Chronic's Research and Aeronautics Project (C.R.A.P.)

[TheChronicOne]

Well, none of the airbrush stuff happened. It's all together and ready I just didn't manage to go fire up the big compressor to fill it. Got distracted by the stuff here, laziness, and the internet in general.

I did manage to get a lot done other than actual building and gawking at all y'alls stuff, though.

I did the dry fitting of the Hercules and Galaxy parts. Amazingly, the overall length of the wings was damn near the same as was the width, bow to stern, at the wing root area. That said, the way the wings of the Hercules go together also make up a fair bit of the fuselage. Needless to say, the Galaxy wings don't have this. The Galaxy wings actually fit onto the fuselage decently but a half circle type area is left in the middle of the wings to be filled in with half a PVC plumbing pipe or something but I'm simply not skilled enough to do it. Nor do I even want to try. 

It's cool, though, as I found a project anyway: http://www.whatifmodellers.com/index.php/topic,44465.0.html

Navy P-51 with floats.    Post War. 







To quote myself:

"Going to steal some pontoons from a Letov S-328 and glue 'em on a 'Stang Mustang. 

Floats are from the old KP kit and the Mustang is from the old Airfix Blue nose kit.

I'll have to order in the transfers but I have some picked out:



Niiiiiiiiiiiiiice and simple. All over blue and not many transfers. I also have some other stuff picked out for a pre-war color scheme of US Army but I have a lot on my plate right now and may not get to it. We'll see!"



Lot's of fun stuff going on around these boards, too, so I've blown a lot of time going around just looking at all the threads.     

[TheChronicOne]

Wasn't thinking about it at all... Had NO modelling plans for today in fact,but... I lucked out and noticed that the wind was very light today as I was brainstorming on yard work (which I did literally ALL day thanks to nice weather).

So, I squeezed in 3 coats this morning and another about an hour ago on the Mitsubishi. I'd still like to get a few more good coats on before I let it sit then start the polishing because I would run the risk of sanding through the paint otherwise. Don't want that!! I just want to do away with the orange peel and make it look nice and flat..... then move into the high grit stuff to make it SHINY!! 

Any how, here's a couple in-progress pictures:





Kitchen looks shiny as hell and the plane is covered in knick-knacks! OH WAIT.

 

EDIT: Yeah, that's two "cubes" of Ramen. Homie is a little broke right now. 

[DogfighterZen]

Shiny indeed! That big bird's looking very good, great job!

[zenrat]

 

[Old Wombat]

Shiny!

[TheChronicOne]

Thanks fellas. Im diggin' on it, too. I don't even mind the bigazz rivetz! 

[zenrat]

Tell you what, there's no way i have the patience to get more that shiny.

[TheChronicOne]

Struggling with it myself. Not sure I'll make it all the way through the process without just giving up, adding one last coat, and letting the peel ride.

I mean... hell, I'm happy with the shine.. I think it looks awesome! This paint has turned out to be really neat. I just would like to figure out how to rid myself of orange peel. I'm either going to figure it out, or likely wind up doing away with using rattle cans for the most part. 

I'm getting close to trying airbrushing anyway and may find that that works great. In fact, I'm taking my air tank with me to work today and when I air up my leaky tire I'll fill it up to and see if it holds air. It used to leak but I'm not sure how fast. If it holds air for a day or more then it will be fine. Hopefully I fixed it though with the new teflon tape and hose I put on it.

[DogfighterZen]

This just reminded me it's been a over 2 weeks since i last opened and cleaned my compressor's tank... probably has a bit of water in it by now and that has to come out...

[TheChronicOne]

YUUUUUUP. Doesn't take long and every change of temperature or humidity makes it worse! Not to mention the heat up/cool down that makes it even worse.

I saw one once that I don't think had ever been drained and one big clue was that the wooden cradle they had made for it had a 2x4 going across where the drain spout was that prevented it from opening, even a little bit. I had to take a sawzall to it and chop out a 6 inch piece. Then, I drained it, and it was like emtpying a kiddie pool. 

[TheChronicOne]

Taking a break from building for awhile. I might get back to it today, depending. Sciatica is acting up and REALLY bad right now. Kind of makes it hard to turn, grab things, bend over to get that paintbrush on the bottom shelf, etc.  I'd like to get back to work today but I have two mid-sized yards to mow and I'm not sure I'll even make it through those so by time I get home I might find myself just playing more video games.. which is alright, too. 

In actual news, though, I got in the transfers I'm going to use on my Navy Mustang floatplane.    I'd totally like to get that one started soon because I think it will be fun. Should be easy, too, because the entire thing will be blue aside from a tiny bit of white on the fin. Well... I may paint the bottom of the floats a different color. We'll see.

Airbrush project:  well.... I remember now, but I had to fill it up first, but the air tank leaks like crazy. Won't even hold air for 6 hours. I'll have to fill it again and go on the hunt for the leak then repair it.    Nothing ever comes easy, does it!

Been ruminating on a paint scheme for the H4 Hercules. While it's a "big" model, it looks really simple to build. What I've read so far confirms this and the kit goes together really well. SO, I ought to be able to fit it in but I'm not going to start on any of it until I get the current RAF build done and also the Mustang. Reason being, I'd like to start an F-14A but I'm having second thoughts about it. Not sure I'll be able to get it done in time for when I want it to be done because it will probably take a while to build. PE parts, etc.

TTYL

[TheChronicOne]

Actually did some work today on the projects. 

On the RAF Aerothing I painted the nose cone, assembled the main gear, and began PSR on the areas on the Ailewrongs that I filled in. It's not much, but definitely a step in the right direction. I also put a couple more beads of glue along the main seams on the fuselage. I believe there is enough on there now, I'll be sanding on those soon..

Stopped and checked in on my paint experiment. The Mitsu is shinier than ever and I've learned that putting more and more coats of paint on makes it shinier and shinier. I also noticed that in some areas the orange peel wasn't nearly as bad as in other areas. No idea why, but I have my suspicions.

Here I held up some trash next to the wing so we can see the reflection and clarity of said reflection. Not bad!!!



Here I tried to get a close up of one area where the orange peel wasn't as bad. You can see the boiler plate rivets here and also where I kind of erased some of the detail near the wing roots. That said, the wing root looks pretty nice!! It was a disaster at first with a big step and requiring a lot of filler and PSR.



I don't think I'll put any more coats on unless I screw something up. From here on out, it's all about the polishing process. This is were I'll need to stop and do my research again and I think I may opt to buy some sort of liquid plastic polish or something... one of the tutorials I was looking the fellow used some near last of the process and his car looked amazing!! 

All for now I guess...  building 1/1 scale cookies and about to play some video games. 

[TheChronicOne]

Back to work today. I had a bit of a break for about a week. Did very little in this time but I DID still work on things as I mentioned in prior posts... just... no dedicated time.

Yesterday, though, I clipped out all the float pieces from the S 328 kit. I can already tell that assembling the cross members and stuff is going to be a pain. Still not sure how I will attach them to the Mustang, either. I'll muddle through somehow.

Also, I'm hoping that the gear doors will actually fit into the gear bays correctly without me having to use any filler. I know sometimes they can be completely misshapen because "you can't really tell when the gear are down." 

I also have a boat load of sanding and filing to do on the RAF Aerothing (I really need to come up with a name for this. . ..) 


TTYL

[TheChronicOne]

HANDS DOWNS one of the most frustrating things I've ever done modelling is try to get these pontoons and braces glued and sitting right. I got them looking pretty good right now, though. I'll them dry up as is for about an hour then work on putting the last two pieces on.






Got the gear doors glued in, too, and, while not perfect, are just fine for me and what I'm doing! Not even going to fill them in because whose to say that they didn't take the floats off from time to time?



I may wind up doing a little something to them if the primer and stuff doesn't lessen the gaps.


Aside from the mind numbing float struts this is going well!   



EDIT: OOPS, this was supposed to be on my build page for the GB.  Oh well, it works fine here, too!

[TheChronicOne]

Mainly worked on my floatplane for the group build. If interested in that, please do, go check out the floatplane GB and have a look-see! 

Otherwise, though, I found a bit of time to sand the everloving piss out of the sides of the RAF Aerothing. The seams are SOOOOO bad....  I've made them quite a bit better though, so that's good. I think another round of glue and another round of sanding then maybe I can glue the wings on. I also sanded on those, as well, at the root. There's a bit of a bow in the fuselage that has the wings sitting sort of like a teeter-totter but it's not that bad.. I'll either continue to sand flat the sides or make it up with putty.

Gloss coated the nose piece that I already painted.

Filed, sanded, and altered the rear-end and the fin so that they would finally join together without a big gap in between.

That's about it...


Nothing else going on. The shiny Mitsu is ready for the polishing process now, though, so I hope to get back to work on that soon.

TTYL