The Wife's Three Week Challenge!

[Gekko_1]

Hi guys,

thanks for your kind words and concerns. Wife and daughter doing much better now. The two boys, aged 1 and 4, are still completely crazy however and quite frankly I see little hope for them!  :dum:


First airbrushing was carried out today. I tried a little experiment by adding 50% Future into the Tamiya paint / Tamiya Thinners mix to see if it would airbrush OK and leave me with a suitably glossy finish for adding a wash to. I think it worked out fine, but will be able to report better tomorrow when I apply the wash. The green arrows show the reason for the experiment as they highlight the areas I want the wash to go.


I drilled out the instrument bezel depressions and painted the panel with NATO Black. I will drop Tamiya Clear into them later, once the instrument dials have been added to the back, and the panel has been dry brushed.


Here's the seat painted, now awaiting a wash, some dry brushing and the cushions added. Should the seat be all black?


The damaged camera portal area was sanded flat and re-scribed. I'm not happy with it and will apply super glue to the area, sand it flat and re-scribe new panel lines removing the portal altogether. I'd better do that to the side profile too!


Here's the other side. The fit was very good, but notice the flat spot I created by sanding a little too much off the insert! As with the other side I will remove this detail altogether.


Port and starboard cockpit sidewall detail as provided in the kit. Sprayed with the 'Future mix' it will be ready, "theoretically" tomorrow for the washing process.




I also sprayed the NATO Black with a little Future too. I used NATO Black as it still leaves a little "tonal room" for shadows with Black during the washing process. B)


Here the torpedo mounts have been added.


Ah, yes good old part C14! Just as I was holding it in the tweezers and thinking to myself that it was a very difficult part to hold whilst trying to scrape and sand, it disappeared into the Twilight Zone, never to be seen again! It disappeared so quickly that I couldn't even tell you which direction it went in

Tomorrow I hope to be able to do all the washing of parts, then dry brushing and get the cockpit together and into the fuselage and close the fuselage up. We'll see! ^_^



Richard.

[Gekko_1]

Completed cockpit installed.






Don't bother with the instrument panel details. Once the fuselage is closed up you won't be able to see too much of it anyway.






Tailwheel and main undercarriage doors with their initial wash of oil paint thinned with White Spirit. The silver enamel is Humbrol Metal cote 27002. A coat of Future was brush painted on to seal the silver before the wash was applied.


Wings glued together. I was quite pleased with the fit. I haven't applied any Mr Surfacer yet, I'll put a light coat of paint on first to see if the small gaps are acceptable or not.


Here's one of the camera ports filled-in with super glue and sanded flat and rescribed.

Cheers

Richard.

[ysi_maniac]

Top notch work bttb        

[Radish]

Ah buggar....bloody good!

[nev]

Should the seat be all black?

IIRC the entire cockpit should be black  B)  

[John Howling Mouse]

mmmmmm...nice to curl up with this thread, over and over again...  

Comfort styrene.      

[BlackOps]

Lookin' good Richard!  

On the little porthole windows I would be so tempted to go the other way with them and make them bubble out. You know the little half dome  shaped bits (usually with the fake gems) you can find in the craft beads/jewelry section of hobby/craft stores would be perfect for the shape. Just a thought  

Oh by the way, not to alarm you or anything but....DUDE YOUR RUNNING OUT OF TIME!!!!    

Mostly I just want to see more pics  

[Gekko_1]

Should the seat be all black?

IIRC the entire cockpit should be black  B)

Ah well, maybe the RAN went for a more modern look!  



Richard.

[Gekko_1]

Oh by the way, not to alarm you or anything but....DUDE YOUR RUNNING OUT OF TIME!!!! 

Yeah, I've run out of time!

Maybe I'll have better luck with my next build, which will be a 1/144th scale U- boat type XXII WWII German Submarine. Its only got something like 23 parts! B)

Anyway I'm happy, after all I'm actively building, enjoying myself and spending a little less time in front of the computer!


Again, remember this is a 72nd scale model, so in reality the gaps and fit problems don't look quite so bad in reality. I tried to align the fuselage a bit better on the rear of the underside, but it just would not stay in position without pushing the top out of alignment, so I opted the keep the top aligned and scrape and sand the bottom once dry. The other arrows point to areas to keep an eye on when gluing, they also can move out of alignment easily.


It looks like a lot of work to clean this area up, but it actually wasn't that bad.


Here's the underside of the nose, again, there's problems, but nothing too drastic.


The wing to fuselage join had some gaps on both sides. An application of Mr Surfacer 500 filled the gap well; once dry a cotton bud wetted with metholated spirit was rubbed along the area to clean up the join. It worked well and didn't take very long at all.


Ahhhh, staring to look like a Wyvern now! The single arrow shows the wing join after the application of Mr Surfacer 500. The other arrows show where I had to do some re-scribing. After I was happy with the scribing I ran some Tamiya glue over the newly engraved lines.


After carefully aligning the tailplanes I noticed gaps on both sides, top and bottom. Nothing too drastic, they'll get the Mr Surfacer/ Metho treatment tomorrow. Check the alignment at the back too!


If you look very carefully you'll see two small pin holes, these will be filled with super glue tomorrow.



Richard.

[Radish]

This is just fabulous!!!

Thanks!  

[cthulhu77]

 Nice stuff !  That is going to be a real looker, sir !

  You'll love the Revell sub, just wrapped mine up this morning, and boy, was it a joy to build!  Pics !

[nev]

Looks absolutely spiffing!

[Ian the Kiwi Herder]

Ahem.... we (well, me....) demand more progress shots !

Ian

[Gekko_1]

Ahem.... we (well, me....) demand more progress shots !

Indeed!


This little tab is the underside of part of the airbrake. I wanted to show the airbrakes "in" as every Wyvern I've seen shows them deployed, and I like to be different!  B) I should have thinned it down a little as it caused me problems, as you'll see!


Here you can see the area gouged out to improve the fit. It worked, but will require more work to tidy up. :dum:


At least the underside looks good  The green arrow shows something I may have missed! Amazing what these macro photos show up!


Although this shot shows what looks like big gaps, keep in mind this is shown at great magnification, after all its a 72nd scale kit, so this gap is actually less than half a millimetre and after filling, a smoothing over with the Mr Surfacer 500 and Metho treatment it will virtually disappear.


Here's the initial application of Mr Surfacer 500.


Here I tried a little experiment. I painted on the Mr Surfacer 500, but this time it was thinned with enamel thinner. As you can see it worked out rather well!


If an ejector pin mark like this will stop you from sleeping at night, make sure you get to it before closing up the fuselage. I'll sleep soundly



Richard.

[BlackOps]

Once again, nice work Richard, Love these progress shots.