Waco

Gray and darker gray? *shrug* Damn thing changes color depending on what light its in. Sometimes it looks dead flat, other times it looks like a mirror.

$$$ Use cheaper weapons, keep the expensive ones for the real fight.

Final shot for tonight...next up, Alclad for the engines, fuselage/wing assemblies, and "miscellany", then attaching the engine cowlings...

Looks like a stealth raider in charcoal gray primer...

Alright...upper and lower fuselage assembled, wing attached, lower wing root cleanup done, upper fuselage "piping" attached... Entire assembly primered:

While waiting for the primer to dry, I cut the brass tubing and music wire to build up the cannons: That's it for now. More tomorrow.

In the previous shot you can also see where I drilled too far, and punched a small hole in the underside of the wing. Oops. Minor putty fill. Here's the lower fuselage wing...assembled. Shortly after this shot, I attached the upper fuselage, and all parts were primed...

The kit instructions emphasize proper wing alignment, mostly due to the brass rod pinning the (rather heavy) weight of the kit. After multiple test fits, I determined I could get a good wing alignment, but was going to have a fairly healthy fuselage-wing join gap. I opted to align the wings so the upperside join was fairly clean, and the underside has the large gap. I filled most of it with cyano, but to get a sandable, smooth finish I finished it off with a generous amount of Tamiya putty. I was concerned about the resin sanding off before the cyano, so I wanted the final surface to be "

Not MUCH of an update...but the photos are starting to lag the progress, so here are some shots from earlier last week... Wings to fuselage assembly completed. That is a pretty healthy hunk of resin, and a fairly sizeable piece of brass rod. I drilled the holes pretty far into the wings to ensure they wouldn't be tempted to tear off at the larger-diameter aligning pins. Actually, drilled a bit too far on one of the wings...more on that later.

Just like it says in the first post...various shades of Alclad lacquers over auto lacquer primer as a base.

Looks good!! Next up: priming and assembly of the fuselage/wings...

By the way, why is it that my cordless Dremel always runs out of charge right when I need it the most? Fortunately, the 14.5V Black and Decker had PLENTY of juice... Here's the lower fuselage, ready to be test fit for alignment with one of the wings...

..and drilled out the holes in the lower fuselage for the wing mounting pins and the brass alignment rod. The forward holes for the aligning rod are 1/8", which was no big deal. But the wing mounting pins require a 1/4" hole!!! I've NEVER had to drill a 1/4" hole in a model before. For that matter, the 1/4" drill bit that I own still had the plastic wrap on it. Thanks Harbor Freight! Here's a shot immediately after drilling out the 1/4" holes...

UPDATE #1... Got the pour stubs all cleaned off. Tonight was drill and dry fit night. Drilled out the mounts for the fuselage cannons...

On to this evening's task: find my respirator, remove what pour stubs there are, and then drill out the holes for the brass aligning/support rods. More to follow...

This is no small craft! The finished model will be approximately 15 inches long, and HEAVY:

Detail shot of the cockpit (?) / fuselage:

Closeup of the engine nozzles:

After frustratingly completing the resizing and rebuilding of the engine nozzles for my 1/32 Tamiya F-15C, I decided to shelve that project for a few weeks and take a break. In search of a "different" project in the mean time, and under the (thinly disguised and virtually ineffective) cover story of needing a Christmas gift for my brother, I bought the Studio Scale resin kit of the new Battlestar Galactica series Cylon Raider. This is a 1/24 scale, all resin cast kit of the Cylon's primary fighter from the new series. It is produced by Kip Hart, under his company, Howling Wolf productions.

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Okay, just to prove I actually finish things once in a while... Here is my completed buildup of the Special Hobby X-15A2. Plenty of online critiques available of the kit, and I would classify it as a fairly nice limited run kit. Not really my normal choice of subject matter, but I built this up as a gift for my brother. Photography of all black/mostly black subjects being as challenging as it is, I haven't done much justice here. The "in person" viewing tends to highly a bit more of the disparate panels look than these pictures do, and the blue tint that is present on some of the fusela

I have to concur with Mike. For a hobby, or pasttime, I find this to be a wholly inappropriate subject. Just my opinion, of course. -Waco