Jump to content

Recommended Posts

I've spent a few hours working on this model, but haven't made a lot of progress yet. So far I've opened up the vents at the rear of the vari-ramps (you can see one done and the other not done in this photo):

001b.jpg

And after e-mailing D-mold about him making some more intakes and receiving no response, I found a post in the Large Scale Planes website by a fellow who'd cut part of the intake off the fuselage and used it to make his own seamless intakes using kit parts and a lot of putty. I decided to do that too. I've spent probably three hours total puttying,sanding, re-puttying, resanding etc etc. Here's how they look so far:

005a.jpg

007a.jpg

011a.jpg

008a.jpg

To sand inside the duct, my fat fingers wouldn't fit. I found some cheap spatulas and carving tools at Hobby Lobby (cheaper yet with a 40 % off coupon), and figured out a way to sand with them. I had some double stick drop cloth tape from a home store, so I pulled small pieces off and applied them to the spatulas and taped the sand paper to them. Here's how it looks:

013a.jpg

014a.jpg

And here's the double stick tape roll:

015a.jpg

Edited by Scott R Wilson
Link to post
Share on other sites

I've also been working on the Verlinden resin cockpit that I'd bought many years ago in anticipation of building a Tamiya F-4. I've cut down the rear of the rear cockpit consoles to try to add the INS and Gyros the way they should be. I also thought I might try making the rear cockpit bulkhead vertical like it's supposed to be, but I'm starting to think I bit off more than my meager skills can chew:

018a.jpg

017a.jpg

019a.jpg

024a.jpg

Link to post
Share on other sites

GREAT start so far Scott! :cheers:

I just got home and now have access to some decent internet- and just in time too. I can see you'll be giving me a lot of tips for my next F-4 build, like opening up those vari-ramp vents. Who knew?! :bandhead2:

FWIW, I recommend that you shoot a coat of paint on those nice intakes before you call them "done". Paint has a way of revealing a lot of flaws you can't see with the naked eye beforehand.

Link to post
Share on other sites
FWIW, I recommend that you shoot a coat of paint on those nice intakes before you call them "done". Paint has a way of revealing a lot of flaws you can't see with the naked eye beforehand.

Yeah, I know. My first mistake was using Squadron green putty. It's given me nothing but grief. I was very careful when I glued the assemblies together to make sure everything was aligned. I even had the ramp assemblies pushed into place to be sure. After the glue set, I glued strips of white styrene along the edge of the nasty step Tamiya gives you inside the duct that makes everyone else use resin intakes, then applied the putty. After sanding it, I noticed cracks and a few small voids. Refill, resand... more cracks. Refill, resand. The edge of the step wasn't quite right. Refill, resand a couple more times. Finally it looked great, I took the photos above. Then I tried to put the ramps in, and I guess the putty had warped the ducts slightly as the ramps wouldn't go in without spreading the duct open slightly, cracking the putty yet again. I was just about to throw in the towel and buy some resin intakes when I got an offer for a set in exchange for some of my photos. I thought that would be my salvation, and e-mailed the fellow that it was a deal. But after cooling off for awhile this afternoon, I went back, refilled and resanded and I think I finally got it. I painted the inside surface white, and there are only a couple of very minor flaws. They wouldn't take first at the IPMS Nats, but they're good enough for me.

I thought about doing the latex paint dipping method that's so in vogue, and may yet try it to cover over the minor flaws. I was just concerned about if it doesn't work right, how do you strip it and start again?

After finishing with the intakes for the day, I spent a few hours making some J79s from a silicone mold that Pierre Greutert (thanks again, Pierre!!!) had sent me some years ago. He'd made the mold from the engine in the Hasegawa F-104. I used fiberglass resin I had on hand. I'd never cast resin of any sort before and went through four tries before I finally got a really good cast, but that final cast stuck to part of the mold and ruined it when I tried to peel the mold away. It needed some more release agent, that's for sure. Pierre had given me the mold with agent on it, but by the fourth use it needed more. That cast and one of the other not-quite-as-good attempts will suffice for the aux air door details. But then the next problem surfaced: my whole house stinks to high heaven of fiberglass resin. My wife has allergies and sensitivities (I think it's maybe a bit of hypochondria too, but don't tell her I said that!), and when she got home from work this evening, I was instantly in the doghouse. She turned off the furnace and aired the house out (it's 25 degrees F outside). It's a lot better now that the house is warmed back up, but she's still miffed at me. I guess the writing's on the wall, I need to toss all my oil-based paints and start buying acrylics, or look for another place to live if I'm going to keep doing any modeling.

The joys of modeling...

Link to post
Share on other sites

I thought about doing the latex paint dipping method that's so in vogue, and may yet try it to cover over the minor flaws. I was just concerned about if it doesn't work right, how do you strip it and start again?

Based upon my experience with the latex paint dip method, everything looks fantastic shortly after you dip them, but even minor flaws still show through once the paint has a chance to dry- and shrink. Bottom line is that this method won't hide all flaws, but it will do a great job of painting the intakes with a smooth dust free look and the demarcation line at the top is near perfect if you do it properly.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Based upon my experience with the latex paint dip method, everything looks fantastic shortly after you dip them, but even minor flaws still show through once the paint has a chance to dry- and shrink. Bottom line is that this method won't hide all flaws, but it will do a great job of painting the intakes with a smooth dust free look and the demarcation line at the top is near perfect if you do it properly.

Ah, another reason not to do it then. The demarcation is right where the filling and sanding is. I'd need to use the latex right up to the intake lip to cover the minor flaws. I'll just press on with filling, sanding and painting until I get rid of the last little flaws.

Scott W.

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...

Hey Scott, thanks for sharing your progress (and photos in Chuck's thread!)! In addition to Chuck's advice about the latex paint method, I have had mixed results with 1/48 scale models. I can't get the paint to "empty" all the way out after a solid coating, and this leaves some uneveness as it dries. However, the intake walls are smooth, semi-gloss, and nearly perfect on one kit, but on a different kit the paint dried unevenly along the lip of the intake, and hasn't covered evenly along the inside walls, leaving brighter patches of white in better covered areas. Maybe its best if you try this method for yourself, or maybe its best that you skip it altogether. Looking forward to more of your progress!

Aaron

Link to post
Share on other sites

Hey Scott, thanks for sharing your progress (and photos in Chuck's thread!)! In addition to Chuck's advice about the latex paint method, I have had mixed results with 1/48 scale models. I can't get the paint to "empty" all the way out after a solid coating, and this leaves some uneveness as it dries. However, the intake walls are smooth, semi-gloss, and nearly perfect on one kit, but on a different kit the paint dried unevenly along the lip of the intake, and hasn't covered evenly along the inside walls, leaving brighter patches of white in better covered areas. Maybe its best if you try this method for yourself, or maybe its best that you skip it altogether. Looking forward to more of your progress!

Aaron

Erik, aka PhasePhantomPhixer supplied me with some absolutely incredible resin intakes in white resin. After looking at those I abandoned my efforts with the kit parts. These puppies are really something, just need some paint inside the ducts, glue the ramps on the front and fill that seam on the inboard side and they'll be perfect.

I haven't made that much progress, I've been having all these great ideas that haven't turned out like I envisioned. First, I thought to open up the aux air door area by getting rid of Tamiya's really fake ribbed duct. I had a silicone mold of the J79 from the Hasegawa 1/32 F-104 kit that Pierre Greutert made and gave to me years ago, and never having cast any resin before I ended up messing up the mold after four very imperfect casts, three with fiberglass resin that I had onhand from working on my Cessna 172's wheel pants (real airplane, not a model), and the last from superglue after I read somewhere someone had good luck casting parts from that. A small section of the mold needed more release agent and ended up sticking to the part, and cracked as I was removing that part. I may buy an F-104 and make a new mold and try this again sometime using proper resin, release agent etc. Anyway, the four cast attempts gave me two engine parts that I think will work as a basis for a much more detailed engine than the original Tamiya representation. Here's the real deal:

#1 engine:

1enginelookingfwd.jpg

1enginelookingaft.jpg

#2 engine:

2engine.jpg

2enginelookingfwd.jpg

Here's my casts, I cut the afterburner section off the mold as that area won't show through the aux air door and would interfere with the resin exhaust tube:

007.jpg

I was having a hard time trying to figure out how to keep the resin from flowing out the ends of the mold, and keeping the mold from opening up to the sides and making the engine parts too wide was also something I didn't find a good answer to which really caused me problems. Looking through a file I rediscovered on my computer last night that I had kept of Pierre's awesome F-4S build, I found a photo he posted of how he did his casting, I wish I'd looked at these photos before I tried it. His little plastic containment box did the trick.

Dsc00002J79recipe.jpg

Dsc00004J79recipe.jpg

Edited by Scott R Wilson
Link to post
Share on other sites

I also cut out the flipper doors at the rear of both forward missile wells. Tamiya has the rear end of the wells blunt to fit AIM-7s, but in reality the doors streamline the wells when there is no missile installed and open to allow the rear of the missile to fit when it's loaded. The flipper doors partially open when the aircraft is unpowered:

Scan1050.jpg

005.jpg

008.jpg

I had this idea to try using filler to make the streamlined part, but then I thought it might work better to glue thin styrene (.005 inch, 0.13mm) to the cut out piece, and then glue the plastic into the well. The part overhanging the edge would be later trimmed to fit the cutout in the underside of the plane:

004.jpg

001.jpg

I wasn't quite sure how to most easily glue the plastic into the well, so I tried Tenax with a microbrush. It was too hot even in the minute amount and melted the thin sheet plastic. I plan to take this off and try again using another adhesive and possibly .010 inch plastic, but I think I'm on the right track:

009.jpg

I've also been spending time sanding off the raised access panels on the fuselage and rescribing around them. It's a very tedious process.

Edited by Scott R Wilson
Link to post
Share on other sites

I sanded off the sheet plastic from the flipper door, and it occured to me that the plastic was thick enough that I could sand in the proper contours:

002.jpg

003.jpg

004-1.jpg

I took some thin plastic strips and added back the wide area to the rear:

009-1.jpg

010.jpg

And here's how it looks taped in place. I need to build an enclosure around the door interior and paint it before gluing the door in place. I think this looks a lot more authentic than the original Tamiya depiction:

011.jpg

012.jpg

013-1.jpg

014.jpg

The real aircraft for comparison:

Scan1050.jpg

Edited by Scott R Wilson
Link to post
Share on other sites

VERY nice flipper doors Scott! I actually thought about doing that to mine, but then I chickened out. Glad to see it was all worthwhile!

I am getting so little done here, this model might take me lots longer than yours has taken you, Chuck... I hope to pick up the pace a little, we'll see how it goes. Thanks for the compliment. I was a bit scared to cut the flipper doors out, thinking what if my idea didn't work, I'd hate to have screwed up this beautiful model. But I took the chance, and my first ideas didn't work. But then when I saw I could sand the proper shapes I was pleased that I took the chance. Here's the doors pressed into place in the closed position to show how they came out. Since they'll be opened I am not too worried that they have a few minor gaps here and there.

007b.jpg

005b.jpg

001b-1.jpg

008b.jpg

I didn't take a photo of my model before I cut the doors out, but here's one of Chuck's photos of his F-4E to show the original Tamiya configuration:LowerFuselage4.jpg

Edited by Scott R Wilson
Link to post
Share on other sites

After about five hours of work, here's what I have to show for it. I'm well on the way to having the aux air door bays framed in, and I've boxed on the flipper door areas. Next come some more structural stiffeners in the flipper door bays and then I'll start adding in the bleed air ducts and other piping in the aux air door areas.

003-1.jpg

002-1.jpg

001-1.jpg

Link to post
Share on other sites

Today I came home from work after a half day because I have a bad cold and feel like crud. So I decided as long as I was home I'd experiment with the bleed air ducts for the aux air door openings. The part I'm trying to duplicate is this one marked, plus the others with the flexible duct sections you see in the photo:

2enginelookingfwd-1.jpg

I have about a 10 foot length of 18-2 shielded wire I kept from my days as an avionics tech. I skinned some of the insulation off and cut a piece of the shield off to use for the flexible duct:

003-2.jpg

004-2.jpg

006.jpg

After trying it out, I found it was too large, I really needed the shield from single conductor 20 or 22 AWG wire. The reason I put the photos here is that if you guys have an avionics shop at an airport near you, you could probably get scrap shielded wire to use for projects such as this. Strip the outer insulation back as far as you need, push the shield back toward the outer insulation still left so the shield bunches up, and cut it as I'm doing in the photo with sharp sidecutters or scissors.

When I realized it was too large I thought about putting this project on hold until I could fly up to Clintonville and get some scrap wire from the avionics shop there, but instead I made a short trip to the local hobbyshop to see what they might have that might work. Fortunately they had this product, which appears to be the same braided shield from avionics wiring but at a small price (but cheaper than avgas):

008-1.jpg

009-2.jpg

It comes in a few sizes. I cut a section and expanded it enough to slide it over a piece of 12 AWG single strand house wire and super glued it in place. I tried soldering it, but the solder wicked into the braid and ruined the effect I wanted. I cut a piece I thought looked about right, and made a collar to cover the end of the braid from a flattened strand from a 16 AWG stranded wire, and glued it into a hole I drilled into the center keel:

016.jpg

010-1.jpg

When I looked at it from underneath I could see I made the braided part a bit too long, but I like the effect. I'll shorten it up and make one for the other side when I feel better. But that's enough for today:

012-1.jpg

Edited by Scott R Wilson
Link to post
Share on other sites

Wow, that braided line is really cool, but for most of us who can't hardly see inside that auxiliary door opening, much less know what's right or wrong inside it, your concern for making it correct is admirable. As a former F-4 tech, you see things that nobody else does, so I'm going to document all this stuff for my next F-4 build! :thumbsup:

Link to post
Share on other sites

Looking great mate. The braided line looks the business :thumbsup:

How's the cold?

Deacon

Thanks. I'm getting better slowly. It's going around where I work, I heard lots of sneezing and coughing today, and a number of people didn't come in or left early. Hope you guys don't get it.

Yeah, Chuck, I'm probably spending a lot of time on stuff people either won't notice or care about, but I'm doing it for myself of course. I have no illusions that I can get the J79 looking 100 percent accurate; I just don't have good enough photos to get everything right and I'm still finding my skills don't always match up to my notions and ambitions. But I aim to make it look as "right" as I can. The Hasegawa J79 I made the copies of has some fictional bits on it too; it represents but doesn't duplicate the real thing is I guess how I'd put it. But it makes a nice starting point, and I think I can make it look at the least better than Tamiya's completely fictional aux air door openings.

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...

I've made some progress, after overcoming some setbacks. I found that putting the braided line over wire worked for the most part, but that it was actually easier to put it over plastic rod, then drip some Tenax over the braid. The Tenax wicked in and melted the plastic underneath and attached the braiding to the rod very nicely. Using the wire, I had to apply Superglue to the braid to keep it from unraveling, that sometimes messed up the braided effect. The setback which you'll see in the photos is that the plastic rod is quite fragile and breaks easily.

I also pretty much finished the forward missile well flipper doors, though there are some minor gigs that showed up when I took the close-up photos (Chuck, you were SO right about that!). I had painted the insides of the flipper door enclosures Interior Green, which is how the real ones were so far as I remember, but the real ones also had overspray from the exterior light gray inside complicating the appearance. I've also seen photos that make them appear to be white inside. I tried the interior green, didn't like it and so resprayed them white.

Flipper door enclosures:

001-2.jpg

Flipper door exterior:

010-2.jpg

012-2.jpg

The bleed air lines inside the aux air doors are different from left to right, so I tried to duplicate that:

003-3.jpg

008-2.jpg

I spent quite a lot of time trying to detail the engines I made from resin. I wasn't too concerned with duplicating anything you can't see through the doors:

014-2.jpg

And taping the engines in place they look like this. You'll note one of the bleed air ducts broke off while I was fitting this together, that's one of the setbacks I mentioned. Oh well, it's easily fixed. You'll also notice Tamiya made the starter doors just in front of the aux air door openings mirror imaged from the left engine to right engine, as well as the engine breather vents; the real jet wasn't like that so that's something else on my correction list.

020.jpg

Here's the real deal starter doors. #1 engine, different from Tamiya's, note the breather vent just in front of a centerline sway brace (engine oil trailing from the vent):

1StarterDoors.jpg

#2 engine, same as Tamiya's, with the breather vent in the same place Tamiya put it on both sides:

2StarterDoors.jpg

Edited by Scott R Wilson
Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...