Thnks, Lewbud.
Well, had a really minor surgery on Thursday last week, but it got me out of work on Friday, and I really couldn't do much other than sit around, so I decided to build my weekend kit.
I went with the Eduard boxing of the 1/48 Accurate Miniatures Yak-1b. I chose this one because it (A) wasn't started and (B) has a beautiful bit of engineering where the spine of the aircraft is one piece like a turtleshell, so there is almost no fuselage seam to deal with, and that's what slows me down most on my builds.
Here's the starting pic. I kicked this off at 10 a.m. Friday.
First order of business was to spray the innards, which are all one color. I used Mr. Paint USN Blue-Gray, then got to work with the photo etch that Eduard supplied with the kit. Between beautiful fit on the plastic parts and the PE, I had the cockpit and wheel wells done in a couple of hours.
Then it was on to assembly. The wings took some coaxing to get the right dihedral, but that's aided by a spar that, though a little fiddly, was helpful in making sure I wouldn't run into a wing root seam later.
I had screwed up when I bought the kit and cut the turtleshell piece off the sprue - I removed a chunk of plastic. A little CA and accelerator, and I was able to sand it to an acceptable look.
My day one goal was to get the plane asembled and the tail feathers primed and painted white, because the scheme I decided to do required careful masking and I wanted the white paint more cured for that.
By the end of day one, I was there.
One of the schemes offered was a plane with a striking tiger on the fuselage, and some cool striping. There is a lot of discussion on what colors this plane actually wore. Some say the tail is AMT-12 dark gray, while others say it's red. Also, there is debate on the spinner color, and the fuselage striping.
After reading up on it, I opted to go with a white stripe for the fuselage and a white spinner. That made the most sense, especially given the white leading edges of the horizontal stabilizers and spinner colors of other aircraft in this unit. Eduard provides a decal for the stripe in yellow, but given that ot's 0.9mm wide and is the demarcation between the tail color and the rest of the body, I was not about to try to use it. Plus, I wanted mine white.
I used my Infini cutting mat to cut Tamiya tape to the perfect uniform thickness, and bent it around the fuselage in the pattern it needed to be in, then also masked the leading edges of the stabs.
Once done, I sprayed the tail AMT-12 dark gray.
I love lacquers, because I was able to mask the tail about five minutes after spraying, with no paint lift worries.
After that, it was on to AMT-7 gray blue for the underside.
At this point, it was about 1 p.m. on Saturday, and I ate lunch, then masked the bottom and shot the AMT-11 blue gray topside color. Then, the moment of truth on the masking. After some very small touch-ups, it was a success.
Amongst all this, I painted the wheels Tamiya rubber black and layed down primer, aluminum and clear on the prop, then hair spray, then Tamiya gloss black and chipped it.
Clear coats went down next. Even though Mr. Paint is smooth enough to decal without glossing underneath, I wanted to, given the complexity of the fuselage markings and knowing I'd need to play with them a bit.
Around 5 p.m., it was time for decals.
I broke the lightning bolt decal in the pic above, but thankfully it lined up perfectly when I coaxed it back together, and no one can tell. Gotta love Cartograf.
Once dry, I sprayed another gloss coat to seal them in, and then it was a flurry of weathering to get it grubbed up a bit. Flory Grime wash on the underside, Dark Dirt on the topside, and than I sealed those with a flat coat to knock down the shine. I attached the landing gear, and realized I'd put the legs on backwards. Yanked them, reattached them, and dropped CA onto them so it could stan don its own by the time it needed to be done.
Used an ink pen for some streaking, used Ammo engine oil for fuel leaks on the wings, spattered some Vallejo European splash mud on the underside, sprayed the exhaust stains with a mix of rubber black and red brown, used some dust pigments on the wheels, and beat up the wing root a bit with a silver pencil. I also stabbed at the cowling with a dark gray watercolor pencil for some discolored scratching effects and chipped it a bit with a sponge dipped in Testors silver.
Attached props, landing gear doors, radio mast, pitot tube, etc. Made a landing light by punching a piece of sheet styrene, installed it in wing leading edge, painted it silver, then added the glass. Removed masks, added cnaopy...and voila.
I finished at 9:58 p.m. Saturday, almost 36 hours to the minute after starting it.
Thanks for having me, and sorry I didn't update as I went along. I was so focused on the build that I didn't drag out th ecomputer and make updates in the process.
I'll get better photos up when I can. Hopefully tonight, but I'm really having trouble getting the lighting right for decent shots with what I have lately.
This was obviously a bi tof a rush build, but it's one of my favorites that I've done, and after not finishing anything since September, it was a great feeling to roll one off the bench and toss the box.
-BD-