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Yet another Thunderbirds Entry! (Completed!)


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I reckon the screens are one-way smoked glass - very cool and prevent unwanted inspection to the cockpit interior - which has probably not been finished off properly...

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Priming is now complete. It only took about 5 coats to get it right. A lot of work has been done on smoothing out the joints on the pod faces - these are now finally smooth, even and not noticable. The whole things has been rubbed down with fine wet and dry to bring down the rough surface. Next was to decide how to do the panel lines. Here is the initial plan drawn using HB Pencil

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Next job will be to pre-shade these outlines. I'm not great at pre-shading so I'll just have to make sure I do a good job and don't just end up with blobs of black all over the place!

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Here it is after pre-shading. Like I said I've never really got the hand of pre-shading and end up with blobs of black instead of nice thin straight lines...

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Going to try for some green today... lets see how that works out...

Edited by Kallisti
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yesterday saw the first coat of green go on, used 2 whole pots of XF-5 dilute 50/50 with IPA - gulp! Just ordered another 10 pots as I've only got 1 left and there will need to be a bit more green paint used...

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Its not easy to see in the photos as they've levelled out the colour variations and you can't see the pre-shading at all, but its shown up a few issues which have needed another round of sanding. The whole thing has had a rub down with micro mesh to remove the airbrush paint roughness, but there are patches which still show up features such as filler from the underlying surface. These will need some more attention... stay tuned!

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Just ordered another 10 pots as I've only got 1 left and there will need to be a bit more green paint used...

Of course this huge beast will swallow up lots of paint. I hadn't thought about that, looks good so far anyway.

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This week has been more painting, this time its all about the engine exhausts. To do this, need to mask the rest...

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Next a yellow stripe was masked and painted and a template for the black stripe you can see here

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I'll print this onto clear decal film, but having some problem with that as my inkjet printer is a printing grey rather than black, so I've got myself some decal paper for a colour laser which I'm taking into work tomorrow.

Currently its in the shed with Alcad black gloss primer drying on the far end of the engien exhaust in order to accept some dark aluminium Alcad and eventually some jet exhaust to stain and weather it. More on that later once I've got the garden chores sorted. There is a lawn that needs cutting now!

Edited by Kallisti
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Further progress, this is what the exhaust decal template looks liek that I used to print out on the laser printer

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and this is what they look like in situ

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The little air bubble you can see on the first pic has been dealt with. On the second you can see the Alcad exhaust ports. These will be additionally weathered with pigments later to dirty them up appropriately.

Bit more maskign done for the windows and wing stripes:

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Still need to paint the metallic details in the tail, plus the two thin yellow stripes on the ends of the tail as well as the engine intakes and of course the big yellow stripe around the middle, but at least things are beginning to shape up...

I'm not sure if I'll finish this in time for the end of the GB - if thats the case I'll limit my entry to being just the pod :)

Edited by Kallisti
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looking very good so far Kallisti! I like the decal idea for your engine exhausts - very well done

BTW - I'd never have noticed that air bubble in your decal if you hadn't pointed it out

I saw a Fire Flash at Expo and thought of you and this build, so it's good to see more of this come together

As for finishing on time - I thought the same thing and what do you know - I actually finished it before the due date. A rarity for sure, but it does happen :D You have what, 6 days left? You can do it!

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Lots of progress in the last few days, lots of masking tape!

The windows from the previous posting came out fine - needed a bit of touching up but nothing too series. Phew that was a relief! Then it was a case of masking the big yellow strip, the engine intakes (agh, that was hard!) and various other details like the red rings around the vertical thrusters as well as the markings.

During this time, I realized that I'd got the size of the "Thunderbird 2" mask wrong - it was about 40% wider than it should be so won't fit on the nose. I've been in touch with Mal at Miracle Masks to see about getting that fixed. While all that other paint was drying, I worked on the legs. These are supplied as tuned brass, so it made "sense" to put Alcad gloss back primer over them and then paint over with Alcad Polished Brass - honest it DOES make sense!! The finish is now a lot smoother and consistent than before...

So here are some up to date progress photos

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I still need to paint the front face of the tail louvres with metallic/steel paint, and then it will be a matter for panel lines and weathering. However I can't really start that until I get the "Thunderbird 2" masks sorted out...

What this does mean is that this won't be complete for the end of the GB on Sunday, so I'll just have to post the Pod on its own into the GB gallery...

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Andrew - this is simply A M A Z I N G - and I'm very jealous that I cant afford one - feel free to let me display it in my home for the long-term in case your girlfriend wont let the completed model stay in your house!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I don't believe this!!! The new masks from Mal arrived today so I immediately got on with getting them applied. I also did some panels using various lighter and darker shades but just as I was cleaning everything up to get ready for the first coat of Klear I noticed this:

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OMG I can't believe this is happening to me :(

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Its painted on using masks from Miracle Masks, which means I need to sand down the paintwork, repaint the green and wait for Mal to be able to send me replacement masks

I'm gutted :(

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Its painted on using masks from Miracle Masks, which means I need to sand down the paintwork, repaint the green and wait for Mal to be able to send me replacement masks

I'm gutted :(

I'm really sorry Kallisti,

I can't believe you have got to sand it all down. I will look forward to seeing it finished....

All the best,

Rick

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