We Three Kings...

[Head in the clouds.]

Evening one and all. Things have not stood still despite my lack of posts, I have other kits on the go and a bright spark at our local club decided to start a club 'Spitfire' build for Christmas, but this is not a bad thing as having 3 Sea Kings on the go adds up to 15 main rotor blades, 3 tail rotors, 12 wheels and the list goes on. So, as they say, a rest is as good as a change.

 

But back to my bread and butter.

 

As a whole all the builds are pretty much as far as they can go build wise so it is out with the paint. As seen earlier XV651 has had a couple of light coats so while this was drying for a day or two I jumped ship to ZB506. As per 'SOP's' a white undercoat was laid down, Alclad's own being the preferred choice. No real issues were found so the Tamiya white was sprayed on next.

All was going well so I decided after a day or so to dry to start masking for the red and this is when it happened. I was not happy with the position of some of the masking tape so I removed it....along with a good flake of paint;

Before;

 

After;

 

Tosh! I am thinking looking at how clean it has pulled away there may have been some contamination that I missed, needless to say I had had enough so put it to one side while I licked my wounds.

 

So onto XV651. Having given it a couple of coats I it received a few more, the Colourcoats  paint is matt so will need a good coat of varnish to give it that gloss look. The paint laid down well so was given some coats of Alclad Gloss coat.

 

Next up was the decals, this is really where a model comes alive but as usual there is no single sheet of decals for this build so a combination of Xtradecal sets were used as well as some from the spares box, in particular the stencils. These went on OK with only a slight silvering of the odd one regardless of how much setting solution was used. I think this is down to my airbrushing skills rather than any other issue, this is by far my weak point in my modelling tool kit.

The  '064' is only on the port side nose all the others are replicated either side;

 

I had also took the liberty of removing the masking from the clear parts, I can never seem to keep small particles out the cockpit so one or two slithers of plastic are visible and they will have to stay that way. I spent a couple of nights placing the decals and fitting the wheels to the undercarriage, no much to report here.

 

Now the sharp eyed amongst you will have noticed that something has not been mentioned once and it is the most important part of the helicopter...the rotor blades.  I have to confess that during the first lockdown I just ploughed on and forgot to take pics. Much has been discussed on these forums and elsewhere about the type of blade, colours, etc so I shall not go into depth on what is what, needless to say this was the latest offering from Airfix of an HAR3 so the blades where backdated to the earlier metal type and painted green uppers, black under with a dark grey protection strip on the leading edge;

 

They have been weathered slightly with AK weathering pencils, yellow on the upper and silver on the under, it is the first time I have used these and I have much to learn to get the best from them but I am happy with my first attempts;

 

It is also the first time I have used the cutting mat to set out my rotor blades, easy peasy when you remember it is there.

 

One more item remained to be made. On the port side cockpit glazing corner quadrant is some sort of metal box, I do not know what it is but is visible in the pic in the Warpaint book. This is an awkward shape and small so took some time to fettle, loosing it several times to the carpet monster, it also had to fit the curvature of the glazing but after a while I had this;

 

 

Once painted it was fixed with PVA.

 

And here it is pretty much finished. I will give it the once over before posting on RFI;

 

 

Thanks for looking.

[perdu]

Beauty.

[hendie]

I concur 

[Pete in Lincs]

Wot he said. 

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Fourthed

[perdu]

Mind you, the state of that cutting board leaves something to be...

 

 

 

 

[Pete in Lincs]

39 minutes ago, perdu said:

Mind you, the state of that cutting board leaves something to be...

Now, how did Shakespeare put it? 'You ain't got a shabby cutting board, you ain't no modelller'

Or it may have been something similar to that. It was a long time ago.

[Head in the clouds.]

Thank you gentlemen.

4 hours ago, perdu said:

Mind you, the state of that cutting board leaves something to be...

It has been worked hard Bill, maybe after this build is completed I may give it a well earned retirement.

[perdu]

Ah no, on reflection it has earned its stripes.

Let it it stay in the game, after all it's been part of a fabulous enterprise.

 

[Head in the clouds.]

8 minutes ago, perdu said:

Ah no, on reflection it has earned its stripes.

Let it it stay in the game, after all it's been part of a fabulous enterprise.

 

Seeing as it is Christmas your wish shall be granted.....😃

[Pete in Lincs]

I'll keep quiet about the state of mine then. 

[Head in the clouds.]

11 minutes ago, Pete in Lincs said:

I'll keep quiet about the state of mine then

This is getting like a game of Top Trumps. 😁

[Pete in Lincs]

27 minutes ago, Head in the clouds. said:

This is getting like a game of Top Trumps.

 

What size is yours then? And, I'm sure you're building slower than me.

[Head in the clouds.]

57 minutes ago, Pete in Lincs said:

What size is yours then? And, I'm sure you're building slower than me.

Too big for you to handle Pete but you are correct, I am a Derby and Joan in the slow lane🤪

[Pete in Lincs]

Sounds like stalemate to me then.      

[perdu]

We do not want STALE this close to Christmas...

[Head in the clouds.]

After completing XV651 which was a milestone in this build, being the first to be completed, this left two more, XV371 which in the main is just waiting on white decals and ZB506.

 

When I last had 506 in my hands I had just removed some masking tape(top of this page) and in the process pulled a large section of paint with it. This was not to be the last time that this happened and became a source of annoyance for me, and, as in this case required a tactical retreat to replenish mojo which was found in a stiff 10 year old whiskey.

This was repaired in the usual way, rub down, prime and paint but as it started to happen more often I started to ask questions.

This is the first time I have used Alclad White primer and initial results were fine,it was only when removing masking tape that peeling happened, even with 0.75mm masking the same occurred. Initially I thought with the first instance that it was due either to contamination on the airframe or me not de-tacking the tape enough but as it happened more often with any masking size and in many locations I am thinking it may be the primer. More experimentation is needed before I use it again as peeling is not something I come across very often.

 

The repair was made, it took longer than I thought as the peeled area grew substantially until I removed all loose paint;

 

 

With the Tamiya white  now on it was time for the mammoth task of masking which took a considerable time, the Sea King is not the cleanest of airframe and I have not made it any cleaner by adding long slabs either side and various antenna too, some of which pinged off later on. This is for the red;

 

With the red, again Tamiya, on it was time to mask up and spray the blue. Up to this point no more white peeled off when the above masking was removed so much of it was used again;

 

Looking good.....or maybe not;

 

 

Drat,drat and double drat as Dick Dastardly would say to Mutley. Time for a mojo boost... 🥃.

After allowing the mojo booster to work and exercising my vocal chords with a torrent of unprintable words I set too(again) to repair the peeled paintwork;

 

It had to be the red strip though, didn't it? Three areas, between the two windows, the rear where the strip ends and the opposite side near cockpit. They do say problems come in threes....

After repair;

 

 

Result. The down side of all this repair work is that the same masking process had to be followed and this took much time and inevitably there was a little overspray in places, this was cleaned up with more masking and spraying. Out of the woods now..............!

 

NO!

My mojo bottle is becoming less full at an alarming rate, look at this;

 

When I removed the mask for the white band around the door I then had to mask for the red band and as you can guess when removing said mask this happened. 😭. At this point I placed the model down and proceeded to go a.....I think you know where I am going.

More later when I get my focus back...🥃🥃🥃

[hendie]

sorry to hear of your woes but you are doing a great job despite the difficulties.

I too am having serious doubts about Alclad primers and specifically their quality control. 

I have a bottle of Alclad black primer which will end up in the bin.  I've only used it on a couple of jobs, but each time, when demasking, the paint has come off in big chunks right down to the plastic.

I also have a bottle of their grey primer - which I have used for years (not the same bottle, obviously) and never had any issues with peeling - but with this latest bottle, again I've had peeling on several models when demasking

[Pete in Lincs]

3 hours ago, Head in the clouds. said:

and this took much time

And suddenly you're in a rush already? Two words, Mate. Hycote plastic primer. Okay three words then. It's cheap, delivered to your door (usually free on ebay).

And, It works! It stays stuck on! I use the grey and white ones. It's cheaper to buy multiple cans BTW.

You've hit the hurdles here, but you got around it, so good for you. I think you're not alone in wanting the end to come sooner rather than later!

Regards, Pete

[Head in the clouds.]

17 minutes ago, hendie said:

I too am having serious doubts about Alclad primers and specifically their quality control. 

Sorry to hear that @hendie, I thought it was probably my inexperience and not be the most accomplished painter.

I too had one of their original, larger bottles of grey primer and swore by it, never having any issues. This is in a smaller bottle and being the white primer, so being much newer, I gave it a go a) because I find Alclad paints to be good and b) so I did not have to decant from an aerosol. Also like you I found it peels right back to plastic. If my tests turn out unsatisfactory mine will be binned too.

[Head in the clouds.]

2 minutes ago, Pete in Lincs said:

I think you're not alone in wanting the end to come sooner rather than later

Too true Pete. Thanks for the heads up, I will have a look for some of your suggested primer on evil bay and give it a go.

[heloman1]

Great work going on here. Unusual for the primer to peel on demasking. It looks lime there was little or no adhesion. I have never used Alclad primer excepting for chrome use, so can't comment fully. I use either Tamiya decanted or Duco GP Primer (similar to Halfords) (aerosol) also decanted. I've recently converted though not fully to the new range of Tamiya LC paints. Still limited in range but I prefer the way they spray.

Another trick, when de masking is to pull the tape back over itself rather than at an angle.

 

Cheer

 

Colin

[Head in the clouds.]

5 hours ago, heloman1 said:

Another trick, when de masking is to pull the tape back over itself rather than at an angle.

Thank you Colin.

 

That is one snippet I will put in the locker.

[Head in the clouds.]

Onwards and upwards.

 

The black walk area was next on the sponsons, again much masking, feel like I am a roundabout here;

 

Peeling off the masking was another tense moment, you can only use the masking so many times before it becomes useless. Anyway, got away with it this time.

 

 

Now I started to cut the masks for the black area around the engine exhausts using pics to get measurements and drawing it out on wide masking tape remembering to reverse it for the opposite side, this I did by turning the first mask around and tracing around it;

 

 

I am getting good at this de-masking malarkey...😂

 

Now I had the Royal Blue laid down I decided to fit the navigation light, or is  it an anti collision beacon...not sure but I am going to fit it anyway. Simple job, drill small hole in middle, fill with red paint and paint lower body blue, fix and call it done.

 

Next up was the part I felt was going to be tricky, fitting the glass front to the Hele Tel camera. If you look atthe following pic you can see it more or less just sits on the front with no obvious fixing mechanism, well, not one I can replicate in 1/72;

 

It looks like a series of pins around the edge where it sits on the ball, well I have one thing to say about that, Bob Hope and no hope! It will have to be fixed with glue that dries clear and is strong enough to hold it in position. Also I need to find some clear acetate that is not too flimsy but strong enough to manage being handled.

This is the thinnest I can find;

 

I have already cut out a piece, bigger than it needs to so I can offer it up and trim accordingly.

 Even with this thin material it is still a little over scale, to get it in scale it would be thinner than paper so accordingly I had to bend the corners over to follow the contour of the ball. It is one of those time in modelling you have to go with your best effort knowing it is not true to the real thing, even with paper thin acetate I still think I would have to bend the corners. I anyone has a better idea please tell, I am all ears.👍

 

There is a little paint damage from somewhere, that will need tidying.

Next to replicate the little lens like disc above the main window in the black triangle. For this I used a Little Lens 1mm but only using the adhesive backing as this is silver on the facing aspect.

 

I had previously painted the 'X Box thingie'

 

Now we have to bring all the parts together that make up the Hele Tel unit. As can be seen in the following pic the articulated ball sits in the crescent cradle by way of a shaft with a larger bush assembly in which the whole sits;

 

For this I will use 1.2mm brass rod for the main shaft which is the brown section and 1.4 and 1.6 for the bush, which is black. The bush should be just the right size to fit in the slots I have made.

The brass rod was cut and laid out;

 

Main shaft fitted and bush assembly made up;

 

And all together now..

 

You can see what I am trying to achieve. A little glue to keep it all together and done.

 

 

The pic above this one makes it look awful but in the flesh it looks better....honestly guv!

 

Well, that went well I thought.

That's it for now, more again soon, probably some decals me thinks.

 

Thanks for looking.

[Pete in Lincs]

Getting there, Gary. Getting there.