No More Excuses GB: Part Deux. Closed to New Entries But Finish What You Signed Up For

Fantasic job on those 727's.  I will update the front page with your builds.

Thunderbolt, nice fix on the axle. I see you have a nice plan of attack to get this one finally completed.

Thanks, Kevin. I got some work done on her yesterday. I installed the snorkel and reattached a lamp that had cracked off -- the Russian plastic is not so enthusiastic in its response to cya as others so it's a tiny but frustrating. The hull is closed and tight and the painting is underway, I did the tires and hubs and laid down a base colour on the Tamiya tracks:

My airbrush needs a service so I won't be cracking on quite as quick as I had hoped, but I should still be laying on the camo next week. It'll be very satisfying to see this one join the display shelf, it's my oldest unfinished armour piece.

Cheers, Mike/TB379

Looking good Mike. I'll look forward to seeing you add the 'realism'.

BTW, how do you usually mask the wheels, assuming that you airbrushed them ?

Cheers

Tony

Tony -- I use the template method. I have a couple of sheets of circular drawing templates, and some special photoetched ones, and these rims clicked neatly into the 17mm circle on one of the sheets. It sure makes the job e-a-s-y!

Mike/TB379

Tax, those airliners look great. Way outside my comfort zone in modeling even though I grew up building them many many years ago as  young kid. I am impressed by your work here.

Thunderbolt great save on the T-72 road wheel arm. The T-72 is one of my favorite bad guy tanks, it has seen so much service around the world. I cant wait to see yours come together.

I only made a small amount of progress on my RF-4 so far this week. I have had lots of family duties interfering here... ah well. My main work was filling in the Sparrow wells as my references say that the RF-4 had those filled. I used lengths of sprue cut and filed to the appropriate length and shape to fill the wells, then sanded them flush to match the surrounding fuselage contours.

Tony - Sorry, I haven't been following along in this GB as I should.   Just checked out your 727s and I must say they are quite nice!  I love the different color schemes for both and a very interesting choice of airlines!  Not one I was familiar with! 

Mike - Luv your choice of queens to work on!  I had a Tamiya T-72 kit many years ago that I never finished and just disappeared.  I remember it being a pretty good kit, but the Zvezda kit looks pretty nice too!  Great fix on the broken axle and overall it looks like a winner!  Can't wait to see some paint on it. 

Stik - I know we're all  eager to see that RF-4!  Keep at it!

bufflehead  - Where the heck is that M4A3 Sherman and Pz.IV Ausf. A?? 

So here's the deal... I got the M2A2 stripped down and rebuilt the lower hull, primed it, and re shot it with MM Acryl gulf armor sand only to have it run all over the place. I was so incredibly ***ed off at this sight that I smashed the lower hull under a fist went inside and scraped the remainder of the parts in to a hefty bag. However I'm not dropping out of the GB just changing projects to my Kawasaki ZX-14 by Tamiya that has to get done by first week of October anyway yet hasn't been touched since April mainly because of an issue wherein the U.S. government held up Tamiya lacquers for relabling then Tamiya discontinued it's TS-13 gloss clear causing me to have to try and hunt down an new clear for the cowlings and wheels.. Here's a link to the Fotki album with all the photos up to this point.

http://public.fotki.com/corvettemike/automotive/kawasaki-zx-14/

I started working on the cowls today. They had already been prepped months ago so it was just a matter of washing them in soapy water then priming them with Tamiya fine white surface primer. I decided I want to do a two tone metallic green/metallic black scheme so I first sprayed the appropriate areas with Tamiya TS-52 Candy Lime Green. I will let this dry overnight, then tomorrow morning I will mask off the green and spray some Testors one coat lacquer metallic black and clear coat all of the panels.

Taxtp- Those 727's are gorgeous! Someday I will try an airliner...

Thanks Sub and Bufflehead. I thought I'd take a welcome break from gloss finishes and build some military aircraft now.

I've just realised that two of my next three builds need gloss finishes, a Sea Harrier in Gloss Extra Dark Sea Gray and a Corsair in Gloss Sea Blue. At least I'm not going for the relatively pristine white finish of an airliner.

Cheers

Tony

Mike, that T-72 is coming along nicely.  Like Stik said, a good looking bad guy tank.

Stik, excellent work with your RF-4.  Nice job accurizing it.

Corvettemike, sorry to hear your M2A2 won that war.  Happens to everyone.  I am sure your ZX-14 will work out ok for ya.

Tax- Most modern aircraft are kept in pretty nice condition, but if you think about where and when most Corsairs served, you could fade the you-know-whats out of it and it would look right! I think the best Corsair I ever saw was a (New Zealand, I think) bird on a South Pacific diorama, that looked like it had been sitting in the sun for years. Fit the bill perfectly!

Thanks Sub, I've been thinking about that. It's a French F4U-7 at the Suez crisis, they would have been pretty long in the tooth by then.

Cheers

Tony

With Tamiya clear banned for resale in the US, I had to go with the Testors product on the body panels....BIG MISTAKE! Every panel cracked up like a desert floor, then when I tried stripping them in DOT-3 brake fluid (cheap wally world brand) they became etched. In the end I called the folks at Tamiya USA and obtained a brand new set of body panels which just arrived today. I also have 5 cans of the Tamiya clear inbound from the orient, however being aerosol they must come via sea transport so I'm looking at 2-3 weeks on the sidelines before this bike sees any further progress :(

Buffle and Mac, thanks for the kind words about the RF-4. I have been concentrating on a few other projects mainly, so it is currently sidelined, but still on deck in my batting order. The only other work that I have done on it is to paint up the interior of the camera bay area Flat Black.

So While my other main projects are drying/waiting, etc, last night I pulled out another long in progress sidelined project. My career build of the 1/48 Monogram SBD that I have been upgrading. To make a long story short this build has been heavily modified. That is probably why it has been sidelined so much and taken so long. Recently I realized it was pretty much ready for the main paint job. So last night I masked off the canopy. (I also applied Polly Scale ELO [Easy Lift Off] to the salvaged TBD propeller that I am using on this kit). And I handbrushed on some Humbrol Primer on the hubs of the True Details wheels I am using on this build. Like I said this kit is heavily modified and many kit parts are being replaced to make a proper SBD-3. Today I airbrushed on Aeromaster Warbird Acrylics (anybody remember or still have those paints?) for the early war colors of Blue Gray over Light Gray. I am still trying to decide which decals to use on this build. USS Wasp at Guadalcanal, or a USS Enterprise at Midway. I have another Midway SBD in my stash so its a toss up right now.

here are a few pics

The parts left to be painted and attached, the twin mount .30s came from a Hasegawa A-24- that build I am going to give a single mount .30 as was flown over Papua in 1942. The 500 lb bomb comes from an AMT P-40K and the prop was salvaged from an old TBD build that I junked. The spinner cap is from a Hobbycraft P-35.

under surface

close up of cowl demarcation- the cowl was only pressed on for painting, I still have work to do on the engine. the kit engine was a semi detailed engine face molded into the cowl. I cut it out and ended up using a Quickboost engine of the proper type.

close up of the tail area

and an overall shot of the upper surface and the parts still needing to be painted & attached

I'd like to join with a Revell F-4U4 Corsair that I started a couple of years ago.

I somehow got paint on the underside of the canopy and didn't know how to fix it.  I put it back on the shelf, then we moved and I haven't been working on any models.

In June I started working on them again.  I signed up here and found a solution to my canopy problem.  Last week, I started working on the Corsair again.  I'll post WIP pictures as soon as I find a decent replacement for Photobucket.

Stik, nice work on that SBD.  I especially like how the soft edge camo turned out.  Did you mask that or freehand it?  Either way it turned out great.

Corvettemike, hang it there buddy.  No big hurry at this place.

DJinFlorida, Welcome aboard!  I will add you to the roster.

Thank you Mac. I do the color demarcation freehand.  I have not ever tried to mask for a soft edge camo. The only "mask" I will use is to hold a folded piece of paper or such beneath the horizontal stabilizers to prevent or reduce overspray of Blue Gray onto the Light Gray. Of course I had  to go back and do a bit of touch up to get it how I wanted.

If you don't mind me having a 2nd build I can toss this in while I'm waiting on my Kawasaki stuff. Found it a bit ago, according to my log notes it's been about 12mo since any work was done on it. Needs wheels, an engine, and exhaust. Interior is done (no pics) aside from the dash. I remembered it because a model builder buddy came over and was like "where's your bee at? Need to finish that man!"

http://public.fotki.com/corvettemike/automotive/1970-dodge-coronet-/

AMT 1970 Dodge Coronet Super Bee. plum crazy with a white vinyl roof made from masking tape.

Great Mike. We see too few cars here anyway, and it's a muscle car to boot ! I'll be watching avidly.

Cheers

Tony

Muscle Cars rule! At least in the car world...

Only minor progress on my career build SBD- I painted up the twin mount .30s.... Eewwwwwww...

Well, I still do need to give a second coat on the gun armor, paint the handles, and give a wash, but hey, at least it's painted now...

Between working up the front glacias details on my T-34 I wrapped up the interior save for the dash which still needs to be painted flat black. I'll post up photos tomorrow after I get it entirely done.

OK you've inspired me...Goal is to get ALL THIS done by Dec 31 2012 so I can start out New Years 2013 with a clean slate. A big chunk of it should be gone by at least October which will leave 4 builds or so to get done.

Here is the completed interior. The seats and door panels are sprayed Tamiya flat white while all of the black portions on the tub were brush painted MM Acryl flat black. I didn't add any of the carpet, seatbelts, etc.. I would normally add in the interest of not getting bogged down. I mean the point of this GB is to just get it done! All "chrome" areas are plain old Testors silver from the 1/4 oz bottle. The gauge faces have drops of Microscale krystal kleer to represent a lens. Of note I love how these kits manufactured in the 1970's have this issue (seems like most of them do) where the seats are either too tall or the column is too short resulting in  steering wheel that rests on the drivers seat. Now about my main project (Kawasaki ZX-14) my distributer from whom I ordered my clear coat has told me that it hasn't even left Hong Kong yet so the time I was expecting to get back to work on that has been greatly extended, for how long I'm not sure.

I installed the glass and attempted (key word attempted) to install the interior and under tray and everything went south. Not a damn piece of it fits going in to final assembly! The chassis to body fit is so loose if you pick up the car the bottom drops out. I tried gluing it only to be playing Forza 4 and hear a loud POP followed shortly by another POP, walk over and see the stressed joints had popped and the body fell out. When the joints popped it must have sprung the body because in turn the rear glass came out. Asking some friends and other forums about this kit and seeing if there's a way around this. If I can't find anything I'm gonna beat it up, rust it out, and tear it up make up a groundwork base and call it a pre restoration barn find with no under tray. Probably use some tall grass or weeds to hide that fact along with some plywood and whatever, maybe make it look like the suspension collapsed and add flat tires. I dunno I'll figure it out, either way this bee is getting done.

It was looking great Mike, it would be a shame to see it beat up. Can you add some plastic to the chassis to get a more positive fit ? I had to do it on a BMW a few years back, it worked OK but each one is different.

Stay with it.

Cheers

Tony

I was thinking along those lines. Problem is for some reason, not sure if the front glass is blocking it or what the front of the interior tub doesn't want to settle in to position. It sits lower in the front than the rear and that's affecting the fit too as far as the front end of the chassis plate sitting fully within the body. In other words when the chassis is on the body sits at a nose up angle with the chassis sitting level and sticking out from below. I put it back on the shelf for the night and started in on my Fokker Dr 1 for the great war GB and I'll mull the situation over. If worst comes to worst and it absolutely will not fit no matter what I do it'll play a nice experiment for the instant rust I just got before I use it on any armor builds.

OK, I am bringing one more build off of the sidelines for this GB. This past Saturday at AMPS Chapter, we had a "build day" where we all brought in a kit to work on, instead of having some sort of seminar on building, finishing, etc.  Well most of my current in progress or sidelined builds are pretty much in the painting stage... except this one, so I got a chance to restart it, Dragon's T26E1 Pershing. I started the build last year and had finished most of it except for the link by link tracks and some fiddly bits, when I sidelined it due to moving. And it sat sidelined until Saturday. Between then and today I finished up one side of the tracks... YAY!

So here is the completed track on one side

and here is where is stands overall with the upper hull placed onto the lower hull for this photo

Mike, add as many as you would like!  No limit my friend.  The interior looks great!  Nice work.  I will update the roster.

Stik, thanks for the tickets to the gun show      I will add the Pershing to the roster too.  I always liked the look of that tank. 

macattack80

I will add the Pershing to the roster too.  I always liked the look of that tank. 

Me too... like it's contemporaries the Centurion and T-44/T-54, it just had a good solid non nonsense look.