Trials and Tribulations - An old dog learning new tricks

[billn53]

Hello everyone! This will be my first build on the site, in fact, it's my first aircraft build in a very long time (i.e., over three decades). There has been enormous progress in the hobby since then -- the technology and techniques available to modelers today are amazing and I have much to learn. I thought the best approach would be to do a "practice build", and decided on this venerable kit:

 

 

 

I remember building this when it first came out, sometime around 1972 (!!!). Back then my modeling toolbox consisted of a couple of X-acto knives, some files, sandpaper, and putty. I owned an airbrush but couldn't afford an air compressor on a student's budget, so I used Badger Propel cans instead. 

 

Modeling techniques I plan to try include: Resin and photoetch aftermarket items, scribing, proper airbrushing (goodbye Propel), pre-shading, Blue-Tack camouflage masking, and simple weathering (e.g., pin washes). So wish me luck and please share your experience and knowledge as this old dog tries to learn a few new tricks.

 

Edited April 4, 2017 by billn53

[AngstROM]

Quite an unusual (but by no means unheard of) carry for an F-4 -a brace of Falcons! This alone makes for a cool project...

 

Welcome to the elite enclave of scale aviation modellers and have a blast with that there Spook.

[Ludicrus Sextus]

Blimey, this brings memories, if only every model was like the box art.  Is this the one where Hasegawa used invisible ejector seats?

[billn53]

Yes, there are seats but they look more like something that belongs in a car

 

 

But I plan to use this instead:

 

 

The Aires cockpit probably isn't designed for this old kit (I assume they're for the newer Hasegawa Phantom) and I anticipate there will be some fit problems. Also, since the kit's canopy is one-piece, and I don't intend to try cutting it apart, this resin aftermarket is probably overkill as hardly anything is likely to be seen clearly once the canopy is in place.

Edited April 4, 2017 by billn53

[qn30jEkPz7]

Overkill?! There is lots of fun to be had in tinkering with getting something to get it 'just so' even if no-one will ever get to see the results properly

 

 

[billn53]

No more dilly-dallying around, time to get started. What better place to begin than the cockpit. Since LS asked about the seats, here are the Aires pair done up. Maybe it's just my age, but the photoetch harnesses were quite a bit more fiddly than I expected.

 

 

Cockpit painted up and test-fitted in place. You can see I had to do a bit of scraping and filing to get it to fit, especially around the front.

 

 

 

More later....

[Gene K]

Really (!) nice job on the pit ... so good in fact that you should have used it on the later, much better incarnation of the Phantom.

 

Gene K

[billn53]

Today's progress. Fuselage halves buttoned up:

 

 

 

Added these braces to widen the fuselage a bit, otherwise there will be a huge gap later where the wings join:

 

 

[billn53]

Good progress today, this collection of plastic (and resin) is beginning to look like an airplane :-)

 

First up, this old kit includes an undocumented option for the original short gun muzzle brake or the longer muzzle characteristic of the Midas 4 update. I decided on the long version just because it looks meaner ;-)

 

 

Painted the insides of the jet inlets white and glued in place. The fit is just as I recall from when I built this years before... bad. Thank god for Perfect Plastic Putty. In the pics below, the wings have been test fitted into place to check how well the fuselage bracing closed the wing-fuselage joint.

 

 

Another problem is the joint at the bottom of the fuselage. Not only is there a gap, but also a nasty step that despite all my efforts at trimming & fitting, it just won't go away. I foresee more putty work will be needed here.

 

 

Last pic for now -- Do you see what's missing in the pic below?

 

 

I should have installed the instrument panels before closing up the fuselage. Now it's going to be a bear getting these (sorry for the bad pic) to fit.

 

 

But that's why this topic is titled, "Trials and Tribulations..."

 

Edited April 6, 2017 by billn53

[billn53]

So far everything has gone pretty much vanilla, as far as building goes. Now I am at the stage where I am weakest: painting! Any suggestions will be most welcome. First up, I took a shot at pre-shading the panel lines, which is new to me. Here's the result.

 

 

What do you think?

[DaveyGair]

Hi Bill, nice work so far. You're a bit like me, coming back into the hobby more or less after many years. The big change for me is using acrylic paints with a gravity fed airbrush, Vallejo MODELAIR paints working superbly out of the pot, so far.....

Pre shading isn't something I'll try, just my opinion, but I think 'artistically' it looks OK, just doesn't look 'right' for me.

 

Good luck and good modelling.

 

Davey.

[billn53]

Thanks, Davey! Yes, airbrushing with acrylics is new to me and I'm still struggling to do it correctly. My first attempt (using Mr. Color paint) was a total failure. The airbrush began spitting out spiderwebs! After searching for solutions online, I ended up increasing the amount of thinner and lowering my air pressure (from 20 psi to between 12-15). 

 

Focus today has been on closing up the cockpit. Got the seats installed but had to seriously lower the rear seat to fit properly under the canopy. The instrument panels (which should have been installed much earlier, see above) required serious surgery to get them in place. Thankfully I'm not building this with open canopy, so evidence of my mistake will be mostly hidden from sight. Also the top part of the forward instrument panel (not sure what it's called) that fits under the windscreen and holds the HUD was much too high, and needed a lot of knife & file work to get the canopy in place.

 

 

After dipping the canopy in Future (a trick I learned on this site), I tried my hand at masking following a video I found on Youtube (the internet is chock full of good tutorials I found). I'm using Testors masking tape but wasn't too happy with it, next time I'll try something else. After adding the bang handles to the ejection seats (left off 'till the last moment to avoid losing them in a handling accident), I glued the canopy in place using clear 5-minute epoxy. When that was set, I filled-in any remaining gap between the canopy & fuselage, and sprayed dark gray for the canopy frame inside color.

 

 

That's it for now. Next stage of this build I'll begin airbrushing the camo using the Bluetack sausage method. Wish me luck!

 

[qn30jEkPz7]

Looking good - this thread is at least partially responsible for an F-4 making its way from stash onto my bench 

[billn53]

As promised, I have begun painting the camo but before starting that, I decided to experiment with my new scribing tools. First thing I discovered is that it's a lot trickier than it appears on the YouTube videos I watched. Even with tape as a guide, my tool often wanders off and I am left with squiggly lines. So here is a quick question: What's the best way to fill in scribing mistakes? I tried using CA (a tip I found somewhere) but it drys harder than the plastic, and leaves me with a ridge that is almost impossible to sand out.

Another lesson-learned is to do my scribing before assembly. The surface being scribed needs to be firmly fixed in place, and that's hard to do once the model is nearly complete.

 

Here's the result of my efforts on the underside of my Phantom, as seen after painting.

 

 

Moving on to painting the top side colors, I first roughed in with the tan, and then (using a printed pattern as a guide) applied the BlueTack sausage rolls.

 

 

The BlueTack technique was easier than I feared, although a bit tedious. I'm waiting with anticipation to see how well it works.

 

Another lesson-learned along the way: It looks to me that the Mr Color tan is too dark, even though the FS# matches the USAF camo paint specs. In the future, I'll do a test shot whenever using paint I'm unfamiliar with, to ensure the color is correct.

[Gondor44]

For me, scribing is not something I do often, but when I do I start by lightly scribing the line I require with lots of gentle passes. I have a couple of tools that I use as well. A sewing needle glued into the tip of a poor quality pencil that has had the lead drilled or fallen out of the tip and a purpose made scribing tool that looks like a hook which has a tendency to gouge out plastic at a fair rate which is very useful for separating plastic.

 

Gondor

[rayprit]

2 minutes ago, Gondor44 said:

For me, scribing is not something I do often, but when I do I start by lightly scribing the line I require with lots of gentle passes. I have a couple of tools that I use as well. A sewing needle glued into the tip of a poor quality pencil that has had the lead drilled or fallen out of the tip and a purpose made scribing tool that looks like a hook which has a tendency to gouge out plastic at a fair rate which is very useful for separating plastic.

 

Gondor

 

Easier than a wooden pencil, slip your needle into a round handled Xacto knife handle, I have one permanently suited up for scribing(in fact I use Xacto handles as pin vices all the while, they have a superb chuck for gripping small drills)......also have a spare pin vice with a needle in the handle, forever putting one down and unable to find it, even if its right in front of my eyes.............so, generally end up using 2 x tools for scribing

[billn53]

I've been following the scribing discussion on Spookytooth's build, here

Quote

 

which I wished I had found before starting my less-than-satisfactory job at it.

 

Painting of the camo progresses...

 

After masking the tan areas, next is the lighter of the two greens

 

with a "rinse and repeat" of the process for the dark green

 

My next post should be the big reveal!

Edited April 11, 2017 by billn53

[billn53]

I

Quote

I've been following the scribing discussion on Spookyman's build, here

which I wished I had found before I did my less-than-satisfactory job at it.

 

Painting the camo progresses...

 

After masking the tan areas, next is the lighter of the two greens

 

with a "rinse and repeat" of the process for the dark green

 

My next post should be the big reveal!

[billn53]

I woke up this morning with anticipation -- what's hiding beneath all that Blue Tack and masking tape? Did the camo turn out ok, or not? I was very pleasantly surprised by how well this technique worked.

 

 

[billn53]

I have a couple of questions and hope someone can help. As you can see in the pic below, the Mr. Color paints have a definite shine to them. Does anyone else have experience with Mr. Color, and is this normal?

 

Second, and more important, notice that the paint did not go on entirely smoothly. The surface has a textured effect. What could have caused this and how can I avoid it in the future?

 

Thanks!

 

 

Edited April 13, 2017 by billn53

[billn53]

I haven't posted in a few days but that doesn't mean I haven't been busy. It's time to bring this topic up to date.

 

After making a few touchups on the camo, I sprayed a coat of Klear, added markings for Ritchie & DeBellevue's MiG killer bird, and oversprayed with Vallejo clear flat acrylic.

 

 

 

The masking job on the canopy turned out to be a big disappointment. First, the Testors masking tape left an adhesive residue that was a real pain to clean off. More significantly, the edges didn't come off clean, as can be seen in these pics:

 

Next step was to attend to the bare metal areas aft of the engine exhaust. For this I used Vallejo Metal Color acrylics (aluminum and dark aluminum) over Vallejo's gloss black primer. You know the saying, "one step forward, two steps back?" I taped off the rear of the aircraft before spraying the metallics, and when I removed the masking some of my decals came off with it. Arrggghhh!!!

 

Fortunately, I had a spare set of decals in my stash, so I was able to fix that. But that was not the end of my problems! To replicate the residue from the Phantom's dirty exhaust, I sprayed Tamiya smoke on the bottom portion of the bare metal area, as well as along the bottom of the horizontal stabs.

 

I wasn't happy with how glossy the smoked areas came out, so without thinking I grabbed a rattle can of Testors clear flat and gave the exhaust and horizontal stabs a quick shot. Murphy's Law rules! The Testors lacquer reacted with Vallejo's Metal Color, and this was the sad result:

 

So now I have a bit of cleanup and re-paint to do :-((

 

On a happier note, the engine cans came out pretty well IMO.

 

That's Vallejo Metal Color "Jet Exhaust" with a touch of transparent blue, black pinwash, and a light cleanup using enamel thinner.

 

 

 

Edited April 16, 2017 by billn53

[billn53]

After kicking myself a few times for my stupid mistake with Testors clear flat, I got the horizontal stabs cleaned up and re-painted. Here's the result:

 

and the bottom side, suitably dirty...

 

Some presents arrived in the post yesterday!

 

so of course I had to try them out by re-doing my scribing job on my Phantom's belly:

 

Finally, I tried my hand at making a pitot tube out of telescoping tubing. The kit's part is shown for comparison.

 

 

 

Edited April 18, 2017 by billn53

[The Spadgent]

Hya. I just read through and caught up on this. I must say you are doing a sterling job here. I started posting my first WIP about this time last year after not modeling since being a kid and it reminded me of that very build, although I fear you are more accomplished than I. The camo has turned out really well and the wash on the underside is lovely. It's a real shame about the canopy masking and the fact you don't get to see much of that stunning cockpit. I would invest in some Tamiya masking tape for canopy masking. There are loads of builds on BM including my own that use the same technique of flattening the tape into the canopy rims with a cocktail stick or super sharp pencil. Then cutting the excess with a new blade. Tamiya tape has no residue and in my opinion is the only tape for the job.

Sticking with tape, excuse the pun, I might be teaching you how to suck eggs so I apologize in advance but you might be able to avoid taking off decals with tape by taking the anger out of it first by sticking it to the back of your hand a few times first. all in all though she looks great and I'm only sad I didn't notice this from the start, I'll follow along now if you don't mind.  The Vallejo metal issue was a real pain. I have this too but use Tamiya top coat, no issues to report on either rattle can or mixed.

 

I'll stop waffling now. Great and enjoyable build. Bravo sir.

 

John.

[Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies]

On ‎13‎/‎04‎/‎2017 at 2:25 PM, billn53 said:

I have a couple of questions and hope someone can help. As you can see in the pic below, the Mr. Color paints have a definite shine to them. Does anyone else have experience with Mr. Color, and is this normal?

 

Second, and more important, notice that the paint did not go on entirely smoothly. The surface has a textured effect. What could have caused this and how can I avoid it in the future?

 

Thanks!

 

 

 

For a return after a 3 decade break I would cut myself some slack over a finish like that. It's really not so bad

 

In the interests of getting a smoother finish next time as per your question though and whilst not a Mr Color user myself, a textured finish like that can be caused by a few things, but next time round I'd try thinning the paint further and spraying at a lower pressure. It looks like the droplets are too large and drying before they can self-level.

[Beggsy]

Another thing you might want to try would be to use a paint retarder (probably best to use the same branded paint, thinner and retarder to make sure they work properly together).  Basically it gives the paint a little bit more time to level on the surface before solidifying.  Generally about 10% retarder to 90% paint and thinner works, adding too much will leave your paint not setting properly.