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Hi guys! New build I've been messing with to show you. It's a pretty good kit for 1/72 and nothing at all like that last 1/72 aircraft I built (Testors/Hawk F4U-1 Corsair). This one is going together like a charm except for one minor spot, but you'll see that in a minute.First impressions of this kit are that it has to be a re-boxing of a Hasegawa kit. All of the clues in the box support this theory (someone correct me if I'm wrong).The details are not very defined for this scale as I have seen better, but this isn't bad, and a good platform for one of my favorite parts - Scratchbuilding. I started on step one and added improvements as I went. Adding the throttle quadrant, trim wheel, seatbelts, canopy crank handle, Oxygen bottle and fire extinguisher (adds color), and a bunch of odd greeblies around the pit floor to fill up the negative space with something that looks more functional and busy.I detailed the map holder on the right side of the pit after painting. It just needed more detail on this side.All of the knobs were simple made from drops of thick paint built up in layers till they took the right shape.
A reminder of the scale.The only thing I forgot to do here was to use a silver pencil to trim the gauges just to make them pop a little bit more. The yellow circle on the right side of the panel is actually a knob on a lever. After the panel was installed the knob got lost behind the flap lever and you really have to move around at odd angles to even see it. I could've left that out.And then this is the part that gave me a touch of trouble. The wing roots, where the connect behind the pit, under the plane needed some filling. Since I want to rescribe these panel lines back in I'm using bits of stretched sprue instead of my usual Bondo.Now that I've added all of that fine, micro detail. I want to show it off, right? Well in typical Hasegawa-like fashion the canopy, though well fitted and quite clear, is too thick to display it open. So after thinking on it overnight I woke with a fairly good idea. I have some different types of clear acetate to work with and some of them are thicker than others. The first one I tried was a perfect thickness.The first step was to take the original canopy and cover it with masking tape. I then trimmed the masking tape to the canopy edges so I have a copy of the canopy's shape. I applied it to the acetate and cut it out very carefully with a sharp pair of scissors. Now the next step was one that most of us are familiar with; heat bending. I heated up a small pot of water to boiling and let it cool down to a simmer. But there was a problem. The acetate not only did not want to bend correctly, but fogged from the heat application. I tried polishing it afterwards but that didn't work as this particular acetate is made in layers. So on to the next sheet of scrap plastic. A paper thin sheet I found somewhere and not my first choice. This time however, I decided after cutting out the shape to tape it over the original part and heat shape it very carefully with a lighter. Using the tape as a barrier this method actually worked. Because this acetate is so much thinner it is still flexible so care is needed to make sure it doesn't get bent out of shape.I then took the masking tape off of the new canopy and did some careful measurements to make the frame masking.I primed it with Rustoleum clear Matte (to seal around the tape edges) and then Krylon Camouflage pea green (closest to interior green in a can I have) and to make sure it has a positive connection to the model later, I added some stretched sprue railings that fit into the rail guides on the side of the fuselage. Later after I remove the temporary canopy mask I will add the rest of the track rails to pit sides. It'll look a lot better than the flat slabs that are there now to accomodate the original canopy piece and it'll set the pit sides to a more accurate height. I taped up the clear parts to use as a mask so I don't have to worry about getting any paint in the pit, but quickly found out the rear window "bars" are far too thick to let the new canopy slide over them. Seriously, they are almost a millimeter in thickness, which stick out very far from the model. I sanded those down til they met the level of the masking tape and all is well. They are now flush with the fuselage sides.^ This is the "before" shot where you can see those frame bars and how far they stick out. If they had done this for all of the window frames it would have made masking the front windscreen much simpler. Because once the masking was done sanding down the frame bars was easy on the rear windows. I'll have to add the windscreen framing later by hand as the lines are very feignt and not easily seen. Oh, maybe I'll try clear scotch tape! That might work! So that's where I managed to get before this weekend. I've got more work to do on the wing roots before moving on to the rest of the model but it's all going together quite well. This one is actually easy.Thanks for looking! Have a great weekend. :D
I taped up the clear parts to use as a mask so I don't have to worry about getting any paint in the pit, but quickly found out the rear window "bars" are far too thick to let the new canopy slide over them. Seriously, they are almost a millimeter in thickness, which stick out very far from the model. I sanded those down til they met the level of the masking tape and all is well. They are now flush with the fuselage sides.^ This is the "before" shot where you can see those frame bars and how far they stick out. If they had done this for all of the window frames it would have made masking the front windscreen much simpler. Because once the masking was done sanding down the frame bars was easy on the rear windows. I'll have to add the windscreen framing later by hand as the lines are very feignt and not easily seen. Oh, maybe I'll try clear scotch tape! That might work!
So that's where I managed to get before this weekend. I've got more work to do on the wing roots before moving on to the rest of the model but it's all going together quite well. This one is actually easy.Thanks for looking! Have a great weekend. :D
- Mike Brindos "Lost Boy"
Wow, super nice work on such a small kit. Awesome sauce !!
BK
On the bench:
A lot !! And I mean A LOT!!
2024 Kits on deck / in process / completed
14 / 5 / 2
Nice start on this Mike, some good detail in the Pit.
I checked on scalemates and there is no mention of it being an old Hase kit. According to the site it was a new tool kit back in 1999 along with a P-40M/N and was re-released in 2012.
I am a Norfolk man and i glory in being so
On the bench: Airfix 1/72nd Harrier GR.3/Fujimi 1/72nd Ju 87D-3
That's odd. Everything about this kit says Hasegawa to me. They even copied the sprue shapes. Odd that they would waste a bit of plastic without having anything writen on it. I would think they'd have designed it more efficiently if this were a new tool.
The kit even has a few of the old Hase hang-ups, such as overly thick parts. If it came in a Hase Box I wouldn't question it. lol
Funny you should say that. I have the Academy, Hasegawa and Italeri 72nd Kubelwagens. The first two are exactly the same, dimensions, sprue layout everything.
If they have copied them un-offically, i would have thought someone would have noticed, and to do so so exactly without the original moulds must take some doing.
I believe in their early days they did copy other companies kits but changed some small things to get away with it. But i didn't think that was still going on into the late 90's.
Hmm... That makes some sense. Its not a copy, but a legit new tool made by Hasegawa while they were partnered.
What stands out in my mind now is that I picked this kit up for about $10. They had a 1/72 P-51D as well, but it was $25 for some reason. If these are Hase designed kits then I want that Stang too.
That reminds me, I've been told these decals are... not so good. But I got to use some of those lovely cartograph decals and they were a dream. Any recomendations for a good scheme??
Can't help you on the scheme Mike. But i have heard many bad stories about Academy decals. So far i have avoided useing them, so i can't say from personal experiance.
Excellent job, Mike, but the area under the rear glass panels are not Interior Green, but OD 41 just like the exterior colors.
WIP: Monogram 1/72 B-26 (Snaptite) as 73rd BS B-26, 40-1408, torpedo bomber attempt on Ryujo
Monogram 1/72 B-26 (Snaptite) as 22nd BG B-26, 7-Mile Drome, New Guinea
Minicraft 1/72 B-24D as LB-30, AL-613, "Tough Boy", 28th Composite Group
Excellent job on the cockpit. A very neat trick with the forming of the canopy. I'm sure that the rest of the build will be just as great. I'll be following.
Toshi
On The Bench: Revell 1/48 B-25 Mitchell
Married to the most caring, loving, understanding, and beautiful wife in the world. Mrs. Toshi
richs26 Excellent job, Mike, but the area under the rear glass panels are not Interior Green, but OD 41 just like the exterior colors.
Now that, I did not know. That's an easy fix. Cosider it taken care of. :) Thank you!
Thank you for the compliments, gentlemen. And the advice! I have always wondered about how that should stick out as it does, but my only reference for that has been that old Monogram P-40B, that I'm also about to finish lol.Toshi, thanks for following along. Hopefully I can teach you something you don't already know, as it would be my honor. :D
I've seen both of those built up and they both look fantastic. But I can only get what is available locally, if I can get one at all. Budgetary reasons, of course.
The one I was looking at was the same newer box style as the P-40E so that's whay I had considered it. I'm familiar with the older boxing of the Academy P-40 and it wasn't that good. A friend of mine built it a long time ago and the parts fit wasn't that great then. I still have a few pices from it and they lack the current level of definition.
But I'm guessing the stang I saw in the newer box is okay?
Thanks so much for sharing your scratch building techniques, very impressive and clever. You're taking a ho-hum model ( interior wise anyways ) and really making it come alive. I'm taking notes.
I'm finally retired. Now time I got, money I don't.
Thank you very much, Jay. Take as many notes as you like, use them as you will, and enjoy the results! :D Most of what I know I learned from other modellers. Very little of what I know is from my own experimentations. This is why we are all here, right? ;)
Learning new ideas and applying them to our own skills is a big part of why this is fun. If I can help others enjoy our hobby more, then I'm all for it. :) This hobby needs to be rediscovered by the new generations and taken to the next levels of imagination and creativity.
Fine work you did on the cockpit, Mike. Im really curious as to how the acetate canopy would turn out. Id have made the same acetate choice.
As I recall when Academy first came out in the ... 90s? ... their kits were exact copies of other kits, like Tamiya's.
No bucks, no Buck Rogers
It's been a while since I popped in on the aircraft building scene and I'm glad I did. What a job on that interior!! Keep up the great work Mike!
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Thanks, Allen. I think the acetate canopy is going to work out very well for what I want to see in the end. It's thinner than I wanted and wasn't my first choice, but its going to work out well I think.Especially after I get to add the channels to the pit sides. That's going to be a neat detail in this scale I think and should help convey a larger scale look to the build. :D
Mustang, I though you lived in this section and mearly visited the others ocasionally lol. Thank you! I'm very happy with the results so far. I'm going to keep up the good work indeed! :D
A rushed, blurry picture from this morning. I started reshaping the rear wing roots and have added a touch of filler to smooth it out. The gun ports are also being blended into the wings and there are some odd panel lines up front on the lower nose that I've got a little CA stuck on for filler up front. I'm not sure if I will rescribe these or not. I'll have to look at some images of the real deal before I make up my mind. The forward wing root lines only go half-way and then end where the parts meet. ??? That may not get fixed. I've already lost some rivet detail at the back of the wing roots that I don't think I can recover. They seem to be on one side of the panel lines, and then on the other side of the panel line on the other part. So.... yeah. How about no rivet details in these areas at all. Hmm?
Decisions, decisions.
Advice?
I did a little more work on this plane, but it's all packed away now so I'm not so distracted by our move coming up by the end of the month.^ I sprayed some Tamiya Fine Surface Primer over the model to check for errors in the work thus far and, no surprise, there was more work to be done on the join area where the back wing root meets the fuselage. I got this area fairly smooth and almost invisible. Close inspection will reveal the small errors, but its good enough for 90% of us.^ I drilled out the exhaust manifolds at this stage. The main components are assembled so it just all of the small parts to finish preparing.^ I squished the tires a bit. They look over weighted, but photographic evidence shows that they did look this squished under a full load. I just went carefully with a Bic lighter and pushed them onto my desk. ^ I cleaned up the side bulges so they don't look like they're going flat. ^ I sprayed some color over it to further check for flaws and because I don't like working from a white surface. The wheels and the propeller are just sitting in place for now. Now some of you may have notice the tail, and if you didn't before, you're looking at it now lol. You may have a good clue as to where this build is headed. I finally found a good scheme I liked and its easy to replicate with some basic masking.^ First layer of paint is Israeli Armor Sand acrylic from Model Master. I'm not as impressed with the MM acrylic as I am with the Tamiya brand. It doesn't spray as nice lol.Now here is where I am trying something I've heard of, but not yet tried for myself. I sprayed on Model Master Medium Green enamel for the camouflage. Its all a bit too bright for what I'm aiming for, but I can utilize a filter and correct this problem. I just need to wait til after I need to make any corrections or touch-ups or it will be hard to match up the paint later.^ I thinned-down some of the Israeli Armor Sand and brushed it on at the edges of the camouflage. This method blends the color transition so you have softer looking hard edges between the colors. Its a neat trick and as it turns out, its really easy. ^ After 3 rounds of Testors clear matte I sealed it all up with a cote of Vallejo Clear Gloss. Now I can move on to masking up and painting the Sky Grey onto the bottom.That's where this build will sit for a while. It's back in its box and ready to go into temporary storage till I can re-establish my desk and work area in a new home. Thanks for viewing! Have a great weekend.
Its been a while since I had to put this little plane away for a move. Since then our friend Toshi has inspired me to dig it out and get back to work on it. :)
I tried some paint removal because I wanted to start a repaint, but it got a little messy and by the time it was sorted out I thought I was in the clear. Turns out I wasn't as fortunate as I thought. The old paint layers ended up filling in the panel lines and I couldn't see it til I reprimered. This morning I decided I was going to have to dig that stuff out and I picked up my scribing tool and it turns out that its not as bad as I thought. Since the panel lines are acting as guides it hasn't been nearly as horrible of an experience then I thought it was going to be.
Unfortunately it means I'll have to respray the bottom, which as of last night was pretty decent. Oh, well. We gots ta do, what we gots ta do. Onward!
Its ugly, but I'll fix it. I'll also never try removing large amounts of paint with Testors Acrylic paint remover again. Everything got sticky and it didn't want to wipe off very well at all. It was like I'd rubbed the model down with honey. I hate sticky. >:( Well, that's what I'm up to. Have a great day, my fellow modellers!!
Its ugly, but I'll fix it. I'll also never try removing large amounts of paint with Testors Acrylic paint remover again. Everything got sticky and it didn't want to wipe off very well at all. It was like I'd rubbed the model down with honey.
I hate sticky. >:(
Well, that's what I'm up to. Have a great day, my fellow modellers!!
"Can you fly this plane and land it?...Surely you can't be serious....I am serious, and don't call me Shirley"
What's you got's to do isn't so bad. These issues are something you can overcome with your eyes closed! So far everything looks great! I can't wait for more future updates! Your fellow forum modeler.
Oh wow, that's some nice work there Mike. How on earth did I miss this back at the first of the year????
Clever idea on the canopy, I really like that!
"I dream in fire but work in clay." -Arthur Machen
That is a very cool scheme for a P-40, I don't think I've ever seen one painted like that. Very very cool.
lol. Thanks guys. I've changed my mind about the paint scheme which is why its back in black. So far, so good.
The rescribing of all of the panel lines is progressing, though tedious and eye straining. Because of the old paint flowing into all of the recesses this job is sometimes hard and I'm afraid some of my panel lines are going to be wrong, but I will push forward regardless. Some of the places where I didn't try to clean off the old paint look as if they have a fresh primer on them and I'm glad my experiment didn't go past the wings and central fuselage or I'd be at this for a week and should probably just start over with a fresh kit lol.
Right side is complete. Now on to the left side. [sigh]
Mike,
That's really nice detailing work on the pit, the canopy, the tires . . .
Really nice work.
Chris
Thanks, Chris. I hope it turns out okay after all of the rescribing. lol
I normally use fumeless oven cleaner as well. But I didn't want to lose my cockpit paint. Since, all of the little tiny knobs are made out of paint, that would be bad.
If I'd simply sprayed over the piant job that was already there, I would be having less problems with this lol. Live and learn. That just part of the hobby.
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