interlude: Figures

I got a bunch of figures made by ICM and I can only sort of recommend them. They are basically rip-off recasts of Tamiya figures and the detail is soft in some places. However, it is really hard to find USN/USAAF WW2 aviation figures in 1/48 scale. Oh, if you want great Brit or Soviet, Eduard is your company and if you build 1/72, you can't help but find really nice stuff by Airfix.

But 1/48 is tough. I wonder why. So here are my two recent paints. I've got some film shots coming, but until then, you've got to deal with bad digital. I will say that they do look really extra nice when slightly out of focus.




I'm trying some new things. First, I gave the figures no whites to the eyes as you really wouldn't see the whites if it were a real person 12 feet away. The entire figure was painted white, then a light coat of flesh was applied to the skin areas. I put in irises and then shaded and highlighted around it. It helps to reduce that popeyed look.

The white base coat also helps with another technique. When it comes to clothing, I don't do highlights. I paint a quick, smooth light and slightly thin coat of the base color. I then begin to build up the shadow areas. First with the base color then a slightly darker version that I try to blend from dark to light. The thin first coat coats the entire area, but tends to pool a bit leaving the raised areas (areas that would be highlighted anyway) a bit lighter. The places where different things meet such as sleeves and arms, hats and heads, straps and body, I outlined in black to make them pop.

listening to while posting: Groundhog's Day (live in Lewiston, Maine) by Primus

Martin MB-2: Sow's Ear Edition

I had a bunch of armor models lying around that I'd never build (one M113 ACAV was purchased in 1989 and was still only 3/4 built) and gobs and gobs of 1/35 figures, guns, heads, and assorted gew-gaws that I'd never use. I found out that a co-worker of mine builds and so I tossed them his way. I asked nothing in return except that they be built within a year; if they were to sit in a stash, they could sit in my stash and soothe my nostalgia.

The next day, he brought in a model he'd never build: a Martin MB-2 by a company called Glencoe. Apparently, Glencoe was an injection molding company that made models of odd subjects on the side. If this was any indication of their injection molding capabilities, I can see why they are out of business. This is a pretty terrible model. Where there are guide pins, they don't align, or the holes are so close to the skin that they are ripped; The injector points are in the stupidest places (trailing edge of fabric wings, center of mesh radiator screens); The pieces have no numbers unless they are large pieces, then it's stamped on; Sink marks; The figures, are an embarrassment; and the model is 25% flash.

It does, however have some very, very nice box art.



So, why am I building it. I have no idea really, except that I am between models, waiting for a Revell SNJ/T-6 Texzn to arrive from Great Models Webstore and I needed to build something.

So, I grabbed the engine and decreed if I could make the crappy engine look decent, I'll build the whole thing. Here's a compare of the unpainted engines.



First, I assembled the not-well-fitting pieces and puttied the bejeesus out of it. I'm actually very happy with how it turned out as I had to do some carving of the plastic to make things align; and it's smooth as a baby's cheek. I then carved away the wire/hose looking things below the cylinders and made new ones out of brass rod. I also added little ribbed supports that would have been cast into the block. You can barely see them as the white bits behind the brass. I also added exhaust pipes. Glencoe couldn't even make exhaust pipes. How hard would it have been? Jeezum.

The manifold that would go on top of the engine was problematic. I could have made an entire new one, but It would have been a pain and besides, I couldn't find a good reference for it. So, I just made some new 'blowers'. The new one is raised up a bit because I added some geeblie wires on the underside to flesh i out a bit.




The radiator needed work. As mentioned there's an injection mark in the middle of the screen. Check it out


The mesh is actually HO scale chain link fence that I had lying around for some reason (I may not have a current stash, but I have box full of model pieces that go back to the early 80s).

My SNJ Texan gets here on Friday, so the MB-2 may go into hiatus, but I think I'm doing pretty good so far and will complete it. Firstly because I could only find two examples on the web and also I'd like an excuse to buy one of these puppies

listening to while posting: The Elements (live) by Tom Leher

F8: part five, epilogue

It's nearly done, so it's now more a near-failure. Or just a Disappointment. I had hight hopes and thought my skills could hack. However, there were too many things that I didn't, couldn't see until it was too late. Not enough experience... yet.

Here's the front:


FIP.

The underside photographs well, but it doesn't look smooth and 'in scale' enough when viewed in real life.
The landing gear scratchbuild turned out pretty good, but I didn't plan ahead for the brake lines and they just sort of end at the wheel well now and don't actually go anywhere.

You can also see a gap between the engine cowling and the fuselage. This was not there in the numerous test-fittings I did, but when I went to put the cowling on for final assembly, it would not go on any farther.



The oil cooler flaps turned out pretty nicely, though.




Here's the back. The paint job looks decent here, but up close the brush-applied future has some uneven drying. Academy's decals also don't like sitting in Future a much as the Tamiya decals did. What you can see that I like is a small, totally scratchbuilt bomb cart. I'm pretty proud of that mediocre thing. I also like the padeyes on the top of the bomb.


Here it is close up.



So, did I waste my time? No. I learned a lot. I learned to use photo-etch details; I learned a lot about scratch building; I learned that pastels don't like gloss finishes and stick better to matte; I learned about planning; I learned about using cyanoacrylate (super) glue;

Did I waste my money? Nope. I got a good price and I got it local. The only wasting feeling I feel is that I may have wasted the kit. I don't think the kit nor the detail pack is available any more. It's a shame, it's a really nice subject.

Listening to while posting: Something from the Fight Club soundtrack

F8:interlude

Crap. Crap. Crap.

Things are going wrong left and right. My W.I.P is fast becoming a F.I.P (Failure In Progress).

And it started out so well.

F8 part four: oil cooler flaps

I really don't know if these are oil cooler flaps, I just call them that. I never worked on radial piston engines, only turboprops.

Here's the real thing:




and here's what the kit came with (I accentuated the scribed panel lines:



I'd originally planned on cutting out the scribed area to install a scratchbuilt panel. As you can see, towards the front of the area it's very narrow. I wasn't completely sure if I could cut the panel away without breaking that bit or if it would even stay structurally sound. I would bet it would, but I lacked certainty. If I broke it, repair would require scratchbuilding skills that, if I'd had them, I wouldn't have broke it in the first place (makes sense?).

My solution was to make flaps and place them over the scribed area, painting the interior area black to simulate a hole. This MAY work. The problem is making the flaps look, at least a little bit, like they are rotating into the fuselage. It looks pretty good unpainted, but we'll see.

Here are the flaps:



and here they are installed. I'm sorry that the picture is after I'd pre-shaded (see below), but I mistakenly thought I'd taken good photos before I pre-shaded.



Pre-shading is a way of adding depth to a scale aircraft. I could explain it to you, but I'll let the the video by Brett Green explain it to you as he did to me.



listening to while posting: "Don't Let Go" by Weezer

F8F part three: engine, cockpit and misc

It was a busy little week what with finishing this week's update to my comic and all these little things with the F8.

A lot of it was planning and experimenting.

I painted the wheel wells and installed the internal bay:


I then worked on the landing gear. I had to add some detail, as it was a little bit sparse. It was also incorrect. As I said, I'm not a stickler, but there was a part to the landing gear that was so blatantly wrong and so easily fixable, that I had to do it. In this picture, you can see at the top of the struts, I put in the retraction actuator and some sort of spring-thing that you can see in this reference photo. You can also see a brace that I had to scratchbuild. Those are the little things to the left of the struts.




I also worked on the engine. The detail was a little soft on the cylinders; ironically, it was rather crisp on the rear set of cylinders that will be all but invisible when the cowling is installed. I installed the ignition wires and the sort of circular tube that goes around the prop gearbox. I wish I had a the equipment for better digital macro shots. Sorry. You could pretend the reference shot is the model, if you'd like ;)





Finally, while working on the wheel wells, I felt the need to cut away the not-deep-at-all intakes on the wing roots. If you know where to look in the internal bay photos of the last post, you can see how shallow they were and why I had to deal with them. Here's what I've got.



The cockpit was fun and a pain. Photo etch parts are interesting to work with, mostly because they are very very very small. Using super glue is a pain in the ass, but necessary to adhere metal to plastic.

Before:



After (with the superglue looking a bit too shiny from the flash). There is quite a bit of 3-dimensionality to it, but it's hard to see in the photos. There's even a teeny (2mm) T-handle for the fire suppression. Sweet.:


Now, I'm waiting for the shop to get some flat black paint in before I can do any more.

listening to while posting: "Maybe Not" by Cat Power

F8F part two: Internal Bay

The first scratchbuilding I attempted was to fill the big, empty bay underneath the cockpit.



It should look like this:



Isn't that a lot more interesting?

I decided to move slowly. I bent some sprue and found a v-shaped brace and installed it with white glue to see how it'd look. Not a bad start:



I then had to fill it. I experimented with a number of techniques from stretched sprue that was too thick for antennae to basic wire. In the end, I stripped the thick-ish casing from some braided copper wire and slipped a bent piece of steel wire into the end to create the fitting. Then, I added some steel wire hydraulic wires (with casing left on the ends to simulate fittings) and some random geeblies to simulate filters and check valves. I wasn't going to attempt a recreation of the real thing, I just wanted it to appear more natural. I went for white paint rather than a zinc chromate green fro three reasons. First, more than a few of the vintage Bearcats I found photos of had white wheel wells. Second, it was just after WW2 and during WW2 USN aircraft had white wheel wells. Thirdly I thought it might show off my stuff better :)



Here it is test fitted:




I'm pretty happy with it. I learned a lot doing it. One thing was using white glue on most of the non-structural elements. I'm curious to see what happens over time; white glue is not really archival. But, It was easier to work with than super glue when gluing dissimilar materials. Plus, It could be broken when I needed to fix a mistake ;)

One thing I'm trying to do is find the border between making something perfect and knowing when I've done all I can do. I'm notorious in my artwork for re-working a piece in an attempt to make it perfect, but never actually finishing it. That is no way to learn.

Next up: landing gear and wheel wells.

listening to while posting: "Darker" by Doves