i find you have to polish the black to within and inch of its life and put on so thin a coat of the polished finishes they are hardly there, to get anything resembling the look they promise. a lot of hassle.

I think the finish you achieved is really nice and looks the part perfectly.

Hey guys I am officially done with this 1/48 Academy P-36 now, I just don;t have the will to try and flog a dead horse anymore.

I have learned the following. 

Alclad black primer does not work for me, the decals in this kit ware really bad (had to mask and spray the tail), will do the pannel wash before decals next time.

I would say I am about 70% happy with the NMF look, I was going for pollished allu, but it looks more like airframe allu to me. The Tamiya gloss black enamel gave me way better results.

Glad it helps!

Hang in there Talent!  Trainwrecks like that which can be successfully navigated give me hope to soldier through my own little meltdowns. =D  Keep it coming.

B52Gunner, that's a great link!  that'll come in handy for my build in a big way.

I am puting the last detail on my P-36, I will post pix asap and then calling it done! SOme of the decals have failed, but I will not be replacing them, I mainly built this model as NMF practice so I am not to concerned with the final results

Theuns

Cmk wheel wells grafted into the academy compared to the kit well.

DSC02640 by omgpainful, on Flickr

DSC02641 by omgpainful, on Flickr

this is the oez well...hmmmm.

DSC02642 by omgpainful, on Flickr

this is the wonderful oez "fit"

IMG_1448 by omgpainful, on Flickr

IMG_1451 by omgpainful, on Flickr

after a few aplications of mr disolved putty to fill the trenches.

DSC02632 by omgpainful, on Flickr

motor tooled to hell and back to fit the engine. it will be filled and smoothed obviously. The white is whats left of the plasticard i had lined it with to fit the kits parts.

the above are all the oez kit. this one is the academy PF. i decided i will try to fit these as they are a big improvement over the kits.

You're on the list!

Hi...this is the kit.....it'll built oob with eventually same scratch......add only a beautiful Super scale decal sheet and montex mask for the canopy.....that's all.....Ciao from Italy.Enrico.

Starfighter: I say you're in! Just tell me the manufacturer of that kit so I can put you on the list!

Gunner: I love your Mustang! Every bit of it! That is one great looking build. I hope mine turns out half as good...

Talentless: I'm looking forward to those progress pics!

I say come on in, the waters warm and the people are friendly and wecall love a nice shiney sabre  B-)

Smaal update, i almost gave up on the mf as the kit is horrible. I have sooooo many lovely kits waiting to be built i thought why am i bothering. Thrn i came across an old buildcthread somewhere of a similar kit, a time when it was considered one of the best. It changed my mind an i decided to try and do the old girl justice. So i hacked the snot out of it with a motor tool and sqeezed in a brassin engine just for good measure B-) pics of the aftermath to follow.

Hi guys,beautiful works all around,I've a n F86-D Sabre 1\48 for this GB......what do you think???

Thats all looking damn good to me, cant wait to see it all put together.

Well, so far so good.  I have many pieces prepped and ready.  I'm waiting for my 132015 HGW seatbelts to come in before I can finalize the cockpit and get the fuselage glued together.  I have my wing prepped to spray some Mr. Surfacer 1200 to cover up the rivets for the puttied wing look.  Decided to go Alclad Duraluminum for the slightly dull gray look and NMF for the remainder of the wing.  Here are several links to some great similar builds from others that I use as references. http://www.scalespot.com/onthebench/p51tamiya/build.htm

http://www.scalespot.com/onthebench/p51d/build.htm

The second link is a Dragon model but further down, he talks about some great Alclad techniques for the different shades of aluminum on varied panels.  Great stuff here for those that are in the dark like me.  To my dismay, my front windscreen had a scratch running right across the middle pane.  I had to order some Novus 2 plastic polish so that and my micro mesh polishing pads will have to be put to good use.  Bummer.  I will be dipping the canopy in Future to help after polishing the scratch out.

I have heard from several reports I read from actual pilots that the wings were puttied to include panel lines.  After hard flying, sometimes some of this putty would work out and may/may not be refilled.  Wingtips are also a gray area.  Some wingtips were puttied, others not.  I have also decided to leave the gun bay panels NMF to add contrast to the wing.  My NMF will be using Alclad paint of the shades of Airframe Aluminum, White Alum., Dark Alum, Duraluminum, Polished Aluminum.  I'll also be priming the model using Alclad gray primer followed by gloss black and then the Alclad.  I can't wait to get started.  More to follow and I am hoping I am posting this correctly.  Should I have replied to the Header Post or just Add New Post.  Hope I'm not stepping on any toes here.

Happy modeling y'all!

wish i could get my seams as neat as yours.

If anyone can, you can Theuns.

Some progress on the Sabre. primed it, it's not bad. a couple of little fixes, re-prime and polish the nthe Alclad. Added some harnesses, the rest is from the kit.

Cheers

Tony

These are the frist real "issues" I have had with Academy decals. After trying the rudder decals I decided to strip it off and mask/paint it on. Will see how it comes out.

Theuns

if you use the tamiya TS-14 i would be very interested to know how it works with alclad!

i love it when the decals start going on, i think its my favourite part of a build. its a real downer when they play up, i feel your pain :-(

I will use something else as a black coat on my Sabre next. In the meantime I have put the decals on the P-36, and most are OK, ecxcept for the darn rudder decal that did not conform or sit well atall. I am beating it into submition with microsol.

The red fuse stripe also needs sime work and toutchup where it broke.

Oh, and the big 'US ARMY" decal on the bottom also no working! Come to think of it, this is the first time I had real issues with the Academy decals. :-(

Theuns

Try using decanted Tamiya spray paint (TS-14). That stuff works like a charm. Just spray it on the model using your AB of choice and wait for it to dry completely. Then add a second coat and let it dry as well. Now you just have to sand/polish everything to get a perfectly smooth and shiny finish...

Theuns...I've got the Alclad gloss black as well and I've seen it do the same thing before but I also come to realize my brush wasn't quite clean enough.  Also, I'm no expert on Alclads yet, but I've been making several test sprays to see how they all lay down in comparison to each other.  I would recommend  shaking the gloss black thoroughly and try it on something you don't need.  ...aaaaaaaannnd thoroughly clean your brush.  =]

Wow now that is one derelick Sabre ! Is that North Korean markings on it?

I might have to go back to enamels for the gloss black, I just thought that the "right primer" would work better, but allas the shine on the P-36 is not the same as on my Mirage 3 with the same pollished allu.

Anyway, so we all learn hey?

I managed to put the silver dope onto the controll surfases and the red on the cowling. I am busy with a re-cover of a rudder on a client's PA-22 TriPacer, so I was able to EXACTLY match the sliver dope look of full size LOL!   Tamiya X-11 sliver enamel is the one to use.

Theuns

comparison of the engine parts. Things have come a long way from the two part oez through the really nice eduard etch to the lovely brassin set.

DSC02620 by omgpainful, on Flickr

the oez fuse,the plastic is thicker than me, and that is some ejector pin mark! I bought the brassin engine to go in here..... looooool not a hope!! even with the all the lumps gone it wont even look at it . ill  save it for a future build. i bought the neomega two seat conversion when i got the new sk-1 seat. (i am a sucker i know )

DSC02614 by omgpainful, on Flickr

Theuns - i find alclads gloss black horrible to use.it never seems to go on smooth or polish up nice, or even dry properly! i use humbrol enamel instead.

found another pic. cant see much polished aluminium on this baby. Looks like someone else had problems with their alclad 

0571279 by omgpainful, on Flickr

talentless: Your cockpit looks really good! Good luck with the second seat...

Looking nice so far!

Evedently I posted pix of my P-36 in the wrong NMF GB LOL!

Here we go.

The gloss black alclad primer did not really "work" for me, nowhere near as gloss as I have got from normal enamels before. So I sanded it down....

And tried again with the alclad gloss black, but still not as good as I had hoped

Think i got a duff one. Id look around for a  different one but csnt keep throwing money at it.  maybe ill see if a different manufacturer does a seat for a pf.

Couldn't bear to look at t any more and ordered a new one from neomega, heres praying its a nice one.

talent, that Pavla seat does indeed look shocking. I have a couple of Pavla resin sets, and I thought they looked ok. I think I better have a closer look

Tony, that's looking nice, I am sure you will do a better job that I did on my sabre a few months back.