Amo Aero

Gorgeous!! love the colors and the photography!

Fantastic modelling and a beautiful collection!

Hope to see it soon in 1/48--that and any other "Silver Wings" era aircraft you decide to do! Cheers! Karl

Beautiful model--superb NMF and radome!

"Yes there is so much to do and so little time and most of these are unproffitable." How sad. All the wonderful aircraft types that will never be kitted because they aren't profitable. I never have been able to understand the insatiable demand for 109s, F-16s, etc, etc, etc

Very cool looking model! Great to see rare birds in model form.

What a great collection! So nice to see such variety and nice clean builds.

Love the colors! Beautiful work!

Great work!

Good luck with your venture. Bring out the right subject(s) in the right scale at a decent level of quality and I'll buy.

I echo many of the other posters here--would love to see more vac kits. I would much prefer to build a quality vac kit instead of a resin kit. It is very unfortunate that resin kits have almost completely eclipsed vac. Resin is too expensive, too heavy, too prone to warpage, and IMHO should only be used for smaller kits and kit parts. Unfortunately, I also believe the golden age of vac kits is long past. There was always a significant percentage of the modeling public that would never touch a vac kit because of its perceived difficulty--there is a good reason for the term "vacuphobia". One of the reasons for the rise in popularity of resin kits is in the similarity to injection kits in the minds of many modelers. I also believe that widespread vacuphobia is one of the great tragedies of our hobby. Had vacuform kits been embraced with the same enthusiasm as has been showered upon resin and short run injection kits, we would be experiencing a much richer and varied hobby today. As for the gentleman who wants a vacuform Valiant, any vac kit manufacturer will tell you that the appearance of an injection kit, no matter how bad it is, is virtually the kiss of death for sales of any vacuform kit of the same subject.

Nice, clean and crisp. Perhaps it is a bit too glossy to be strictly realistic--but frankly, I think the overall look is very pleasing and would be proud to have a model like that in my collection. Refreshing and very well done sir. It is funny how modelers judge realism. A grossly overdone shading job is almost always universally applauded, even though such a finish bears very little resemblance to reality, yet dare to make a model "too clean" or "too shiny" and any number will criticize it. Fashion is a powerful force. You have clearly flown in the face of what is fashionable today. Bravo!!!

I believe Lone Star Models made a 1/48 FE.8 in vacuform

Not sure how the tape would work on a vacuform kit, but to cite an example I gave in the OP, it works great for improving surface detail on existing injection molded kits. For instance, the SMER Walrus has very crude and heavy wing rib detail. Using coarse sandpaper or a file, remove all the old detail, then emboss .005 or .010 plastic card with rib tape detail. Double sided tape holds the embossed card on to the injection molded wing, and then cement is run along the edges to seal in the tape--otherwise it will dry out and come loose with age. Woodman used MEK to seal the edges, "Christian the Married" recommends CA. I have already done experiments using this technique. The embossed card looks great and is very easy to do. Double sided tape holds the thin card to the injected wing very well, but when I get to the stage of sealing the edges I run into trouble. CA can be problematic--sometimes it holds, sometimes it doesn't. The solvents I have tried have worked well, but no matter how careful I have been, there is always one or more areas where the solvent seeps beyond the edge and causes distortion, puckering, blistering, etc--in short, it ruins the embossed card and looks terrible. Thanks very much to "Christian the Married", viscount806x, kiwidave4, and everyone else who responded to this thread with their suggestions, tips and examples. You have provided much food for thought and experimentation. Looks like experimenting with different products, and practicing my technique will yield the results I am seeking.

So using Humbrol of Revell Liquid Poly are less likely to cause problems months down the road?

Display space is severely limited for me. Over the years I have come up with different strategies to deal with the problem. Early on I realized that one of the easiest solutions was to not build any big models--simply had no room to display them. After culling all the big kits, there still wasn't enough room, so I decided to focus my collection only on those subjects that are really important to me. That was very hard to do, as I am a lover of just about all types and eras of aviation, but in end I decided to concentrate on smaller models of WWI and Golden Age props, helicopters and Cold War jets. A big part of being able to focus on a limited set of models was getting away from the idea of building a "comprehensive" collection. In essence, that means no more "gap filling"--just pick the model and version of aircraft I am most into and forget the rest. Even with all that culling and focusing and what truly turns me on, there will still not be room for everything, so I will be chucking older builds and those models which no longer hold my interest. For years I had almost no display space at all, so everything completed went into storage. My wife would not allow me to display any models in the house. I hated that--a big part of why I build is to take pleasure in viewing the completed models. I finally used up all my storage space--literally had no room for even one more model. The only way I could continue in this hobby would be to throw out a substantial portion of models, or give away all future builds--I don't want to do either. I had a heart to heart talk with SWMBO and told her how important model building is to me. It turned out a big part of her objection to having models displayed in the house was that she didn't like the models with the swastikas. I used to be a big Luftwaffe head, but with the coverage of Luftwaffe models on so many websites, I was pretty much burned out on the whole subject anyway, and with my concentration on other subjects and eras, having a bunch of swastikas displayed in the house was not going to be a problem. She was relieved to hear that and agreed to let me have a couple of display cabinets in the house. I am hoping to start building the first of those cabinets very soon.

Interesting! That might work--it's certainly worth experimenting with. Thanks. I can relate to borrowing the daughter's nail supplies. I took my daughter's nail polish remover to wipe away excess putty on a seam I was filling. She was not amused when she saw the bottle sitting on my work bench.

I don't think that would work. Liquid solvent cements evaporate very quickly, yet they linger long enough to cause problems such as puckering, blistering, etc. I believe tube glue, with its much longer evaporation time would only make matters worse. Thanks anyway for the suggestion.

Thanks guys. Your suggestions do make sense. To avoid problems caused by the plastic melting don't use solvent type cements. I would still like to know how Saint Harry got such good results using solvents. Seems like they would provide the most strength.

I am trying to replicate a technique described by Harry Woodman in his classic book "Building Scale Models in Plastic Card". This involves gluing very thin (5 or 10 thou) plastic card on to injection molded kit parts. The very thin plastic is embossed with rib or panel detail. Seems like a great way to improve older, crude kits--for instance, grind away the coarse wing rib detail on say the SMER Walrus, then glue finely embossed 10 thou card over the wing to provide better wing rib detail. I am finding it just about impossible to glue these very thin sheets without the glue causing melting, buckling, warping and other types of distortion that ruins the fine detail. Woodman warns against using excess glue, saying it will cause the problems I have experienced. I have gone as far as trying to apply the cement with a cut down brush consisting of only a few "hairs", but even those small amounts of solvent are causing melting and distortion in the extremely thin card. I am beginning to think maybe the cement I am using is too "hot". I tried avoiding the melting issues altogether by using super glue, but the results have been inconsistent and not very satisfactory. I also found an old thread on a railroad modeling forum that suggested using MEK, saying it wasn't as "hot" as other solvent type cements, but others say MEK is actually hotter than many commercially available liquid cements, so I am completely confused. Can anyone recommend a less "hot" solvent that would work for gluing extremely thin plastic card? Thanks for any advice! Karl

It may be only one, but it is one to be proud of. Great job!

Beautiful models and great job on the Day-Glo--I know that is not an easy color to paint.

Well, that's one way of keeping it in perspective--LOL!! Thanks!

What beautiful model! Well done! Other than the intake, are there any other known glaring inaccuracies on this kit?

Seeing the post about the coming WNW Salmson 2-A2 reminded me of the 1/48 scale Salmson 2-A2 being produced by a Greek gentleman (I can't recall the company name). I recall test shots were shown maybe a year ago, but to the best of my knowledge the kit has not yet been released. Does anyone have any more information on this? I would love top have a Salmson 2-A2 in 1/48th, and the test shot photos seemed to show a lot of potential.