Hello from my little corner of solitude, my hobby shop. I’m currently 40+ hours into this kit and am finally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. For a New Tool kit I was expecting something a little less problematic than this. Most of the past 40 hours were spent grinding, filling, and sanding and repeat. The kit was atrocious when it came to seams, gaps, and fit. The directions left a little to be desired as some of the numbers listed for sub assemblies for left and right were listed for the wrong side. The illustrations were at times confusing or unclear. The paint colors listed such as iron, which Revell doesn’t make, when I looked at actual live pictures was Cast Iron. The ordered Iron paint from Revell tuned out to be common steel paint, so I ended up at Sherwin Williams after an exhausting search turned up nothing online. To my astonishment Sherwin Williams had in their color palette Cast Iron and it matched perfectly with I needed. A quart, the smallest amount available, was $18 and change after taxes. The Anthracite paint listed Revell did have but only in the small metal 14ml/.47oz tin. For a kit this size, over 26” I bought one tin and looked for a source for a rattle can option. I found that on Amazon by MTN 94 RV-7016 Anthracite Grey. It went on well with easy coverage since it was a dark grey. It made a very nice Matt finish with one coat, but I have a couple corrections still to make that showed up after painting. This kit will turn out very nice if you take your time. The paint colors are a challenge, but if you source like I did, you shouldn’t have too much trouble. I should mention I don’t use a lot of acrylic paints, I’m an enamel or lacquer for personal reasons, sorry Old School. If you try this kit and you’re picky like I am it will challenge you. Thanks for reading and visiting my shop.
Well it is completed to the owners request, no decals. The seams where the upper and lower fuselage meet on the lower fuselage were bad. It took a lot of filing filler and sanding to make those areas look good. There was also a fair amount of rescribing panel lines. In the end the effort was worth the result. The seam lines on the upper fuselage and especially the engine cowlings were much harder to hide and blend properly. With the vent details along the top of the cowlings making it difficult to hide the seams.
All in all it came out nice after the added effort and the old tool kit is in my personal stash so I will have that kit to compare to the new tool.
