Jump to content

1/48 Hasegawa F-4EJ Phantom


Recommended Posts

Seats, I always leave these til late in the build for some reason. These are the Quickboost seats.

F-4EJ-035.jpg

Gloss coate. I'm trying to use up old gloss coates I've bought and tried. This is Gaianotes. It's a Japanese Lacquer and I really like it as it dries very fast (I can decal over it in about 20 mins) But it's "hot" and I often get paint that it underneath bleed though. The green has bled through in places on this one which I've had to over coat again.

F-4EJ-036.jpg

F-4EJ-037.jpg

And back to the green paint. The aircraft has some text printed in green. On the decal sheet it looks a fair bit different in shade from the green I've used. It looks closer to the Humbrol green (38 lime green?) . Some of the collours of the artwork on the sheet doesn't look like that on the photos either.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Fun with stickers.

The main markings are from the Model Alliance sheet. They are printed by catrograph so they went down well.

However it seems the people you did the artwork clearly didn’t look at the aircraft in question. The background on the surfer on the splitter panes has a dark blue background on all the images I have, not light blue and purple. Plus the light green in the text doesn’t resemble the green they suggested for the tail, spine and nose. I’m just going to live with it and move on.

The stencils are from the Hasegawa kit. These are pretty close to the aircraft in question, so far I’ve only seen a couple of minor differences and I’m going to live with these. Hasegawa give you a lot of the individual stencils on 1 large decal but I’m cutting each one out and applying them individually. This is taking a long time. I’ve spent about 3 hours on this so far.

These decals are going down ok. But on most I’ve been putting a drop of floor polish under the decal then after positioning it, using a cotton bud to squeeze out the excess. Hopefully this will reduce the amount of silvering.

Where I haven’t used floor polish under the decal I used a really hot cloth to press down on the decal.

F-4EJ-038.jpg

I really like really hot water for decaling, especially for Hasegawa decals. I got sick of constantly emptying and topping up a container with hot water so this I picked up a glue pot ($10 at the local art store). This keeps the water just below boiling. This has been working really well, although I did put a inline switch so I can easily switch it off if need be

F-4EJ-039.jpg

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

Sealing gloss coat.

Really happy with the way the decals turned out.

For the stencils I applied a little bit of future (PLedge One Go actually ) and then laid the decal in that. Once I was happy I used a cotton bud to press our the excess. The times I needed to reposition a decal I just applied more future until the decal unstuck then repositioned it and tapped out the excess.

There appears to be no silvering. :D/>

F-4EJ-040.jpg

F-4EJ-041.jpg

When I started modelling I always struggled with Gloss coats. about 5 years ago I finally figured out what works for me (Tamiya X 22 with Lacquer thiners or Gaianotes) . Since then I've been looking for a good flat coat. FOr quite a while I'd been using Testors Dullcoate and/or Tamiya XF86 Flat. Both are good, particularly the Dullcoate but I still suffered from getting the white posts from time to time. I'd read about people using Winsor and Newton Galeria Matt Varnish. Whilist at an Art Store in Wollongong I picked it up. $22 for the 250mls.

Wow, what product.... 2 thin coats and a dead flat finish .... And no silvering or carrier film in sight.

My only issues are that I'm wondering how it'll react to oils for weathering . And that you have to clean it out with water (I find anything than needs cleaning with water is a PITA the clean)

Enough my rambling, here's some photos of the model with the flat coat on

F-4EJ-042.jpg

F-4EJ-043.jpg

F-4EJ-044.jpg

Hasegawa put many stencils on one large decal. But apart from the ones on the bottom around the centre of the aircraft , I cut them into smaller individual pieces.. I'd guess it took about 12 hrs to do the lot. I did apply 2 large decals to the bottom that had large number of stencils as I'd had enough by then. They worked well so I guess I could have done the same on the top.

F-4EJ-045.jpg

F-4EJ-046.jpg

Now for some weathering and to finish the fiddly bits.

Edited by a4s4eva
Link to post
Share on other sites

Your Phantom looks the Ducks Nuts, an absolute beauty. I have these same decals and thanks to your advice I won't be using Tamiya X-15 like I was planning to. Can't wait to see her with some more weathering and on her feet. :thumbsup2::clap2::thumbsup2:

Link to post
Share on other sites

Calum - You have just showed the Hasegawa folks what the pit should look like OOB....it not only screams it jumps off the page at ya....keep on keepin on, mate you're giving us a lesson in modeling :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup::clap2: .

Link to post
Share on other sites

Just an incredible paint job, and your decaling is absolutely perfect, well worth all the time and effort you put into it. To say I'm more then impressed, is putting it mildly.

Joel

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...