RoG 1/144 KLM Royal Dutch Airlines Boeing 747-400

[Adam Baker]

Was home sick from work yesterday, so was able to get some more progress made. Worked on rescribing some of the lost panel lines. I also made a nice discovery. I started sanding down the primer coat that i'd put down to check the putty work on the windows, and found that when I sanded the primer down, that the outlines on the windows almost disappeared. My guess is that the putty absorbed the paint, causing it to make the windows visible in the paint. Looks like a little bit more putty work on some of the windows and they will be gone completely, which is exactly what I want.

[john53]

Nice job! Are they all molded with those defects? I wanted to do a 747 but

if thats as good as ROG gets I will go with Hasegawa's 1/200 747.---John

[Adam Baker]

I've got no clue John. This is the first 747 kit I've built, so I don't know if they all come like this or not. I have to say I was pretty disappointed w/ the modeling & fit of hte kit. I would hope they weren't all like this, but I don't know.

I haven't worked on the kit at all in a few days, been too busy w/ other things, but I did manage to order my decals today from Draw Decals. Going w/ the KLM airlines older scheme. Looks like it maybe a few weeks before they get here, but that's ok, I'm sure it'll be a few months before I'm ready for paint & decals, haha.

[TheFlyingDutchman]

Nice livery!! :P

[Adam Baker]

Haha, yea. I liked it. I like the colors and the fact that there's very little white on it.

[Adam Baker]

Received my decals today from Draw Decals, and I have to say they look excellent. Now the search is on for what paint to use. I'm going to be doing PH-BFA "City of Atlanta", and I found that it wore the scheme I'm doing up until February of 2007, when it went in for overhaul and then was painted in the current scheme w/ the much smaller dark blue cheater stripe. I'm hoping I can find suitable paint from Tamiya since I dont have access to Xtra Color short of mail order, and I'd prefer to get it local if I can find a suitable substitute.

Im hoping to get some time in on the build this weekend, see if maybe one more coat of putty will be enough to get all the windows filled and then it will be on to other things.

How much construction would you guys recommend prior to painting? I'm assuming that I should probably attach the wings so that I can fill the wing root gaps & such before doing painting.

[Trojan Thunder]

Most of the time I add the wings to mine before paint. You can leave the horizontal stabs off until after paint.

[Adam Baker]

Thanks for the suggestion. I hadn't thought about the horizontal stabs, but I was definitely thinking it would be better to add the wings prior to paint, especially w/ this kit and how so far nothing has fit w/o a major amount of work.

[kiwifire]

looking really good so far , keep up the good work

[Adam Baker]

Thanks! Been making some progress, but its still. Still fighting to get the windows to go away completely. So far I've put down 3 coats of putty and still have slight outlines. Im probably going to put down a couple coats of primer on the fuselage again, and see where it comes out, and go from there. Also working on trying to rescribe lost panel lines and making the lines consistent.

[Adam Baker]

Finally a little bit of progress to show. Still working on filling all the massive seams & fit and alignment issues. Tonight I want to Walmart and got 2 cans of light grey primer, so tomorrow I can prime everything again, to get an idea of what needs more work. Still trying to get all the windows filled, and its getting pretty frustrating, I just cant seem to get them to fill completely smooth.

I got the Rolls Royce engines last week, w/ a huge thanks to Trojan Thunder! We traded the engines he had for the GE engines that came in my kit. I've gotten all 4 assembled, and mostly cleaned up, and starting work on rescribing lost panel lines, and they only need a little bit of touch up work in a few places and they'll be good to go.

On to the pic's

Got the winglets glued on this evening. Went ok, but typical of how the rest of the build has gone. Lots of flash on the parts that took some time to clean up, and then no locating pins at all even though there were locating holes in the ends of the wings, so not sure what was up w/ that. But I got them on, and only need a little bit of filler to get them faired in to the wings nice & smooth.

[Adam Baker]

Well, back to step 1...

Got it primed this morning, and every single window on the fuselage was still very visible. In an attempt to loosen the putty, I dunked it in Purple Power, which then dissolved the superglue holding together the nose weight I put together (brass tube w/ BB's superglued inside w/ a styrene disk on one end). So I had bb's loose inside the fuselage, as well as the brass tube loose.

W/ no other option, I carefully broke the fuselage halves apart, so that I could get everything out of the fuselage. Thankfully it came apart pretty clean, w/ only a couple areas where I had problems, and amazingly it didnt brake the clear windshield, but I ended up having to use a razor saw to cut it in half, so thats going to take a little extra work when I get it glued back together, but since I'm using a decal for the windshield, Im not worried about it, I can clean it up, putty it and paint over it.

I have to say this build has been horrible. The fit of every single part just sucks. I've had to sand down every single mating joint on every single part. If I hadnt spent money on decals, and the money to swap engines w/ a guy in Australia, I do believe that this model would make a one way flight into the trash.

[Litvyak]

Oh wow, talk about a horror story! :(

[Adam Baker]

Yea, this build has just sucked, but I'm going to push through it and persevere in the end. The problem is I'm getting really worried about all the sanding & scribing I've done, that I'm going to break through the plastic somewhere. So I think what I'm also going to do, is add sheet styrene inside the fuselage to thicken it up some, so that I don't have to worry about cutting through somewhere while I'm scribing.

[avgass]

I feel for you - mines been nearly 3 years in the making because of the horrible nature of the kit. Probably the worst (in terms of unnecessary clean up of parts and poor fit) kit I've tried to tackle. Keep at it.

[Adam Baker]

Im glad to hear I'm not the only one w/ a lemon kit, haha. This one is definitely the worst kit I've ever dealt w/, for the same reasons you mentioned.

I just finished getting all the primer stripped, and a lot of the putty has come out, so later tonight, once the parts are dry, I'll begin cutting out the window openings, and then filling them w/ .100" evergreen square stock and sheet styrene and then go from there.

[Adam Baker]

Well, the first section is cut out, and filled in. I'll get this one sanded down to see how it goes, before moving on to the rest. If it goes good, then I'll fill all of the rest, and then sand them all down at the same time, but want to do a test run on a single set before I do a ton of cutting.

Windows removed & the hole cleaned up w/ a flat file.

And then filled in w/ 2 pieces of .080" square stock.

The interesting thing I discovered is that the fuselage is as thick as the square stock I put in, so I guess I dont have to be quite as worried as I originally was, about sanding or scribing through the plastic.

One advantage I thought about, by painting & then stripping the primer, is I got some really nice pre-shading on all the panel lines, haha. Too bad thats not what I was going for, haha.

Edited March 10, 2013 by Adam Baker

[Adam Baker]

Not a great deal of progress, since I've been sick as crazy the last week, but wanted to share what I've managed to get done in the last week.

I've spent all my time working on cutting out the windows and filling the openings in, and I think I've finally hit on the method that works best for me. It took awhile to find a method that would work w/o destroying any detail around the openings, or cause low spots in the fuselage ( which I managed to do on the first section). I pulled out all the large emory boards that I've got, and used those to start smoothing things out. They're large enough that it spreads the sanding out over a larger area, so I'm less likely to cause unintentional extra sanding anywhere, and it also allows for a smoother sanding job.

TO get started, I either used Dymo label tape as a guide, or a ruler, and then scribed above & below each set of windows w/ a sewing needle chucked up in my pin vise. I think went back w/ the back of a #12 xacto blade to deepen it, and then I started using my thinnest razor saw blade to finish off each section. The saw worked great b/c it helped me get a much straighter cut on each opening, so there's slightly less work to clean the opening up. All I have to do is work the opening until its large enough for the 2 strips of square stock to fit.

I decided to cut all the openings in the 2nd fuselage half tonight, so that tomorrow I can get all the strips glued in and start drying, and then I can work on sanding the whole thing down at once. I'm about 2/3's of the way done w/ the first half, as you can see in the top half of the picture.

And a close up shot of the areas I've worked. So far I'm pretty pleased w/ the results. Might try giving this side a shot of primer tomorrow evening, so I can see how smooth it is.

Edited March 16, 2013 by Adam Baker

[Adam Baker]

Well, after a ton of work, I think I might finally be about ready to join the fuselage halves back together.

Not sure whether I'll hit them w/ primer prior to assembly or do that once the halves are back together. Hoping to maybe get them back together this weekend, but got a deadline for a client this weekend, thats going to take a lot of my time, and then wont be home much on Sunday, so it will most likely be next week some time, but ya never know, might find the time this weekend to do it.

[Adam Baker]

Progress! Last week I got the 2 fuselage halves joined back together finally. I put a coat of primer on the halves prior to joining to check the filling on the window inserts, and was very pleased to find that they are almost completely invisible. There were a few places where I think I'll put in just a little bit more putty to finish the clean up but for the most part, I am finally done w/ the windows.

Once that was done, I started working on getting the bottom plate back in that gave so much trouble the first time around. I started out by adding bracing to the front end of the opening that is so lacking in the kit. I used pieces of .1" square stock to give the bottom plate something to rest on, instead of just floating in space. I also added bracing to the bottom side of the slot for the wings. Unfortunately in the disassembly of the glued fuselage, I broke out a small section about 1/4" long on both sides, so I needed to add some bracing there as well.

Once that was done, I started adding some bracing inside the fuselage w/ styrene, and some more .1" stock.

And then just for the sake of overkill, I decided to add in pieces of .030" styrene sheet to just give it more strength & rigidity.

And then I glued in the bottom plate. It fits so much better this time, it shouldnt take nearly as much filling as it did the first time I got this part. There are still some pretty sizable gaps in a few places around the landing gear bays, but its a lot better than it was the first time.

The goal now is to continue working on cleaning up the seam on the fuselage halves. This time when I glued the halves together, I did it in sections, to help align the halves better, and thankfully it came out almost perfect, there were only 2 or 3 areas where the seam had any noticeable step between the halves, and most areas just took some very minor sanding to get the 2 sides to blend together. I'll need some putty to finish the job off, but I'm very happy w/ it. Once the fuselage is done, I'll focus on the wings, and then it'll be time to glue the wings in place.

Edited April 14, 2013 by Adam Baker

[Adam Baker]

Been pretty busy the last couple of weeks, but managed to make a lot of progress.

Last update ended w/ the install of the bottom plate w/ the MLG bays. I was left w/ a very large step across the leading edge, and some huge gaps across the trailing edges around the MLG bays.

To solve the large gaps, I filled all of them w/ pieces of .010" & .030" sheet styrene, and then flooded it liberally w/ Ambroid to get the plastic to melt, to fill any small gaps between the styrene.

Once dry, I scraped the plastic down smooth and sanded the area, and was pretty happy w/ the results. Still had a bit of a step, but the use of putty to fill the area, along w/ the leading edge of the plate, helped a lot to fill the area in. I also puttied over a few trouble areas around the windows, to fill gaps I found w/ the last round of primer. Thankfully none of them were major issues. Just putty & sand.

Once that was done, I primed it again to check things, and found that the windows are now completely finished. I'm extremely happy to finally reach this point.

W/ the primer, I found that I still had a few area's to work on.

Again, a bit more putty, and some sanding, and it's looking good again. I was kind of surprised to find out how much work I had to do along the joint between the fuselage halves. I thought I'd done a much better job on that, but thankfully it was still fairly minor. Again, more putty, and sanded smooth.

[Adam Baker]

And this is where I'm at now. I think I'm good on the bottom of the fuselage around the MLG bays. But I need to get another coat of primer down to verify it. That will most likely happen today some time. Same thing w/ the fuselage joints. The one area I'm most expecting to still have problems, is the area directly aft of the MLG bays on the fuselage. When originally joining the halves, I found that the plastic in that area was poorly formed on both halves, resulting in some very large holes. To solve this, I backed the area w/ .020" sheet stryene when I glued the halves together. I then reinforced it w/ square stock, just so it wouldn't move. I then filled the openings w/ putty. Its taken a couple of applications, but the holes are finally starting to blend in. You can see the area in the 2nd pic below.

Finally getting very close to being done w/ the fuselage. I also have a bit of work to do around the tail, that I haven't quite figured out yet. It has a lot of raised detail that will be lost when I start cleaning it up, that I'm not sure whether to just sand down and leave smooth, or attempt to fix the detail in that area too by engraving it lightly. I'm leaning toward attempting to engrave it, but we'll see I guess. And then it will finally be on to working on the wings and getting them attached to the fuselage. I can already tell that the wing to fuselage gaps are going to be a really fun adventure to fix.

[volzj]

Nice job with all of that filling and re-scribing Adam. I think you're making me want to stick wihthe the Haegawa 1/200 kit for my 747 builds. This one looks like a real bear!

[Adam Baker]

Yea, this one has turned out to be a lot harder than I was expecting when I started it. I think if I'd had any idea just how difficult this build was going to turn out to be, I probably woudln't have started it, but then that's just how it goes, and I like to think that I've learned a lot so far on this build, and improved my skills, so that's definitely one benefit of this build.

[Ridgeline]

Wow man... You really took the scenic route with this build!

Good on you for sticking with it. I tried a Revell 744 once upon a time and was still correcting the nose/cheeks when I finally abandoned the project....