MONOGRAM MAFIA II GB

Go right ahead Dave. I have nothing copyrighted. Use whatever you can.

Hey Stick,

The Devastator looks fantastic!  It's inspirational and I just picked up another one off Evilbay last week to give it another run. If it's okay with you, I may "borrow" some of your improvements and incorporate them into my next Devastator build......thanks for the inspiration!!

Thank you Len. You're not the first person to call this kit a tough one. I personally dont feel it's that difficult of a build, but I can see where the challenges are during the build. I have heard lots of good things about the GW TBD. I look forward to seeing yours on here one day soon. There are never enough TBDs on here ;-)

You did a really nice job on a tough kit Stik!

Back in March I picked up the Great Wall Hobby TBD kit for a good price...looking at the sprues, it reminds me of an Accurate Mini kit, that level of detail. Hopefully I can make it look as good as your Monogram kit!

Len

Those decals were a mother to get to snuggle down. Thank you for the kind words Fly & Reasoned. I hope the Boss is able to check in here one day soon.

Fantastic Stik!  It looks like a prize winner!

Bravo stik, you really kicked this one up a notch!, the Hammer would be proud!  Those decals look fantastic, snuggled in very nicely (oh, and love the torp).  This is an all-around tight looking build.

Thank you GT. I do appreciate your kind words about this.

That's a real beauty!

Thank you for the kind words. I am glad to hear that you like it RR.

Excellent! Very well done...

All done with this one boss,,, where ever you are Don... Monogram's classic TBD with a bit of help from me and some Tom's Modelworks PE and Evergreen plastic.

Yes they can!  Thank you sir, I am glad to hear that you like it. I have an idea of how to really replicate the overlapping skin panels using them the next time that I tackle this kit. There is another one in my stash. I will be taking photos of the completed build and posting them here shortly. Stay tuned ;-)

Wow! Fantastic work stik, I really like the opened up access look and weathering.  Just shows raised panels can be worked with. 

The last couple of scratch built added details- sime thin styrene rod to simulate a piano door hinge on an access panel for the fixed .30 cal. MG(a pure SWAG as I have no idea if that is how that panel opens- I could not find any photos of the real life, only completely removed.)

and painted/glued in place. The forward panel does open as shown I did find a photo of that!

and I made the armature strut for this panel from some strip styrene

painted with the flight deck figure who is supposed to be placed there

antenna wire (made from my daughters hair- good strength and color) with super glue insulators

and the antenna wire lead (the only close up photo of this that came out focused)

more scratch build work today- I filed some sprue to shape to create the canopy hood guides, then glued them in place. I still need to paint them.

and I glued teh antenna mast and torpedo sighting scope in place

Nice work so far there on round II Fly!

little bits of progress to post today

Fixed & flex mount .30 Cals installed

canopy masking removed and wingtip lights painted w/Tamiya Clear Green & Red

Final fiddly bits painted/touched up. I still need to put in a drop of clear glue for the sight scope lens

Ok, here's where I'm at now.  I repaired the damage to the cockpit, added some spare IP decals, installed the control stick, ejection seat and finished the HUD.  Of course I forgot to take pics of this stuff.  Oh well.

I applied the first layer of paint which is Dark Ghost Grey:

This time I will leave the pylons off.  But I will add a practice AIM-9 and an AN/APX-95.  The fuel tank hasn't changed.

Masking the tiger stripes really shouldn't be very difficult since they're basically a bunch of straight lines.  But it is gonna be time consuming.  And starting Monday I'm gonna be busy for the entire month of June and the first week or two of July.  So it will be a while before I post any new updates.

stikpusher

Thank you sir. Those are the sort of things that I really enjoy in this hobby. individually not a whole lot, but taken together they add up.

Looks great stik!

Thank you sir. Those are the sort of things that I really enjoy in this hobby. individually not a whole lot, but taken together they add up.

Looks good Stik.  Those are some nice extra details.

Torpedo retaining cables glued in place

Lots of fiddly bits work in the past couple days up to now...

Propellor added to the engine

torpedo retaining cables (sounds like a good name) created from wire and tube styrene

holes drilled in bomb racks to accept cables

exhausts & exhaust collector ring painted

and the main wheels and torpedo glued into place

Today I was able to get the Humbrol matt top coat airbrushed on... much better now...

Pin wash of enamel MM Burnt Umber along all panel lines and a wash over all the corrugated areas. Cleaned up th wash with a thinner moisted brush along leading side/upper side and left the shadows in areas of the trailing/lower areas. On the corrugations and certain raised details I drybrushed high light areas with lighter similar colors- Humbrol Steel Grey on the Blue Gray, and Humbrol Camouflage Grey on the Light Gray areas.

Hey Stik, how'd you get the raised panels to hi-light so well, what did you use?

Oh that should look pretty sweet there Fly... Sorry to hear that your last effort got stymied so close to the finish.

Nice work 68GT.  Nice and clean!

Stik, that TBD is turning out great!

Well, I ran into some trouble with the F-20.  First, the Tamiya decals just weren't that good.  This comes as no surprise since Tamiya decals suck 95% of the time.  Couple that with the fact that some of the decals that I had to use to complete the markings were old, dried up and just didn't really lay down well.  

But the real problem was something I did.  I used a lacquer dullcoat on top of the Future and the Future reacted with it.  It pretty much ruined it.  I don't feel that bad about it since I wasn't super happy with it in the first place.  So I stripped it and started the paint process over.  Fortunately, all that was ruined was the paint.  I didn't have to do anything in the way of sanding or repairing anything.

I re-primed it and preshaded it.  Also, I re-masked the canopy and windshield:

I went ahead and purchased some decals this time...instead of trying to use old scraps from the spares box.  The scheme at the top is what I'm going for:

Hopefully I'll have better luck this time around.