What I finished in 2008

General Discussion General Modeling Discussion
1

Hi, all!

I’d like to post pics of the models I finished in 2008. It’s an interesting exercise to reflect on what you actually accomplished, especially when looking forward to what you want to build in the new year.

First, thanks to my parents for giving me a digital camera for Christmas, so I can now post pics here, and thanks to the Lord for giving me such good parents! :slight_smile:

And to my fellow modelers from Agape, this is a repeat of my posts, so, sorry for duplicating :wink:

First up is Aurora’s Godzilla kit:

I built this kit back when I was a kid, as so many of us did, and the opportunity to build it now in my second modeling life came, when my local modeling club, the Delaware Valley Scale Modelers, announced our themes for this year. March was “Movies”, and I immediately thought of building Godzilla. I got the kit off eBay, built it, went to the meeting, and found that I was the only one who remembered the theme[:O].

Not a problem, I enjoyed this nostalgia build. This time around, my main concern was concealing seams as much as possible, without losing surface detail and having to sculpt new detail. I was most successful on the head, least on the limbs. But I’m still happy with the way it turned out.

I did take the precaution of painting the inside of the head, spraying flat black. You don’t have to look deliberately into Godzilla’s maw to see the back of the head pieces, and I didn’t want the green plastic to show.

I painted him overall with Testor’s medium green out of the rattle can (airbrush is not operational yet [:(], not realizing that the actual monster was gray (“You can look it up”, as Yogi Berra used to say). OK, so I painted to the judges’ notion of what Godzilla looked like [:)] The mouth I painted with Testor’s, mostly pink for the lining, and pink and red on the tongue, a little black on the gums (like a dog’s mouth-woof!) and then good ol’ Testor’s square-bottle gloss cream for the teeth.

I wanted to pay more attention to the base than I did in 1972 or '73, and decided I would apply techniques I had learned in the meantime. I left the buildings in the primer color (WalMart’s in-house automotive primer is what I use), attached them to the base, then masked the upper parts and sprayed the base flat black. Then it was drybrushing for smoke damage, some contrasting colors for interest (eg, red for bricks, some browns). Then, what to do about the windows? I ran out of time to paint them individually, though if I built this again, I would. I decided to experiment with ink washing, using India ink, and first water, then isopropyl as the carrier. Well, it didn’t work the way I’d hoped. When first applied, the wash settled into the low spots nicely, and all the windows were black. But as it dried, the pigment settled into the low spots even further, and wasn’t enough to color each window. Argh! After several cycles of applying the washes, letting them dry, and saying some Daddy words, I decided that enough was enough and left it as you see it now. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense, you need a lot more pigment to cover the relatively large area of each window (large compared to the folds/cracks/fine seams that we usually use washes to highlight). I may yet go back and paint the windows individually, but I’m still happy with my result. I had fun, it took me back to Saturday afternoons watching Dr. Shock on Channel 17, and it was an enjoyable build.

Next build to follow…

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Next up is a 1/72 Hawker Tempest V, by Zvezda (originally by Frog, I think):

I got this kit in the monthly raffle at DVSM, and when I opened the box and looked at the parts, I thought that I would use it as a test bed to practice sanding and rescribing panel lines. The kit is simple, almost toy-like, in relatively soft plastic, with large raised panel lines. Also, as many kits of its vintage, it has almost no interior detail. And the alignment pins didn’t align. I don’t know if that goes all the way back to Frog, or if the Russians introduced that, but I had to cut them off and align the fuselage halves by eye. Not a big deal, in the end.

For the panel lines, I sanded them off, then used a pin chucked into my pin vise to rescribe them. I also invested in a flexible metal drafting template from Michael’s (maybe a buck, tops) for use on the curves over the fuselage. The plastic was soft, as I said before, and the straight pin was too big a point to use. The next time, I’ll use a needle with a finer point. But I was satisfied with my result, in the end, and I’m confident the next time I feel I need to replace the molded detail. As an aside, I don’t fall into either camp-raised vs scribed panel lines. To me, it’s what looks best in each case, and that could vary.

Inside, I added an instrument panel from card stock, drilling the instrument faces out with my pin vise. I gave the pilot a control column from stretched sprue. But you can’t see them that well-argh! [:(]. Well, I know it’s there. I also added the armored headrest and the formation light behind it (card and clear sprue, respectively), which you can see, under the bubble top canopy that is too squat and has no framing at all. I also added the whip aerial behind the cockpit, from fine steel tubing.

I also added the Tempest’s flush-mounted wing cannons with fine brass tubing. It’s so small in this scale, but it looked better to me than the holes that were there.

Colors were provided once again by Testor’s, and they are accurate-USN blue gray and USAAF OD over USAAF light gray [:D] Actually, those were the closest approximations I had to the RAF colors, and I’m not a color Nazi, anyway. I want the colors to be as close as possible, but by the time these birds hit the mud, dust, rain and sun of the outside world, they faded anyway, so again, I think it’s more important to eyeball it. My preference, not running anyone else’s technique down [:)]

I was suspicious of the kit decals, so I did use Eagle Strike for the RAF roundels and recognition flash. But I did use the kit recognition code and walkway decals. In the end, I should not have. I Futured the whole aircraft, to prep for the decals, and all of them went down well, with no silvering. I sealed the model with DullCote, attached the canopy with Elmer’s, and took it to DVSM.

Fast forward to the summer, and I had the model displayed on a table beneath an open window, where a sudden tempest rained a little water on my little Tempest. The kit decals floated off and onto the water splashed below. If I build another Zvezda kit, I think I will leave out the decals [:)].

I was a little heavy-handed, too, with weathering. I drybushed the engine and cannon exhaust, but I think I should have applied a lighter touch. But I’ll address that in a subsequent build.

Despite the negatives that I’ve noted here, this was another enjoyable build. This was only the second RAF subject that I’ve ever built, the previous one being Revell’s 1/32 Typhoon, back when I was 10 or 11. I enjoyed researching it, and messing around with scribing. I’m glad I’ve gotten back into this hobby.

More to come…

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OK, the next kit I finished was another raffle acquisition, and it was the first car that I’ve built, since I was maybe eight. I’ve always built military subjects-armor, airplanes and ships. And some sci-fi, too. But I’m not that much of a car enthusiast, it’s more utilitarian to me, so I never sought out cars as a modeling subject. That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate the work that car modelers do, whether in 1/24 or 1/1 scale. And I think that we modelers should be able to build any subject, apply what we know, and do the best job we can. So when my number was drawn in the raffle, and a Monogram 1/48 B-25J that I wanted was already gone, I picked a Monogram 1/24 Porsche 911 slant nose instead.

Here’s the finished model:

I tried some other closeups, but they’re out of focus-please forgive me, I’m still getting to know my camera!

This was an enjoyable build, though I got stuck once or twice and had to leave it alone for a while. It was different from building an airplane or a piece of armor, especially in that, those subjects are usually meant to be weathered. But a car like this should look like it’s on the showroom floor. So I had to fight the urge to weather it. I limited myself to washing the motor with a very light burnt siena, just to pop the details, and to painting the exhaust brown with a little rust-a very little.

I did strip the chrome from most of the chrome-plated parts, because on the tree, it looked like they would be almost toy-like. But in retrospect, I think I would have left the chrome on the wheels, because when the model was finished, I think they would have looked OK. I did strip the chrome from the engine, and painted it flat aluminum instead.

I have even more appreciation, too, for car modelers and the fantastic finishes they achieve. I just used the rattle can to do the body and panels (Testor’s again, “Italian Red” they call it). I did cover the model with a large plastic container, while the paint dried, to minimize dust adhering to the finish. But I probably could have gone through a couple of applications of color, then maybe buffing, to get a smoother finish. I also painted the details freehand, the pieces like the door handles, the pieces around the signals, the bumpers, and for the amount of contrast between what is plastic on the real vehicle, and metal, I think I would have done better to mask and spray. Not to say, never brush, but in this case, I had a little trouble keeping within the lines, as it were.

I wanted to do a good job on the interior, since this is a convertible. I used flocking for the floor, for the carpeting, but in the end, you can’t see that much of it. The dashboard was familiar territory-it’s just like an instrument panel. So the gauges got a similar treatment to an airplane’s, though it was white for the faces, details picked out with drybrushed red, then Future over the faces.

The kit decals were practically useless. They were thick and impervious to any solutions. I started with the air filter’s label, and it refused to settle over the curve of the filter box. I think I got it to stick with repeated applications of Future, brushed under the decal, and holding it to the curve with a toothpick. After that, the only other one I used was the Porsche logo for the trunk hood up front.

I had a little disaster with this kit, too, a day before the monthly meeting. At some point handling the model and applying the details (door handles, mirrors) I got a fingerprint on the passenger door! In my head, I always see that clip of the Professor from “Back to the Future”, when his toy car flies off the table, bursts into flame and sets the rags on fire. Augh! First thought was that I would have to take the body apart and sand and repaint the whole thing. No time! I wound up making a mask to apply over the door and spot-sanding and spraying the damaged area. Almost like a 1/1 scale body shop. “You can buff that right out.” The print was gone, but there are some marks at one of the door handles where the CA glue attacked the finish. If I build another one, I will have to take greater care.

Even so, the car guys in our club had nice things to say, and I appreciated that. I enjoyed this build, too, it was a nice change of pace from the other things I work on. And I think Revell/Monogram still has this kit in their catalog.

Last completed model of the year, coming up…

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Here’s the last thing I finished in 2008, a real nostalgia build: Monogram’s 1/72 P-40N.

I got this kit off eBay, by mistake. The seller had mislabelled the kit as 1/48. Now, I built Monogram’s 1/48 P-40, back in the day, but that was a -B, and as far as I knew, they never produced the -N. However, it was 20 years since I was an active modeler, and I had learned of subjects they built, that were not available in 1982. So I bid and won, but realized my mistake when the package arrived in the mail. It was too small to be a 1/48 kit box. No matter, it is a great little kit, especially for its age. The kit is as older as I am, or older (I’m 44). Again, in keeping with kits from that era, there’s not a lot of interior detail, though the pilot is a good figure; and the wheel wells have no detail. But it looks like a P-40N, and though it has raised details, the details are very fine. So I was enthusiastic to build it, though it was in the stash for a couple of years before I did get to it.

The pics:

For this kit, I decided that I would use it to practice weathering with chalk pastels. I had already used them on a 1/72 halftrack model and was pleased with the results, so this would be my first application on an aircraft. I also wanted to see if I could get something like the results for fading panels, and highlighting panel lines, that others get with spraying.

It was a quick build, since there aren’t too many parts. I did add an instrument panel and some side details in the cockpit, which can be seen through the greenhouse, although not in these pics, sorry to say. I also added the armored headrest, from plastic card; pictures that I have seen of the P-40N show this relatively prominently, so I went ahead and added it.

I left the wheel wells as they were, although I did modify the tailwheel well. It’s supplied as a single piece, with the doors extended out at 90 degress, and a hole for the tailwheel to pass through. I took the closed door piece and scribed it into two, attached those to the tail, and glued the wheel into the locator for the original wheel well piece. As a result, it’s a little off-center, but it looked better to my eye, than the original piece.

Colors were-guess! Yes, Testor’s again, rattle can USAAF OD and light gray, nose spinner in Tamiya flat red. The kit markings are for a non-descript bird in the CBI theater, I think, and I just needed the basic colors, as the canvass for the weathering.

The decals went on well, which is more in line with my previous experience with Monogram’s decals, and in contrast to the Porsche decals (see previous post). They needed almost no settling solution at all, just a little Solvaset to help the shark mouth decal, around the nose. I Futured the areas where the decals would go, a little departure, as an experiment, from Futuring the whole bird. I won’t do that again; the next time I use Future to prepare, I’ll cover the whole model. It makes sense-you can see a difference between the areas with acrylic and without, especially on the wings. DullCote sealed everything then, and it was time to weather!

For the engine exhausts, I selected a couple of browns, from a yellowish brown to dark brown, and also some actual iron oxide dust (thanks to one of the guys at DVSM who is a machinist, and who brought in a Crisco can full of rust dust, from cleaning some equipment at work). To pulverize the chalk, I just scraped the back of my X-Acto along the edge of the bar, onto the ceramic palette that I use. Then I dipped the brush in it, and brushed it onto the model, like paint. I did the lightest color for the largest area, first, then added successively darker tones in the center of the stain, also going to a finer-point brush, for the last application. The darker brown and rust powder I also applied to the exhaust stacks.

For the machine gun exhausts, I used a similar process, except that I started with a medium brown and ended with black. I brushed the largest area behind the gun muzzles with the brown, and only very lightly, progressing to the darker color, and highlighting the separate blasts from each muzzle. I also added a little coming out of the shell ejector ports.

For the body panels, I mixed a gray color, using artist’s black chalk, and a piece of good ol’ schoolhouse chalkboard chalk for the white. I powdered both, then made various mixes, with nothing darker than a dark light gray. Then I brushed them on. Remember, this was a test of an educated guess, I had to see how it would come out. Well, the chalk adhered to the raised bits, like the rivet lines, and it also hit the highlights in the center of the panels, leaving the perimeters in the darker base OD color. I was pleased with the results. On the gray of the underside, it left the light gray looking dingy and dusty.

I did drybrush some paint, too. I used flat aluminum for wear areas, such as around the ammuntion loading panels, and on the wing root, where the pilot would step, and around the radio access panel on the fuselage, over the insignia.

One note, though-I did not seal the chalk, so I can’t say from experience whether the affect I achieved would be changed by a sealer coat. Most others I’ve talked to, who use chalk, have said that that is the case, and you might have to go through a couple of cycles of applying, sealing and applying some more, to accommodate that. I did get a tip from Bob Doebly at DVSM (our new president, congrats, Bob) to use plain, unscented hairspray as a sealer. I have seen others talking about that, too, so I may yet try it. As it is now, I have this model in a little display case (Michael’s has some good varieties of them), but I may go back and try sealing it, to see what happens.

Overall, I’m pleased with the way it came out. This build, I really enjoyed, because the P-40 is one of my favorites, and as a nostalgia builder, Monogram is still my favorite company. In fact, I may track another one of these down-they were in the catalog right up to the merger with Revell-and build one as a NMF bird.

Conclusion to follow…

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Well, there it is, that’s my output for 2008. I have a few more things that are started, in progress and then put on hold-don’t we all!-and this exercise has helped me look at my building and resolve to spend more time doing it, in 2009. I have identified the kits-there are 12 of them-that I have started, and I’m making a New Year’s modeling resolution to finish those, before I buy or open any new kits in 2009. I’ll post pics of those in a new thread, though.

I hope you’ve enjoyed looking at my work, as I have enjoyed seeing everybody’s, too. I’m glad to have the opportunity now to show you what I’m doing, and participate at that level in the forum.

Comments, criticism, tips, discussion, please, let’s hear from you!

Regards,

Brad

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QUite a good year for at the bench, Brad! Well done![8D]

I’m thinking next year, maybe more aircraft?[;)]

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Thanks, Roger, I appreciate that!

Here’s the followup to this thread:

/forums/1064888/ShowPost.aspx#1064888

I think you’ll like the compostion of the list [;)]

Regards,

Brad

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Nice work there, Brad–now that you have a digital camera, you can start posting WIP threads!

OK< so you have a figure, a car, a plane–you need a tank now! Get some armor and we’ll see yu over in the appropriate forum! [;)]

9

Thanks for the compliment, Doog!

Actually, the second kit I finished, after returning to scale modeling, was a Hasegawa 1/72 US halftrack, for a group build in October 2007. I made a little diorama, with a wooden plaque from Michael’s, some Celluclay, and baking soda snow. Here are 2 pics, taken by one of the guys at the meeting:

I meant to take clearer shots, once I got my own camera, but in the meantime, I dropped the diorama! Augh! Fortunately, all that happened was that the ammo box came off the .50 mounted on the pulpit, and I have to re-attach the halftrack and figures to the base. But it was a build I enjoyed, too. I experimented with making my own mud from pastel chalk, water and dish soap for that build, it looked pretty good, I thought.

I also retrieved my Tamiya armor from my parent’s attic. I took those to one of the meetings, too, just as a curiosity, showing where I was in 1982, when I gave up building models for beer and girls. I’ll take some new shots of those and put those up in Armor.

Happy New Year!

Brad