Metal masters GB 2016 (1Feb to 31 July)

Hey FSM,

Have a little more progress to share.  Got to the point of closing up the fuselage halves.  Let me share what it took to get there.

First, I had to prep the intakes.  There's really no detail to see, so I painted the insides of the intakes black.  Then, I sprayed a little aluminum and "faded" it to the black.  I think this gives the intakes a sense of depth.  

Because of all the CA glue and styrene I needed to reinforce the forward and rear fuselage joint, I had to take my motor tool and grind the bejeezuz out of the engine assembly.  Luckily won't see anything except the very end of the pipe. 

At that point, I was able to get the two fuselage halves glued together.  

Now for a failure...

I have all three of Alclad's proprietary primers.  I know that the darker the primer, the brighter the overlying "metal" shade.  So, to experiment, I decided to paint the stabilizers with all three primers.  The goal being to get different shades of the NMF to show through when painting with one shade of "metalizer."  In the past, I've used one primer and one metal color for the whole airframe.  I've gone back with custom mixes of metalizer in order to get differing metal shades.

Well, I'll save you from the gruesome "after" photos.  Let's just say that the parts are now soaking in paint stripper.  Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.  At least I didn't wait to try this on the whole airframe.

OK.  So, this is how my build will stay for a while.  I still need to clean up some seams, attend to the stabilizers, and figure out how I'm going to attack the canyon seams that result from the wing -to-fuselage assembly.

Again, share your thoughts.  Thanks for lookin'!

Cheers,

-O

I'd have still liked to have seen the pics of your primer outcomes.  I'm guessing you didn't bother taking any.  I think it's still of some use to see how it works and what kind of difference it makes.  I'm guessing it was too stark a contrast for you in the end, right?

Hey bvallot,

I did take some pix of the results, but I didn't post them because they didn't come out well enough to show the end product.  Even in post-production, I couldn't manipulate the images well enough to show the detail.  

I've been using Alclad's white primer since I started using Alclad's metal line.  I've liked the "sheen" it produces through the metalizer.  I've read that different primers produce different effects.  The differences in my final sheens have always been done after the fact.  I've gone back and picked out different panels with custom mixes of the original metal color.  This time I tried to use different primers to achieve the same effect.  It didn't work out for me.

The grey produced a nice sheen, although I thought it was a little too shiny for a wartime airframe.  And the black?  That produced an almost chrome or polished aluminun look.  Way too bright for my liking.  But that wasn't the worst of it.

I've always wet sanded my Alclad white primer after it's dried.  I take my fine polishing pads and give the parts a few swipes to get rid of any dust or dirt that might've landed on the parts during spraying.  It gives me an even smoother surface for the NMF.  This time, I sprayed all three, let them dry, then wet sanded the parts.  For whatever reason (my technique/process didn't change) every little scratch and swirl mark was visible under the metal.  The black was the worst.  It honestly looked like I had sprayed the metal, then went back and dry sanded the final coat!  Hmm...I'm going to have to play with these black and grey primers before I use 'em on a build.

No biggie.  I'm still a ways away from paint on this build.  I'll get the wrinkles with the paint ironed out.

Thanks for lookin'!

Cheers,

-O

Oortiz - that F-80 looks great so far. Can't wait to see how it comes along.

Theuns - Nice work so far as well. What markings are you going with for yours?

-BD-

I got started on my F-86 the other day by priming the interior bits. Theuns is right - the bang seat on the Hasegawa kit is lackluster at best. Fortunately, mine came with the Verlinden interior set, of which I will definitely use the cockpit. Not sure yet about the gun bay, as the markings I ordered for it are for "Mig Poison," which has a cool-looking decal right over the gun bay access hatch, which I like th elooks of on the plane and not sitting beside it on a panel.

Anyway, since it is a pre-November 1953 Sabre, my cockpit is black. I haven't experimented with a black pit before, so I'm playing around with tonal variation for it, and I went a little light on it since it will be darkened during the weathering process:

Tonight I'll pick out some of the details with color and paint the seat and harness. Verlinden didn't feel compelled to provide a headrest for the seat, so I'll use the kit part for that.

-BD-

Alright, I got some time with the cockpit tonight after a stressful day at work, and it was nice to unwind.

I think this more or less does it, except for the headrest, which is drying at the moment. May need to scratch up the rods that hold it in place still. We'll see.

The whites and silvers are actually more toned down than they appear in this pic.

As for the instrument panel, my decal didn't lay down nicely, so I think I may pull it off and paint the thing by hand. Trying to avoid that, haha.

-BD-

I don't know what decals I will be using for my Sabre, may be kit, maybe SA Air Force Sabre.

That is a good looking cockpit you got there :-) Do they call for the dark colour? I was under the impresion that Korean era F-86f30 had a light grey color, I stand to be corrected though.

Theuns

So far no filling needed, maybe just a little on the bottom of the wing to fuse joint will be required.

The nose intake ring was a little oversize and I had to sand it allot to fare it into the front fuselage, I wonder if the other builders of this kit has the same issue.

Thanks for the kind words. I read on a forum that the cockpits in F-86s were black until November of 1953, when the new standard was to paint them gray. For colors, I also looked at the Eduard instruction sheet online for their Ultimate Sabre kit, which uses the Hasegawa plastic, and matching the instruction sheet with the markings supports that (it calls for gray on "Marking B," which is 1955, and black on the others, which are mostly Korean War era. Not that kitmakers always get it right, haha.

Here is the link in case you're interested: http://www.eduard.com/store/out/media/1163.pdf

As for my nose intake ring, in dry fitting, it looks like it might be a little proud of the fuselage, but might also be a finicky positioning thing on my kit. I'll let you know when I close up the fuselage.

As for my progress, I tried using the kit decal for the Verlinden IP, but it didn't line up correctly, and the decal wouldn't sing in to give it any sort of depth, so I pulled it off with tape and then dry-brushed the panel to highlight the nice details. I then filled the gauge faced with Micro Krystal Klear to replicate glass.

The photo isn't the best, but you get the idea.

-BD-

Guys I have updated the "rules" so that NMF subjects like spacecraft (si-fi) and Autos can also join in.

Theuns

The detail in the speedbrake wells and wheelwells are really nice.

Next will be primer and gloss black for airframe alluminium.

Theuns

I've got a start on my Mig-21PF. I'll be doing this in N. Vietnamese markings. On the interior front section I primed using Black Ammo of Mig Primer. I really like the way it goes on super smooth. The metallic color in the nose is matte aluminum acrylic metal colors from Ammo of Mig. The Russian Green is from Ammo as well. The tail end I primed with Stynylrez grey primer and then Ammo Titanium acrylic metal with some Alclad Jet Exhaust. I was nervous about the Stynylrez as it is pretty thick straight out of the bottle; however, I sprayed it through my Paasche Talon at about 22 psi with a .38 needle and had no problems. It layed down nice and smooth and covered up minor imperfections.

Good start there, I really enjoyed building that kit.

Theuns

Hey FSM,

Before I share my progress, I want to say to everyone that I'm impressed with the work being shared here.  Great stuff and great motivation.  Keep it up!

OK, so now let's share an update, shall we?  When I left you all last, the fuselage halves were glued together, and I was thinking about how I was going to deal with the seams resulting from the fuse-to-wings assembly.  One wing root was about 2mm and the other was about 1.  On the underside, the rear end of the assembly had another 1mm gap.

The "small" gap:

Because the assemblies are hollow, I couldn't pack it with putty or CA glue.  I needed a different approach.  I decided to use pieces of sheet styrene.

After gluing the front of the assembly, I made a shim to bridge the gap at the back end of the underside of the assembly.  Once it was all glued up, I trimmed the plastic, sanded it flush, and rescribed.

I figured this was the best approach for the wing roots too.

After I sanded the extra plastic flush, I sprayed a heavy coat of Alclad's Fine Grey Primer to fill any residual gaps and gouges from the sanding.

At this point it looks like, once everything's sanded smooth, a final coat of Alclad Fine White Primer will even things out in prep for the metal finish.  I'm feeling pretty confident that these gaps/seams have been beaten.

After the fiasco with the primers on the stabilizers, I stripped 'em back down to bare plastic.  While they soaked, I turned my attention to the tip tanks.  I had sanded off the raised detail and, in a fit of artistic license, replaced it with some tape.  The tanks were sprayed with Future to get a nice smooth surface and to help blend and adhere the tape.  Well, I followed the Future up with some grey primer.  I then "preshaded" the tape "bands" with Alclad Steel before covering the whole tank with Airframe Aluminum.  The NMF was sealed with MM Metalizer Sealer, washed with Flory's, and flat coated.

Here they are dry fitted on the wire hangers I built into the wing.

Anyway, that's where I'm at.  Next is to sand the airframe to even things out before covering it with Alclad's primer.  Feel free to drop your two cents into the bucket.  Your comments and criticisms are always welcome.

Cheers!

-O

Omar, that looks good, you surely got that sorted out.

Theuns

Here it is in 3 coats of airframe allu. I usually at this stage mask off the panels I want to look a little darker and shoot more alclad to make the rest lighter.....I now have 2 ways to go with this model

1. the decals are for a nice 1960's plane in the normal "used" NMF

2. I have a pic of the same plane as a super pollished airshow plane, where basically only the gun panel and exhaust looks a little darker, the rest of the metal looks uniform due to the pollishing.

What to do what to do.....

Theuns

I masked off the outer sides of the wing centre section and put 2 more coats of airframe allu on to lighten that area.

I also masked off the fuselage panel that in all the pix I have seems to be darker aswell as the exhaust and gun pannels.

I will shoot more alclad to laghten the rest , then I usually put 1 coat over everything (unmasked) to make the tone difference a little "softer"

Theuns

I started with the decals last night and sofar I am not really having allot of fun with them :-(

I wanted to do the Korea decals, the large central fuselage band (after breaking up) convinced me to do the other supplied decal scheme!

Then the nose decal on that scheme broke up...I got it somewhat inplace but not really 100%, so I will just beat this thing into submition anf complete it.

Theuns

Yea, just a pity as I have used hasa decals before and they were great, maybe these ones got brittle in the heat or something...

Theuns

I actually haven't ever experienced a bad set of decals yet.  There have been a couple of instances where it was my own fault and I overworked an area or mishandled something. Hell, nowadays I'm painting everything I can lol.  So I'll likely find fewer and fewer instances where I'll get to find out. =]  I can certainly understand age being a factor, but what about weather conditions mess with decal film?

I don't know, here we have very high summer temps and in the winter is dips to below freezing regularly.

I did see that the film is very reluctant to come off the paper in anything but hot water.....ah well they are all on without to many further issues.

Pix to follow.

Theuns

Theuns - I can't wait to see the decals on that thing. It's so shiny and gorgeous!

-BD-

I have a quick update for my 1/48 Hasegawa F-86F-30 today. After a lot of working on the seams (some of it due to fitting the resin cockpit, I believe). Keeing everything straight took some doing.

I got the model primered and painted gloss black. I then masked for the black borders on the yellow stripes, and shot the yellow stripes. I also used yellow as an undercoat for the red nose, as it covers much better than red over black.

Here are the stripes painted using Model Master Insignia Yellow (they aren't this bright in real life). I have a decal for the fuselage but decided to just paint them all to make them match, and I don't have great luck with stripe decals anyway.

After this pic, I shot the red on the nose. Later this evening I got the stripes all masked and then gave it another coat of gloss black to get rid of the overspray. I hope to get some Alclad on it on Thursday.

-BD-

Brandon, that's an interesting start.  Have you done that before? Does it affect the outcome of the color of the stripes.  I might think if the opacity is sufficient it wouldn't make much difference.  I'm guessing maybe you're doing this as a typical method of painting and masking and chronology..?

bvallot

Brandon, that's an interesting start.  Have you done that before? Does it affect the outcome of the color of the stripes.  I might think if the opacity is sufficient it wouldn't make much difference.  I'm guessing maybe you're doing this as a typical method of painting and masking and chronology..?

 

For the stripes or the nose? I usually paint stripes after the base coats are down, but in this case, since I already have black paint on it and I need black borders to the yellow stripes, I decided to paint them first. I just used thin vinyl tape to mask for the black, then filled in with the yellow and masked that. Masking will come off after the Alclad is down. I wanted to eliminate the overspray so it wouldn't affect the shininess of the Alclad.

As for the nose, I put the yellow down as an undercoat so I can build from yellow to orange to red. When I've tried to paint red over black, it has always taken a lot of paint and come out looking awful. I also find it easier to mask the narrower end of a nose or prop spinner than the fatter end, so I just did it this way out of convenience.

-BD-