opus999

Does anyone know if the nose gear bay has silver (or another color) tubing in it? I have a lot of detail in the nose bay part, but couldn't find any pictures up inside the nose bay. I saw a B-57 at Ellsworth AFB's museum and didn't take a picture there either...

I was just reminded of this thread, and I took a look at the test piece. Still no change. Weird. It seems like it should've happened by now. So, maybe it was a combination of the brasso and the Testors decals. At any rate I am fairly satisfied that the decals for some of my upcoming builds are safe with Alclad polished aluminum. I'll continue to monitor and update. I figure a year will be long enough, so I'll continue to watch it until then.

I forgot to note: the pictures of the cockpit don't really show how the wash brought out the wrinkles in the head rests very well, but not so much in the seat cushions.

Just a couple of pictures. Yesterday I just about finished the cockpit. I drybrushed the side panels with gunship gray, and then I followed up with a very light drybrush of Testors Steel. I gloss coated the seats with Tamiya X-22 clear, did a water color wash on them, and then dull coated them. I dull coated the floor and scuffed it up a bit with Tamiya black pastel. Late last night, I glued the seats together and glued them in the cockpit. It was after midnight, so I didn't do anything else on the cockpit, but plan to add some wear by drybrushing silver on the seat sides and by silver chipping on the control column, which is what I've seen in many pictures I've found of the B-57 cockpit. I also worked on the main gear bays because they were completely plain. That would've been especially obvious in the final product because the nose gear bay has a lot of molded detail. So I used my old Testors B-57 as a guide. I used 1mm half round styrene -- It's a little bigger than the spars in the Testors model, but won't be noticeable. I also wanted to use square plastic rather than half-round, but I didn't have any that size. I think it will look OK though. I also sanded the sub assemblies and got them all cleaned up as well as sanding off the rivets of the drop tanks and sanded their terrible seams. I didn't get any pictures because it was after midnight, and the ol' brain was shutting down at that point.

Wow, that's pretty cool! I'll make sure to give you a shout out if I get stumped on something. Off topic -- That Lancaster with the green/gray camo on the cover looks awfully nice in that paint scheme! Almost like a fleet air arm camo. That gives me some ideas...

That is an understatement. That's terrible. I am sorry to hear about that. My dad is a Vietnam vet and I have seen some of the absurdity that Vietnam vets went through with the VA, but at least they didn't have to worry about it being taken away entirely! I've heard a lot about Lifecolor. In my Acrylic paint thread a lot of folks recommended Colourcoats to me. I haven't tried them yet but plan to on my next build (F2H Banshee). There's only one supplier for the US, so I have no idea if they're available in the Philippines.

Martin, The kit comes with 2 nose cones -- both the blunt shape and the nipple shape. The instructions say that the blunt shape is for the B-57 and the nipple shape is for the RB-57. Good eye.

I was going to post about that! As I was sanding them last night I thought they look like no other US bomb I'd seen. I think I could take the bombs and pylons off of my old Testors B-57 to use here.

This is a fantastic build thread! I've learned a lot reading it and have lots of ideas for the Italeri TB-58 that's been sitting in the stash for *ahem* a number of years *ahem*. Maybe I missed it, but what is "Sprue Goop" made of? is it just sprue melted in liquid glue applied as a filler? Nice looking work. I'm especially wowed by the cockpit!!!

Wow, great work on making this kit more authentic! I made this same boxing with my 7 year old son a couple of years ago, but it was straight out of box, with little to no filling/shaping/sanding. As such, it actually came out really well -- I don't think there's any major faults with the fit. The major faults are with the detail, but you seem to have that well in hand. Makes me want to work on the one I've got, which is a late '80's boxing of the same kit...

What a neat kit! I bet it will look great with the decals -- I hope they go well.

Here's a re-cap of what I did yesterday. I put all the sub-assemblies together except for the main wings. For those I want to dress up the landing gear bays a bit before I glue them together as they are quite plain. I see a bit of sanding in my future. There was a little flash on some parts and others didn't fit together well. The bombs especially don't look real great, so there will be some work on those ahead. Also, there is some raised riveting on the wingtip tanks that looks pretty bad, so I plan to remove that. I painted all the cockpit parts. I pulled out my old Testors B-57 instructions for the color call-out because the Airfix instructions only have the Humbrol numbers and I was too lazy to look them up. The interior gray called out was FS36230 (Dark Gull Gray), but my bottle was dried up so I used the MRP FS36237 I had left over from my CF-188 project. They looked virtually the same (and I confirmed on colorserver later that they are very very similar). Later in the day I did some more painting -- I looked up pictures of the B-57's cockpit and it looks like the side instrument panels were black: I plan to do some drybrushing to pull the raised detail out. Dry brushing is still a bit of a challenge for me to get right, so I don't know how well it will go. Practice makes perfect, right? And I spent some time painting the seats: You can kind of tell from the photos that they molded wrinkles in the seat cushions and head rests. It would be nice to pull that detail out a bit -- I may try a wash to do that. After that I will do very light wear and grime in the cockpit. Then it's off to the races as I glue the fuselage together and glue the sub assemblies on. I expect some work on the wing roots, but every thing else seems to dry fit pretty well together. The fuselage will have a bad seam because of flash and I am a bit apprehensive about fixing that because of the raised panel lines. I will likely obliterate the panel lines around the seam and I don't know how to fix that. Well, I could re-scribe, but I've established that I don't do that very well.

I am feeling a bit peaked...

Well, I was lucky that my dad had a large supply of colors so, early on, my aircraft had "approximate" paint schemes. Of course, the color call-outs in Revell and Airfix kits weren't very precise either ("Dark Green", "Lt. Gray") so I probably did the best that could be done. When I started getting Testors kits and discovered FS numbers, I was unhappy with our collection of paint and then yes, I had to wait. Luckily, my grandma lived in Spokane, which is about 2 1/2 hours away, so we would go at least once a month. We did have limited supplies of "Basic" colors (red, green, black, etc.) and different glues here at the department stores, but that was about it. Have you used a lot of acrylics? I have tried and had terrible results, so I plan to stick with Lacquers. Actually I started a thread asking folks about Acrylics and what their preferred paint was. I live in an extremely dry climate, so I don't know anything about how paints behave in tropical climates. Did you grow up in the Philippines? It kind of sounds like you didn't.

Welcome aboard! I hope to make some real progress on this as we have a long weekend here in the US. But... I also found out about some chores around the house and yard that were planned, so that may slow things up a little!