes, but we shall see how you tackle it?

 

Keep up the good work

 

Derek

Edited January 8, 2013 by Derek B

[Lee White]

^what he said^.

[Shawn M]

bummer but it should be an easy fix to block of your holes in the fuse.

[LSP_Kevin]

Thanks Derek. You're right though, I am eager to progress with this one, and we all know what tends to happen when you rush a model build. I'm not overly bothered by whatever this throws at me, as I'm just trying to get a feel for the process.

 

Here's my plan for attaching the wings:

 

 

The thin brass tubing will pass through my stupid cutouts in the fuselage and locate themselves inside the other wing. This will provide strength, and a means of keeping the wings level. It also means that the wing-to-fuselage bond is not so critical in a structural sense.

 

The styrene rod you can see attached to the trailing edge is to help overcome that fact that I completely overlooked sanding back one of the trailing edges on the two halves before gluing them together See? Don't rush! Anyway, this method works really well at producing thin and sharp trailing edges. Once the rod is securely bonded, I'll trim its length and then back-fill it with a CA/talc mix. After that, sand the lot back to a sharp edge. The only down side is that it widens the wing chord by the thickness of the rod, but it's usually not noticeable.

 

Here's a test fit:

 

 

Not too bad! Bit of gap here though:

 

 

I've also been beefing up the tail slot to aid in fitting the tail planes later on:

 

 

It's all a bit of a mess at this stage, but I'm not fazed. I've got plenty of Milliput, CA and talc at the ready, as well as scrap styrene and Tamiya Extra Thin. There's no way I can lose!

 

But wait, there's more!

 

When I was attaching the brass tubing to the inside of the wing, I decided to run some extra thin CA down them. What ended up happening was that it also ran around the inside edges of the two halves, found small gap right where my thumb was holding the part, and proceeded to bond the two together:

 

 

It's hard to see in that very blurry photo, but as soon as the thin CA touched my thumb, it started the exothermic curing process with a vengeance, literally burning my thumb and leaving a long 'cut' in the skin. It hurt like hell! While I was able to sand the excess skin off the wing OK, my thumb's a bit of a mess...

 

Back when the pain subsides!

 

Kev

[Derek B]

Nice recovery Kev (the model, not your thumb...I said that you'd lose your finger prints one way or another! ).

 

I am extremely impressed by both your progress and enthusiasm, there will simply no stopping you now that you have the taste for it. The real beauty of the vacform game is that there is really no right or wrong way to make it (every modeller develops their own techniques to overcome a given problem tailored to their own specific tastes).

 

The other thing about vacform modelling of course - especially if you are new to it like yourself - is the heady rush of achievement and boosts in levels of self confidence that is achieved whenever you solve a problem (like now for example) - it makes all the hard work and effort more enjoyable.

 

With your Spitfire F.24 build, and this J-29 one, you are now officially on the road of no return as far as expanding your modelling skills is concerned - well done.

 

Cheers

 

Derek

[Guest Peterpools]

Kev

Nothing like 'bonding' with your work' Nice comeback and working around the challenges.

Keep 'em coming

Peter