In My Stash GB : Threepeat

I finally broke the seal on the plastic this morning of the 1/35 AFV Club Bigshot.  I have every intention to pound this out by the end of the year.  With two weeks of vacation time, it shouldn't be a problem.

Hello, Gents.

Seriously... ever since summer started, this has been the most hectic time of my life.  Won't bore you with the details, but it does appear that things are finally stabilizing once again.  I too have finally had an opportunity to sit down and accomplish something on my kit today.  I am also going to press for an on-time completion with what's left in the year. 

So... to a rather strange part of this build.  Recall I'm building a Ka-50 Hokum, with counter-rotating rotors.   Well the kit is designed such that both rotors are glued together as one peice, so they would spin together.   And that just stinks... so i'm trying to build a metal shaft-in-sleeve-in-sleeve apparatus that will enable both rotors to spin independent of each other. 

Kit part with my metal sleeve replacement parts.  Gonna have to dress them up a bit yet.

Balsa substrate

Drill bit in place of the shafts

Cheers.

ARKI - been watching your build.  Looks like it's been a royal pain in the arse! LOL
It's coming together beautifully.

Hey, IL2 is back!

I'm officially nominating you and Arki as the new organizers of the IMS series of GB's with Kenny leaving to do his own thing elsewhere. Whatta you guys say? Huh? Huh?

Robert, good to see you have started.  Eagerly waiting to see that monster come together.

IL, welcome back. I see you are up to your typical standards.   Clever idea to get the rotors to work correctly.

Dupes, sure.  I'd be up for it if IL is, as long as Kenny has no objections and there is sufficient interest in doing another IMS here on these forums.

Wow! It's been a long time since I've been to this thread!

There are some great looking builds everyone!

I finally got a start (albeit a small one) on the Polar Lights Mystery Machine.

Here's the box again:

I also found a set of waterslide decals to replace the kit's peel-and-stick stickers(which are curled badly!) It's still going to be hard masking the green areas. No pain, no gain!

Well, here's my "progress". I got the Scooby and Shaggy figs put together and primed. They're not perfect, but alot of their lower halves won't be seen once everything's together.

Thanks for looking!

Fellow Stasher my apologies at being a poor participant in this years GB.  Work and health issues contributed to limiting my online time heck it limited most everything else.  However all is not lost as I have been moving the piece of junk(more on that later) you chose for me forward.  I still have to sort out my pics and upload them, then I'll post an update. 

I've gone through the posts and to all that have finished their builds well done.

Cheers

As promised here are the progress pics of the Valom Devastator as chosen by you my fellow stashers.

First off the kit

This is a limited run kit and my first experience with this type.  What a surprise or chock as it were.  The resin and pe parts are quite nice however the styrene components are something else.  The fit of the wings and fuselage are very poor actually one of the fuse half's was longer than the other by a good 3 mm so aligning them was going to be fun then throw in the resin bits and the fun begins.

Here is a view of the wing assembly.  Even with all the fitting there was still gaps in the leading edge.  Because of the corrugations on the wing using putty was out, so out came Mr, Surfacer after a few coats the gaps were dealt with now to rescribe all those corrugations

Here is a look at some of the resin bits

After much sanding, fitting, sanding, fitting....

And more sanding and fitting

Now it's starting to look like an airplane

At this stage I've painted the underside and I'm getting ready to paint the upper surface.  I'm getting there but what a rough ride this is not an easy kit and I would'nt recomend it to anybody that has not worked with resin conversions for good kits just my .  More when I have it.

Cheers

Bear

Nice start superbear. Well done to everyone, lots of nice things going on. here's my update after a bt of a break form the USS Essex.

This is the state of play as of today. The fact that IMS IV is starting up has got me motivated again. Putting together and installing 76 20mm guns wasn't much fun and led to this sitting on the side for a few weeks. It's mostly there though, jus small things to add, some decals and some 1/700 aircraft.

In the meantime I did...

1/72 FW Ta 183..so far so good. Basic details and  filler needed to smooth out seams and wing roots.

Airfix 1/48 Hawk. Nice plastic shame about the decals. The white is opaque and although it looks as though the film is tight around the decals, when they slide off the paper they have huge pieces of film around them. They need really close trimming with a knife.

slightly out of focus Tamiya samurai - almost finished, needs more washes etc and some finishing off.

These are the 4 I want to get finished before Xmas...and maybe a 1/72 P-38 as well if there's time.

Paul

Excellent, some life left in this group build toward the end.

Some quick progress pics on my end.  Put some black down on the canopy and exhaust area.  And of course had some paint pull from masking.  That's fixable, but aggravating.  Need to do some more seam work at the canopy, but don't know if I"ll ever get it perfect.

Also started focusing on the rotors, which I had completely neglected.  I have a feeling I'll be working on this build right up to the end.

The Essex looks awesome, Paul.  Godspeed with all those gun turrets :P

Superbear's build is coming right along too. It should look sweet when it's done, the interior looks cool.

Arki, looking at the exhaust area on your kit got me wondering how I will go about weathering my Hokum.  I mean... I've weathered so many aircraft, I know rigth where to work.  This helo on the other hand... hmmm... gonna have to think about it a bit differently.

--

I closed the fuselage assembly, and in a rare departure from my normal process, I decided to prime this build earlier in the process that usual.  I typically spend an extensive period of time working seams before I prime the first time, but the idea I had is that the primer may heal some of the smaller seams, or at least reveal the ones that are small enough not to matter.

Anyway, not much other progress, but it looks neat in gray!  Good enough to bump the thread, i thought.

IL, that is a wicked looking heli.  Not a bad idea on priming early.  Let us know if that condenses down the seam effort.

Thankfully, I won't be worrying about weathering on this.  CG keeps these clean, and frankly I don't weather anyway.

Body work and filler...

The use of early primer made it more apparent where the biggest trouble spots where, but it certainly didn't fix them for me!  I would, however, say that it knocked out the small stuff pretty well though.  And it helped immensly with visulizing the problem spots.  It seemed to expedite things: an evening of sanding (wet worked best on the Tamiya primer), followed by a second cycle of sanding and coating, and the body is now pretty well ready to go.  I am going to start up work in the cockpit area next.  I would definitely try applying primer early again on other builds.

Sorry about the pictures.  Only the camera phone was handy.

Nice progress Arki and Il2.

Arki its looking really nice, always have to put in loads of aftermarket huh?

Il2- Better hurry, the deadlines coming up!

raptordriver wrote:

Arki its looking really nice, always have to put in loads of aftermarket huh?

Yes, glutton for punishment.   Thanks for the comment, Andrew, appreciate it.

I puttered around a bit with the Big Shot this weekend.  I'm  kind of jumping around the instructions a bit.  I don't think their order is very logical.  I'm following Redleg's build over in the Armor forum, since he's building it at the same time.  I recommend y'all check it out, he's really knocking it out of the park.

I got some more done on the Mystery Machine today. I finished painting Shaggy and Scooby. All they need is a quick shot of flat coat because The color I used for Shaggy's shirt has a sheen to it.

They're not perfect, but you can't see much of them once they're mounted anyway.

Here are the boys!

Thanks for looking!

Robert, nice progress.  Certainly is a big kit.  Redleg is tearing it up with his, but I kinda doubt you'll have the time to invest to that level with the time remaining.

Max, love Shaggy and Scooby!  One of the quirkier builds we have.

On my end, I have white highlights painted but not my better work.  Mucho touch-up so no pics of this mess until I get it straightened out.

Fellow Stashers, I have completed the F-101. Would you like to see?

Sorry I have been so slow, its been a hectic trimester at school. With a combination of trying to get perfect grades and four hours of swim practice every day I haven't even touched my model until this weekend.

Alright, I will assume you guys say yes. Here it is, 1/48 Monogram kit staight from the box, except for Aeromaster decals.

Thanks for looking Any comments very welcome.

ARKI looks good so far how close are you to finishing.  You've done very well with the CG orange.

Sir IL2 nice progress on the beast

Mark I'll echo the other Shag & Scoob look good how goes the mystery machine?

Andrew Your F-101 came out super  Well done

Progress report I'm now at putting on the second coat of the blue after I messed up a bit applying the first coat.

After that's done remove the masking, install the gears and final bits, decals and I'll call here done.  So work permitting I will make it before Xmas.

Cheers

Bear 

Essex Update

As you can see the ship is basically done - the flat coat has just been applied in the photos and the aircraft just have to be painted and decaled. Looks like I will make it in time :)

Paul

Well done Paul she looks great

Cheers

Bear

GREAT JOB!!! on the F-101 Raptor Driver. I have seen that kit at Hobby lobby.  Might pick it up for a future build.  Pics are looking good also.  Thanks for sharing. 

Also, check your PM

Bear, thanks.  I'm not as close to finishing as I'd like.  The build is nearly kicking my butt.  This new forum is doing the same.  Can't say I'm thrilled.  Nice progress on your Dauntless.

Paul, sweet work.  Camo looks great, it's suprising how big it is even at 1/700.

Wow - lots of action in the last stretch!  There is some great work up there guys, keep the momentum rolling.  Only 22 days left.

Here's the hokum with finished cockpit and some scratch-built bits.  The rear view mirrors were a challange:

I removed the tail rudder