Is it just me or did Hasegawa “slightly” overdo the rivets on this kit? I want to do a bright shiny one and all the photos i see of the plane show a very smooth finish with the rivets evident only in patches.
If so whats a good way to go about reducing the rivet count?
The F104 is 1950s technology and this was before carbon fibre and glues that can withstand the extremes of high speed aircraft. The 104 is almost all metal and that necessitates rivets or welds. On natural metal F104s the rivets are obvious even though they are “flush” rivets, but on painted 104s they are almost invisible. In “scale” I do not think the rivets should be as obvious. You could look at references and determine which areas the rivits are most visible in a natural metal 104 and fill in the areas that should not be so extremely visable. I also think that the kit rivets are overdone, FWIW.
Hmm…I wonder if the Mad Riveter was working at Hasegawa before moving on to Hobby Boss…lol…I think your best bet for getting rid of them is putty. Just tape along the sides of them as close as possible to fence the putty. I did this on some of the incorrect rivets on my A-10 and I’m going to have to do it on my F-14 too.
what type of putty did you use? would it be best to use mr surfacer or something that is liquid enough to fill up each rivet or plaster the whole area with a filler and sand it back (i is a noob to this, it seems most ppl complain about not enough surface detail rather than too much. Mouldmakers cant win can they)
I use Tamiya white putty. Making sure it gets into rivets real well can be an issue. I imagine something like Mr. Surfaced would work just as well, but I’ve never used it. With the Tamiya I just tape off around as much as I can pop a runner surgical glove on an run putty on with a finger and sand off the excess.
If you can get hold of some of Tamiya’s own-brand lacquer thinner you can dilute the Tamiya white filler into a liquid which can be brushed on like Mr Surfacer. Don’t use regular lacquer thinner though, it’ll melt the styrene.
Ill have to get hold of some tamiya stuff, its about the only putty i dont own. i have squadron white/green, valejo pllastic putty, mr white putty, mr disolved putty, revell plasto, mr surfacer 500 and 1000 and 3 milliputs but no tamiya. typical[:O]
The Hasegawa F-104 rivets are way overdone. It is not you. That thing was built for speed and having seen a few up close and personal, they are clean. Most USAF 104s were painted ADC gray or camo, or in Aluminum Lacquer for most of their careers.
Rather than a lacquered one i want to do the really polished up one with the highest shine i can get, so will be filling in a lot of the rivets as suggested. did the rear of theses planes show the heat banding the f 100’s had or did the rear stay clean?
http://data3.primeportal.net/hangar/bill_spidle2/f-104a_56-0733/images/f-104a_56-0733_01_of_56.jpg
Image copyright Bill Spidle
I have never seen the “heat banding” on a 104. Photos do show a tonal difference to indicate a differant metal used on the after fuselage
something like this?
I’ve also used plain ol’ Liquid Paper to fill in tiny gaps. In this case, they might help tone down those rivets as well. Just a thought.
Eric
Very often you will find F-104s that are natural metal and highly polished with white painted wings. I forget why this was done, something to do with air flow IIR. Check your references for the aircraft you are modeling. Look closely at the above picture and I think the wings are white. Also note that the nose cone covers the radar and it is not metal. There are red metal leading edge gaurds put on the wings leading edge when the aircraft is on the ground to protect the SHARP leading edge as well as ground crew. Yes, the rear fuselage metal is darker in a section as it is a high heat metal (titainium, I think) and it is naturally darker than duraluminum aircraft skin. As stated above look at photos. Up close you can see a boat load of rivets on the F-104, but they blend in at a distance, AND in scale they would hardly be visable. “The Missle With the Man in it”.
As far as I know, the wings on all F-104s were painted, even on NMF birds. White on upper surfaces and ADC Gray on the lower. Yes the radome is fiberglass and can vary in its color.
Stickpusher - yup that looks like the one.
The kit has decals for one like that but not sure if ill use them or look for a different variation. The kit also calls out white and grey wings and painted radome so thats confirmed.
Yup there are a lot of rivets but if you scaled up the kits ones they look like they would be about an inch deep! Maybe ill try mr surfacer or tipex as sugessred to reduce rather than eliminate some of them, especially around the access panels, and remove only the ones that look filled in on the plane.
Also toying with the idea of closing everything up and doing an infligh one so as not to spoil the smoothfinish but ill have to find a pilot first. Thanks for all the info.
Monogram makes lots of sweet 1/48 pilots in their various kits.
PJ Productions do a 1/48 resin F-104 specific pilot:-
www.pj-production.be/…/71-481113-f-104-pilot-seated-in-ac.html
Excellent find my friend [t$t]
A little reference and visual inspiration from Hollywood for you Talent[;)] Except for on the canopy framing, you can see how smoothly the rivets (or cant see I should say) were blended into the skin on the real bird here.
Hey, there’s ol’ Shaky!