Kenetic canopy chaos...Help please!

[Night Owl]

OMG...this kit is killing me, I have a 1:48 scale F-18B everything was going great until I took out the canopy and noticed this seam that runs down the center of both parts the wind screen and the canopy. How can I get rid of this without destroying the canopy. I do have a Hasegawa kit for a F-18D that has a two seat version canopy I don't mind taking. Both models are tandem seat cockpits but I don't know if its the same canopy design...does anyone know if MacDonald Douglas used the same canopy for both versions? thanks in advance for any help.

 

Dave

[Richard E]

Hi Dave

 

It might be possible to polish the seam out of the canopy with some fine sanding sticks - you can probably find some videos on You Tub which will illustrate the best way to do this.

 

Hope this helps

[Black Knight]

Whilst you can sand and polish the seam on the outside, can you get into the insides to do the seam?

Also the line will still show, all you can do is smooth the seam

afaik the B and D canopy are the same

[Shin]

The problem won't be the real canopies being swappable, it's whether Kinetic and Hasegawa's interpretation of them would be. Lots of modern jet model kit canopies (most of them?) have a center mold seam line on the exterior. Scrape it off with a hobby knife, sand with 8000 then 12000 grit (maybe a lower grit if needed depending on how much damage you did with the scraping job) , then use a polishing system (Tamiya compound, Novus plastic polish, or similar). 

Edited February 11, 2020 by Shin
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