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1/72 Italeri SR-71 Blackbird


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If you ask me,this is the most badass airplane ever built. It's time to build this beauty.

Unfortunatly,this is a dog of a kit,so I will have my hands full trying to correct lots of mistakes,and

make it accurate as I can.

In short, full rescribe,custom exhaust,detailing wheel well, correcting the (notoriously wrong) nose,etc.

Not a lot of parts,but work needed to be done,enormous :)

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Aftermarket parts,only Rocketeer decals and Eduard set.

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First thing,rescribing.

Lots of wrong panels on the kit,so I start to correct this. All the panels are raised,so I can use some of it as templet to scrabing.

First stage,general lines. Of course,I will make the lines better,without mistakes in second stage. Goal is to make 'new tooled look' to it :)/> , with all the rivets,etc. Well

that's the plan anyway :)/>

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Edited by Woody_
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First picture - you can see how pure fit this kit have (marked with blue circle) , piece that needs to be replaced with PE (yellow circle) , and 2 pieces that don't exist on

real airplane,so needs to be removed (red circle).

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Second picture - after

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Third picture - starting to play with riveting. Oh boy,this will be a pain of a job. I will do it all one by one,with help of that metal piece you can see on the picture above.

I think it will look ok in the end,but my mind could go south in the process :) Tried with riveting tools,but I didn't like it. Maybe for some other areas...

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Nicely done Woody. I'm right there with you on adding details and rescribing. I've added a ton of this to my 1/18th scale Tomcat. It's VERY time consuming and requires alot of patience. I like your metal rivet guide, where did you

get it from ? This would have been nice to use on my Cat.

Steve

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Thank you !

It is a VERY time consuming,do it rivet by rivet,sanding,correcting... but this bird deserve all that :)

1/18 Tomcat ... you are even crazier than me :)

Metal guide,it's part of Dreammodel template set,you can easy find it on ebay.

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Just to get a little rest from scribing and riveting, I start to play with terribly wrong shape nose.

First,remove plastic (you can see original on the left side,marked red)

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Now you can see deliberately made gap,to make room for styrene.

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Something like this,but long piece correctly shaped

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All that ,God help me :) ,to achieve something like this shape (you can see how wrongly is the shape of kit front

,not just Italeri,but I will say all Blackbird kits on the market)

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Unfortunately,I can't do much about it at the moment,because before I start to seriously work on this,I need to finnish many other

things (cockpit,front wheel well). Many things needs to be done before I can close both halfs together.

This is just a plan presented,so you can comment if you wish, make sugestions,correct me if I'm wrong in something.

Edited by Woody_
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very interesting job!

All that ,God help me :)/> ,to achieve something like this shape (you can see how wrongly is the shape of kit front,not just Italeri,but I will say all Blackbird kits on the market)

JjDVsTF.jpg

Wow!

So it is the same for the 1/48 version??

Do you recommend an accurate scale drawing?

Cheers

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The nose looks like it could be correct for an A-12 "Oxcart". Maybe that is what Italeri did, made their research of some A-12 at some museum, and then added a second cockpit? I built their YF-12 once upon a time, and I would not be surprised if a lot of plastic is the same.

Nice work with the panel lines. I have the utmost respect for someone who is prepared to put that much effort into their model. I am sure this one is going to look great when finished!

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@rom

Yes,1/48 also have wrong shape.

I'm not aware of any official SR-71 bluprint,but people manage to make pretty accurate drawings.

When you look at this drawings and reference photos,you can make very close shape.

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@erik

Italeri (and others) made some kind of mix between A-12 and SR-71. Shape of the front end is A-12,but too long. Notice also,it's not just the nose,as many

modellers mentioned,but also area under cockpit. If you correct just the nose,shape will still be wrong. You need to correct it all the way,as I show on the

picture.

This is most prominent,but overall shape of the plane is also wrong. Not critical tho, but area between engines is too compressed.

But in the end,with a little corrections you can make pretty descent SR-71.

I hope it will look ok in the end,so much work to do yet :)/>

Edited by Woody_
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Working on front underside.

Just a little scribing and riveting on the front,much more to do.

Few corrections,first I remove ridiculously shallow front wheel well,then work on cameras.

You can see here wrongly positioned windows,and new placement for it. Also,subtle,but you can see differently shaped windows (TEOC and OOC),as I correct it.

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Work in progress

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You can see here how I fill wrong windows and make 2 new ones. I will go with only TEOC,as this is usuall configuration in mission flights. OCC will be just closed plates,

as they always remove glass when not used.

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Edited by Woody_
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Working a little on vertical stabilizers...

On the right,you can see original kit part,no details,wrong,so I correct it,as you can see on the left.

It's not perfect,but for 1/72 it will pass :)

Uv6V6GO.jpg

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If you ask me,this is the most badass airplane ever built. It's time to build this beauty.

Unfortunatly,this is a dog of a kit,so I will have my hands full trying to correct lots of mistakes,and

make it accurate as I can.

In short, full rescribe,custom exhaust,detailing wheel well, correcting the (notoriously wrong) nose,etc.

Not a lot of parts,but work needed to be done,enormous smile.gif

NVYzowc.jpg

You have exquisite taste there, young man 271.gif !

I'll definitely be following this build.

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Nicely done, what a difference it looks 10x better. Keep up the great work Woody.

Here's a suggestion if you don't mind. When it comes time for painting her, save yourself a step and shoot her gloss black. Then you can decal, weather and flat coat. That's how I did my 1/48th scale F-117A.

Steve

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WOW, what great attention to detail! I may very well be interested in trying to build this one again someday and with this how to tutorial, it may very well look as it should. Cant wait for the next update and how to!!!!!! Keep it up.

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