North American F-86F Sabre
Alclad II worked fine, although I expected it to be stronger, in the plastic spoon it sticked very hard but in the model, as I was sanding, it nocked out some chips that I had to sand down and retoutch, about 2 times,but in the end that´s the result.
Here is the right side of the wing done, with rivets and polished with finger nail polisher stick, we can compare with the original side on the left.
After a visit to the Wernigerode Luftfahrtmuseum, were I could analize the real plane very close, I notice the complete absense in the kit of the landing lights that fold flat in the surface, so here I will recriate that as good as I can
The rivets were done all free hand and I think next time I will try to use a ruller to get them more straight, some areas they were a bit too deep and in others almost vanishing, but I gess that´s the way to learn: practice, overall I like the result...
After a lot of sanding, polishing, gap and sink marks filling riveting, polishing more. 3 coats of primer with sanding and repairs in between, the gloss coat is done.
Airfix have the sprue gate located exatly over the center welding line of the tank, in one of them I maneged to reshape the missing bit but in the other I damaged the surface around, not nice for NMF, so I sanded off completely to add stretched sprue.
First color on, mrp super silver metallic
I masked some of the black primer to paint them in another shade
Second color on, MRP Chrome, I have not maskedked anything, I just removed the masks that protected the black in the previous step
The chrome covers very slow and have not much effect overcoating the silver, I can still see clearly the demarcation line if the tape
Adding some variation to the metallic surface
I used some mr color 8 in the center of the panels of the ailerons and flaps to add a bit of interest in the model
Decal madness on the way!
We have wheels... and it's not a tail seater, good thing!
Airfix haven't provided any way to make the front cover, not even a panel line gap, so I made myself one decal out of the provided "spare decal" using one circular cutter.
Finished! it is still reflexive in places under some angles, but without clear coat I run the risk of finger prints and the decals to came off eventualy (when I was masking some areas to retouch the metal finish, chunks of the big "USAF" came right off!
I'm afraid of the durability of the finish, After the incidend with the "USAF" decal camming off in the masking tape I was scared to death, thankfuly I repared the damage and so far I have been handeling it with care using latex gloves
I placed one order for one alclad ll aquagloss, I'll try it to seal the model, I used Tamiya pannel accent wash for the airelons and flaps only
Not much weathering going on, panel lines are already very deep, I'll not "accentuate" them
that was a longer road than I was expecting, but I loved the experience.
Froom some angles is possible to see the carrier film of the decals, I will try some Alclad ll aquagloss as soon as it arive to see if it can fix the problem...
The overall looks convincing to me.
The landing lights were improvised, the rivets were done with RB production.
The black detail in the front of the nose cutted off from the spare decal really worked well, I used Revell decal soft and hair dryer with a lot of patience it conformed nicely to the surface with minimum wrinkles.
The navigation lights on the tip of wings were sanded off early in the building process, I used one blob of 2 part transparent epoxy to recriate that, and I used on top clear green, red and orange in the tail.
the machine gun´s pannel was masked and painted with Mr Hobby buffables in a mix of iron and stainless steel, and than buffed to shine
Seat from Pavla, had to sand the sides to make it fit,They do also the full interior for this kit, the back of the canopy was improved with some wiring, the "Maj Blenn" should be placed in the frame of the canopy, but obviously there´s no space
after painting one thing anoys me: the difference in the rivet's depth, too deep in one wing and vanishing in the other, next time 'll be more carefull using ruller to straight them up and be sure they look consistent troughout the model.
real lights as well as the navigation lights were chopped off early in the build process, replaced afterwards for 2 part clear epoxy, here painted over with orange clear from tamiya
the landing lights that I created previously in front of the noose landing gear, were painted with Molotow liquid chrome marker and filled with Revell Contacta Clear (similar to micro kristal klear) the tip of pitot tube was replaced for hipodermic needle
one lesson learned is that when I atempt to make rivets, I have to be more constant in the pressure and carefull wen sanding it: some areas are deep and in others it almost desapear
the resin wheels are realy one welcome improvement over the kit ones. I think now that I could have used some aftermarket pthotoetch for the instrumentation as the canopy is very clear.
overall alignment is ok, the shape of the canopy could have been better fron the front section and the frame in the rear botton is far too thin, but worked out nicely.
also the ejector seat helped a lot, it is very visible from the canopy, I have removed the internal transparent locator tabs from the clear part because they would be evident later, I chopped them off, sanded and polished, I think I did a good job there.
Comments
1 6 May 2017, 20:51
Christian BruerVery nice work so far Cesar 👍 Looking forward to the first coat of the NMF.
Cheers, Christian
7 May 2017, 08:58
Album info
In this project I will test my Ideas in refining my NMF output, fully riveting, and polishing the textured surface from airfix, bringing the overall look to be less toy-like, let´s see what I can achieve.
I don´t have many construction pictures this time, hope to get it done faster and put the pictures of the result as soon as I can
