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Curtiss SO3C Seamew 'War Junk' ***FINISHED***


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Evening all. I'm late to the party, but will be trying my skills out on the Sword 1/72 Seamew kit. Here's the obligatory shot of the unstarted kit. First impression is that I had forgotten how small 1/72 is (where's that magnifying glass?). The detail looks well defined but there is a fair amount of cleaning up required. The resin parts are a nice touch too. The name of this particular subject seems apt considering the type's history.

 

Off we go!

 

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Edited by andy.m
Build finished
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Hi Andy,

 

Welcome to the GB! That is a really interesting aircraft. Looking forward to seeing it taking shape. Good luck!

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

 

 

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Evening all.

 

I've sat and looked at the kit for a couple of evenings and tonight finally made a start. The plastic is shiny but easy to cut. The connections of the parts onto the spruce are very short and wide so the razor saw has been employed to make them part company. It's a short run kit so I've added a few bits of plastic card inside the float to help align it properly - that's now together and needs to be cleaned up when it is dry. I've also put the wing floats together and started to assemble the cockpit. I've finished the evening by priming a few bits and will start to add some colour tomorrow. 

 

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Edited by andy.m
Typo
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12 hours ago, jrlx said:

It comes with resin accessories, right? Any PE as well?

 

 

There's a resin engine (or front quarter of...) plus exhausts and cockpit interior (sides and kit between the two seats, but not the instrument panel). No PE included in the kit. I'm building straight from the box. 

Cheers

Andy

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Just a little bit of progress this weekend...

The cockpit is nearly there with a masking tape harness added. The rear gunner/observer will get a lap-belt too. Interior green sprayed on then a few details picked out, a little dry-brushing and an oil wash. Not much of this will be visible through the canopy!

 

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Tonight I've managed to close up the fuselage and done an initial tidy of the seams. Fit was generally good, with just a little trimming of the cockpit floors to get a tight fit. The wing halves have been glued and need fettling. Like the fuselage, the float went together with no real issues. I've dry fitted the canopies, which are nice and thin. Next step is to fit the machine gun and mask the canopies. I'll fit them and then paint with them in-situ with the rest of the plane.

Pleased with progress!

 

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Last night I spent some time masking and fitting the canopies. I've used foil to mask. You can cover the whole canopy and then, using a very sharp blade, remove the foil around the glass and then burnish it down flat as needed. I like it where there are lots of little windows like this. It can be fun removing it afterwards..

The canopies are fixed using gloss acrylic varnish. I find it easier to use than cyan and it dries out fairly quickly. If you've made a mistake you can remove it without damaging the clear part too.

 

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Next step is to spray the canopy interior green (so the 'inside' of the framework is the right colour) then I need to fix the wings and prime everything. 

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Sorry! Knew I should have said something about that. 

I use Micro Metal Foil Adhesive - you brush it thinly onto one side of the foil and leave it to dry. When you apply  the foil you rub it down with a cotton bud or a toothpick. When it comes to removing it you have to carefully lift a corner (that's the 'fun' part) and then peel it off. I use a tiny amount of isopropyl alcohol to clean the adhesive off the glass - just be careful not to rub the paint off the frame.

 

image

 

Edited by andy.m
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So, wings attached. The locating ridge on the fuselage worked fine but I had to do one wing at a time and keep a close eye on things because as the glue set as there was a bit of movement. All has been primed, a few joints filled/sanded and a few panel lines re-scribed. I've now done a bit of pre-shading and laid down some white on the under-surfaces. Hopefully a bit of colour can go on today ! (Just spotted that little shadow at the back of the front canopy - the camera is so critical! - now need to see if that is a joint that needs to be flush or if that part of the canopy slides back when it opens...).

 

image

 

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It's bee a slow week on this model. I had found paints that were 'near enough' to the FS numbers but when I test-sprayed they looked really dark. I found the exact colours in the Vallejo modelair range (which I really like using) and ordered them. They arrived yesterday and prove that my original colours weren't actually that bad! 

The colours are FS35164 Intermediate blue (on the top of the tail) and FS35042 Sea Blue.

Compared to other build reports (on here and elsewhere) the planes have been finished in much lighter versions of the colours. Here's what I have done so far - what do you think? 

 

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I have a canopy back! With the colours I tidied up the boundaries between the different blues and that has helped to improve the contrast between the two. Removing the foil that was masking the canopy was a slow job but it has worked as well as I had hoped. I had a bit of touching up to do this evening. I've painted the red stripe on the float rather than using the decal. The kit decals were lovely to use. I've also done a bit of weathering using an oil wash and some chalk pastels to make the airframe a little grubby, but not too much. I'm not sure these planes were in use long enough to look battered!

I've now got a pile of bits and pieces to sort out to bring this little kit to completion.

 

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I'm calling this one done. The final bits and pieces went together without much argument. On my 1/48 planes I use a very fine elastic for aerials, but on this one I pinched one of my daughter's hairs! I'll do some decent pictures shortly, but it's snowing outside so I can't use decent daylight...

On the whole it's a nice little kit. Typical short-run with a fair amount of work to get everything fitted neatly. The mouldings seemed generally good and the resin parts are nice.

I hope you like it. Any comments welcome!

 

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Congratulations, Andy! It's very well finished and it's a very interesting type and didn't know existed! Looking forward to the pictures in the Gallery! :clap2:

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

 

 

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