Alex.B

Some good news... and some bad news. Good news is that I added the decals to the body and airbrushed a nice coat of 2K gloss The bad news is that something (yes.. "something" because I have no idea at all about what is it..) decided to ruin the clear gloss exactly in the middle of the bonnet: And in real life is much much worse than in this picture. Nothing that I can't fix, but this unexpected problem combined with my moving that is taking place right now, will considerably delay the model completion. And by "considerably" I mean that most probably I won't make it for the end line of the GB and we will have to wait to see the finished product, in one of the regular "Ready for Inspection" galleries Never say Never, but this is the most realistic scenario

…and that’s why I created a spreadsheet with all the kit boxes and related aftermarket things that I own. 😆 I actually did that after purchasing some ejection seats and decal sheets that I already had.

Love the Mini! (I actually have to buy a real one.. sooner or later)

Today has been quite a productive day at the bench. When the primer was dry I lightly wet sanded it with 2000 grit paper, then I sprayed the body color thinned with MLT. I applied one almost dry coat followed by two wet coats. After the last wet coat I shot some pure MLT all over the body. Could even consider to lay down some decals tomorrow...

I've being able to work a little bit again on the 695. So here is the body fully primed: And finally we now have the dual body carburetor:

What a beautiful bird

Not many progress in the last days, but at least I've started the base. I feel the need of put every model I build on a display base, even a very simple one, just to show them in their natural environment. For this 695 is a section of asphalt, as simple as that. My standard approach pretty much for every display base is an eight sided piece of wood, on top of which I glue what I then use to represent the surface that best suits the model. For aircrafts this usually is a 1 or 1,5 mm plasticard sheet that I then scribe and paint to represent an apron section. For 1/20 and 1/24 cars I've found that a sheet of fine cork sensibly airbrushed represents quite nicely some asphalt. After gluing it to the wood base I trim everything at 45° with a router, I then stain the wood and add a polyurethane finish. Last part is the proper painting of the top part. This is the 695 base just after the router work, before wood finishing and painting: Here you can see that IMHO the cork sheet approach looks quite convincing once properly painted:

Some insane work here 😧 I really wish I could 3D draw like you! BTW, can you please extrapolate the thing about paint and baby powder to make the suede like texture?

Very nice considering is your first car! I have the same kit in the stash.. hope to build it one day or another

Always in to build a nice weathered USN aircraft... even more if it's a Tomcat

I'll be in with a F1 or a Rally car!

Ok yesterday I had an idea. What if the 1/24 owner of this 1/24 695 wanted to have a 1/24 model of his own car? 🙈 Of course he had to stop at a hobby shop and buy the Tamiya kit! So I made a 1/24 model of the Tamiya box and instruction sheet: I downloaded from the web various images of the box and I then created a "box" on vector graphic software: I then printed it on photographic paper, cut, folded and glued, just like a real box top. For the bottom part I used a 1,5 mm thick plasticard glued inside, this also to give some strength to the tiny box. The instruction sheet is just a scan of my own one, then reduced 24 times and printed on high res paper. The idea is to represent the car just after the owner went to the hobby shop to buy the Tamiya kit and, before leaving and maybe go home, he opened the box and checked the instruction sheet. ...who doesn't do that? 😉 So I glued them on the passenger seat with Ammo MiG PVA glue, added door panels with Studio27 photo etched details, and I now call the interior finished:

Interior almost done, except for the door panels. I wanted to try to paint some wood effect on the steering wheel and the gear knob, a first for me. I brush painted some Vallejo Light Brown (Model Color 70.929) and once fully cured I did some dry brushing with Vallejo Charred Brown 72.745 from the Game Air range, that is a very dark brown. Next I airbrushed a couple of coats of Tamiya X-29 Clear Orange. Last step was a coat of Tamiya X-22 Gloss Clear. As written before I never did this before, so I watched some tutorials on Youtube. I think they turned out quite nicely! Here is a picture of the engine bay, where I added some weathering, but I kept it more subtle than on the underbody:

Order pending from SpotModel, waiting for one item that should arrive in stock on the 24th. So maybe for the end of September I will get it. In the mean time I added the exhaust. I tried to replicate some color variations due heat, as if it's an inox aftermarket exhaust system:

That’s really insane stuff 👏