A different Korean War Grumman F9F-5 Panther

1
November 11, 2016
Dug up from the dungeons... with some additional bits and pieces.
2
November 11, 2016
Paint stripped, kit broken down, parts do not look that bad, canopy damage bit worrying
3
November 11, 2016
Flaps reattached, cleanup, first paint on
4
November 11, 2016
Filling, sanding, filling, you know the drill.
5
December 18, 2016
Saving the canopy, looking good
6
December 18, 2016
Done! Polished and dipped in Pledge ParketPlus. Never done that, looks great.
7
December 18, 2016
Scratchbuilding ejection seat, bases on spare Italeri F-104 seat
8
December 18, 2016
Cockpit tub ready
9
December 18, 2016
Rescribing in progress, wings done
10
January 15, 2017
Pylons and fences on. Had to source some pylons from the spares box. Quite sure the pylons are not accurate but did not worry too much about it.
11
January 15, 2017
Tailpipe in place, inlets blanked, nose weight resecured, cockpit installed (but not well enough as I learned later...)
12
January 15, 2017
Next milestone, fuselage assembled
13
January 15, 2017
Mr Surfacer on seams, filled and smoothed gaps around fences, inlets ready for installation
14
January 15, 2017
... and filling and sanding away. Inlets do not fit very well. Had to add shim to compensate for thinner fences.
15
January 15, 2017
Scribing panel lines on fuselage. Made a bit of a mess that I had to repair. And then knocked cockpit loose 🙁. CA glue to the rescue, then decide to first finish cockpit and install the canopy.
16
January 15, 2017
Almost ready for canopy installation, also painted replacement main wheels from the spares box.
17
January 29, 2017
Canopy installed, filled the gap under the windscreen.
18
January 29, 2017
Wings installed, huge gaps of course... filled with plastic rod.
19
January 29, 2017
Add some filler and sand away. And hope the fences survive.
20
January 29, 2017
... and they did. Lot of work to get these last seams right. Must have sanded of a ton of plastic by now. Restored scribed lines and a last polish and we're good to go.
21
January 29, 2017
First job: white edges around the canopy frame.
22
January 29, 2017
And done. Next up is will be full gloss blue layer.
23
February 12, 2017
Used gloss blue for the anti-glare panel as primer for the remainder of the model as well to cover all the scratches etc
24
February 12, 2017
Base aluminium layer, I use Model Master metalizers
25
February 12, 2017
Oops, dark blue is not the best color to spot errors...
26
February 12, 2017
Oh well, some more filling can't hurt...
27
February 12, 2017
28
February 12, 2017
More shades...
29
February 12, 2017
And the end result. I'm happy, but the model is still too shiny compared to photographs. I think I will need a satin coat the even things out...
30
February 12, 2017
The decals printed and ready for the next phase!
31
February 21, 2017
Decaling in progress. Decals worked well after spraying with decal film, nice and thin and metalizer always easy to work on
32
February 21, 2017
After decaling I did some weathering with powdered soft pastel and followed up with a satin coat. I think I overdone the different metalizer a bit... Had to retouch the white lines on the canopy quite a bit.
33
February 21, 2017
And then adding all the final bits and finished!
34
February 21, 2017
35
February 21, 2017
36
February 21, 2017

Comments

1 11 November 2016, 16:02

D N
I always love zombie-kits being resuscitated!

11 November 2016, 17:04

Łukasz Gliński
Watching

12 November 2016, 21:20

Hans Zwetsloot
Some more progress on the Panther, slow but steady going, so far no major problems.

18 December 2016, 10:45

Ekki
Watching too.

18 December 2016, 18:13

Hans Zwetsloot
Some more pictures. Ran into some problems with the wing fences, one broke up on me during filling, fixed it again, and then realized too late that the fences and pylons will be in the way when filling the inevitable wing-to-fuselage seam. Duh.

6 January 2017, 21:43

Hans Zwetsloot
Looks like last time the new images didn't load. Uploaded again, together with some more images, made good progress the past week.

15 January 2017, 19:37

Thomas Bischoff
you don't go the easy way - looks good for such an old kit

15 January 2017, 20:21

Hans Zwetsloot
Finally finished the construction stage and the first paint is on. Getting the wings on was far more work than expected, very nasty stepped seam to deal with. Ended up sanding and polishing half the model once more... And re-scribing of course. I hope the painting stage goes a bit more smooth.

29 January 2017, 20:10

Hans Zwetsloot
And another phase completed. Painting ready, on to the decalling. Airbrushing went OK, not too many problems, just some minor gaffs, like dropping your model... twice. Who doesn't, right?

12 February 2017, 13:45

Hans Zwetsloot
And finished. All in all a lot more work than I expected, but quite happy with the result. Stands out nicely between all the blue 🙂

21 February 2017, 18:35

Łukasz Gliński
Looks v.good

21 February 2017, 20:23

Ekki
Very good work. Excellent result.

21 February 2017, 20:29

Rex
Great model. If you want to do another, and have "half the work" for a Silver scheme, look at "Blue Tail Fly" and "Vice Versa",,,,,,,each is half silver and half blue, on opposite ends. They would make a funny transition,,,,,a Blue aircraft, Blue Tail Fly, then the Silver, then Vice Versa, then a Blue one again.

21 February 2017, 20:42

Spanjaard
good work, nice restoration .

22 February 2017, 00:14

Calvin Gifford
👍

22 February 2017, 01:13

Alec K
Trying to wrap my head around this "restoration" business, as I find building a new kits challenging quite enough 😄 Impressive!

22 February 2017, 03:57

Lee Fogel
Very nice work!

22 February 2017, 04:40

Album info

Another rebuild, this time of my old Matchbox Panther, to be rebuilt into a natural metal VF-111 Korean War Panther. Natural metal because decals will be home made so any color is OK as long as its black.... and on a light background please.

Grumman F9F-5 Panther

36 images

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Completed

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