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I'm not the first guy to tackle the many 1/48 Tomcats. Darren Roberts put together a handy guide (he even gave them grades!! You can tell he is a teacher :)

http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/Gal10/9301-9400/gal9392-F-14-Roberts/00.shtm

And Paul did a comparison build as well, you can find it here.

http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/index.php?showtopic=142212&st=0&p=1276367&hl=tomcat%20project&fromsearch=1entry1276367

I have all the 1/48 scale Tomcats (except for the Academy, and new hobbyboss but that can be resolved later) And decided it was time to build them all, If only just to say I did it! So I had to come up with a plan first, how did I want to do this? I am a what-if/sci fi builder primarily, I tend to do models that take a long time and I can't remember the last time I finished an OOB build. Since Darren and Paul covered the comparisons, I really just want this to be a big series of in-progress builds, its not really about A vs B Vs C (they did a great job of that already). So I decided on a set of rules after my gray matter burned out.

^ It should be generally OOB. For speed purposes. trying to fix some of these kits would take way more time than they are worth!

^ The outer lines of the model should be preserved. so no adding new tail fins or anything. If the shadow was projected on a wall it would clearly be a good old fashioned Tomcat. Nothing different about the shape, silhouette will be consistent.

^ "5 minute fixes" are allowed. What is a 5 minute fix? Adding tape seatbelts or shaving down a landing gear tire to make it flat are excellent additions that are not major conversion work like rescribing lines, adding resin, or wiring. (If you can do that in five minutes however-- I salute you)

^ Replacement parts. For badly done parts, poorly shaped Phoenix pallets for example, replacements from another Tomcat kit that will help its shape are allowed. Basically Drop-in replacement.

^The Tomcats should feature modeling skills I need to work on. Masking, adding texture, gloss coats, etc. I have made a to do list and hope to add little things here and there to improve my skills and experience.

^Maintaining the original silhouette, and OOB nature does not mean conventional schemes :)

So starting with the worst!

The original Revell kit:

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Some revell parts that are to replace by Revellogram Tomcat parts

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The Revell cat has a weird split style construction with smaller flat parts inside larger parts. I realized I could add some Science Fiction flare by tracing the parts onto patterned styrene and creating a solar panel look.

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Will post more soon! Thanks for stopping by!

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Looking forward to this comparison build TT. Will be following with interest. Are you going with OBB markings?

Probably not on the Markings. Going to invent a few, rob stuff from others. Some of these kits are old so the decals are long gone, or just sketchy at this point.

Ooh, this is going to be fun to watch!

I'm excited! Your reviews have been hugely helpful, And your comparison is something I will refer to many times in this build!

So this is about exploring new techinques. I wanted to do a very exotic cockpit, So I saw this painting style called "Tuscan Finish" And wondered how I could scale that down and make it look good.

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Tuscan Finish ^

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Cut some old Decals to fit first.

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I used some Krylon Textured spray paint carefully masked. I then hit it with gray primer to make it gray.

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I added some black drybrushing and then brush painted on some streaks to look like cracks.

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Lastly I globbed on Tamiya Smoke as the "glaze"

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Not what I had hoped for... I'm going to refine the technique... oh well live and learn. I added the decals but didn't take a picture

Next update soon!! :)

Edited by TaiidanTomcat
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Cool project. I thought the planked plastic was going to be to give the entire Tomcat a wooden plane finish, lol. A true Jolly Roger, per say.

Edited by Exhausted
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Thanks Clif! and Bigassham you certainly have the right spirit! :thumbsup:

Cool project. I thought the planked plastic was going to be to give the entire Tomcat a wooden plane finish, lol. A true Jolly Roger, per say.

Thats a great idea, Oscar!! :woot.gif: I would love to do that, but I would probably want to take it to an extreme and start with a nicer kit

Joel, with the 1/48 hobbyboss offering there are 7 main types of 1/48 Tomcat, and I plan on doing them all :thumbsup:

An unfortunate development! In all my travels I lost the Canopy for this 1/48 Tomcat. :doh: So I grabbed a set from the Revellogram kit and took a look at how close I could get it.

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Hmmm

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I added styrene (about 2MM X 2MM) to cover the gap cut to shape. (good thing I am going for a sci-fi look, would hate to have to blend it in)

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The Styrene was too high though. I had to decide what I should cut down and decided on the Canopy. So I took some off-- the never ending cycle!! I think its good now though.

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Painted black

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A while ago I took a bunch of googly eyes of various sizes, Rattle bombed them silver and now I add Tamiya clear colors for lenses and screens and such.

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Green on this one and then I just glued it into the hole I drilled when I started construction

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the decals on the cockpit. Cockpit is basically done, save for the seat to be put in later. Canopy is still a work in progress though

Thanks for the comments everyone

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TT I think you are in the right direction on the Tuscan paint scheme. One thing to mention is that painters use 3 different colors for the effect and basically dry brush the second color on. The darkest color is normally put on with a plastic bag wadded up and pressed against the wall with a dabbing effect.

What I would try is everything you tried from the get go but on the final use a piece of the smallest holed sponge you can find and use it as the Plastic bag. I would basically use it to dry brush the effect on where you intend the paint to be.

I painted my fathers house this way and it looked great. Not hard to do but to get it into that small of a scale you are really going to have to think about the material you use to get the effect correct. Great job so far I am looking forward to seeing this thing come to fruition. You have great imagination and your skill set is not far off.

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  • 2 weeks later...

TT I think you are in the right direction on the Tuscan paint scheme. One thing to mention is that painters use 3 different colors for the effect and basically dry brush the second color on. The darkest color is normally put on with a plastic bag wadded up and pressed against the wall with a dabbing effect.

What I would try is everything you tried from the get go but on the final use a piece of the smallest holed sponge you can find and use it as the Plastic bag. I would basically use it to dry brush the effect on where you intend the paint to be.

I painted my fathers house this way and it looked great. Not hard to do but to get it into that small of a scale you are really going to have to think about the material you use to get the effect correct. Great job so far I am looking forward to seeing this thing come to fruition. You have great imagination and your skill set is not far off.

Thank you! And thank you for the help, I am still trying little things here and there to get this Tuscan scheme scaled down. The above has been helpful, appreciate you taking the time to write it all out. :thumbsup:/>/>

Update! Wanted to experiment with some texture:

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I had to be really sure on the masking, its one thing to have over spray, its another to have textured over spray!

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Happy with the results. I used Krylon textured paint. I have used it a few times but this is the first with some actual masking.

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Just as on the Sukhoi Flanker, and F-15 Eagle I wanted to add exposed metallic portions. This is krylon "Hammered steel" And although it looks like a pretty standard metallic in the pictures (i couldn't get the camera to cooperate and show the textures no matter how hard I tried) up close it does have a certain pattern in it.

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I painted the fins white to prep them for a masked emblem of some kind (I still haven't decided what exactly) On the Tomcat the fins are not "handed" So left side will have the "solar panels" and the other will have the emblems.

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Lastly, added some spare patterned styrene to the intake. I wanted to avoid looking down them and just seeing an overly cavernous intake with a fan of some sort way back there.

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:OMG-OMG: :OMG-OMG: :OMG-OMG:....someone call the medics 'e's gone bloody bonkers, 'e's a madman...this is getting veddy, veddy, inkertestink...just so's ya know I've just had a fresh batch of :popcorn: and soda brought in, I'm here for the duration.
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Your experiment with texture certainly has a positive result, but it does look rather thick and out of scale. Are you going to be polishing it so that the hard edge is more to scale?

Joel

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Your experiment with texture certainly has a positive result, but it does look rather thick and out of scale. Are you going to be polishing it so that the hard edge is more to scale?

Joel

No i didn't I honestly did not even think about scale! :bandhead2: Good point. I was just happy to see the masks did well! :doh: I don't think its going to be too obvious anyway, as I am not going to paint them or make them stand out with a different color.

:OMG-OMG: :OMG-OMG: :OMG-OMG:....someone call the medics 'e's gone bloody bonkers, 'e's a madman...this is getting veddy, veddy, inkertestink...just so's ya know I've just had a fresh batch of :popcorn: and soda brought in, I'm here for the duration.

Thanks Clif!

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"South sea pearl" nail polish. If you use it on light colors it looks like the bottle there, on dark colors it changes between blue and green. (Also Thanks hun!)

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I tried to drybrush it on there to not obscure the detail. I think it looks neat, don't know what the hell it does (power cell? Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator?) but it looks futuristic and the intake wont just be a black tunnel with a fan back there somewhere.

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Clamped down! the white styrene is being used as a brace to keep the intake open while the glue sets (they were warped) and will be painted and glued deeper into the intake later on.

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The emblems for the tails... this actually took a while LOL, longer than it should have.

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cut and applied. Don't know what it means or what it stands for, I just wanted a simple little design. I can add some decals to it later as well.

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Everyone's favorite part!I always try to shim with styrene, as I tend to sand too much and cause pits and other additional problems, that send me into a parallel universe of infinite sanding and filling.

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The nose after I glued the alpha probe. Like all expert modelers I glued the piece on and then scrambled to find a way to place it so it could dry! You can see my highly advanced jig above. I then added weight to avoid the tail sitting.

Moving along pretty well, Thanks for looking in, I appreciate the comments everyone. My mind is already starting to drift into plans for the next F-14...

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Time for an update!!

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Purple!! After adding the revellogram Aim-54 pallets I rattle bombed it with Testors bright light purple.

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masking with both silly putty and tape.

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If you look to the left you can see the masking that was applied over the engines. :)

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My idea for the canopy, inspired by the B-2 Spirit. Remember that a big part of these builds is "coloring outside the lines" Taking an OOB model and making it look exotic and different with the finish.

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Coming along quite nicely. I think it's safe to say that this will be one highly exotic painted Cat. Boy does that purple stand out.

Joel

its only going to get crazier! :sunrevolves:

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The Canopy, with front frames sanded off and then polished. The putty is to hold it in place while I affixed the masks.

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The solar panels are glued on, my inability to get them glued in after the fuselages were joined forced me to paint, glue solar panels, and then put the halves on, with touch ups expected. Just the nature of the beast. ^One of those modeling moments when you wish you had 8 arms! This is going to be "fun"

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The fit was so bad I literally ran out of clamps.

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A lot of seams popped or didn't take to the gluing. For a while it was literally 2 seems fixed, while another popped and had to be redone. 2 forward, 1 back. What I should have done, was glued the mid section as it was the toughest with the wings, and then glue may way out from there forward and aft, but I went with the whole shabang at once...

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which didn't work all that great and I basically ended up going from the wing gloves out anyway! But at least this took longer and was more difficult, so there is always a silver lining

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Serious gluing needed for the front fuselage to make it hold. I masked, Puttied, and then very gently sanded. For once I was going to use "restraint" and get it right the first time.

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Masking for touch ups

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I worked on the seat while the rattlebombing dried. Used graphite from a pencil to creat highlights. Yep just one seat for this Tomcat.

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Yay! Well here comes the wild, time to add the camouflage... Thanks for stopping by!

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Nice work. Is the glass going to be gold tinted, as it is on the Spirit?

it probably won't be for this build, but that is a great idea and I want to incorporate it, I'll research it because I know is tricky to pull off. :thumbsup:

Wacky and wild stuff.... I love it!

Thanks John!

This is almost like following a Big Daddy Roth paint job from the glory days of hot rodding.

Joel

high praise! Thank you! :woot.gif:

And here we go...

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Art by Chris Foss for the movie Dune (pity it never got used)+NYC Jade Green=

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I refined the canopy idea to give it a curvy organic shape.

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Other pieces and parts

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Underside, showing panels and removed masks to expose the metallics

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Closer up

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Metallics on the top side. I wanted to keep the organic look up front along with the wavy camo and contrast that with the more utilitarian engines/panels. The camo is also there to camo the "less than good quality" of the model too LOL

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The nose cone, I used a pin vise and added that little "bowling ball" formation you see there. I have observed little holes like that in science fiction drawings, thought it would be an easy way to add a little "complexity" to it. You will also notice I did a curvy mask too.

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After paint, but before I sanded it down to pretty it up and remove some of that texture there. Also worth noting is I went over a lot of the model with a second coat to rid it of the brush streaks you see in the pictures, so no worries there!

Thanks for looking!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thank Ham! Thanks Joel! I was little nervous about how this would be received :woot.gif:/>

Update:

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Canopy remasked to protect the clear parts from future Flat Coat

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Scale modelers have sharp eyes, so I wanted to create some unique stencils that wouldn't be what we are used to seeing.

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Decals and wash done. The Decals are not wanting to stay on, so we will see what makes the cut when all is said and done. :(/> The stabs and fins are glued on in this pic. the canopy is fitted just to see how it all looks. Should be ready for the flat coat, and very close to the finish line.

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