After much deliberation I decided I was due for a break from the putty, sand, prime, repeat nonsense. Which the go to for that is a Tamiya kit. Of which I have 3. The deciding factor there was the other 2 are prop kits, and the last several kits I’ve done were prop planes, so time to do a jet. I started working on the cockpit on Friday, and spent all day yesterday working on it. I had to miss out on a musuem Saturday due to weather. I would prefer not to put my trucuk in a ditch driving through white conditions at 7am, lol.
Don’t have a lot done so far. Pit isn’t even done yet, have yet to start on the seats which come in later. Pit isn’t perfect, but I tried my hardest to paint those tiny little buttons using my maginfiers and the smallest paint brushes I have, still made a little bit of a mess in spots.
Where I left off last night. I won’t be able to get back to it until at least this afternoon. I have some errands to run. Not that I want to go outside. It’s cold, lol. I’m over winter. It can go away any time now.
I just got the D version a couple weeks ago. Several modelers tell me this thing builds like a dream. Really looking forward to the day I start mine.
'The cockpit looks good. To bring out the dials have you ever considered dry brushing? I like to dry brush the panel in grey and pick out a few dials in red, green, or yellow.
Not a whole ton of progress over the last few days. A lot of nipping parts off the sprue, cleaning up the attachment points, and glueing pieces together.
Got primer on the fuselage and other main parts. Showed me where I needed some work. Mostly from my own glue marks, but some seams needed a bit of sanding and a little bit of putty. Not much though.
Laid down some white paint today, and a lot of it. I had previously painted the landing gear on the sprue. I’ll glue everything together and do touch ups later. I ran out of my Tamiya flat white. Fortunately I had ordered some before I started this project, knowing I was going to need it, but it’s still a few days out. Bummer. Really makes me miss my local hobby store. Owner passed away a little over a year ago.
So I can’t do any touch ups to the white until I get more paint. I’ll have to work on other things in the mean time. No matter, I have some stuff to do tomorrow afternoon that will keep me away from it for now anyway.
I had to wait for my white paint to come in the mail, which was finally Saturday…of course the day I’m in Geneseo all day, lol.
Got some bad news yesterday. Long story short I had a Husky that I had to rehome due to his behavior issues, and not wanting to run the risk of him biting anyone in my home. He has bitten in the past. My brother in law was nice enough to take him into an adult only home, and they all knew his entire past. Well he had landed up having a tumor on his spine burst, that no one even knew he had, and he was bleeding internally. So there was nothing to do but let him go. He was only 8 1/2 years old. He was my dog for 7 years.
So I opted to bury myself in the F-14 today in order to avoid dwelling on the situation all day, and got the bulk of the major painting out of the way.
I did do some post shading, but as usual my cell phone camera just washes it out. Oh well.
I have to touch up the vertical fins, I seemed to have forgotten how Metalizer paint goes EVERYWHERE!
Got some stuff going on tomorrow, so I might not get back to this until Tuesday. Best rest assured I will get quite a bit done during the week. We are slated for yet more freaking snow. So I prefer to stay indoors if I can help it.
Been a bit slow going with decals the last couple of days. I’m still not done. Seems every time I get going on them life gets in the way. I should be able to finish them up tomorrow.
All the little NO STEP. I find stencils either annoying or theraputic. Depends on my mood.
Markings on either side of the nose done. Still need to do from the nose back though.
Some of the armament.
Exhaust cans, and a few more fiddly bits.
Landing gear, fins, and ejection seats decaled and ready for clear coat.
Everything takes up quite the amount of real estate on my bench. I’ve still got a few more parts on sprues!
Thanks Tojo! It probably should of been easier than I made it, but that is how I do things, lol. It has gone together really well.
DiscoStu, Thank you! The decals have actually been really good. I did manage to tear a couple, but that was my own fault. I attempted to move a couple of them after they had been on there a few minutes. They have all laid down nicely, and didn’t really give me any trouble. Certainly not the hair pulling experience I had with the F-16 Thunderbird decals.
Visually it doesn’t look like I did much today, lol. I finished up the decals, worked on some detail painting, and some fiddly bits. I was hoping to get a bit more done today, but such is life. Next steps will be weathering, finishing up the detail painting, and final assembly.
