F-86T Sabre-Hawk

[Geoff_B]

Hi Nev

Yeap it was crap lighting, those sodium style ones found in a sports hall with no natural light. As for the cloth the usual one had covered the normal What-if Stand and Lee's had covered the TSR-2 SIG, but because Joe Cherrie and the R&D Sig failed to appear we had to use Martins spare cloth to take up the bare tables and spread the What-ifs about a bit.

I didn't get round to doing a great ammount of the stand with the digital as we meant to do some more later on but unfortunately everybody decided to pack up fairly quickly and scarper before we got a second chance. I do have some with a conventional Camera but that will have to be developed. Plus martin took a few but he's currently on Holiday in Scotland at the momentso it will be another week before we see any of them.

Cheers

Geoff B B)  

[Swamphen]

The red & silver Lightning is the EE P.6, a single engined version, with another VG two seat Sea Lightning next to it.

Ah, my dear Wook, but the Lightning I was referring to was the one in front of the VG critter...

[John Howling Mouse]

All most impressive.

All I could ask for are individual shots of the subjects with better lighting.

What a load of work you guys have produced.

Hats off to ya!

 

[NARSES2]

Great effort lads - sorry I couldn't make it but had to be a Godfather on sunday

Chris

[Mairfrog]

Is that a Meteor III in training colours that I spy on the left?

I'm planning a Meteor or two, most will be based on the Matchbox NF kit. This will leave me with a load of bits left over so I'm gonna do some Gloster 'Platypus' with them.  ^_^  

[elmayerle]

Speaking of Meteors, has anyone every done a conversion for the Beryl-powred prototype?  That was by far the most, IMHO, aesthetically appealing variant.

[NARSES2]

Froggy, good luck with the Matchbox meteor.  I've done a few and they are real horrors to build.

I did start the Meteor F2, but had problems with the wings.

Amen to that !

[John Howling Mouse]

Taped and ready for primer!

 

[John Howling Mouse]

Underside view: puttied/sanded/taped and ready for Krylon primer.

I have a lot of troubles with assemblies which require landing gear struts put in place prior to painting.  On this one, I believe the nose-strut could have actually been affixed after the fuselage assembly but I followed their "destructions."

Wooksta, I notice some of your models have struts already in place as you're about to paint them.  How do you mask all that off or do you simply paint the struts and wheel wells by hand after the body is painted?

[John Howling Mouse]

Puttied, sanded, taped, primered and ready for paint!

The Krylon sandable primer completely hides any unwanted sanding marks while
leaving all raised and engraved surface details fully intact.

 

[John Howling Mouse]

Underside with Krylon primer in place...

[John Howling Mouse]

First coat of Tamiya "silver leaf" spraypaint brings out the details and causes a dilemma:

This was supposed to be just an undercoat of silver for the bare metal that I had intended to mostly cover up with a two-tone green camo.  The idea was that I would use the old saltwater solution trick to mask up panel lines and other details to protect the silver undercoat, then paint the camo over this and later rub off the saltwater solution mask in order to expose the silver (bare metal) underneath due to heavy weathering.

Naturally, since I was not at all worried about the quality of the finish for the silver, it has turned out nearly flawlessly.  i.e. I'm now liking it a LOT.

So, should I stick with the original plan and severely mess this silver finish up with heavily weathered two-tone camo (for some developing nation's air force) or go with a polished, mint Royal Canadian Air Force depicting a 1950's era aircraft in the prime of its life?

:dum:  :dum:  :dum:  :dum:  

[John Howling Mouse]

Underside.  Question remains:

So, should I stick with the original plan and severely mess this silver finish up with heavily weathered two-tone camo (for some developing nation's air force) or go with a polished, mint Royal Canadian Air Force depicting a 1950's era aircraft in the prime of its life?    

[John Howling Mouse]

One last view.  I always knew the Tamiya spraypaint was wonderful stuff but, if I had known this would have been so effortless to get this result, I would have first painted another variant of Tamiya's "silver" range and masked it off to get some variety of panel hues!

[John Howling Mouse]

I usually fix the u/c in place and spray the top first, then mask it and spray the underneath.  Several reasons for this - firstly, the model has something to sit on whilst the paint is drying, two I can hold the wing whilst spraying the upper surface then place it dow and spray what's left, and finally, I find it easier to mask the upper surfaces without having to worry about u/c cut outs, etc.  Masking tape tends to bring off fragile things like u/c legs.

It must be the Tamiya paint fumes (wicked stuff) but I'm not sure I follow.
Do you not mask off the u/c or wheel wells whatsoever and simply paint them by hand after all airbrushing/body painting is done?