turnerdad Posted January 16, 2011 Share Posted January 16, 2011 (edited) I'm working on this now, started it last Friday and have been enjoying it immensely so far. I love the shape of the Thud without centreline stores which spoils it for me (I know...) so I am looking at just hanging stuff from the wings, probably set in a simple diorama either just about to set off on a mission, or having just returned but with a pilot figure involved somewhere. I'm using the Aires pit to start with, so all the usual cutting and grinding etc. Beautiful detail as usual. Havn't got long as I need to go to bed, I'm 37 now and it's nearly 9.30... Built up some fitting points for the main tub, to hold it secuely in place as shown below. Also useful noseweight, as I have a sneaky feeling this would be a tailsitter if left unchecked. Blacked the parts and drybrushed the detail... ...then masked off the panels and sprayed highly thinned grey, which I mixed myself from H306 and lots of white using my reference pics. I don't worry too much about colours, I used to spend ages trying to get them historically accurate and causing all the usual divisions and opinions. Looks good to me, I'm happy. I actually sprayed 3 tones of grey, each successively lightened with white until I was using almost pure white, very thin. It helps trap shadows if you see what I mean. http://i234.photobucket.com/albums/ee106/T...006DSC_0552.jpg[/img] Base coats all done. After this, I painted the whole thing up as usual, and added a thin raw umber panel wash, before sealing it all in with 2 coats of matt xtracrylix. I am not doing too much painting on the upper rear bulkhead, or the front coaming as I will need to fill fill and blend these areas after the body has been joined, as there is a gap around each. After that I will paint and weather them. The front instrument panel was tricky as the fit isn't good and you will have to remove the Aires radar scope and replace with stock tube or the PE panel will not fit around it. The painting is tricky too, as most of the panel is black, and in order to keep the thing looking neat I "washed" in the grey around all the bezels and black panels. I added switches from stretched sprue, otherwise it all looks a bit flat and featureless. Edited March 12, 2011 by turnerdad 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gcn Posted January 16, 2011 Share Posted January 16, 2011 cracking work as ever, this should be a treat Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Metallicus Posted January 16, 2011 Share Posted January 16, 2011 WoW now that is some great work on the pit, seat and ip!! Great work!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Iain Ogilvie Posted January 16, 2011 Share Posted January 16, 2011 Cor - that's one nice pit Mr Turnerdad! Iain Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr B Posted January 17, 2011 Share Posted January 17, 2011 Wow Shrinking ray techonolgy.........! lovely work chief........stunning.....what markings are you going for.........the box has good two nice options........ Rgds Mr b Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
POMPEO Posted January 17, 2011 Share Posted January 17, 2011 great job, the pit looks awesome cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Calum Posted January 17, 2011 Share Posted January 17, 2011 The IP, and seat are stunning The Pit is damn good as well Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sid de Koning Posted January 17, 2011 Share Posted January 17, 2011 Amazing! Awesome paintwork! As usual. Sid Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daz greenwood Posted January 17, 2011 Share Posted January 17, 2011 Lovely work on that cockpit Nick. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gekko_1 Posted January 17, 2011 Share Posted January 17, 2011 Excellent start! This should be good! Cheers Richard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spitfire Posted January 17, 2011 Share Posted January 17, 2011 I'm not really that interested in jets but I find the F-105 strangely attractive, especially in the Vietnam era camouflage, and you are doing a grand job, will be sneaking in to check on progress now and again. Cheers Den Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Giorgio N Posted January 18, 2011 Share Posted January 18, 2011 Very nice, that panel looks like it's in 1/24 if not bigger from how well painted it is ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian Posted January 19, 2011 Share Posted January 19, 2011 He hasn't painted that, he's got a troupe of trained spiders to do it for him !! Museum quality workmanship, simple as that. Ian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turnerdad Posted January 19, 2011 Author Share Posted January 19, 2011 Thanks guys. Hit a snag though. That damn canopy, Hobby Boss have as usual managed to mess up the canopy, the sides should be parallel, not slanted like they are in the kit. I knew there was a problem here anyway and was hoping the Monogram canopy could be used, but alas, the front doesn't nearly fit. And there is a problem with the Aires coaming-it is very busy as it should be, but the kit canopy won't fit on now at all as due to its slanted sides it hits the detail. Don't think Aires have done their homework on the kit itself , or test fitted the parts, or whatever, but I wish they (or someone) had supplied a replacement canopy. So now I am going to have to make one, but have to track down some .5mm acrylic...trust me that's not easy now thanks to the chinese manufacturing explosion-it almost all goes over there for mobile phones. But I'll get some! Much nicer than clear styrene. Bum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spence Posted January 20, 2011 Share Posted January 20, 2011 Absolutely beautiful... Spence 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smuts Posted January 20, 2011 Share Posted January 20, 2011 That's stunning Andy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fifer54 Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 That is, indeed, ab-so-bloody-lutely stunning. This is the first thread I've seen in several months that makes me want to give up modelling... (again!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PhantomPhreakII Posted January 21, 2011 Share Posted January 21, 2011 That is, indeed, ab-so-bloody-lutely stunning.This is the first thread I've seen in several months that makes me want to give up modelling... (again!) Me too.... oh well.. harald Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turnerdad Posted January 21, 2011 Author Share Posted January 21, 2011 (edited) That is, indeed, ab-so-bloody-lutely stunning.This is the first thread I've seen in several months that makes me want to give up modelling... (again!) No, this isn't hard, believe me if I blew the photos up any more the parts would look rubbish. Just takes a little patience and research (ie looking at a few photos). Seriously, I owe much of my modelling (dubious as they are are) skills to Verlinden, "On Plastic Wings". Got it when I was a kid and building loads of rubbish before setting them on fire and throwing them out of my window. It sowed the seeds of my present day passion, if you havn't got a copy, get one, still available and quite cheap and full of the best advice I've ever had, and this was a book written back in the mid eighties. Legendary stuff. Edited January 21, 2011 by turnerdad Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dads203 Posted January 22, 2011 Share Posted January 22, 2011 Some nice work Nick, stunning so far mate Dan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnonymousDFB1 Posted January 23, 2011 Share Posted January 23, 2011 Lovely pit Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turnerdad Posted January 23, 2011 Author Share Posted January 23, 2011 Started work correcting the canopy. Made a liitle jig for the kit parts and sealed them in. Then poured in fast cast resin, and placed a piece of flat acrylic over the top to get a nice flat surface while the resin was still wet. Got a nice resin male plug which I can now reshape, while preserving the "footprint" so it will still fit the model. The pic below shows the problem, compare the slanting sides with the photo below it (forgive my copywriting infringements etc), totally wrong. They should be parallel. Side shot. I've kept the parts seperate instead of joing them as it will be easier to check the cross section and preserve the split line, as I will join them for vac-forming and the visible join line will allow me to cut the canopies accurately. And the remains of the kit canopy-no going back now! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turnerdad Posted March 12, 2011 Author Share Posted March 12, 2011 Quick update. I've been working hard on this over the last few weeks, and I'm trying to correct some of the most serious issues. One of which is the shape of the nose, something I hadn't noticed until I had already performed a good deal of surgery. I ordered a replacement nose from D-Mold, but to be honest, although the shape was good I wasn't too taken by the panel lines, as the kits strongest feature is superb recessed panel lines with lovely hinge detail, something totally lacking on the D-Mold parts, and a feature that would be extremely hard to replace. Also, I had already opened up all the various vents and scoops in the nose area, which I would loose, and would also be much harder to replicate in resin as opposed to plastic. I therefore decided to use the D-Mold nose, and make the exixting plastic fit the new nose cone. It seemed like the most sensible way to save the existing detail and work.So I added some struts inside the nose which stretched the parts and gave it a better profile. Of course, I ended up with a bit of a gap......so filled it with superglue, but did not accelarate it with a kicker as although it cures it very quickly, it tends to make it very hard, and therefore difficult to rescribe and sand down. I had to do a lot of sanding with a herd rubber block, rescribing in between sanding to prevent losing the panel detail, time consuming but better than the alternative of rubbing all the detail off then rescribing from scratch. I filled the areas around the Aries pit replacement in anticipation of priming and repainting. I then masked the pit of and primed with good old Halfords grey plastic primer. I only sprayed a couple of light coats, just enough to identify trouble spots. Another area I wasn't happy with was the afterburner area, which are supplied as shown below. This is a limitation of injection moulding which cannot handle undercuts. I therefore drew up a segmented replacement with CAD and had it printed through our work. Much nicer...and easier to paint. I added the external detail as an exercise in CAD. It all fits beautifully. Next job, lots of filling and more scribing, then repaint the pit surrounds. Absolutely no chance of finishing this in time, boo hoo. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mentalguru Posted March 12, 2011 Share Posted March 12, 2011 Sorry, I'm being thick, can you tell me what you mean about the CAD and the afterburner- I don't understand what you are trying to illustrate. Work so far is absolutely gorgeous Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
turnerdad Posted March 12, 2011 Author Share Posted March 12, 2011 Sorry, I'm being thick, can you tell me what you mean about the CAD and the afterburner- I don't understand what you are trying to illustrate.Work so far is absolutely gorgeous I didn't like that it is impossible to build the afterburner can area without being able to get rid of the seam lines when joining the 4 longitudinal kit parts, even though the area is difficult to see anyway. I'm teaching myself CAD (Computer Aided Design) so drew up a replacement on my laptop, but built it up radially with no splits. There is a process we use at work where the parts are printed in a kind of resin in very thin layers (if you've seen the Jurassic park where one of the guys builds the resonance chamber of a Velociraptor with a machine-similar to that process). I won't show a pic of the actual drawing as I'm toying with producing it commercially. Hope that helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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