Vidar_710

The P-61 Black Widow.... Anyone suggest a good walk around book, or other references for modelers? Tracy

Well craaaap! I was cleaning up the hobby room a bit and the 757 took a tumble to the floor. The rear bottom of the fuselage developed a seam shadow from the fall. This will have to be fixed before I move forward. Just lucky the paint didn't get marred anywhere else. Tracy

in 1/32 scale... I know an 'A' is out there... How 'bout the E? Anyone release a set yet? Tracy

Great idea with the contour gadge. Can't find mine! This will help shaping and adjusting the gluing points to match the curvature of the fuselage's skin. May help with positioning the forward mount gluing points as well. Tracy

DutyCat and I are in the middle of a Buddy Build with Mincraft 75's with some fixes. Check it out! Tracy

CJ, A heads up for you. I have extensive experience with this kit. The windscreen part has a TERRIBLE fit to the front of the airframe. Tracy

To lighten the grills, I decided to core them out. I did this by drilling holes just inside the end jig dowels, then I cut out the material at the edges of the holes. Once ALL the plates were cored, they were stacked and glued for assembly on their perspective jigs. Once the glue had set, they were removed from the jigs and clamped in a make-shift press using a drafting table and a flat piece of wood and a bunch of clamps to ensure they were flat, and the grills didn't show any waviness. 85 plates were cut and made by hand to represent this interesting characteristic of the Excelsior Class Starship. Now that the tedious part is over, on to correcting more resin parts from the Lunar kit. Tracy

Each Warp nacelle grill has 17 plates, 8 large and 9 spacers for a total of 34 plates to cut by hand and shape. It all starts with a large sheet of .7mm thick styrene Then strips are cut for ease of handling each plate. 34 plates are all hand cut at the same size to start. I then pick out the plates than match the most to represent the large plate that actually shape the grill section. The others are designated to be trimmed down to be the spacer plates. All the plates are drilled through in 3 places to match a jig to be used for assembly to ensure pure alignment.RED dot is the port nacelle parts and jig, and GREEN is Starboard. Since the nacelles are hand made, they are not precisely the same, so plates are specifically designed to a nacelle. Here the plates are stacked on their specific jig for final shaping. After the shaping is done, now the spacer plates can be trimmed to size. Then the spacer plates are stacked on the jig and sanded to shape for 'their' final size. A test stacking to see how they came out.

The Dorsal stack is finished then sanded to its final shape. The 3D printed Torp Launchers are finalized and given a light primer coat with some light dry brushing to pop the detail. The Nacelle grills are next! Tracy

Feel your pain... been wishing for a 1/32 scale S-3 Viking for years! :-/ Tracy

Tom sold PNT to Federation Models before he passed away. Get a hold of Tracy at Federation Models to find out if he's re-releasing it and for what price. Tracy

Can you scale this to the Tamiya 1/100 scale kit? just the cockpit would do. I can provide measurements of the cockpit cavity. Tracy

Small update while waiting for the 3D Dorsal Torpedo Launchers to show up. Wrapped up the final stages for the master of the lower half of the Primary Hull. Added the aft bottom plate the saucer's superstructure under the impulse engines will glue down to. There is a raised paneling detail that covers this section and surrounds the dorsal adapter to the saucer outside the radius of the ring trench. Here the paper template is in place. The thick plate detail is in place, but further refinement to the part is still needed. Once the 3D printed dorsal canons arrive, I can finish up assembly of the entire dorsal section and do the final sanding to shape. Tracy

Well shoot... since I got all this stuff out of the rafters... here a sneak pre-view. Tracy

OOOOOO K. My comments about the decals are incorrect. The decals I showed above are NOT the actual decals! They are a paper back sticky representation (not to scale). The actual decals are larger and to scale. They will fit the orbiter properly. Just need to have them 49.5mm apart. Actual decals. The recessed trench decals are 12.6mm wide x 13mm long. The doors are 13mm x 13.2mm The paper back sticky graphics are a bit smaller, so I'm good decal-wise. ;-). Here's the difference. The distance according to placement on the 1/100 scale 747 should be 49.5mm Tracy