One-Month Jug

I work part-time at my local toy and hobby store (laid off graphic designer). My boss, also a modeler was gifted with a Hasegawa P-47D (Tarheel Hal) a while ago and it was left sitting behind the counter as he really didn't care much for the Jug. On Nov. 18, he offered it to me and I accepted. I like the p-47, but it's not my favorite, so I decided to use it for an experiment.

How much and how well can I build a model in a month. Well, here's the result. Everything you see was worked on during the month. I'm sorry for the quality of the photos, I didn't feel it turned out good enough to use my SLR and macro :(



I built it OOB (if you accept that also in the box was a KMC resin cockpit).



Construction went well and after the Matchbox Stranraer, it was nice to build a model with good fit and clean detail. The cockpit took a lot of work as it was my first resin cockpit and needed some carving for proper fit. The kit seat was better, so I used that but I really liked the resin gunsight (too bad the photos won't show the tiny clear reticle I put on it).

I used Tamiya "Titan Silver" for the NMF which worked pretty well, but when it came to seeing if the finish was consistent, it was harder than white.



The "Tarheel Hal" decal was big and I thought it'd be hard to get it to sit well over the panel lines and I didn't want to mix a blue to match for the spine. So, I took to painting the blue and white and using the individual stars provided on the decal sheets. This proved to be nearly as hard. The decals were both fragile AND thick. The carrier film of the individual stars showed up awfully. I also found out that using Friskit Film was great for paint masking the blue, but NOT for the anti-glare section. Even with a coat of future, the film pulled off a good amount of decal. I suppose I shouldn't have been angry about this given that the decals didn't look great, but GRRR! anyway.



The dio base was done on Sunday; it's a bit shoddy. The figures turned out rather well, though.



The chocks and start cart I saw in a "How to Fly the P-47" video on YouTube and are totally scratch built.



As was the toolbox.



The whole thing was finished Monday (Dec 13) night. No "heroic measure" were taken for the build; I worked, drew an elven-page comic, read books, shoveled snow and watched Dr. Who with my wife. Was this a success or failure? I think right in between. It won't win any awards, but I learned a lot about seam-filling, resin-cockpits, masking, and a way to make NMF. All will serve me well in the future. By moving fast, I've now learned better how to go slow.

Also, I'm aware that maintenance would likely not be done on a plane with a full bomb load; I didn't decide on the figures or dio bits until the plane was completed.

Matchbox 1/72 Stranraer: The Madness Revealed

I'm procrastinating inking the newest issue of Obscure Tales and I'm working on the Stranraer. I've completed building the interior and I've painted and washed it. It looks pretty good here. Nice and full:

Remember to click on the images as Blogger crops them to a uniform width. Most are wider





The problem is, when I button it up, it is virtually all invisible; the radio station with it's electronics rack and plush seat can only be seen if you shine a light inside and tilt the fuselage just right. Even through the dorsal gunners hatch, not much can be seen. I was fooled by the white of the Evergreen plastic into thinking stuff would pop out when I painted it cockpit green. Oh, well.

Here's the navigator's station, the only part besides the cockpit that will be visible:



The other thing I did, which will also be nearly invisible, was to make a new instrument panel. The kit panel is an embarrassment (especially when put next to the crisp, well-detailed Lewis guns and pilots). I found a panel layout diagram, drew instrument faces in Adobe Illustrator, laid them out to scale and printed them on paper. I then worked a sandwich of Evergreen sheet and paper. Turns out, that the detailed faces I worked on were a waste of time given the resolution of my HP DeskJet. At least they look busy. What did work nicely was painting the panel black and then twisting an Xacto #11 in the hole to reveal some white. In person, it makes the instruments pop. I'm debating whether to put a drop of Future on the faces as it may degrade the image more.



In other good news, I made a test of a technique I wanted to use on the wings and control surfaces (which are aluminium doped) and it worked! I'll share when I've done it for real and have some pics.

Listening to while posting: "Keep Fishin' " by Weezer

Stranraer: The Madness Continues

With the interior done except for painting, and a break to participate in 24-Hour Comics Day, I've decided to venture into Biting Off More Than I Can Chew Land. It's been a strange journey so far.

The kit canopy is VERY, VERY THICK.



With all that (hopefully) beautiful detail inside, it seems a shame to hide it behind a warped, distorting canopy. So, I've decided to build my own canopy out of sheet styrene and that thin clear plastic they use for packaging headphones and the like.

I thought and thought and sketched and sketched and came up with Technique #1. I'm building a frame of styrene. The frames are a bit wider than scale, but I think (hope) that the clearer transparencies will make up for that. We'll see how it paints up (one reason for doing it this way was easier painting of the interior of the frame. My one worry is putting the 'glass' in I have a plan, but it wasn't fully formed because I didn't think I'd get to this point without complete failure.









I've got a tentative plan for Technique #2 which I'll be attempting Sunday. I'm doing that a) just in case placing the glass in the current frame fails or b) it looks like butt.

All in all, this is the smallest, most delicate thing I've made yet. Not only that, it's the smallest most delicate thing that needs to be structural! I'm pushing the limits of my engineering ability and my tools. Some of the parts are so small that I really can't see them when they're in the tweezers. Zowie. Stay tuned!

Listening to while posting: "Swans" by Camera Obscura

Matchbox 1/72 Stranraer

I won a Stranraer at my model building club's auction two weeks ago (US$3) and jumped right in. I wasn't planning on much of an interior, but that little open door just called to me. It is my first 1/72 scale model since 1989...

More specifically, it called to that little portion of my brain afflicted with AMS. I'm holding back a bit, not putting super-detail where it really won't be seen, but I wanted the interior aft of the door to at least look busy when the viewer's eye moves past the windows.

The admin of the forum on Seawings.co.uk was very helpful when I told him my tale when applying to the forum. He sent some awesome plans.

This is the rough, unpainted interior. Much of the little bits (Lewis magazines, first aid kits, extending lamp, etc) are not in and will be painted separately. The major furninshings are done. The cockpit is nearly done, I'm deciding on how to do the second pilots fold-away seat and rudder pedals. Click on the images for the full view. Most of the images are longer than 600px and blogger just crops them.









Sorry for the odd angle on these...







A lot of work for a tiny door. But, it had to be done. Well, maybe it didn't, but I did it anyway...



Listening to while posting: the torrential rain hitting the roof. Zowie!

Well, isn't this ironic

Or, maybe not. The definition of irony sometimes escapes me.

Here's the deal and the bad joke: I don't often post finished models. One might say, I'd post a finished model when pigs fly. So, here's a flying pig:



And my build of his aircraft, FineMolds' Savoia S.21 from Haiyo Miyazki's wonderful film Porco Rosso. (make sure to click to embiggen these)





The model is a marvel of engineering in most places, silliness in others. The silliest part is in the interior. Just ahead of the cockpit is the fuel tank, beautifully molded with nuts on the mounting flanges. The silliness is that when you finish the model, this part will not be seen except for a tiny glimpse of the rear of the tank under the instrument panel. There are no provisions, or even the possibility for opening a panel.

The other silly part is the engine. The engine was full of detail, including a manifold in the aft section and exterior detail to the engine gearbox. I had to try to show this magnificent little thing, especially when I went all AMS on it and put detail that would never be seen (and since I took no photos of the finished engine before buttoning it up...)

The engine cowling pieces were thick, so I asked a fellow Mount Mansfiled Modeler if he could vacuum form a replacement for me. He was gracious enough to do so (he and his wife also had me over for dinner and a great dessert, too. Both of which I was grateful for).

Looking to the film and finding a couple of shots of the engine under repair, I set to work. Here is a screenshot:


Here's my recreation of the panels:




Here are all the pieces ready for painting:



And here it is finished and assembled. Note how I also hollowed out the exhaust and the engine cowling vents. That was pretty touchy, but looks much better:




Here's a closeup of the cockpit, the harness are scratchbuilt as the kit only came with a decal harness:



The belly was my first attempt at oil wood grain. I've developed an easy technique for using Tamiya NATO Brown to make wood grain, but the large area and need for a more subtle effect prompted me to try oils (the fact that my wife is a painter made supplies easy to get). Try as I might, however, I could not take a decent photo to show off my wood grain. It looks good, but I should have kept at it until I got a more subtle Albatros DVa-style plywood effect. Also, the stripes are painted so that I could weather them as close to the main fuselage as possible. I think I'll paint all stripes from now on. easier in some respects to decals.



While this is not good enough to enter a contest, it is the best build I've done to date. I learned a lot and there are some nice moments on the plane. (though, looking at the photos, I need to re-tension the pontoon rigging. I'll get on that before the next modeling club meeting). I'd really like to build another and use this one to build an overly-ambitious diorama of Porco's lair:



Two more pics for good measure:




next in the pipeline: another Academy 1/48 P-26 Peashooter. I'm going to make this one shine (after I get some aftermarket decals to replace the very thick kit ones.

Listening to while posting: "Aeroplane" by Bjork (wow. Is THAT ironic?)

t-6 Texan: Round Two!

To get over my frustration and low self esteem from the Siemens-Schuckert disaster, I decided to build another T-6 Texan. This is a good, solid kit and I really enjoyed building it last time. The first turned out pretty good and I would put the lessons I learned building it to the new one.

The lessons learned, basically, were procedural (I assembled or painted some things second that I should have done first) and detail (I put lots of detail in places that were not visible at all when assembled and didn't detail some places that were visible).

Right now, it's being painted, but here are some process shots.

First is the hollowed out exhaust. It needed it as the original was not very deep. First the basic drilling:



Behind the fuselage, you can see this little guy. It's a hollowed out black sprue.



That's needed to fill the hole, but also add depth. Here, it's glued onto the inside of the fuselage:



Of course, you can't tell the depth from this photo, but it's there.



I also decided to make the control surfaces in non-neutral positions. The ailerons proved impossible, but on all of the photos I checked, they were in the neutral position while the elevators drooped. I didn't have a JLC combo knife so I just used an Xacto. Slowly cutting over and over until the piece came free.



I also decided to put a bit more detail into the wheel wells. Here, I drilled some lightening holes that are in the actual aircraft. I've since added hydraulic lines and a small bulkhead on the airframe.



I also re-worked the rear bulkhead. It was very difficult to find a photo of this section. But, between a few photos of Texans being restored, I managed to get close

Here's a bad shot of the original (those lumps are ammo boxes. Only used on Texans used for bomber gunner training):



and here's the re-built:



I'm really moving slow on this one. Working on my seam filling and other basic stuff. I'd like to get this good enough to take to Valley Con next spring. We'll see. One of the guys in my model club is a very experienced modeler who was a judge at the Nationals this year, so he can pre-judge my work!

FAIL!

Well, the Seimens-Schuckert is a major fail. I did a big post at theHyperscale forums on their, oddly timely, "modeling disasters" section.

Everything you'll need to know about why I'm not posting a finished pic of the Seimens-Schuckert isright here.

I'm doing another T-6 Texan to make myself feel better...

too busy building to post

About Xmas time, The Mount Mansfield Modelers had their annual swap meet/sale. I saw what I thought was a little gem and asked the guy what he wanted for it. "Nothing", he replied. I asked him a couple of times to be sure and he was. He had too many to build and just wanted to get rid of it. Coolness!

Then I checked on eBay and found out that the kit, in shrinkwrap as this one was, went for $60 - $80! Now, I couldn't take that from him, so at the next meeting, I told him about eBay and what the kit was worth. He still told me to keep it. I told him I planned on putting this at the top of my list of builds. And I did.


Here she is, the Eduard Siemens-Schuckert D.III (kit circa 1993). This aircraft ("LO!") was flown by Germany's greatest ace after Richtofen: Ernst Udet.



Now, Eduard is now known as a company that creates some of the best cast, most detailed, best engineered model kits out there. It was not always the case. This was a short run kit and I'm not sure what they used as molds, but I think they may have been jello. Check out the flash on these pieces:



Here's a closeup of the prop blades:


and one of the guns:


Eduard is now also known for exceptionally detailed and meticulously researched photo-etched detail sets. To make up for the crappy molding and soft detail of the plastic, they included a massive photoetch set. The entire cockpit is photoetch and there are even gun cooling shrouds. However, cool this seemed at the start, the pe cockpit was to become the first bear of the project.



I spent a good three or four hours just sanding the pieces. Gods, there was a lot of flash. I also took the time to separate the control surfaces. It always makes a plane more natural-looking to have its control surfaces not in the neutral position.

Then to the cockpit. Bending and painting and assembling the cockpit was really hard. The pieces were filddly and fragile, but I managed to get it together. For scale, those lines to the left are 1" (2.5cm) apart.




I then moved on to assembling the fuselage (which, by the way, has no alignment pins). Then, due to handling, I broke the damned cockpit. Snapped those side arms clean of. Since the pieces were too small for CA glue and epoxy would be a pain, I decided to scratchbuild a copy out of sheet styrene. It was pretty easy as I had a three-dimensional blueprint handy:







Not bad. I have some shots of the fully completed cockpit, but I haven't dumped them from the camera yet.

And by the way, do you see those tiny buckles on those seatbelts? Those had to be slipped on the seatbelts individually. Jeezum!

Next up: Fuselage Follies!