Tamiya 1/48 Fairey Swordfish Mk.II

Chris, Lawdog, and Greg,

Thanks for the input. I do intend to build the MkII stringbag again. At that point I probably won't post it as a WIP (a little gun shy with that particular kit) but, rest assured, I'll do another WIP at some point in time.

Lawdog, your suggestion is well noted. I did use this page:

http://www.ipmsusa.org/reviews/Kits/Aircraft/tamiya_48_swfish2/tamiya_48_swfish2.htm

Unfortunately I did not read one very important section well enough. John R. said:

Having gotten past that problem, I test-fit the fuselage, center section, and wing cellules, lightly sanding the top/bottom of the locating arms to get the wing cellules to slide on easily, to balance/level the center section. Then I glued the center section down, keeping the wings on as a "jig".

I sure wish I'd burned that piece of advice into my brain before I'd glued down the center wing sections to the fuselage.

All who decide to build this kit should read and heed his advise.

You had a good looking bird going on there.

I wonder who amongst us has never trashed a kit in progress?

Sorry it had to be at your expense, but it was a learning experience for me. Thanks for letting us follow along.

And don't you dare let this stop you from posting future WIPS. You do a really nice job with them.

Ouch !

Sorry to hear that.

Chris

Modelcrazy, Jay Jay, and Mike,

Thanks for the sympathy and kind words.

Mike,

As to saving it for a "crash" diorama or something of that nature, I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen. I was p****d off at the world when I trashed it and, although I kept part of the fuselage, the rest is really, honestly, TRASH.

I have another of the same MkII kit which I will attempt after I've done another, hopefully easier aircraft for a friend of mine who used to work on them way back when. It's the Hasegawa 1/48 TA-4F Skyhawk. That particular skooter was not a training aircraft - it was essentially the same aircraft as the single seater with all the armament. My friend emailed me one time after I'd asked him about aircraft when he was in the Navy. He said:

"I worked on A-4's when I was stationed at Naval Missile Center, Pt. Mugu, CA.  We had six or seven A-4B's and one TA-4F.  Basically all the variants  prior to the "E" were B's with armament or electronic upgrades.  The E's and F's got electronic upgrades in the dorsal hump, and also the newer more powerful engine. I believe that the M's were E/F's with slight mods such as extended tail pipe.   The TA-4F was by far the best because it had a back seat and if it was open for a flight I could go along for the ride.

On the jet line, we had F-4's, F-8's, A-7's, and A-6's in addition to the A-4's"

So, I thought I'd build this TA-4F for him.

Mike

"Crap on a cracker, Kathy." That's really bad news. I was really looking forward to seeing this build completed. You were doing such an awesome job of it, Mike. It was gorgeous work, even if you disagree.

Perhaps in a few months you can fix it, or perhaps make a crash dio out of it. A hard landing on a carrier deck would probably fit the situation. Who knows.

I usually save such disasters for practice painting or trying out an effect to see if it'll work. Just don't toss it. You could slap that fuselage on a truck trailer, tie it down, and have a dio of an old bird gone to pasture. Lots of stuff that could still be useful for.

Sorry, I just hate to see good work go to waste.

Anyways, what's next? :)

Oh Man , that's too bad.    

I can relate though as i have a double winger Walrus half done in the stash that needs the top wing put on, and I am afraid of the same alignment issues you have had. Someone told me to build a jig to align the top and bottom wings while gluing but that's just too much work for my lazy self.

Oh man that stinks!!! I will take your lessons learned and apply them to my Swordfish.

I have my share of trashed kits.

Sorry folks, it's in the trash.

I was not able to line up the wings with the center top and bottom sections on the fuselage. When I tried to force it in I was able to get one wing on - albeit with bent bracing wires which would have been near impossible for me to redo with the wing in place - but the other wing would not go on at all. About 1/8 to 3/16 inch out of line. Too much. I forced it just to see what would happen and, as I expected, I cracked off the beam that slides into the outer wing from the center. At the same time all the rigging was torn off and part of the inside struts broke.

I am keeping the fuselage just to see how I screwed up the alignment of the top and bottom center portions of the wings which was the reason that both wings would not fit properly - I think.

I'm not giving up on building a stringbag since I have another kit but I am going to take a break and build a simpler kit before getting back to the Fairey Swordfish.

Again, my apologies to those who might have been interested in this build. I'll try again in 6 months or so.

Thanks guys. I'll just keep plodding along on this kit hoping to learn enough to avoid the same problems when I build my next one.

So far, your build looks really good.  I don't build bi-planes so I don't know anything about rigging.  All of my builds have some type of issues.  We can only learn from them and move forward of which you're doing a great job on.

Toshi

LOL Mike, 

You may not have gotten the rigging correct but you picture taking ability is great. I don't see the issue with the pictureI see, maybe a little rough at the attachment points but all in all what I see looks fine. Biplanes are a tough proposition for anyone. 

Well, this is embarrassing . I've screwed up my stringbag's rigging on the wings beyond the point of redemption.

I apologize to those of you who were following along thinking that I'd put this kit together in a manner that was reasonably competant. I did try. Unfortunately my skills at prefitting, double checking, looking for tripwires in the building process was not up to snuff. I've been hoisted by my own petar.

I'm going to carry on and see how it looks if I can attach the wings after adding the armament. I say "if" because there's an even chance that I'll not be able to attach the wings without knocking several pieces off several times.

The rigging of my wings is a nightmare. I ended up not having some of the kit PE sections reach the holes into which they were supposed to fit. In those instances I more or less gave up the hope for finishing this aircraft in a manner that would be satisfactory to me. I added some plain, round (the PE braces are flat) copper wire to extend the rigging. It doesn't look at all acceptable. Nonetheless, as I've just said, I'll attempt to finish it.

I'll post a picture of my disasterous wing rigging that I've struggled with over the last couple of days. You won't have to strain your eyes to see lots of glue and scratches some of which I may be able to take care of before I'm done. In addition, I'm sure that the styrene struts were not placed correctly as hard as I tried. That added to my frustration by making the wings slightly catawampus.

Oh well, I will continue to work on this now ruined kit with some knowledge of how to best proceed on my next build of this aircraft.

Ahrenisavagabond,

I certainly can't speak for Lawdog but if, by chance, you meant my cheap, ugly, sagging spray/paint booth, the ducting is just 4" dryer ducting. I can't remember where I bought it - probably either Walmart or Amazon. My booth is just poster board that I cut to make reasonably sized booth. It's 30" wide inside x 14 1/2" at the rear and 18 1/2" at the front inside height. It's put together with duct tape. (Remember, duct tape is your friend!).

I bought some LED light banks (battery powered so I use rechargeables in it) on Amazon to furnish some working illumination. I use a 12" x 12" air filter on the back of the booth to trap some of the paint. They're cheap filters and I can turn it 90° whenever one section of the filter looks like it's getting some build up.

Hope this helps.

Lawdog,

I just saw your airbrush booth, that looks nice! I'm gonna have to steal your ideal about using the small duct piping. Can I ask where you got that?

Lawdog,

If by the home stretch you mean I've got most of the build ready to put together, yep.

I do have worries about the Tamiya PE set for this kit. Only because I managed to screw up the PE for the AM 1/48 Grumman F3F-1 that I built a couple of years ago. It was supposed to be the "easy" solution to rigging biplanes. Nothing, I repeat, Nothing is foolproof in my hands . However, this time I'm going to take my sweet time and try to make it work.

The painting (and repainting, and decaling, and Futuring, and sealing with flat clear) has taken me longer than I thought it might.

Onward and upward.

Although it doesn't look like I've done much, I've actually put in a lot of time A) correcting some mistakes and, B) touching up and repainting, using more setting solution on some decals, and spaying the wings again with both Future and, when cured, MM flat clear. As usual I've managed to create a few "accidents" along the way but, in general, she's coming along to my satisfaction.

Note: When those of you who are going to build this puppy get around to it, be very meticulous in your dry fitting of certain very important sections - such as the top center wing unit. Make sure to dry fit it with part A10 before you get out the CA.

One of the things I'll not be able to correct in this build is my use of CA when putting on the windscreen. As if that was not bad enough, I didn't protect it enough when I was spraying my MM flat clear on the fuselage. Oh well, it's now one frosty little windscreen .

I have some PE to worry about in the next few sessions with my stringbag. Wish me luck.

That is a fantastic view of St. Helens!  Also, you're doing a phenomenal job on your build, I'm beyond impressed sir!  Great job my friend!

Toshi

Chris,

Thanks for the information regarding your experience with airbrushing a dullcoat. I'll spray the the whole wing with Future and, when cured, I'll go over the whole wing with the flat clear.

Thanks,

Mike, the Swordfish is looking very nice.

I use brushed on future as a gloss coat over brush painted MM acrylics all the time.  Then I usually coat everything with spray-on Testors dullcoat.  I agree w/ MC.  I'd brush or spray future over the whole wing surface just to make the finish uniform.  

In the past, when I've sprayed dullcoat over a mixed-finish surface - there has been a noticable difference in the dullcoated surface finish.   

Love this paint scheme on the Swordfish - very nice indeed !

Chris

Steve,

I may, with the top part of the the upper wings, do exactly that. Spray the whole wing with Future first. I'm not sure though since I hand applied the Future to that area to begin with I wonder if I'd have to hand apply it for the rest of the wing. No biggie either way.

That is funny Mike, I like the picture details. Despite your "screw-up's" I think it is turning out fantastic! I'm constantly breaking off wee pieces and having to glue them back on or replace them with a scratched piece (because I dropped it and can’t find it).
I can't even see the windscreen and never would have known if you hadn't pointed it out. Sometimes a plastic polish can help, but not with CA. I use Meguiars Plastic Polish and it works wonders.
As far as the difference in sheen, can you go over the whole thing with Future then spray the flat? I don't know and I'm sure someone will know better, but that seems like that would work.

Steve

Another update. Not exciting. It took me a while though. I'm always slow with decals. I do need to tell the truth though, I used and ruined two decals from my kit and there were no extras. Fortunately I'd bought another kit because I like this plane a lot and thought I'd do another MkII with invasion stipes or some other kinds of markings (I also bought some 1/48 AM decals for the MkII). So, I just ripped into the new box and used (thank goodness, successfully) those decals.

The picture that I'm posting with this missive has my usual comments where I screwed up. I wish I could redo some of the parts but, alas, they're on to stay. Please don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying all the work I put into this aircraft and even with my errors I like how it's turning out so far. A long way to go though.

Mike

Mike,

That is a great picture!!! I can no longer hike mountains or even go for long walks due to my Pulmonary Fibrosis. I am glad I climbed a few while I was young though.

Toshi, Greg, and Modelcrazy,

I know that my building skills are still evolving so when I mention how tight the pit was in the fuselage, keep in mind that it may have been partly due to my less than perfect build of the cockpit. OTOH, I think that some of the "tight fit" issues I'm having are real and, although so far have not been a problem, I do hope it ends up being a little advanced warning to those who build this kit in the future.

Modelcrazy,

I'm glad you liked the quote I posted in my reply to Greg. I've been guilty of letting certain things go without the proper effort to see them through. As an example, I did a very tough hike in July of 2013 but was not happy with the atmospheric conditions at the time - too hazy for photographs. I tried reaching the top again in September but turned around about 2/3 of the way up since I wasn't feeling as well as I thought I should and, although the atmosphere was clear as a bell, the very top was covered in clouds. I didn't think I'd ever try it again.

However, last summer (July of 2015) my brother and I did it again. I just HAD to get a series of photos from which I could creat a summit panorama. Again, a strenuous hike but I'm so glad I perservered. Funny, when I did the hike last summer I beat my round trip time from two years before by over an hour.

The hike was to the top of Mt. St. Helens. My brother can be seen sitting down by himself with his daypack off to the right of the image.

Mike

Greg

Great quote, indeed. Maybe even a wake-up call.

I have tried many things in my life and too often "checkered by failure" but at least I have fewer regrets. This also applies to modeling as some of my builds reflect.

Mike, that is sound advice, thank you.

Great quote, indeed. Maybe even a wake-up call.

Thank you 1943Mike.  This is very informative and a very straight forward WIP thread.  You've given forum members the ins and outs (Positive and negative) on this build that will help future builds as such.  I'm learning a lot from your WIP.  Thank you sir and keep up with the very good posts.

Toshi