1:24 Airfix Hawker Typhoon Car Door Version Start-to-Finish Build

Well done, Builder. While I build exclusively in 1/48 (it's a weird thing where I prefer to have everything the same size), this was an enjoyable build to watch come together, your dogged determination to get to the finish line is inspiring, as I keep snapping off pushrods for my 1/48 FW190. Adapt and overcome!

Thnak you for sharing, and for keeping everyone up to date. Even though you didn't get a ton of comments, I think it was due to everyone's mouth hanging open...

Well done. Thanks to Airfix going with the cheapest materials and manufacturer (somewhere in India) These, and almost all Airfix kits, throw curveballs at the builder.

You would have been better going with paint masks for the insignia, squadron codes etc. Once again the decals are done by the cheapest provider and as you noted are thick and not very flexible.

I have both car door and bubble top in my stash and an abandoned one that threw several curve balls before it took an unscheduled flight across the hobby room. This one taught me much about what to expect from the newer Airfix kits. Superb design and detail let down by cheap materials and manufacture.

If you read the airfix blog about the new Hellcat and you see the test shots that they dealt with, they are of a much superior plastic than what you get.

I would rather pay a slightly higher price to Airfix for their new 1/24 kits for them to use state of the art chinese manufacturers and decent styrene plastic for a better fit and experience than the cheap stuff they are using now. It is ruining the brand.

Murphys law comes in here with Airfix. "Your kit is made by the cheapest going!"

Still, you have done outstanding work with this and I suppose I should dive into mine at some point once I have all the needed extras, Camo masks, Insignia masks, stencils etc.

Congratulations, man.  That was a lot of work!  Very nice!

That is an impressive build. Thanks for taking us along. It was fun.

BK

This bird has flown. Did the last few (and annoying) items including almost destroying the glazing. I was right to be wary of how that went together. The glue surfaces are microscopic and regardless of what cement I was using the joints were hanging by their fingernails... so to speak. And then the armor panel broke loose underneath the teardrop canopy and I had to reinstall it by attempting to run some thin CA into the space without screwing everything up. As a result there's a shiny spot of CA under that canopy, but I did get it stay put while tilting the plane in various angles so it fell into position while the CA was curing. I really didn't want to remove that teardrop. The glazing did get a bit of cement on it, and I sort of corrected it by brushing on some Future to fill the imperfections. And of course, one of the inner doors fell off again. That made at least three times.

Otherwise, it's one heck of a model and not for the faint hearted. The rating on the kit is legit. It's not for beginners.

So he she is in all her glory, ready to kick some Axis butts. Took the pictures with my Canon EOS.

The following shot was done with the flash on to show off some of the interior.

This picture was down with focus-stacking software to extend the depth of field over the entire model. As I did before, one of the multiple exposures was done with flash to highlight the cockpit which was otherwise completely in shadow.

So dear followers, this is the last plastic for a while. I have two building projects for the layout. One is a commercial kit and the other will be another 3D printed, laser cut creation of my own design. Stay tuned. Don't know what my next non-railroad project will be, but whatever it is, I'll do a build thread here. So thanks for hanging in there. Stay well, stay safe and stay a safe distance from folks where you don't know their condition.

The end is near!

Today was a punchlist day. Got almost all of it finished. I hate it when the very last stuff causes troubles. I'm never particularly good with the transparent parts, partially because I'm getting impatient to finish the job and don't take as much care as I should. Then there's stuff that's not in my control. I've complained about this kit's engineering and it reared it's ugly head again. There's a round, finely molded, bar that extends from inside the fuselage next to the door opening on one side, goes into and around the perimeter of the windscreen and ties into the fuze on the other side. The location points are vague at best. I realized that gluing it the fuze first wasn't going to work, so I attempted to glue it into the windscreen. Then it broke in half. Then it didn't glue right. Then one half disappeared on the floor after I tried gluing it in with Bondic. Unfortunately, Bondic doesn't adhere well to styene. That's when I decided the model didn't need that part and glued the windscreen down without it. The part broke WITHOUT my manhandling it.

I did fix those miserable decals. I found another "X" and made a "P" out of an "R". Carefully placement, lots of MicroSet and MicroSol, and leaving it alone and not fussing too much. Whew! In this image you will also see the fixed paint job on that door. I masked it carefully. Shot the gray, then held a curved mask off the surface to clean up the overspray with some more dark green. Painted the opposite side to get rid of the erroneous camo job on that side.

I put on the wing tip lights. I used some real chrome foil first under the lens. I painted the interior of the lenses with the correct color and glued them in with Testor's Canopy Cement. I would recommend that cement since it holds styrene well and cleans up with water. It does not craze the transparent parts.

I put on the armor panel behind the seat and glued down the teardrop portion of the canopy. I finally got that windscreen in and will touch up the dark green around it on Monday. I removed all the masking on the engine and re-glued some of the exhaust stacks that had loosened. I then put on the prop.

All that's left is gluing on the open door and the open top panel. That top panel is going to be very, very delicate. Frankly, I'm not sure how long it's going to stay there. You can see the tiny scale hinges sticking out from it. That's basically the gluing surface. We'll see. I will glue the gun bay doors onto the wing and mount two more tiny aft lights that go right behind the elevators. Then there's an antenna on the bottom and a foot step that extends down from the bottom as well. These too will be very, very easy to break off. And with that... it will be done.

Long post today... a lot happened.

Up first: putting on the main gear. While one of the build videos I watched claimed that the gear fixture was secure, I was totally unhappy with the structural integrity of the kit's method of gluing on the landing gear. Even with the offset joint, it was basically a plastic-to-plastic joint holding a lot of weight. Therefore; I drilled and pinned the joint, followed by gluing with 30 minute epoxy. I used 3/64" brass rod driiled with a #55 drill.

I located the drill spot with the sharp point from a dividers. I then pilot drilled with a 0.022" drill (it was already chucked in one of my pin vises) and then followed with the main drill. Even so, it started to break out on one side. I compensated by drilled in the opposite direction at about 45 degrees until the hold was re-centering and then finished drilling vertically. It saved the job.

This view shows the pin installed in the hole drilled in the strut. This was the side that started drilling off center.

And here are both sides epoxied and stabilized until it cured. 

After the gear was cured I added the inner gear doors, their actuating cylinders and the locking links for the main gear. This highly detailed part did not impart any structural strength. The attachment point was simply too unsubstantial to add strength.

As usual, some of the most insignificant parts cause the most trouble. I had to trim the base of the inner door cylinders to enable them glue without the piston rod bending like a pretzel. I was getting to the point where I was going to make the entire cylinder assemly with brass. Lots of wonderful detail in those wheel wells. If I was a real detail hound I would have run hydraulic lines to those inner door actuators. Overkill! The model has enough problems that it WILL NOT BE A SHOW WINNER, and therefore; doesn't need any more fussing.

The plane now can sit on its own legs. I also glued in the tailwheel.

I put some flat clear on the rockets, but it wasn't enough and had to hit it with Dullcoat spray. It basically still wasn't enough, but I had enough. I used some narrow gauge black iron wire to simulate the electricl ignition leads to the rocket motors.

Before I glued these onto the plane, I needed to finally repair the broken roll cage in the cockpit. I was about ready to install the glazing and saw that I hadn't fixed this. Again, I drilled 0.022" for phos-bronze of the same diameter. After installing and using CA, I didn't like how it was holding and added some Bondic UV-Cure filler to strengthen it. It's now strong... not pretty, but strong. Once the glazing is in there's no way to repair this so I wanted it foolproof. It's also another reason the model won't win any rewards. I also paint the upper end of the seat belt harness.

The rocket installation was next. At first I was using liquid cement, but was unhappy how it was curing so I went old school and used Testor's tube cement. This bird now has some talons!

Another view:

Then I was trying on the glazing to see what, if any, paint touch up would be needed. And I found that I blew it. I had camoed the wrong door! When I was planning the glazing paint, the model was upside down and got me a bit confused. I will now have to remask some of the window on the port side to add the ocean gray. This is the closed door and it will be noticed. Then I have to paint the starboard side all deep green. Then I can install them. It was a real DOH! moment. I also have to do something with those awful decals. I chipped another part of the letter when having the model inverted in my little wooden fixture. The model looks like they replaced the door with a part from the junk yard...

I think it will be finished tomorrow, but we won't know that until I do it. You never know if some other weird stuff will rear its ugly head. Just for fun, I glued together some of the forward skin. I can't make an entire covering since the parts of the fuselage sides that I removed are gone in the trash weeks ago. I'm glad I went with the open front. The skin is quite thick and wouldn't go onto the motor with certain parts in place. If Tamiya had designed, the skin would slip on and off like a fancy evening gown. In their 1/32 Mustang and Mossie, the skins are held with magnets. That could have been done here too especially in 1:24

First up: Painted all the glazine and then demasked. The backsides of the doors got flat black. I then turned them over and painted the entire grouping with flat black that would be the interior color of the framing. I then did a color shot with the RAF Deep Green except for 1/3 of the starboard door the Ocean Gray to match the camo at that point. The door will be in the open position so you won't be able to see if the registration is a bit off.

The Eduard masks worked perfectly and the framing is A-1. I am very pleased with it.

I finished up all the little stencils on the fuselage and painted those broken decals. The color was a bit dark and I may go back and fix them. Although, one could image some flight line touch ups that wouldn't be perfect either. I added Tamiya panel line accent Black to all the panels. I added soot (black weathering powder) the gun pay covers, the cartridge exits under the wings, and some exhaust staining. The staining is very hard to see against that dark green. I like a little weathering, but tend to not overdo it. For example, I don't do pre-shading. I dirtied up the wheel wells some more too.

Speaking of wheel wells, I assembled the main doors and their liners, and then dirtied them up a bit too. I added the structs themselves and the wheels. This will have to wait until tomorrow before installation. The struts do not fit tightly to the stubs. I'm going to epoxy them on.

Here's some more images of the weathering and panel work.

After the final decaling, I shot the whole deal with Tamiya clear flat through the airbrush. I find I can control it much better than using Dullcoat from the rattle can.

Before flat spray I had added the open foot steps that a landed plane would have. I painted their exteriors camo color and their interiors flat aluminum.

We're getting really close to the end here. The model could be done by Friday. If not it will be early next week.

My treatment of the thick decals did work. Here's the big rondel showing good conformation to the surface texture below.

I applied all the underwing decals with no trouble. Again, lots of setting solution was needed to get the decals to show the underneath details.

I glued on the inner liner to the outer main gear door and touched up the exposed areas with flat aluminum. (no image)

I then started working on the fuselage decals and all hell broke loose. The decals' brittleness reared its ugly head especially on the large lettering that depicted this version. 

The "Xs", "Rs" and "Ps" all cracked and broke in various ways. The Solvaset was probably too strong... at least that's one theory. I will repair with a matching touchup paint.

Then, to make matters worse, I accidentally picked it up and grabbed the X and removed part of it. Didn't realize until I took the picture.

Instead of replacing the entire letter (I did have extras from the other configurations), I just cut a piece of decal to replace the missing leg.

The starboard side had less problems. The R lost it's leg, but I was able to refit it. The arrow points out an interesting detail. This little chunk is part of a long string of text, but the instructions only show the J and a slice of the next letter... an N. It's too show that the invasion stripes were applied over top of existing id numbers. That's conforms to the idea that invasion stripes were put on in the field, long after the aircraft was built. And some were very sloppy, not at all like the perfectly masked version that I did. I'm sure some crews were fastidious and made theirs very neat. Notice too that the tail decals are on.

Last thing I did was use the Eduard fitted masks and masked all the glazing in prep for painting tomorrow.

The lower parts of the car doors gets flat black inside and its part of the camo pattern on the outside. I going to display the model with the door open. There's only a single pin supporting that open door. I'm worried about that. I may have to use a brass wire reinforcement. The canopy framing is very fine and would have been a bear to mask by hand. The mask instrutions call for using liquid mask to fill in the remaining open areas. I tried using it, it didn't wet the surface properly and I wiped it off. I then went back and filled the areas with Tamiya tape. I also taped the backsides of all clear parts. That V-shaped piece is a sort of a roll bar behind the pilot's seat that has litlle windows in it. The Eduare set had masks for this too. Nice!

If you were paying attention you remember when I broke off the top of the seat frame including the armor plate behind the pilot's head. I'm going to drill the frames and install wire to reinforce this so it won't break again. I've had the model upside down a lot lately and if the seat hadn't broken when it did, it would have surely broken now. That roll cage  glues to this seat frame so I'll have to remember to get it done.

I will do that after the main gear is finally installed.

I noticed another very minor mistake. I opened the holes for the external fuel tanks, but then decided to not install them. In fact, I threw the remains of that sprue in the trash. I may fill the holes or just see if anyone ever notices them.

I looked at the a/m decals, but decided against it since none would work with the particular paint scheme that I used. So I stuck with the kit's. I first air brushed white (best under yellow) and then the yellow. Tamiya paint dries fast enough so by the time I got the gun all cleaned from the white, I was able to shoot the yellow. Sealing worked as it should. I also took some time to touch up some of the paint in the gun bays themselves.

Then it was time to begin the main decaling. I started with the biggest, the upper wing roundels. RAF has a different rondel for top/bottom/Fuze. Not just size, but different design. I decided to time how long these decals actually take to slide... four minutes! Way too long.

I had to soak the heck out of them with Microsol (before decals), Microset (after decals) and Solvaset (as an insurance policy) and the decals did finally settle down. They're really thick.

In addition to these biggies, I put on the wing walks and the stencils called out for the wing tops (fuel 100 octane) and a little "W/T" at the outboard corners of the ailerons.

Tomorrow I'll do the same for the wing bottom. Last I'll do the fuselage. I going to have to paint the transparent parts too.

Didn't think about a/m decals, but now that you mention it, should have. Cartograph decals are so much better.

Some of the versions had a bright yellow spinner. The one I chose had the sky color. Some had the gun shields yellow too. Of course, I picked the one with the most complex invasion pattern. So... what else is new? I always end up going the most complicated way. It's all because I wanted the one with the rockets. That alone created ore complexity.

As a refresher, here's the version again.

Thanks for sharing some of your thought processes. Interesting stuff.

I don't know what the yellow leading edges are about either, but after perusing models of this a/c for several years now (and building one in 1/48 myself), it's a standout trademark of the a/c, that's for sure.

That sucks about the decals. That isn't a fun thing do discover at the tail end of a 'build'. I presume these are the kit decals? When you first disovered the problem, did you look into aftermarket decals? I've yet to work with AM decals myself.

Something about that spinner color. I love that color, no idea why.

I do most of my "mental modeling" in those moments before falling asleep or the time when I'm waking up that extends to the time when I'm staring at my face shaving. I often build a model in my head a couple of times before I cut the first sprue which is done in conjunction of reading the instructions several times. 

Even then, it's usually the things I think about AFTER I've built it that would work the best. Example: I sold that 43 old plank-on-bulkhead on eBay this week. I was going to toss it and then thought that maybe someone would want it. There are sevearl reasons why I didn't ever start it including its size (1 meter long). But the real reason was how lo-tech it was. The wooden detail parts were just printed on some plywood and you had to cut them all out. I didn't relish that and therefore never started the kit. 

After selling it I thought of an answer. I could have scanned those ply sheets and re-drawn all the parts in CorelDraw and had them all laser cut. It would have made a much better kit. It was still too big, but it wold have worked. 20/20 hindsight!

Spent the day working on more of the details. I glued the prop together and retouched the RAF Sky color. Big spinner!

I finish painted the gun bay doors and glue them together. They still need some weathering because they would be well stained from propellent debris. I just laid them on the wing to set if the angles were correct. The inner and outer doors are glued at different opening angles. I masked the leather area on the inside door and air brushed the aluminum.

I removed the 'fake' gun cover and tossed it. I had used "sticky wax" to hold those in position during painting. I would not recommend this in the future. The wax was hard to remove. The clay worked better on the gear doors, and possibly using blue-tack. I had some of that too, but it was old and very hard and crunchy. The open doors get glued on after all the decaling and transparent work is done.

After gluing the rockets into position on the rails, I painted the decal areas of the rockets with Tamiya clear gloss.

I noted this before, but it bears repetition. These decals are awful! It's take literally minutes for them to soak enough to slide off the backing. Then they're so stiff and thick it's like trying to decal with peices of acetate. One of the rocket decals had to wrap fully around. This is what it looked like when I applied it with tweezers.

I used every decal softener I had and eventually bent the decals around the shaft. Several fractured. It would be okay if it was just stiff, but it was also brittle. No happy.

With persistance I did get all the rockets decaled. I will put some flat coat on them next work session (Monday). There were actually different stencils for HE and SAP rockets. I chose High Explosive.

Last thing I did was mask off the outer leading edges for that yellow paint job. I have no idea why they have that yellow leading edge, but this version does. A lot of masking for a 20 second air brush job. Before setting the plane aside for the weekend I sealed the edges for the future, leak-free paint job.

Monday will see this yellow applied and the big decals on the plane proper. I'm not looking forward to these decals. They're a pain in the butt.

I reviewed this page. Got to thinking about it here's what I think;

I admire the way you deal with challenges and setbacks. You move on and deal with them (and most others here do the same, I think).

I tend to migrate to my lazy-boy and waste another couple weeks pondering about twenty-thousand possible solutions and try to narrow those down to the one I want to try.

Odds and ends today. Gloss coated the bird in anticipation for decals. Finished painting the rockets and worked on the gun bay folded access covers.

I made a template to paint the three diameters of color for the rocket tips. It didn't work out quite as well as I wanted and ended up doing a lot of finicky touch up painting. It worked mostly. The last technique I tried for the small yellow center was just dipping the rocket nose in a little puddle of Vallejo yellow. That would have been the best way to do all gthree colors if I were to do it again...which I ain't.

The outer ring is red, middle white and inside yellow. I also painted the flat aluminum brackets that hold the rocket to the slides. The rocket warhead needs a decal added and for that I will apply a litle bit of gloss by brush to ensure good decal adhesion.

The folding gun bay doors are a combination of flat aluminum and leather. The leather, I've read, was to reduce vibration when the 20mm cannons fired. I had air brushed the leather to some of the pieces, but hand painted the leather panels on the others. I have to go back and do flat aluminum on the pieces that are all leather colored. I had chose this method since masking the all leather pieces is easier since it's only leather colored in the indented space, whereas the others are leather with thin aluminum ribs separating them. 

After the leather color is all applied, I'll go back and back paint aluminum to make it spiffy. I also have a yellow stripe that needs to be painted on the leading upper edge of the outboard wing panels. This yellow extends from the outboard gun shield to the navigation light pocket at the wing tip. I started masking it and the realized that I needed to do the gun bay doors. That was becasue part of the Rondel decal is attached to the bay door... Just a corner, but enough to make me get the doors done. All of this will be done tomorrow.

Chicka Boom, Chicka Boom, Chicka Boom Boom Boom... That's stripper music in honor of me pulling off a ton of masking tape unveiling the newly painted invasion stripes. There were only two leaks in all that masking. The clear coat worked perfectly. On leak was between the green and bottom at the tailwheel under the horizontal stab and that part wasn't treated with the clear coat. The other was a tiny spot on the wing. I was very pleased.

The bottom was as good as the top, and the clay holding the solid wheel door in place worked very well also. I had to be careful removing it, but it left no residue. It's special clay to make resin casting molds. The open doors worked well too with their stripes perfectly in line with the wing stripes as it should be.

I had some painted peeled exposing alumimun. Most were planned with liquid mask, one I think was just delaminating paint. I'm leaving them alone for the time being. I did some very minor touchup around the gun shield flanges also.

This chipping was intentional. Not the tiny white notch in the black. That was not a leak. It was a taping error which I touched up after I took this picture.

Next up will be a gloss coat a decal application. I will also mask and paint the transparencies. I do have the Eduard mask set for the plane.

Glad you're watching and to all my other home-bound model lovers. The "Air" comes in those convenient (sometimes) little dropper bottles like Vallejo. They're great for squirting small quantities into my gravity feed air brush, but don't give me any advantage to the bottle feed, bottle fed brush. They seem to spray very nicely un-thinned, so I'll take the meaning to be either interpretation.

I airbrushed the little region at the rear of the fuselage invasion strip area A-K RAF Sky. The instructions were ambiguous regarding the width of this feature. The dottle lines showed 19mm, but the lines were halfway in and halfway out of the sky-painted region and the illustration seemed to be smaller than the 19mm. I made it that size. After air brushing it and the spinner and backing plate (same color), I force-dried the paint and masked over it for the remainder of the invasion striping.

I laid out the distances with the digital caliper on both the fuselage and the top and bottom of the wings. Since the white was already applied, I had to mask off all the white areas to expose the part that was painted black. I used narrow Tamiya tape to work to the line and then filled the rest with blue masking tape. I did this first for the fuselage, then the wing tops and finally the wing bottoms. When I marked the 19mm, I did it in two places so it would help me getting the tape in parallel lines across the entire wing. I also re-checked based on the rivet pattern.

This was a finicky operation and took more than an hour to complete. On the bottom I was careful to mask both the wing and the gear doors which are only held there with tape underneath. I will remove them before painting the black and paint their stripes separately to ensure that the paint goes directly to the wheel well edge. I have the gear-up door fastened in place already to mask out the entire wheel well.

After masking I again went around and brush-painted Tamiya gloss clear to all the taped edges to pre-seal against any leakage. This worked perfectly on the sky portion of the aft fuselage. There was absolutely no leakage into the white area. I did not pull the tape for the aft portion so can't tell if that leaked or not. I'm assuming it did not. Regardless, touching up the camo areas is not as sensitive as touching up the white-painted areas.

This beast used a ton of masking tape. I'm going to use NATO black instead of flat black. I think NATO black appears as a normal slightly faded black that (to me) appears a bit more realistic. I will do the camo painting on Monday. I'm excited to see what it looks like.

My wife took a nice walk around the neighborhood this afternoon. The weather was wonderful and it's good to get out now and again. We are being very careful in our interactions. Hope all of you are doing the same.

Just wanted to drop a note to let you know I'm here in the cheap seats, watching and enjoying your build! Impressive work so far, especially on such a massive kit. 

I also wanted to give my comments about the AK Real Colors "Air" paints. I believe the "Air" title simply means they are colors for aircraft, not that they are prethinned for airbrushing. I could be wrong, maybe someone else can confirm. These are the glass bottles, correct?

Very glad that you and the others are following the thread.

I painted the RAF Ocean Gray today, doing it all freehand. I had some minor errors in where I painted the RAF Deep Green, so I first used the detail airbrush and repainted the model to better conform to the camo pattern. Surprisingly it dried pretty quickly and I was able to start preparing for the ocean gray. I did the gray and then went back and forth a couple of times to ensure that the feathered edges were decent. I may be making an error here since the RAF camo may have had harder edges. Guidance here would be helpful. If I need to harden up the edges that can be done.

I had already laid out the masking lines for the invasion stripes on the topsides, so I peeled off the masking and remasked the edges of the white background using thin Tamiya tape.

I then went back and completely masked all the previously shot color areas.

Since the bottom was already completely masked, I had to remove the masking where the white invasion striping backgroud would go. I used the tape positions from the topside to show me where to remove the bottom side masks.

To ensure a good paint line, like on top, I used the thin tape to hold the line. I did the same for the fuselage masking area. To help ensure no paint leakage, I went over all the masked edges with some Tamiya clear. Hopefully, this will help seal the end and prevent any leaks. I airbrushed the entire area with Tamiya XF-2 Flat White. My Badger 150 was sputtering and needed a better cleanout, so I diassembled it and plopped the parts into the ultrasonic cleaner for 15 minutes. That solved the problem. I've noted this before, but it bears repeating. The ultrasonic was purchased specifically to clean un-cured resin on my 3D printed parts, but it's been wonderful for cleaning all sorts of other stuff. I use the paint bottles that conform to the Badger suction cap. I want to resue them and cleaning them out is a pain in the butt. Now, After washing them with solvent, I put them in the ultrasonic and they come out spotless. 

When I had pulled the tape off that covered the invasion stripe area, I inadvertantly pulled off the liquid mask exposing the "base metal" underneath that was suppoded to be for leading edge paint chips. I've made an executive decision. The model represents when it was freshly painted with invasion striping (which was often done in the field) and therefore it, and only it, will cover the leading edge with no paint chipping. All the exiisting color areas will still show some wear and tear.

The first color to go on is RAF Sky in a band at the rear of the fuselage striping. It will extend for 19 mm. I have pre-cut some masking to 19 mm to space out the rest of the black stripes that will follow. Believe it or not, in 67 years of modeling, this is the first plane I've ever built with invasion stripes. The spinner also gets painted Sky on this particular Typhoon version. The leading edges past the cannon get painted yellow on this version also.

Invasion stripes will be done tomorrow. Then I will do decal placement. Following that will be some tasteful weathering and painting the rockets. Lastly will be masking and painting clear parts and building the remaining landing gear parts. The end is in sight.

In these times I wouldn't use the word "killing". Perhaps "greatly frustrating to the point of personal harm"? My wife and I have a deal, "no model work on the weekends". With little else to do, it's calling me... I have some finished work hanging in the 3D printer for the "House by the Railroad" project. I'm working that simultaneously since I have to print out many components before the job is ready to build. Besides, the drying time on the A-K is so long that I have to find filler projects to do while waiting.

The cutting mat is already showing signs of wear. By building on it in addition to cutting, it's getting CA, Bondic, paint and other contaminents on it. That's just the way I work. When I was a kid, it didn't take me long to make my brand-new school notebooks to look like a war zone.

I just reviewed some stuff I missed back on page one. I know this isn't exactly on point, but I sure like that new cutting mat. I'm cleaning up my mess and I want one too.

Back to the Typhoon project, I keep watching your progress, and lookoing at a few of these in stock for around $120 US. So tempting. You're killing me here.

Builder 2010

Didn't get much done today. Wrestling with my 3D printer. It was a draw.

Got the first coat on the Saber.

 

Brilliant!

Love the bakgrund story.

Have the kit since more then a year already, instruction booklet so worn by now I am thinking of contacting Airfix to see if they can get me a new one...

Catching up on your posts since late Jan. Most inspiring! 

Keep them coming please :)

Very Best Regards

Svenne 

I try to use blue masking tape too for large surface areas. Looks like you can actually see the finish line from here! 

......Still following along and enjoying watching your progress.

First thing today was masking the bottom top demarcation line and then completely masking all of the bottom color areas. I had just gotten my new supply of Tamiya tape from my local hobby shop, Scale Reproductions Inc, which offered curbside service. I used blue tape for the large areas since it's much less expensive. I use Tamiya tape exclusively for all hard edges.

The flange around the gun shields is still supposed to show bottom color as are the entire shields themselves. I used my Tamiya Flexible Masking tape to tightly curve around the flange. If there's any leakage, I'll go back and touch up.

I then laid out where the Invasion Stripes were going to go and masked off the entire area. I didn't want to deal with the other colors showing through. The bottom color is pretty neutral and shouldn't be a problem. The painting plan sheet shows the distances in mm where the stripes go. I then painted the A-K Air RAF Dark Green straight from the bottle. I had to get used to how it flows and had some runs which I brushed out by hand, force dried the first coat with a heat gun and then shot a second coat which leveled out the previous troubles. I estimated where the Dark Ocean Grey will go and left it sort of blank. I'll mark out these areas more clearly in pencil after the paint dries a good 24 hours. I will decide whether to hard mask, soft mask or freehand as I go forward. I tend to lean to freehand. I did this with the Thud and it worked pretty well. The A-K paint dries to a semi-gloss and I may not have to gloss coat prior to decaling. That would be nice.

The last thing done was spray the rockets Tamiya olive drab. These shouldn't be weathered since they would only be used once.

With being in the house my modeling is helpful, but my wife and I are also going out for walks. As a result, I'm working on several projects at once. I'm building stuff for the railroad (mostly working on the 3D printer) and also doing things for the Typhoon. To that end, I assembled the rockets today and sanded all the little inconsistencies. I drilled a 0.020" hole in the tail of each and another hole in the back of the launch rails. The holes on the rockets has two functions: it provides the anchor point for a wire that will simulate the ignition lead. This lead will go to the launch rail also. It also provided a convenient place to insert a piece of phos-bronze wire that will hold the rockets for painting.

I'm holding all the rockets in my lazy susan/alligator clipped rotating fixture.

Notice the exquisitely "neat" work area. This is the main reason why I can't possibly do any master builder videos, which some people have suggested that I do. I am WAY too disorganized to be videoed. It would be a disaster.

Tomorrow I'll airbrush the olive drab and then make the concentric masks needed for the bulls eye decoration on the rockets' tips.