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

[zenrat]

On aircraft like the Nipples-Go which have small windows I tend to leave them off, paint the thing and then make glazing with Krystal Clear (which I think is prolly just PVA anyway).
Put some glue on the end of a toothpick, wipe it round the edges of the window and then sort of drag it into the middle.
Works fine if you don't want to get too good a look at whatever is inside the model.

[TheChronicOne]

GRRR!  That would have been perfect for this one!    I'll make sure not to forget next time! These windows aren't anything to write home about anyway.... WAY too thick and can't see through them by any means. They look fine, but, point is I could have easily omitted them and made my own. Oh well... I don't think I glued them on too heavily.. I might try to knock them back out and do the PVA. 

Thanks for the tippy-tip. Masking winders is for people who enjoy doing it andthat ain't me. 

[TheChronicOne]

Applied more filler to the Mitsubishi Nipples-Go now it is sitting around. Not too shabby on the first pass of PSR...  like........I'd say the wings are at about %40 of what they should be and the rest is pretty minor, really, stuff like the gouge on the belly. Won't be long and this stuff will be out of the way.

I knocked the windows out. They came out nice and easy... good deal.. I didn't put a lot of glue on them and I'm glad! Now I can paint this thing all the way to done then come back wit' me Elmer's School Glue and make my own winders that-a-way. That alone I consider to be a huge victory as I was NOT looking forward to measuring, marking, and cutting out the tape. I could do it...... but I don't WANT to. I can also walk to work but I'd rather drive.

Got some more done on the SFGB build, too, but I'll talk about that over there...  basically consisting of more coats of paint over pre-shading.

Now, for the funnest one... the C-Fury!!


Take a look at this garbage picture. I swear.. I just don't get it. One picture is crisp, clear, you can see miles of detail, then the next is bunk like this that looks like I'm taking pictures through wax paper.     Lighting, settings, technique, time of day (yeah, this determines how much and what angle of light is coming in through the windows) whether it is cloudy or not, etc etc etc etc and a million other factors involved. I can't seem to figure it out so...    OH WELL!!   Anyway, this is some of what's going on. Fuselage glued together, wings are glued together, tail planes are glued together.... stuff is painted, etc. Making good headway one this one!!! 

Check out this next picture.... more great design from FROG on a decades old kit!! The control surfaces are molded separately. Look how much butter and more realistic they look instead of being done with mere engraved detail. This actually looks like it is a separate piece as it should be:



Tail planes and rudder are the same way. Gotta love it.... little small touches like this really make an old kit shine. Wheel well detail? Sure... massively detailed cockpit detail? Cool!  But uhhhh..... that stuff can't be seen 99.999999999999999999% of the time whereas control surfaces are ALWAYS going to be seen. "Obsolete kit" PFFFT.  I could shell out 8 billion dollars for some wheel well detail no one will ever look at or I can hop in my time machine and go back and grab some more FROG kits.    I guess it's all about priorities.

The other good bit of engineering I mentioned earlier in the thread:



No worries about getting wrong paint in the wrong places this way!     Good for someone like me that sometimes is short of patience.


The Rockets.

I've painted 90% of the canopy already, as well. I don't even think I'll have to come back with a toothpick. Other things not pictured are the insides of the gear doors. A short moment of confusion there as one was "kinky" and the other "flat." Took me a minute to realize that the kinky one goes on the side were the radiator intake is at. Good thing I stopped and paid attention to this as I could have easily painted the wrong side. 

On that note... I was watching a Sea Fury documentary earlier when I saw some versions that had radiator intakes on BOTH wings instead of just one. This had me running back to my reference pictures to make sure the Cubans had only the singles, and they do, so I'm good. I don't suppose it would have mattered because this is a whif anyway, but, I'm trying to have it only be marginally so.

Well, this is gettin' long winded now so I'll leave it at that, crack open a brew, and get back to painting and gluing. I'd like to be 100% done painting fiddly bits and then get all that I can glued together done by time I call it quits. Shouldn't be a problem! 

[TheChronicOne]

Got a really decent amount of work done today, albeit on only one project.

Dealing with too much malarkey right now and it affects my mood so I find myself not all too motivated sometimes. Us with the ol' depression and anxiety know what I mean.   

That said... after I ate lunch I felt better and then I decided to just grab my wares and start filing. Before ya knew it, I was having a good ol' time and feeling much happier as I PSRed things, touched up paint, etc. 

I had to do some trimming on the canopy as it comes molded with a big tab thing on the rear end. I left it on while I painted because it made a GLORIOUS "handle" and I could paint the whole canopy without worrying about smearing it! On the flip side, however, the tab thing had surplus plastic that I had to file off...  I use a round tapered file for this and it worked really well. At this point I was able to DRY FIT/TEST FIT (yes! I remembered !) this thing then use various other files and sand paper with the round one to get a nice, snug fit.

I had to do minor surgery on the wheel hubs to get the struts attached but I managed it. I also took the external fuel tanks and filed, sanded, smoothed, then painted them. On the second coat of red I thought I messed it all up as I was seeing smears and chunks in the finish but I pressed on and after it all dried... they look just fine!! ..Nice!!

Next I took the tail planes and filed, sanded, and made smooth all them then test fitted/dry fitted the elevators and made sure everything was kosher then glued them on. They look just fine! More good design.. like the ailerons they look like separate pieces instead of permanently fixed to the wings.

I also took the main body and filed, sanded, and smoothed the middle seams on the top and bottom both. It is apparent that I will have to go back for another round or too but they are already looking good. At the same time, I am slowly adding layers of glue to some pretty bad sink marks. There are 5-6 of them. I have one or two that are probably flush but the rest still need work. Any way you slice it, though, I'm off to a damn fine start on this process. Won't be too much before I have a nice, smooth fuselage.

Lots of other minor lil things, too, like the tail gear that is now done, the connecting supports for the main gear, the spinner and props, etc. Those are all painted and what not. Not a whole lot of the fiddly stuff left aside from gluing it on. 

This lil Sea Fury kit is just what I needed right now!  The Mitsu is a bit of a "larger" project because of the intensity of trying to produce a good paint finish.... and thus more stressful and tedious. It's really nice to intersperse with a delightful single engine monoplane build. ..     Big thanks to Fred over at Zenrat industries for the donor kit!

[zenrat]

Glad to help Brad C.

[TheChronicOne]

Back to work on these projects today! I'd like to get a lot done on the Mitsu. I need to get the seams and the surface all smooth then I can begin painting with gloss black.

Right now my work area is taken up with Magic The Gathering cards. I was building decks to go out to the card shop and spend a day playing cards and getting out of the house. Tried to do this the other day, too, but for some reason my check for picking up garbage has not showed up and is currently a full week late.    Oh well, whadda ya gonna do? I already called and haven't heard anything back over the last 2 days but I'm not going to sweat it right now as the mail has already ran and tomorrow I'm not going anywhere tomorrow anyway but if the damn thing doesn't show up by Saturday morning I'll be in a bind because I'll need to fuel up around that time and also I have my helper coming in to work and I typically like to pay people the same day they work. Enough of this crap though, I don't even want to think about it. Trying to have a GOOD day and stay positive.

Anyway, I'm going to wrap up my deck building wit' me Nerd-Cards and get the Mitsu up here. 

[TheChronicOne]

Well that didn't last long. 

I was sanding the piss out of this when the upper fuselage seam split back open!  Yikes! Well, I finished up a little more sanding (should only need 2-3 more rounds of PSR I hope.. I'm getting there, slowly, but definitely making progress!) then re-glued the seam now I have to let it sit around a couple more days so the glue can harden up sufficiently to sand.

Anyway... I think I'll stop and do a little bit of the same on the C-Fury as I'm definitely into the PSR stage on the fuselage and I don't want to start gluing appendages on until I'm as far along as possible with the PSR. I have a funny habit of snapping tail-planes and the like off when I get to putting the ol' elbow grease on the sanding. In short, I need to get the PSR on the main body DONE before I can proceed. I have a couple other minor things to wrap up like finishing the paint on the pilot figure but and starting gloss black on the loose exterior parts but not much else can be done until I construct the actual plane. 

After that, back to work on the Ferengi ship... it's dried enough now that I can get back to painting the hilights and other stuff before I gloss it.

[TheChronicOne]

Speedy update.

Finished PSR on main fuselage so I glued the wings on. Once I get the wing root seams PSRed, I'll glue on the tail planes. I'm taking a more cautious approach to this one and doing all I can in between steps as to leave nothing to chance.

Also, I tried to pain the yellow bit on the engine cowling but when I got to feathering the edge big pieces came off so I just stripped it all back off and will start over. I didn't prime it, so, the paint didn't have much to stick to. I'll prime it then do it again and that will solve the problem.



The bulk of the day has been spent working on the Sci Fi GB entry. All together a good solid 4 hours of painting over the span of 6 hours. Yeah.. I've pretty much spent all damn day working on models, this one in particular! It's getting there, though....  lots of tedious painting followed by successive rounds of touch up.  Bit by bit, though, it's coming together.

[Old Wombat]

Looking good there, Brad!

[zenrat]

The Ferrengi Calzone looks good.

[TheChronicOne]

Looking good there, Brad!

Thanks! BOTH of these projects are fun!

The Ferrengi Calzone looks good.

That's a new one! 

Man... now I got the munchies.   

[TheChronicOne]

Going to get back to work on the Mitsu today. More PSR trying to get the wing roots right and also the fuselage repair. I suppose it's possible that I could reach primer stage today but I kind of doubt it. Most likely I'll need another round or two of filler.

If I get that project far enough along it'll be back to dual workings on the C-Fury and the Ferengi Calzone. The Calzone is drawing nearer to being done. I could potentially FINISH it today depending on how well things go. Also, I have 4.3 billion errands to run today so that might slow me down but I hope not.

[TheChronicOne]

Haven't so much as looked at any of these projects in about a week. Stopped to play some video games and also kind of haven't been "feeling it" due to RW problems. Ever have people in your life that excel at pushing all the right buttons and can ruin your whole day in a matter of minutes?  Yeah.  I could work 23.5 hours a day and the 30 minutes I spend not working makes people think I don't do ANYTHING, EVER. 

But enough of that BS.

Back to sanding the piss out of the Mitsu!!    I almost have the top side all fixed up and good to go (the important side, for sure!) I just need to finish putty on the part on the bottom where I melted a bit of a hole into the fuselage and also clean up the bottom side of the wing roots.

Not making any plans beyond this because I have a boat load of chores to do first, including getting my work space re-organized. I have to hit the re-set button on that before I begin work or I just don't feel right!  Also, I may be tempted by the video game console again and wind up doing that. 

[TheChronicOne]

Ahhhh yes! It's like coming home! Already breaking stuff!   

It's cool though because I'm having a lot of fun and video games fell off the radar. I now have putty on the seams on the Mitsu and the C-Fury both. I'll let them sit around a bit then I'll whip up a batch of something to skim coat the stuff with (probably just use grey paint or something... a few passes with that will work fine, I've done it before; I call it MRS. SURFACER)


In the meantime... I'll continue to work on the Ferengi Calzone. It's getting dangerously close to a clear coat. Depending on how well I do with my touch up painting I might... MIGHT be able to finish it today but I sort of doubt it.

[Rick Lowe]

That Ferengi is coming along really well, Brad.
It's amazing how a different paint job can change the whole look.