Per Scalemates, this kit is 1/195. As such, there is absolutely nothing on the interior. Each kit is comprised of 23 parts. But since I am building both in flight mode, I will only be using 10 of them (including the 2 clear parts, which are not pictured here as I have those tiny parts safely stashed).
The blue box is among my oldest memories. Not this kit specifically, just the Monogram blue boxes that were prevalent when I first started building model airplanes at the ripe old age of 3 (to be fair, that was with a lot of help from my dad). Many years ago, I set myself on a quest to acquire each of Monogram’s blue box releases. I never could find the Badger, so at some point I just grabbed the white box release from the early 70s. It was maybe 4 years ago or so when I came across a blue box release for a reasonable price, so I added it to the stash.
This dual build will not be at all like my previous dual build of 1/48 B-24J Liberators. I have 5 bottles of paint on the desktop for these builds, but may not need even that many. 99% of the paint work will be the NMF, which will consist of matte aluminum, dark aluminum, and white aluminum. I will hand paint the framing on the tiny canopy - no way do my eyes work well enough to mask that, even with the Optivisor.
I slept on these builds last night, thinking of the openings in the exhausts and intakes. Monogram didn’t mold any interior details. While the openings are quite small, it kept nagging at me that the engines would be like the caterpillar drive of Tom Clancy’s The Hunt For Red October for anyone who wanted to peer into those openings. No engines whatsoever.
I was thinking I would fashion a curved intake trunk out of sheet styrene to close off the intakes, and insert styrene tube into the exhausts. The tubing I have it too wide to fit into the exhaust, and the curved intake trunking was not going to work given the limited space. So I pivoted to simply installing pieces of sheet styrene to block 80% of the area that would be visible through the openings. The remaining 20% is a narrow chasm over the wing mount - think of it like the area above the bomb bay that crew would traverse from front to rear in a B-29. I stuffed darkened cotton balls into that area to more fully block the interior.
With that completed, I then assembled the fuselage halves and attached the main gear doors to the lower wing nacelles (which fit perfectly, as the parts were designed for this).
There are ugly seams to work out on the fuselage halves. The blue box kit included a stand that was not from the Monogram mold (it is an Airfix stand). I will have to cut an opening for the stand to insert into. I’m not sure when I’ll get back to my bench in the coming days given all my family has on our calendar, but I expect to have these done in rather short order.
I am really looking forward to seeing these completed Steve!
Out of all the model boxes, I feel that Momogram had some of the best especially fron the 50s n 60s!
Happy Modeling,
Mike
Wow, I remember buying the white box Tu-16 from a drug store when I was in elementary school in the mid-1970s. That kit was sacrificed to the god of firecracker mayhem and destruction long ago, but I now have a 1/72 Trumpeter kit in the stash. Russian Cold War aircraft were pretty thin on the ground back in the day, the bombers more so than the fighters.
I look forward to seeing what you do with these old kits!
I have had odd bits of time here or there to do some work on these Badgers. The builds themselves were overly simplistic once I added the styrene to block off intakes and exhausts. After construction, I noted severe offset along the fuselage seams even though the parts went together as intended. One piece was just bigger than the other, on both builds.
I first scraped away the excess to get it close enough. Then I sanded with progressively higher sanding sticks. I made every attempt to sand only the seam, but there was no avoiding losing a bit of the molded on rivet details along the seams. I finally put tape along both sides of the seam to apply putty; once that cured I removed the tape and repeated the sanding process.
Now I am in a short holding pattern. I bought a set of ICM stands intended for various scales of aircraft, 1/72 being the smallest and the one that I’ll use for at least one of these builds, depending on how many are in the ICM box. I don’t know if I’ll need to drill a mounting hole into the bottom of the Badgers, so I’ll hold off doing any paint work until after I get the stands and can determine how to proceed. I’m expecting the stands to be delivered today if the email I got from eBay is accurate.
Once I get them painted, the Badgers will then go back to a holding pattern while I wait for yet another shipment of a setting solution I want to use on the kit decal sheets. I could not find any decal sets in this scale. 1/144 might be okay, but I’d rather try the kit decals first. If those fail after the setting solution, then I’ll get 1/144 decals for these builds. I don’t anticipate much success in attempting to cut masks out of tape to fit this 1/195 scale.
Rather than setting solutions, you should look for Microscale’s liquid decal film instead. Coat the old sheets with this before trying to use them. Many old decal sheets suffer from micro cracking - age and lack of humidity have dried out the decals. Not apparent to the naked eye, but the decal ‘shatters’ when it hits the water. The Microscale film gives the sheet images a chance to hold together.
@MJames70 Thanks for that. I just looked at the order that I expect to arrive early this week. While it does include the setting solution, it also contains the liquid decal film. Clearly I was anticipating the use case you mention, so I just got the products mixed up when I posted yesterday.
In probably 3-4 more days these Badgers will be done.
My ICM stands arrived yesterday. I’m only going to use one of them, the 1/144 stand, while I will use the Airfix stand that was included in the Blue Box for that build.
Today I opened mounting holes in the underside of both for these stands. The ICM stand’s mounting point is woefully insufficient to properly hold the model, as opposed to the Airfix stand, so the ICM stand will have to be permanently glued to the white box Badger. I’ll probably go ahead and glue the blue box Badger to its stand as well.
Then I put down coats of grey Stynylrez primer on each and let that sit for an hour or so, after which time I noted additional work to do on some of the fuselage seams. I ended up scraping and sanding away much of it, but as with all NMF finishes, they can be woefully unforgiving for even the slightest issue. And as it turns out, I still have some seam problems, particularly on the upper seam. I will likely need to return to that the do a better job on getting rid of that seam.
Finally, I hand painted the frames on the clear parts with Mr. Color silver paint, and the “interior” surfaces Tamiya flat black.
Next up - mask random panels or the ailerons/flaps for different shades of metal (dark aluminum or white aluminum).
Finally, I’ve decided on my next build (Academy’s 1/72 B-50D Superfortress). Since these Badgers are all but done, I’m going to start initial work on that B-50.
Thanks! When I do two of the same kit it is typically because I don’t want to do the exact same kit another time down the line. With the Liberators I just did, Monogram vs Hobby Boss was the idea to see how the kits compared and built up.
I honestly don’t know much about the B-50, other than it seems to be a criminally unknown aircraft that performed critical roles in the early years of the Cold War.
I’m not real satisfied with my work. I never could fully eliminate the fuselage seams. The photos don’t show them real clearly, but in person they are evident in the right lighting. The decal sheets were original to the kits. I coated them with Microscale Liquid Film and let that set up over night. Today, after cutting out the decals and getting them wet and giving time for the ancient glue to let loose of the paper backing, the decals crumbled despite the liquid film.
I ended up going through my spares box to find a sheet of decals for an Accurate Miniatures Sturmovik in 48th scale. Most of the red stars were simply too big, but I did find enough to adorn both builds’ wings and 1 set of even smaller red stars for the rudder, which I elected to apply to the blue box build.
There is nothing exciting about these builds. I did not weather them. I did add different metallic shades of aluminum, but that is hard to see unless you’re looking at it just right. To top it all off, the nose cones did not fit flush on either, but that is not evident when looking at them.
Oh well, on to the next build (Academy’s 1/72 B-50D Superfortress).
