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Stressing about a Hellcat


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I bought another Eduard F6F-5 from @Duncan B a while ago.

 

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I didn't bother with any PE this time, so just used an Ultracast seat in the cockpit and tried to do a passable paint job.

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Due to lack of skill in painting instruments, I did buy @airscale's 1/48 US Navy instrument decals

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As with the last Eduard F6F I built, I sawed out and thinned down the cowl flaps for what is, in my opinion, a much enhanced appearance for very little effort and no cost. The kit parts have the cowl flaps the full thickness of the cowl piece so even closed they don't look like cowl flaps.

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It was bought with the intention of making a very ubiquitous ANA623 Glossy Sea Blue US Navy example as seen pretty much everywhere in the Pacific from 1944 to 1945. The trouble is that ANA623 was pretty good paint and therefore most of the stuff modellers do to models such as pre or post shading, panel line washes etc is wholly inappropriate for such an aircraft. Then again, we can't be having a solid, featureless finish because the real aircraft didn't look like that either. I decided to try mimicking the stressed skin appearance of a real aircraft to try to get similar light reflections from a glossy finish. Out with the paint mule!

 

I cut narrow strips of masking tape. The Infini cutting mats made short work of that and got all strips consistent.

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I gave it two light coats with Halfords grey aerosol primer

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The tape was removed and I gave it a go over with an Infini 1500grit sanding sponge, the aim being to knock all the corners off and smooth the humps a bit.

 

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I then gave it a fairly heavy coat (in many very thin passes) of Colourcoats ACUS34 ANA623 Glossy Sea Blue this morning. This has had a polish with Infini 2500 and 4000 grit sponges and looks like this:

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Overall, and with more work with the 1500 grit prior to top coat, I feel somewhat positive about it and have decided to go for it. This may take some time!

 

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All comments / feedback welcome!

 

 

Edited by Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies
Added scale and kit manufacturer tags. Wouldn't want to waste anyone's time!
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3 hours ago, Johnny_Sokko said:

Great work, I like the stressed skin effect on the wings.

Thank you. I think it's a touch heavy, but it should be easier to do less if that makes sense.

3 hours ago, Stew Dapple said:

 

No kidding! :D 

 

Good luck though, the mule looked most impressive B) 

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

Thanks Stew - I stopped for a break and accidently found myself trying out Mackies Icecream's new icecream parlour in Aberdeen!

3 hours ago, J.P. said:

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That looks spot on.

Thanks! I'd like to achieve a softer effect, but learning how to do things is what this is all about :)

2 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

That really works, on the evidence of your mule.  Great idea

We'll see if I agree it's a great idea when it's ready to prime :D

2 hours ago, Andre B said:

Following with great interest! :)

 

Cheers / André

Welcome aboard! :D

21 minutes ago, J.P. said:

So did you go over the whole area or concentrate the sand paper in the "troughs" where the tape had been?

 

I just gave the whole thing a going over. These sanding sponges may be part of the effect - they make it very hard to concentrate force in a small space but I thought that would help in generally rounding everything off. The primer looked quite square and blocky before the sanding sponge did its magic.

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10 hours ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

Thanks Stew - I stopped for a break and accidently found myself trying out Mackies Icecream's new icecream parlour in Aberdeen!

 

Hmm, Thursday or Friday I would have been intensely jealous of that, but it's been positively chilly by comparison this weekend...

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

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3 minutes ago, Stew Dapple said:

 

Hmm, Thursday or Friday I would have been intensely jealous of that, but it's been positively chilly by comparison this weekend...

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

 

That was a "night out in town" by our standards :D

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I don't normally follow anything but 1/72, but in this case I'll be watching your build. A most interesting effect, for sure. It might be hard to reproduce in 1/72 but you never know. I'm sure there's some brave ( or frikkin' crazy ) soul(s) on this forum that may try.

 

 

Chris

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Hi folks,

 

No progress yesterday or today as we had to take my daughter to Glasgow. She was offered the opportunity to audition for summer lessons with the Scottish Ballet under their "associates" programme and she really wanted to try. I did visit Scott's Models whilst in Glasgow though and relieved him of the new Tamiya Spitfire Mk.I, just because.

 

More taping this week!

 

@dogsbody I actually thought of this with a view to using it in 1/72 scale in a planned build coming soon but on a much more expensive kit :) I'm as keen as anyone to see if it works 😂

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Interesting work Jamie. I've tried to gain similar effects by scraping the plastic with a round blade but this looks less drastic for good results.

 

Best of luck to your daughter at Scottish Ballet. A friend's daughter is there and while it is hard work it is rewarding.

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Does it fool the eye? It sure does. But in reality I think it should be exactly opposite or reverse and that's harder to achieve. I just recently happened to stand over a P-47 wing and ammunition cover panel had exactly the same stressed skin, but with internal framing sticking slightly out. 

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1 hour ago, Josip said:

Does it fool the eye? It sure does. But in reality I think it should be exactly opposite or reverse and that's harder to achieve. I just recently happened to stand over a P-47 wing and ammunition cover panel had exactly the same stressed skin, but with internal framing sticking slightly out. 

 

It depends on the structure itself and how it is stressed. I too have seen the effect you describe, but it's usually on parts of the airframe which have been walked on and get dented a bit. This one is good - it shows the wing roots like you describe - but the fuselage skins are buckled outwards slightly:

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The leading edges show the skins dented inwards where they are riveted to the ribs to form the D-section with the main spar, and they are slightly buckled outwards in between the internal structural members.

 

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This Hellcat fuselage skin appears to be buckled outwards away from the fuselage frames and stringers but the unsupported areas are rippled.

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There are also some like the B52 which buckle the skins in shear in localised places like here:

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What is obvious though is that for a Hellcat wing, my test piece is too heavy and prominent. I need to make it more subtle for a convincing model.

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13 minutes ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

 

Me too really, but @MrsSovereignHobbies remains unconvinced.

It would make an excellent 'shop front' model for some Colour Coats paint ;)

In fact you might need a few for the various colour schemes the type wore... :hmmm:

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4 hours ago, Col. said:

It would make an excellent 'shop front' model for some Colour Coats paint ;)

In fact you might need a few for the various colour schemes the type wore... :hmmm:

 

I'll arrange a 3-person Facebook Messenger call later and you can convince her Col :lol:

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That is a brilliant technique that I plan to unabashedly steal! So much better than the scalpel/scrapping technique I tried/failed at!  Looking forward to this.

 

Colin

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On 5/19/2019 at 7:13 AM, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

That was a "night out in town" by our standards

 

Yeah I was still jealous, but less intensely so than I would have been earlier in the week :D 

 

8 hours ago, Josip said:

Does it fool the eye? It sure does.

 

And that is all it needs to do.

 

6 hours ago, Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies said:

Me too really

 

Do it do it do it do it do it.... :lol: 

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

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Some more tape fitted tonight. Both sides of the fuselage have been kept more-or-less up to date. I'm only doing this on areas which show any real evidence of rippling skins. I don't want the entire thing looking like it's made of bricks!

 

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