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Hasegawa Curtiss Seagull SOC-3 1/72


Gav G

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The ancient-but-surprisingly-good-for-it's-age Hasegawa Curtiss Seagull SOC-3 in 1/72. 

 

This was supposed to be a quick knock up to be a painting test mule whilst waiting for my main build for the GB, a Tamiya 1/48 A6M2-N Rufe, to arrive from Japan.  Unfortunately having 2 other builds on the go at the same time and being completely unable to do anything by half means it's barely started.  If I'm going to do a decent job, I thought I may as well post it here anyway.  The paint mule aspect was so that I could test salt chipping and/or hair spray weathering on an actual model in preparation for the Rufe, as well as experimenting with NMF type painting.

 

Some fitting, sanding and a small amount of construction has taken place together with the whole thing being degreased by soaking it in Fairy for 3 days.  The price sticker on the side of the box was 58p, so this kit may have been around a while!  I'm not sure yet that the decals are going to be usable as they are quite yellow. 

 

XhJzz2D.pngr, it

 

The internals were painted Vallejo Metal Color Aluminium with a brush, to see how well it brushed.  It's a very thin paint and what you can see is 3 coats, however, it does brush OK.  Unfortunately, this revealed some areas I'd missed that needed sanding.  I'll probably put a layer of Tamiya X-1 gloss black over the top and then spray the Vallejo over that.   This is where I have stalled.

 

I intend this to be totally OOTB and keep stopping myself from planning any scratch building.  I'd intended to do another build of this with the Starfighter resin interior but I think my eyes might be too old and hands too hamfisted to build 1/72 these days as I snapped both of the front struts off the main float while test fitting! 

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Hi Gav,

 

Welcome to the GB! It's good to have this aircraft entering the GB. I have one in the stash, together with the Starfighter resin interior, so I'll be following with great interest!

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

 

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Great, I just picked this lovely kit up at the Middle Wallop show.  Mine has different box art, but the same decals, which dont seem to be for the plane on your boxart (which is, however, on the instructions).  Luckily the decal artist didn't follow the spelling of Pennsylvania in the instructions, which must have been literally translated from the kanji.

Cheers 

Will

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  • 3 weeks later...

A lengthy and not totally positive update.  Initially I was going to paint the top wing separately, as the upper surface is orange-yellow so I built it all to a certain point including the main float. 

 

nrGb6Z8.jpg?1

 

8Jv0XPm.jpg?1

 

 

This turned out to be a mistake.  I test fitted the top wing and found out that building it all and then painting was the way to go.  However, the struts holding the float are just too flimsy for me and I broke them all at least three times.  Argh #1

 

Eventually I got the thing done and the major rigging.  I was going to do full rigging but decided I'd just end up breaking the main float off yet again.  So I sprayed it all X-1 gloss black prior to spraying Vallejo Metal Color Aluminium.  I left the paint to cure completely for several days, more to circumstance than design.

 

QpNvywj.jpg?3

 

So today I start with a light first coat on the underside and it runs straight away, there's no adhesion to the gloss black at all.  Argh #2

 

KCrGrFl.jpg?1

 

Which is weird because when I painted the cockpit, it adhered to the gloss black no problem.  However, when I painted the inside, I sprayed the aluminium on straight away when the gloss was barely dry and also used some X-20A thinner and some W&N flow improver.  One or more of those three differences made all the difference!

 

 

I've stripped almost all the paint off using IPA but of course the ****y main float has snapped off again.  Also, I'd forgotten until I was part way through stripping that I'd used Mr Surfacer 500 in some places.  This rehydrates in IPA so some of my filling will need redoing too.  Argh! #3

 

So now I need to decide whether or not it's worth continuing or just binning :think:

 

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Well, the last picture would show a superb finish if the idea was getting a winter camouflage.

 

Maybe you should put it away for a day or two and then get back to it with a fresh head. From what you said, you'll probably need to tidy up some of the fillings and then give the lot a treatment with wet&dry and microsmesh to get a smooth surface. You may also consider using a primer like Alcald's Black Primer and Microfiller, which is very good.

 

Hope you manage to get back on track :)

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi @Gav G,

 

Any recent progress on this one? The GB deadline is now 14 January 2018, 23:59 GMT, one week more. Could this be useful for your build?

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

 

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