Well it took forever, but I finally finished today. Please, please let me know anything that you see that I could do to improve my building; I feel like I am getting better, but I know there is tons more that I could do to produce an even nicer model.
Some specifics:
1/48 Hasegawa Hellcat
True Details Cockpit and Tires
Added Brake lines, hypodermic needles for gun barrels, hollowed out exhausts tubes, wired engine, repositioned ailerons and rudder
Kept weathering to a minimum (wanted it to look almost new)
WOW!! nice build there my friend. looks excellent!! i love the panel lines.[tup] show me some pics of that True Details pit, i got a hellcat on the build pile and am thinking of the aires pit for mine, but true details products are usually cheaper with nice detail. what did you mask with? what did you use for the antenna wire? looks good newtothegame!! thanks for sharing. hope mine comes out as nice as yours. later.
Very nice!!! The paint job looks great. Did you paint the white bands or were they decals? The antenna wire is a bit to bent but it still looks good anyway. The gear doors are a bit thick on the Hasegawa kit, maybe you could thin them out a bit. But apart from those very small points there is nothing I can see that needs real improving. I’d like to see some good shots of the true details interior.
Very nice build!! Very impressive!! [bow] My own inclination would have been to make the panel lines a little more muted, or to weather more heavily to match them as they are, but it looks excellent!
The paintjob, weathering, and details make it a beautiful plane.
It looks like you can teach me some tricks to make a better model, Leon.
Thanks for sharing.
All I can seem to get are junky pictures of the cockpit (I can’t figure out how to get up close and personal with the digital camera yet [:p] but I’ll include what I have at the end) This was my first resin cockpit, but I thought it was great and had a lot of detail.
I masked with parafilm-m. Also a first for me. I need to improve a little at cutting it, but it went on very easy and came off well.
Antenna wire is transparent nylon that I picked up at the craft store. Then once it had dried in place, I went over it with a black sharpie.
There were decals supplied, but I decided to be brave and paint them on. I almost tried doing the roundels too, but then the reality of my ability hit me and I thought better of it. [;)]
I agree with the antenna wire. Oh well. I tried heat stretching it (I think that’s what they call it) to try to tighten it up a little, but it didn’t really do it.
I would have never thought of thinning the gear doors. Thanks. It’s amazing when you build that you will spend hours on one part and then not put any thought into another. Again, thanks!
Yes. I did the panel lines with a mechanical pencil, figuring that it would be a dark grey. Then when finished I realized that it was way too dark and tried to toothbrush/soap it off with minimal results. I don’t know what to do with panel lines. When I tried the sludge wash I couldn’t get it to come off, then this, maybe I am just not meant to have highlighted panel lines.
The lack of weathering is in response to the last model I did: a zero heavily weathered. Didn’t really like the results, so I thought I would try to go really light on this one.
Thanks everyone for the comments. I have learned a lot from this site and really appreciate all that you guys give.
Anyway and few (not very good) cockpit shots…
Oh dang. From looking at this picture. I realize I forgot to mention that I used an eduard photoetch part for the instrument panel.
Leon
hey newtothegame, that cockpit looks awesome friend!!! i’ll definately look into purchasing a true details pit for my bird!! did the PE instrument panel come with it? i really love the instrument panel, thats top notch!! later.
No, I’m afraid the instrument panel didn’t come with the true details. Originally I was going to just use the eduard PE set, but after trying to get some of the tiny parts to stay in place on the kit cockpit parts, I got frustrated and decided to instead try the true details pit I saw at the hobby shop. However, my attempt at the resin instruments looked pretty poor, so I decided to use the instrument panel from the PE set. So really it is both sets (way too expensive to use both sets, but as it worked out, I am quite happy with the results - now I just have to convince myself I don’t need both in the future [:p])
i know what you mean by expensive friend!! i priced an AM cockpit set for my JU-87 and like to collapsed when i saw the price!!! if you dont mind spending a little more, aires has great cockpit sets that have what i think is the right mix of PE and resin. they usually have resin for the major parts, then PE for seatbelts and instrument panels and such. very nice sets and most 1/48 birds run about $12 bucks from squadron. your F4F has motivated me to break mine out of the build pile and get it started!! i’m headed to squadron after here to order the AM cockpit. later.
PS oh yeah, i replied to your photography questions over on my german divebomber post a while back. i forgot to post the answers earlier and then went back and answered them later.
Thanks again everyone. I really love the Royal ____ markings very colorful. In the future I would like to do a Wildcat (Martlet?) and Corsair in these types of markings.
Saltydog, Thanks for the link. I am very excited to try to go through it. I am always looking to get a better photography system going since I am not totally happy with mine yet. Your description in your diver bomber thread is a good one [bow]
