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Roden 1/144 C-124A - "ol' Shakey"


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It's my own fault. I bought and then decided to build this thing. My expectation from a Roden kit is decent plastic but lousy decals. With this kit however, initial impression was reversed. The decals looked good on the sheet, almost Cartograph quality. I was hopeful. The plastic, on the other hand, looked like a bad, early '90s limited run kit. Thick, rough plastic; lots of flash; heavy sprue attachment points; no locating pins; poorly formed small parts; vague and inconsistent recessed panel lines. And yet I went ahead with the build. Before construction could begin, all parts had to be rescribed to make the panel lines consistent in depth and width and to connect numerous lines that partially disappeared. Parts fit met my expectations after seeing the kit in the box; bad! Lots of heavy-duty sanding followed by lots of light sanding and polishing, since this was going to be a bare metal finish. Painting went smoothly, with several shades of alclad and Model Master gloss enamel for the red/orange areas. If the decals were as good as they looked on the sheet, I was home free. They weren't, turning out to be no better than colored cellophane. Wouldn't conform over or into any detail, didn't want to stick, compound curves were out of the question, and they wouldn't react to any setting solution (micro-set, micro-sol, Tamiya Mark Fit, Solva-set, Mr. Softer or Mr. Setter. To make things worse, the Mr. Softer or the Mr. Setter turned the metal under the clear decal film of the windows gray. So, I had to pull off all the window decals with tape (fortunately, they came very easily), repaint the area and punch out and reapply 40+ little, round window decals. I'm happy with the finished product but would never do it again.

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