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Kinetic 1/48 F/A-18C VFA-151 In-Progress


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I'm going to try my first in-progress build thread.  This is Kinetics 1/48 F/A-18C.  It's a bit of a revival build.  I had one of these nearly done, but then the final Testors dullcote flat I used was too hot and gave spider webs everywhere.  It was a total loss, so I'm starting over. 

 

In short, I wanted a dirty hornet with folded wings in low-viz markings.  So this meant a deployed carrier bird and I ultimately settled after finding Two Bobs decals for the VFA-151 2001 deployment.  The build will include:

 

Kinetic 1/48 F/A-18C USN

Eduard 1/48 F/A-18C Exterior

ResKit Wheels

Two Bobs VFA-151 Decals

Eduard Brassin munitions

 

I started taking the pictures for this build a while ago, so it may seem that I build fast.  However, quite the opposite.  I've learned a thing or two about building these Kinetic Hornets, so hopefully that will help.  Most of these pictures will be decent, but I will still save the photo tent, bracketed exposures, etc for the completed build.  So some will be a little off still. 

 

To start the build, I tend to start with intakes.  I'm not a very big fan of smoothing these out, so I like to get this out of the way.  The Kinetic intakes fit fairly well, so to start was simply gluing the halves together with liberal use of cement to smooth the seems out from the start.

 

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The inside was then sanded tediously with sandpaper wrapped around a thin paint brush handle.  Hard to see much in this picture

 

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Kinetic, and most Hornet kits, would have you believed the white of the intake comes to nearly the lip where the natural seem in the kit parts are.  However, the demarcation is actually about 3 feet back.  So I glued the trunk to the intake lips at this point, and then filled this seem with super glue.  I've found for work in areas like this with poor visibility, it can be helpful to spray some black paint over the superglue.  Then this makes it very clear where the superglue still is as you start sanding.  Once the black is gone, it should be good to go.

 

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The front was then primed and sprayed with Model Master Acryl light ghost gray.

 

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The white demarcation would be very hard to mask given how far back it is, so I used the poured latex paint method.  I use a semi gloss instead of gloss, as I find both appearance for scale effect and coverage is better.  This is my setup.  I fix the intakes in measuring cups so the demarcation line is horizontal.  I use a syringe with a long needle to "inject" the paint well below the demarcation line to not mess up the gray.  The toothpick in the hemostat has been measured to be the depth from the lip to the end of the gray.  So as I'm getting closed, I cam placed the hemostat across the intake face and fill until it just touches the toothpick. 

 

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I then let the pour sit for about 5 minutes before pulling the intake up and letting most of the paint drip back in to cup. 

 

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I then hang them up to let excess drip out.

 

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Next update will be the cockpit.  The build is completed through basic airframe tidied up and getting control surfaces and I'll try to get this thread updated through that point at least.  Please feel free to offer any critiques or ask any questions. 

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For cockpits, I've like a simple "black basing" technique.  The parts are primed and painted black first.  At this stage, I tend to loosely mask off the cockpit areas to keep paint off the gluing surfaces. 

 

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I then lightly spray Vallejo dark gull gray.  Vallejo colors are poor for accuracy and this one seems to be a bit dark.  However, its reasonable (this picture is underexposed, so it looks really dark) and I like the simple out of the bottle factor.

 

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The gray areas are then masked, and black sidesills, etc, are sprayed. 

 

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I then settle in for detail painting.  I find my cockpits appear much more realistic with reference pictures.  Without them, I find I go overboard with gray switches and red/yellow warnings.  I've got a tablet holder on my bench for work with reference pictures.  In this case, I'm using screen shots out of the DCS World flight sim that is rather accurate. 

 

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And my other essential supplies are magnification, a good paint brush, and some thinner to clean the brush frequently.  I like the way Vallejo air paints brush, so I use these for the cockpit work.

 

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First the black instrument panels are painted...

 

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Then all the switches, screens, and yellow/red knobs.  The screens later get a clear green coat to average out with the very green look here.  One catching point I've noticed on modern warbirds is the urge to paint all the switches around the UFC (center panel just below HUD) gray, when in reality these are LCD digit strips and backlit keys the same color as the panel.  A bunch of gray dots looks out of place here. 

 

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I then use Airscale instrument dials set in place with future for all the analog instruments.  I punch these out with a punch set to get them the right size for each dial.  Even though this set is sold as 1/48, I find it is overscale and there is usually only room for a portion of each instrument.  I've tried painting these dials, but I've found even the smallest brush or needle can't get fine enough to replicate what can be done with decals. 

 

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The almost done cockpit...

 

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After this, the whole thing gets a dark brown/gray wash and sealed with a flat coat.  Instrument faces get some clear future, and the screens and LCD digit strips on the UFC get some Tamiya clear green.  The finished product...

 

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I'll be putting a pilot in the seat.  I'm using the Aerobonus figure.  I'm terrible at painting figures, so I'm taking this part slow, but they're in progress.  The feet don't fit in the Kinetic pit and wouldn't be visible anyway, hence the emergency amputations.

 

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Next update will be what I call "early airframe" assembly.  

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6 minutes ago, OMWorks said:

Fantastic tips and awesome images so far! Cant wait to see how the rest turns out. I really like the muted but realistic feel of the cockpit!

 

Thank you for the comments!  The last one was proving to be very nice, it's a shame it met its end.  It's also led me to completely move on from Testors Dullcote.  It's a the hot side and I've flirted with disaster before this last time that it completely F'd it all!

 

On to some airframe work.  The exhausts are effectively invisible, so painting and assembly was straight forward.  There is a fair bit of "slop" gluing these in, so I've put some tooth picks in the elevator peg holes.  Failure to keep these lined up can leave some very odd angles when the elevator pins are pushed in to these at an angle.

 

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It's already become clear that I should have temporarily placed the exhausts to center the "circle-in-a-circle" on the back side.  I was still able to "pry" them in to position after the glue dried to get the burner cans to line up.

 

The intake splitter plate assembles were glued in to position before the intake trunk and lip were passed in to the opening.  Kinetic flipped the part numbers for each side of the bases for the plate.  Also, I little prying is necessary to open the way for the intake trunk, but they can easily be assembled.  It seems obvious, but the main landing gear bay needs to be glued in place before the intakes. 

 

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The step from the intake splitter to the lip/trunk assembly is not great fit, but can be made almost perfect by sliding a small piece of plastric strip (very thing, I didn't measure, but in the ball park of 0.010") between the splitter and intake trunk.

 

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Small seems around the wing fold hinges were filled with Tamiya putty...

 

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...and once dry, "sanded" with some Mr. Color Thinner on a towel.  This thinner dissolves tried putty and Mr. Surfacer without attacking the plastic.  It has become one of my favorite go to's for small seams and corners.  I can't believe I made it this far in modeling and didn't learn abut this until just recently.  It's great for this little cracks that need to be filled in, but with delicate detail around them.  It's not a great method for flat seams.  But for corners, or areas that ideal would still stay a bit "sunken" like a wide seam between parts in a panel line, it works great. 

 

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The large flat seams along the back of the fuselage look like a setup for popping, or caving in to look sunken.  So strips of thick plastic stock were used to glue on the inside to reinforce these areas.

 

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Sanding these seams flat looses a lot of detail.  But in this area, I don't think there's an option.  Anything less will create a valley around the seam.  The whole thing that started me using the Eduard set in the first place was a replacement of the slime lights that I just couldn't imagine any way to preserve.  The seams were filled with super glue and then sanded flat with a sanding stick to make sure the face stayed flat without any valleys from the seam or sanding.

 

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I tend to feel more thorough and less overwhelmed if I fill seams and rescribe as I'm going, rather than assembling everything and waiting until the end.  So the next batch will be rescribing, then assembling the nose.

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17 minutes ago, Mstor said:

This is great. I have two Kinetic F/A-18 kits in my stash. I will be bookmarking this build. Already has a number of great hints.

 

 

I've been through two runs.  Both met the shelf of doom, although one was early in the build due to a move and fallen box.  Either way, hopefully I've learned a few things and want to pass them on.  It's getting easier each time.  I also have two more to build at some point, a Blue Angels and the RCAF anniversery scheme.

 

When scribing to replace lost detail, I find it is very easy to not make ends meet up with existing panel line detail.  The exact panel line can be hard to see or appears to move a little bit depending on how "soft" the detail is.  So to start, I apply some Tamiya black panel line wash, let it dry, and then buff the excess away with some 0000 steel wool. 

 

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My tools for rescribing very by the plastic.  I find needles to work better on softer plastic.  The Kinetic kit is a harder plastic, and I prefer scribing tools here.  I am using the Tamiya scriber with 0.1 mm tip.  I do about 3-4 passes using the Dymo tape as a guide.  Once I've done a few lines, I again give it all a black wash and buff down with steel wool.  The steel wool does a better job of keeping dust out of the new panel lines.  But beware, it will leave small particles that will rust.  So this is best for prep work before paint, but not so good once you start putting color on.  The rivets were replaced with an RB productions wheel.  After rescribing a side, this is what it looks like (try to ignore the poor depth of field here):

 

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And both sides done ready to get the nose...

 

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I was going to include the nose with this update, but it's getting late here.  I'll work to add that tomorrow. 

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3 minutes ago, ESzczesniak said:

I've been through two runs.  Both met the shelf of doom, although one was early in the build due to a move and fallen box.  Either way, hopefully I've learned a few things and pass them on.  It's getting easier each time. 

 

I had heard that there were some pitfalls and problem areas with the kit. I believe there is also a problem getting the windscreen fitted (?). I think Dave Roof was going to perfect his method and post it but haven't heard pack on that (hint, hint Dave). Anyway, carry on. I'm watching closely and loving it.

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It’s certainly far from perfect, but isn’t terrible either. My first attempt got up to the nose, then sat in a box, and was crushed in a move. The second one had landing gear, doors, etc. before the fateful dullcoat. So I have been through the windscreen once. It does take some work. I’m not sure my method and Dave’s are the same, but I’ll share mine when I get there. 
 

Overall, I think it’s the best legacy Hornet out there. It’s the only one I’ve built. But I did have a Hasegawa kit until the Kinetic was released. I feel like the construction pitfalls are very similar between the two (except the nose and windscreen) and the Kinetic is much more detailed. I’ve only read reviews of the Hobby Boss kit, but it doesn’t seem worth it. 

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The major issue I've found with the nose is that it wants to taper narrower at the top.  So the cross sections match well at the bottom part, but then the nose assembly where it meets the rest of the fuselage wants to have a narrower profile.  This is relatively easy to combat at least.

 

First, I glued the bulkhead to the forward nose wheel bay instead of the nose assembly.

 

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I then glued the lower panel to the side panel without the IFR probe.  Some care here will make this seam easy to deal with.  Kinetic didn't get the edge of these two parts quite flat.  There are peaks at the tab/slots that don't look very obvious on the part alone, but once they join it's obvious.  Sanding this flat will tidy this up well. 

 

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I then glued this to the fuselage...

 

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I then glued the IFR box to the upper nose/fuselage and then glued the other side in place.  Apparently I didn't get any pictures before glueing this side panel in place.  I didn't glue the top seam until everything else was in place.  This was then able to be clamped down and glued well.

 

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The seam work and rescribing was fairly light around this section, but now it's basically a complete airframe...

 

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This is getting close to catching up with wear I'm at currently.  With the next update, will get basically a complete airframe ready for control surfaces and the small bits. 

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The Eduard landing gear bay inserts were glued in place.  I apply some normal CA to hold the part in position, then use a microbrush with superthin CA to fill the gap.  Some light sanding matches the PE part perfectly to the contour of the fuselage surrounding the part.  I haven't sanded these areas down yet in this picture to blend, but that is complete now. 

 

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The molded in slime lights of the vertical stabilizers don't match with the printed location on the decals perfectly (the tail art and slime light is all one decal).  So these were sanded off.

 

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There's a number of control surfaces for later positioning.  The assembly is fairly straight forward, but there is some clean up and enough of them in numbers to take a bit of time.  The fit of each piece is not terrible, but poor enough that I choose to glue these in place before painting to keep glue/seams tidy.  Painting is a bit more challenging, but not unreasonable. 

 

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And this is where she stood as of a couple nights ago.  The basic airframe is done. 

 

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All control surfaces are ready to be added, and slowly being glued.  Then it'll be small bits, final PE, canopy, and ready for paint on the airframe.  I'll likely pause before pain to work on getting a lot of the pylons and gear doors ready for paint at the same time.

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Thank you both for the comments!  I'm nearing the end of the antennas, PE grills, etc.  So then a couple days of cleanup on gear doors and pilons and I can start painting.  I shouldn't kid myself, that'll be more than a couple days.  But it's moving at least!

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8 hours ago, Mstor said:

Great tips. Keep 'em coming. I noticed the raised slime lights on the nose. Why do kit makers insist on doing this?

 

All the slime lights are raised on this kit, and most others I see.  I end up leaving them.  It's not realistic or to scale, but my options are to just completely remove them or try my luck at rescribing them.  And my scribing skills and patience I don't think are up to the task.  The Eduard set has photoetch options that may be a bit thinner, but ultimately aren't much different.  So I'm only using those to replace the ones I just couldn't save from seam filling. 

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Would be nice if someone started making slime light scribing templates for various kits with raised lights. Eduard could even include them with their exterior sets. I would certainly buy them for kits I have with those ridiculous raised lights.

But, enough of that. Don't want to steal your great thread. Carry on! :thumbsup:

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Some more progress and headway!  All the control surfaces have been added.  All the antennas, lumps, bumps, etc are glued on.  And all the airframe PE has been added (which is basically all the PE in this case).  Some of the pylons, tanks, and doors have been cleaned up getting ready for pain.  And I've started dealing with the front windscreen, which is less than fun. 

 

There's not a huge amount to say for these final airframe construction tips.  The only real point I can note is the locating pegs on the flap actuators are too long for the corresponding holes in the flaps.  These are easily trimmed down all fits well.  The leading edge slats for a parked aircraft should be slightly drooped.  At this stage, there's enough delicate stuff hanging off the aircraft that I also break out a stand to start to hold the aircraft for assembly.

 

The underside of the completed airframe...

 

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A close up of all the PE in the nose bay...

 

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And the top side...

 

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And this is the batch of all the hanging things that needed seams filled.  The panel lines on these parts are "softer" and pass over more curved surfaces.  So I used a little different approach.  This curved photoetch piece is a part from a Hasegawa scribing set that is like a micro saw.  It works well over the curves.  I think I use a squadron scriber to widen these areas to match the surrounding panel lines. 

 

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I'm maybe halfway through the canopy debacle, but will start that in a new post.  It's a bit tedious and long winded. 

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The start of the canopy, perhaps the most tedious of the build.  Well ok, there are other tedious parts too.  But work with clear parts and filling seems is never fun. 

 

Here's the root of the problem.  One of the leaders of Kinetic posted on the forum at one point that the mold maker "added 0.5 mm", which caused the problem.  I wasn't very clear on what had an extra 0.5 mm, but I believe it's the thickness.  The windscreen won't sit down fully over the instrument shroud, and therefore sits proud in front as shown here:

 

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To fix this, I started by aggressively thinning the shroud and the glue surfaces to sink the forward portion lower under the windscreen.  I used a simple sanding stick for this.  The areas I attacked are marked with red:

 

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And the shroud in place after all of this work.  It doesn't look much different, but makes a huge difference.

 

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On the windscreen itself, there seem to be three issues.  1) The front right corner, is very thick and doesn't sit in it's mounting channel.  2) The overall thickness along the mating surfaces catches up.  And 3) the angle from the flat mating surface aft and the curve around the front needs to be shallower.  Using a sanding stick, and carbide burr in a Dremel, and lots of test fitting, I dealt with these areas.  Again, red marks the areas focused on:

 

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The shroud was then glued in place with a clamp making sure it was held firmly seated...

 

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And with a little coaxing, the fit along the front is much better...

 

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Each canopy piece has a pretty stout mold line that needs to be addressed.  I start this with a triple grit polishing stick.  For most of my sanding, I do wet sanding.  On canopies, this is critical to avoid deep scratches that will be hard to get out later.

 

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Then I go through a full set of polishing clothes up to 12,000 grit.  I take care to rinse after each step to keep particles from the prior step messing this all up.

 

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The final step is polishing compound.  I use Novus 3 step compouond (only 2 real polishing compounds).  I've had good luck with Tamiya polishing compounds in the past too, but find they don't come in a very large quantity for the price.  I think some car modelers get good results by hand with a hand cloth, but I've never been able to beat a rag wheel in a dremel at low speed (about 10k RPM).  I use a different wheel for each compound.  Make sure the wheel is turning away from the edge.  If it is turning towards it, it will catch and rip the part out of your hand.  And wash thoroughly between each compound. 

 

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Car modelers will top this all with a "wax", but given future painting, I stop here.  The result is rather good, and if necessary, a wax can be added after painting.

 

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This is only about half the work on the canopy.  The HUD is also too tall to mount under the canopy, and will begin addressing these issues in the next update.

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The HUD is relatively simple to deal with.  As desinged, the kit PE is a bit wider than the box in the instrument shroud for the HUD and sits across the top.  With a burr and knife, I widened this area by I estimate 0.5 mm on each side. 

 

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The HUD PE assembly then sits at a shallower angle and at the base of this box. 

 

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This helps the frame sit lower and clear the front windscreen.  After some touchup painting on the shroud, will come the final HUD assembly, and then getting the front windscreen fixed in place. 

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I've made some more progress and we are now starting to do some painting!  But first, to bring everything up to speed on the canopy. 

 

The black on the instrument shroud was touched up.  The HUD glass projector clear piece was left out, there was no room for it since the frame had been seated lower.  In it's place, a large drop of clear green was put in it's place.  The HUD glass was installed uneventfully.  I used super thin CA, using the freshest bottle I had to reduce fogging and touched up with future where some slight fogging was an issue. 

 

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The glass was glued in place with Tamiya extra thin cement, and carefully clamped in place while drying.  This clear piece has a pretty wide frame that will be painted later, so there is ample area to hide glue.  For thinner frames, I use Testors clear parts cement to avoid marring, but it is a weaker bond and is hard to fill seams.  The part still likes to rock a little, so here's my clamp arrangement. 

 

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I then using Mr. Surfacer around the periphery for the seam here.  In places like this, I like putty, or Mr. Surfacer, over CA to avoid fogging and make sanding easier to avoid marring the parts.

 

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Even though caution is used while sanding, I still protect the clear parts with tape.

 

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...and then sanded...

 

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I used to mask canopies with bare metal foil, but with my longish build times I find that there tends to be a residue that I can't get rid of fully.  Canopies like this lend themselves well to Tamiya tape and a sharp 11 blade run along the framing.  I was going to try and fit the rear canopy loosely with blue tack, but this didn't work very well later.

 

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When the blue tack didn't work well, I glued this in with some clear parts cement temporarily for painting. 

 

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The landing gear was assembled and liquid mask used to mask the lens on the clear parts...

 

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And technically painting has started!  The black for the canopy frame and silver on the nose landing gear for behind the lenses.

 

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Next up will be whole airframe priming.

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I have a bad habit of painting the airframe, but then having to go back and do everything to all the small parts.  So I'm trying to fight this.  Here is everything ready for painting...

 

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I like to prime.  It has some advantages for adhesion, but I find the biggest factor is that it "unifies" all the materials well.  Without the primer, I find sanded areas, PE, etc, all look a little different.  I prime with Mr. Surfacer 1200 thinned about 30% paint/70% Mr. Color Levelling thinner.  I find this to be the smoothest and thinnest finish I can get. 

 

After primer, most areas look good.  A little surprising was the intakes looked a bit rough.  Evident in this first picture, I tend to fall just a touch short of complete "color" coverage with the first primer coat.  I know I'll be coming back after I touch up seams, and want to keep coats as thin as possible. 

 

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These were tidied up with some more CA.  The other area was this long seam on the nose I had been worried about.  This looked a bit deep.  So I brushed Mr. Surfacer 1200 over the seam, and wiped away with a finger perpendicular to the seam.  This cut the depth a lot.

 

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And the airframe is fully primed after a second pass...

 

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The intakes cleaned up much better...

 

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I'll start the landing gear wells next, then mask and get started with the airframe colors.

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To start the landing gear bays, I sprayed them with Tamiya XF-1 flat black.  This in principle is the last opaque coat of paint I plan to use for a while.  I find whites get a little more "life" from the shadows when spray on over black.

 

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Tamiya XF-2 is then sprayed next.  This is all done in one session, but with several light coats rotating around parts to build up a pretty opaque layer...I know I lied already, but I do leave this slightly light just to let some shadowing show through.

 

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I have chosen not to add any piping around the bays.  The kit bays are not quite aftermarket, but are pretty good for kits.  So I just chose to keep it.  I painted nearly all of this piping Mig Metallics Steel.  I initially used their silver, but this proved to be pretty light and didn't show much contrast to the white.  Based on reference photos, some of the thicker pipers appeared to be covered in some type of insulation and were painted a similar shade of gray.

 

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All the piping seemed to have these yellow tags (and some sparse red ones).  This could be connectors, but I think are clips to hold the lines across the bulkheads.  These were added and make the gear wells look alive. 

 

49750421581_7a40f6402c_c.jpg

 

49749883368_ce482b2780_c.jpg

 

I then masked the wells with packing foam.  Sometimes I need to supplement this with tape, but in this case the foam alone worked well.  The foam plugging the intakes was pushed further back to start blending the colors from the trunk to the airframe.

 

49750750502_5378ec7d65_c.jpg

Edited by ESzczesniak
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