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Ancient mariner


Lord Riot

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Am following this build with great interest. It's nice to see an elderly kit being coaxed into the 21st century in your capable hands. 

 

I don't have the Airfix S.1 kit but do have a trio of the 1/72 S.2B, which I believe was based on the former. When the new tool Buccaneer is released by Airfix in the near future it will make quite a contrast I'm sure.

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Thanks @Timbo88, not sure about 'capable' but I'm following a few ideas on BM and fudging a few things together. It's such an old kit though, the fit is terrible. 

 

I've finally coaxed the two fuselage halves together. I'm not happy with the fit of the nose though, I might sacrifice it opening for one that doesn't have a huge gap between radome and body!  I've already foregone the folding wings which I liked because the kit ones were so fat they looked inflatable.

 

It's held together so tightly with tape I can't help but feel it's going to pop apart somewhere along the join.

 

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I remember this kit as the NA.39 which I tried to improve which I eventually did by putting it in the bin. Mind you this was back in the mid 70's when all I had to guide me was articles from the old Airfix Magazine back when it was roughly an A5 size and it contained articles on building "The Charge of the Light Brigade" from Airfix figures and horses to replicate a scene from the famous painting...

Anyway, what I had done was to use tubes or paper glued together with probably a tube of Humbrol cement to form the intakes and exhausts. That was about as far as I got as my modelling skills were very basic then and I didn't even know of any local modelling club to join or anything.

Great work so far though

 

Gondor

Edited by Gondor44
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So I've now got some of the flying surfaces and the airbrake hinges glued in place, and my home made jetpipe deflectors. It reminds me a bit of an old Matchbox kit now with the different colours! 

 

I sacrificed the folding wings for more accurate ones, though I'll need to add some filler below as the roots are thicker than the new outer wings. 

 

I can't find any photos of S1s with slipper tanks; did they ever carry them?

 

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I might spray it with pale grey primer first for an even colour beneath the anti-flash white. Hopefully that'll also show up where I need to improve the join line. I've filled and filed these, but not sure how well. The black line shows up more because I painted so much of the interior.

 

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I filled the holes under the wing as they seem too far away from the inboard pylon for an S1. I glued the pylons for spraying then I'll take them off before applying the underwing serial decals. Which seems an awful long way off yet!

 

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Having already got this far, I discovered it needed major surgery! The kit jet pipes are too long. Do I bite the bullet and cut them off, or leave them and hope I don't notice. 

 

I decided that once known, I couldn't unsee it, so took the plunge with the hacksaw and set about butchering the Buccaneer! If I'd known before I'd have used the S2 fuselage and resin intakes that @Scimitar kindly sent me, but I didn't think I had the skill to cut the intakes and add the resin parts. I wish I'd tried now as this is probably harder! Anyway, having invested so much work in the kit I thought I'd give it a go, knowing I have enough spares to bin it and start again if I had to.

 

So, long pipes cut off ...

 

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Sanded smoother and a bit smaller, then I used kitchen foil as a skin to cover the gaping hole in the rear fuselage ...

 

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I wrapped the jetpipe nozzles in blu-tack so they fit the hole and glued them in. Once dry I'm going to add filler around the rim and smooth it down to give a slightly tapered look to the nozzle and fill that gap.

 

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Damn, this is annoying. I've bitten off more than I can chew with this, I hadn't realised just how inaccurate the old Airfix kit was. So I've stumbled on and on investing more time in a desperate attempt to avoid having to fit resin intakes to an S2 fuselage, which I think is beyond me.

 

However, I hadn't realised the stupidly long jetpipes until I was well into the kit. I thought I'd tamed them, but now as soon as I spray the white the ends and filler start to break up!

 

If I can't fix this I'm going to salvage the wings and nose and bin the rest. I'll do a few more kits to build up my skills before attempting an S1 again with the resin intakes and S2 parts. I guess you get what you pay for - tried to save money using an old kit but what a waste of time. 

 

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Edited by Lord Riot
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Sadly it was unrepairable. I decided to scrap the old fuselage after salvaging the wings, bomb bay and nose. I'll come back to the S1 project another time when I feel more confident about cutting an S2 and adding resin intakes.

 

Apologies to anyone watching this, and especially @Scimitar, I let you down after you sent me those parts mate. I'll be back on it though, need to do a few easy kits again first.

 

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Find a Frog/Novo Buccaneer and use the bits you have to make a nice S1

 

Can be done relatively cheaply too

 

With Richard aboard and us chi-icking from the sidelines we will soon have you sorted

 

Never give up, every day is training day

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11 hours ago, Lord Riot said:

 

Apologies to anyone watching this, and especially @Scimitar, I let you down after you sent me those parts mate.

No apology required.

Rather than bin it why don't you experiment on it?

Try superglue to put the exhausts back in perhaps with a stronger plastic backing (fed in from the bomb bay?)

9 hours ago, perdu said:

Never give up, every day is training day

Sound advice there.

 

At least you noticed the difference in the exhausts. When I repainted my 40 odd year old build and added the new transfers,I didn't (emojis not working so imagine a sad face)

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  • 2 weeks later...

If I were you I'd invest in some plastic sheet a la Evergreen or similar. You're not going to get away with filler over that large an expanse. Miliput maybe, but not filler. It would also have done the job on the old removed exhausts!

Go for some 10thou and 20 thou to start with, that should make things much easier!

 

Ian

 

Ian

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Yes, Your Lordship, lots of plasticard: Evergreen, Slaters and Plastruct are your friends, lots of rod and strip too...  come over fully to the 'mildly dingy' side of scratchbuilding improvements, you are already qualified after the innovative use of gardening consumables!

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More progress today.

 

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I filled the gaps between fuselage and intakes with PVA glue as I could brush it smooth and won't need to try sanding in such a tight space.

 

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Lots of filler needed! 

 

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Amazing how many joins still show up through a coat of primer, even though I thought I'd filled and sanded everything.

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After much sanding, I've now sprayed on the first coat of white. I'm hoping there won't be too many gaps and unsightly ridges, joins, etc this time. 

 

By my admittedly average (at best!) standards it doesn't look too bad, but I've not looked close up yet, the paint fumes in the garage became too much to hang around long! 

 

I'd filled and sanded all the joins, particularly along the forward fuselage under the cockpit, so if they're still visible after all this then I'll have to live with them and hope the decals cover up the worst, otherwise I'd just end up sanding away the shape! 

 

It's my first attempt with resin parts too. The cutting away is actually harder than fitting them, because of the odd shape and fit between wing and intake 'shoulder'. I had to use a lot of filler around this area.

 

So, my excuses are in early, just have to let it dry and see if it's acceptable.

 

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