Anybody have any tips for leveling out two surfaces that are supposed to be flush but came out a hair or two off?
Had this happen with my Dauntless WIP along the trailing edge of where the wing root meets up with the fuselage. The back half of the wing ended up sitting just a skosh lower than the fuselage. It’s maybe a millimeter off, it that, but I’m afraid it’ll be noticeable once the non-skid surfacing is laid down.
I wasn’t big on seam repair in my previous modelling life, so I don’t have much experience to draw on here…
Can you provide a pic of the problem? There are a number of methods you could use, but sometimes uneven mated surfaces can’t really be fixed adequately, or at least not so that it won’t show noticeably. Hence, let’s have a look at it. [:)]
Here are pics from an aft and profile view. Excuse the quality, shot these fast with the phone.
My memory turned out a bit faulty…it’s not the trailing edge of the wing, it’s the middle. Still, I’m afraid it’ll be noticeable, especially if I opt to use the decal for the non-skid walkway.
You probably want some type of putty for this, and personally I don’t care for those hobby-type putties like Squadron’s products…they tend to shrink.
You might consider Aves Apoxie Sculpt. It’s a 2-part epoxy putty, is easy to use and has a long working time, feathers nicely and cleans up with water and won’t shrink. It dries hard and is sandable and comes in several colors for your painting considerations. A downside of Aves is it takes about 24 hours to fully cure hard.
Other alternatives are 3M Acryl Blue Glazing Putty or Bondo Spot Glazing Putty, but they both have shorter working times than the Aves and are fairly noxious. The advantage of those is that they dry and cure pretty quickly. Clean up is with lacquer thinner, and both can be had on Amazon.
I’m sure others will chime in with their suggestions.
D., There are many opinions on seam fillers. I still like Squadron green putty and Mr. Surfacer. Whatever filler you can get comfortable with will work . The big deal here is that I believe the seam you want to fill is a seam on the real aircraft. If you fill up the low spot and sand it down real well, you will have to rescribe the seam. To me that is a tough line to rescribe even before it were covered with filler. As small as your height difference is, you might try to lightly scrape the high side of the seam if you have a curved tip exacto blade that would fit the contour of the wing root. The shape of the blade is important. If you were to do that you could protect the panel lines running into the repaired seam with masking tape. Keep in mind that there is a black wing walk that runs along that seam, all the way up to the pilots compartment. That area is prime for some heavy weathering. So you could probably hide the problem pretty easily. I’m sure someone can throw in some better insight, but I’ll settle for some food for thought. Rick.
This looks to me to be a good time to use a needle file. Most needle file sets have an oval cross-section one. I have two sets- both have that one.
It may also be possible to scrape the high spot with a #11 X-acto, but unless you are practiced in scraping, you could do a lot of damage quickly.
I keep an old knife with older blades handy just for seam scraping- I use the technique a lot. It dulls blades very rapidly. So when a blade gets dull I put it in the “scraping” handle for awhile. Even a blade too dull for cutting still scrapes well. You hold the blade nearly perpendicular to surface and draw it along the seam. With a little practice you get a very smooth surface, better than from a needle file. Practice a bit on scrap before doing it on the model if you are new at it.
Didn’t really mess with the seam last night save for giving it the same sanding with 600 grit and a quick swipe of Mr Surfacer 1000 as the rest of the join lines. Once I sand the Mr Surfacer smooth tonight I think I’ll take stock and see where I want to go from there.
I’m not positive, but I think the non-skid walkway runs just outside this seam, and if that’s the case instead of running right over it or overlapping it anywhere, I may just leave it as is. There’ll be enough going on right there, and the difference is minimal enough that it might not be noticeable.
If it is, though, I guess I’ll have to gird myself and break out a needle file or x-acto. Gulp.
I use that technique a lot for removing the remnants of connection points that the sprue cutters don’t catch and find it a lot more controlled than busting out a file or coarse sandpaper. I’ve also found by playing with the angle you can adjust the intensity of the scrape.
Just never tried it to perform surgery on an aircraft…
Your local auto parts stores will carry those types of putties… If you can find one that takes a hardener cream, it won’t shrink… the others might a tad if you put them on thick…
the 2 parts wont… plus you can mix them “hotter” ( adding more hardener) and they will dry quicker ,save you some time…
