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Evening all, I'm taking a temporary break from the Ju52/1m project as I need to get more comfortable with the foiling process. To try and get a handle on what to do, and of course what not to do before I attempt it on the Ju52, I've dug this out of my stash: I will be honest and say that as a rule, jets don't do a lot for me, and certainly not the modern ones. Having said that, I felt this was ideal for my purposes as there isn't an awful lot of faffing around to be done on building the thing to a point where I can start foiling. I am going totally OOB for this, aside from the foil that I end up putting on the exterior. So, I won't bore you with sprue shots or pics of the initial build - suffice it to say it's the very definition of shake-n-bake; it's a very good quality kit aside from the hideously wide tram lines where the panel lines should be. Not much needed in the way of cleaning up, no flash, no ejector pin marks worth worrying about. The choice of paint schemes is quite interesting, and on another day I might have been tempted by the North Korean scheme or even the Hungarian one. However, the one I want to do is the Soviet one, which is literally all bare metal save for the insignia and a red nose ring at the front. Works for me! I deliberately avoided fitting the wings and any other paraphernalia so as to make the foiling process as easy as possible - not that easy is necessarily the most appropriate way to describe this! The pile of scrunched up foil on my bench is an early testimony of how 'easy' it's going to be! From that, I worked out that the tops of the wings are quite possibly the worst place I could have started. So I turned my attention to the fuselage: OK not a lot to write home about yet, and I freely admit this may not be the absolute best way of going about it, but at least it lulled me into a sense of achievement. This could all unravel of course! I used a toothpick (sanded to round the end a bit) to smooth the foil and to press it into the panel tram lines. The excess was trimmed away carefully by running a scalpel down the line. Things seemed to get easier after the first panel was applied, even though the curves tended to differ with each one. I think I get the notion of smoothing out from the 'high point' to avoid creases. I didn't manage that all the time, but I was able to buff out the worst of them with the side of the toothpick. Cutting out round recesses like the air brake panels was a bit interesting, but once I'd tidied it up and run the toothpick around the finished edge it looked OK. Similar story with the tail, requiring several little pieces: The underside panels I did with a single piece, as they were all very similar in their curvature - I just scribed the panel lines with the toothpick and all was good: So there it is, we're off and running. It's not been too bad an experience so far with the fuselage, but I know I need to re-think how I do those wings!