Dutch Posted February 28 Share Posted February 28 Fred, apologies for not commenting sooner, but it seems you have recovered nicely from your faux-pas. The trials and tribulations of a true large scale model builder! I am just now getting caught up since moving my 98 year old mother-in-law in with us and working on my 1:1 scale Ford F-150. Carry on with the 737, 738 & 739! K/r, Dutch Quote Link to post Share on other sites
f5guy Posted March 9 Author Share Posted March 9 (edited) Hi everyone, I had some time to work on this build today. This involved painting the nose section. I had to mix the light blue, and got mostly there. It's not quite a 100% match, but pretty close. Thankfully the darker blue was much easier. Revell's #54 blue was a dead on match. It's actually a very dark purple. At first I thought that no way would it match, so I touched up a small pin prick spot on the decals and it was right on. I do need to go back and do some touch ups, but the base is there. Interestingly I had the decals try to peel up under the masking tape (Tamiya yellow). In the pic it looks really bad to the rear of the cockpit windows, but it just got hit with Solva-set, and was still settling down. These laser printed decals certainly are much more tricky to use than the normal screen printed ones, and will require much touching up. All for now. Fred. Edited March 9 by f5guy Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Dutch Posted March 9 Share Posted March 9 Nose looks fabulous, Fred! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
f5guy Posted March 9 Author Share Posted March 9 8 hours ago, Dutch said: Nose looks fabulous, Fred! Thanks Dutch! It's getting there..... Maybe in another week I'll have it done if I can get some bench time 👍 Fred. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
southwestforests Posted March 9 Share Posted March 9 14 hours ago, f5guy said: the decals try to peel up under the masking tape Putting any nature of adhesive masking material over decals is several orders of magnitude more modeling bravado than I have! 🖖 My your successes with that live long and prosper. Wouldn't attempt that in the 1980s when custom painting model trains for money and bathing the Microsale decals in Micro Sol, and although those days are gone, still won't tempt that particular fate on what few models I now do for me. 🎨 That two tone blue Eastern livery has long been a favorite. Is both simple and classy. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
f5guy Posted March 9 Author Share Posted March 9 6 hours ago, southwestforests said: Putting any nature of adhesive masking material over decals is several orders of magnitude more modeling bravado than I have! 🖖 My your successes with that live long and prosper. Wouldn't attempt that in the 1980s when custom painting model trains for money and bathing the Microsale decals in Micro Sol, and although those days are gone, still won't tempt that particular fate on what few models I now do for me. 🎨 That two tone blue Eastern livery has long been a favorite. Is both simple and classy. It's something that I generally try to avoid myself, but this time around I had to blend the nose colors into the decals, so some careful masking was in order. The next time that I have to do stripes on a big airliner model I will definitely be painting the stripes if possible! Lesson learned 😂 Agreed.... that Eastern scheme is a real classic! Fred. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
f5guy Posted March 15 Author Share Posted March 15 (edited) Alright everyone.... I'm calling this guy done! Overall I'm pretty happy with it, but it is DEFINITELY a three footer (looks good from three feet away or further). I made a ton of mistakes on this build, but was able to salvage things and learned a few new techniques in the process. The biggest headaches were that gloss white paint, and the decals. Thanks to this build though, I have come up with a workable system for doing large amounts of gloss white now. The decals.... well.... they're very tricky. They are laser printed by V1 Decals, and I'm not bagging on them at all, but they were a handful. This is no doubt due to several things: Laser printing: The decals are quite stiff, and do not want to conform around any complex curves. They also do not react to well to decal solvents. Also their large size makes them difficult to apply, and they tend to want to fold over on themselves. You can see this problem in the close up of the right side cabin door. The decals folded over and I couldn't get it fixed, so I just had to cut it off and hope that I can find a correct size/color replacement in the future. In the future I will just paint the stripes, instead of using the supplied decals. This should greatly simplify things. Also in the close up pic you can see the pitot tubes. There's four total. These are 3D printed by ARC's own John, who has an ebay store. I cannot recommend John's parts enough! They are superb, and look far better than the photo etch pitots supplied by the kit. Here's a link: https://www.ebay.com/itm/186275226139 So in the end it was a bit of a lengthy build, which is normal for me, but despite all of my goofs, I learned a lot, and it looks great in my display case. Even though it's a challenging kit, I highly recommend BPK's line of 737 kits. Two thumbs up 👍👍 Fred. Edited March 15 by f5guy Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Trojan Thunder Posted March 17 Share Posted March 17 Lovel it Fred. great job. I'm sure you will sort out the cabin door decal issue soon as well. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Dutch Posted March 18 Share Posted March 18 Woohoo! Fred, very nice. Classics scheme! Glad to see her 99.99% done. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
AD-4N Posted March 19 Share Posted March 19 I love it. Well done, fellow Utahn. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
ST0RM Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 Taxied past this Eastern 767 the last couple of days. Thought of your 737 project. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
f5guy Posted March 22 Author Share Posted March 22 11 hours ago, ST0RM said: Taxied past this Eastern 767 the last couple of days. Thought of your 737 project. Huh.... I didn't know that they were born yet again. Thanks for posting this Jeff 😉 Fred. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
f5guy Posted March 22 Author Share Posted March 22 (edited) Thanks everyone for your very kind comments everyone, and for tagging along on this extended build! Next up for me is to finish off a 72nd AMT XB-70 that I started awhile back. Then I'll get going on either the Titan 757-200 or BPK 737-900 conversion that I'm doing progress builds on. Thanks for tuning in, Fred. Edited March 22 by f5guy Quote Link to post Share on other sites
southwestforests Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 1 hour ago, f5guy said: Next up for me is to finish off a 72nd AMT XB-70 that I started awhile back Ahh, so this handsome little 737 was merely a guinea pig for the true gloss white challenge. 🤔😆 Partly because of that gloss white challenge, I ended up not building the B-70 way back when and scrapped it for parts for sci-fi projects. Well, look at it this way, at least the B-70 doesn't have stripes ... (was also threatening to give the B-70 a removable cockpit roof like Revell's (not Monogram's) 1/72 Space Shuttle. The B-70 seriously needed more windows so as to see the cockpit in the model) Quote Link to post Share on other sites
f5guy Posted March 22 Author Share Posted March 22 (edited) 13 minutes ago, southwestforests said: Ahh, so this handsome little 737 was merely a guinea pig for the true gloss white challenge. 🤔😆 Well..... I started the XB-70 kit about 4 years ago, but hit the wall with it with all of the endless grinding and sanding involved. I also knew that my gloss white painting skills were not up to such a challenge, so it got set aside as painting approached. Now that I've tackled the "Rat 55" 737-200 and Eastern 737-800 builds, I feel that my gloss white skills are now up to the task of finishing off the XB-70. So I suppose both 737 kits were guinea pigs of sorts 🤣 Fred. Edited March 22 by f5guy Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Dutch Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 Fred, KursadA has announced a 1/72 & 1/144 XB-70 sheet. I suspect it will be available in the fall. Fingers crossed! Dutch Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Dutch Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 On 3/21/2024 at 11:49 PM, ST0RM said: Taxied past this Eastern 767 the last couple of days. Thought of your 737 project. Is, is this for real? Or just a movie prop? Quote Link to post Share on other sites
ST0RM Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 (edited) 2 hours ago, Dutch said: Is, is this for real? Or just a movie prop? It's a real jet on the ramp at March AFB. Look up N825KW. Edited March 23 by ST0RM Quote Link to post Share on other sites
f5guy Posted March 23 Author Share Posted March 23 5 hours ago, Dutch said: Fred, KursadA has announced a 1/72 & 1/144 XB-70 sheet. I suspect it will be available in the fall. Fingers crossed! Dutch Hi Dutch, I saw Kursad's announcement regarding decals, but will likely just finish mine off with the kit decals, as they're in good shape, and I want to keep this build moving forward. Thanks! Fred. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
Trojan Thunder Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 On 3/22/2024 at 2:19 PM, ST0RM said: Taxied past this Eastern 767 the last couple of days. Thought of your 737 project. Looks like a 777 to me! Quote Link to post Share on other sites
ST0RM Posted March 24 Share Posted March 24 14 hours ago, Trojan Thunder said: Looks like a 777 to me! Good call. Quote Link to post Share on other sites
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