Better Late Than Never - Eduard Weekend (Ha!) 1/72 F6F-5

[Dandie Dinmont]

Hi Folks! Isn't it great that August is finally here and we can all get started on our Hellcat builds...What do you mean, everyone else started in June?

 

I jest of course. I'm fully aware that I'm a little late getting started with this but I'm taking a new approach here. In my previous group build, I suffered a major mojo loss as the end of the build approached meaning that it was unclear until the 59th minute of the 11th hour of the build whether I'd actually get the thing over the line in time. For this build, I decided to get the period of demotivation out of the way early. Besides, an unexpected heatwave (and in Scotland, any heatwave is unexpected) had rendered my man-cave under the eaves of the house hot enough to boil a badger's bum so there wasn't much incentive to head up there. It was so hot even the cats were complaining. With the return of normal meteorological service, i.e. fog interspersed with torrential rain, I've finally got this puppy under way.

 

Having been a little over confident in my last group build, I'm setting my sights much lower for this one and am tackling the Weekend edition of the Eduard 1/72 F6F-5. This one in fact

 

 

This will be my first attempt at an Eduard kit. I own several of their products, all 1/48 WW1 fighters for some reason, but the combination of minute PE parts and rigging instructions they offer has always led to me shaking my head and gently, but firmly, closing the boxes, every time I contemplate starting one. No PE or rigging with this one so let's see how we get on!

 

 

I'm sure most of you are familiar with this kit but here's a sprue shot anyway. At first sight, things look very promising with crisp sharp detailing and no flash or warped mouldings in sight. A little different to some Airfix kits I've tackled recently.

 

 

The kit comes with two marking options and 2(!) decal sheets, the second packed with a worrying amount of stencils. I'll be doing the option on the right hand page above for no better reason than I'm also building a F4U which features a yellow ring around the front of the cowling and I thought the white ring on the Hellcat would match nicely. 

 

I have actually made some progress on this and am now at the stage where the cockpit is more or less complete, the multiple instrument panel decals provided being a great aid in making the office look sufficiently busy. Being the Weekend edition, the kit comes with decals to represent the seat belts. I was worried that these would appear a little two-dimensional so I thought I would be clever (never a good sign) and stick the belt decals to my favourite belt manufacturing material, tin foil sandwiched between two strips of Tamiya masking tape. How did this go? Well lets just say that the canopy is going to be firmly closed on this one.

 

 

 

Next task is to close up the fuselage. While doing a dry fit, I was somewhat alarmed to notice that the fuselage halves feature no location pins whatsoever.

 

 

Getting a decent join may pose a stern challenge to my modelling skills. More developments soon, hopefully.

 

Thanks for reading,

Craig.

[Col.]

Welcome to the GB Craig. Better late than boiled  

[Foxbat]

Some people have added a couple of tabs to help get the fuselage halves together. I forgot but had no problems anyway, which was nice. Yours is looking great so far, looking forward to the next instalment.

 

Andy

[Alan P]

Welcome, doesn't matter when you start but when you finish 👍 

 

Neat start as well! 

[Thom216]

That cockpit looks real good. I'll probably be closing mine up too, to cover a little snafu,,,

[Roberto]

Good progress 🙂

[AliGauld]

Nice work on the cockpit.

Don't stress about no location pins. Take your time and work along the fuselage.

It's sometimes easier without the pins as it gives you some wiggle room to get it right.

 

Cheers,

Alistair

[Dandie Dinmont]

Thanks for all the kind comments folks, really encourages you to return to the bench and get cracking!

 

As recommended by @Foxbat, I added locating tabs to the fuselage sides:

 

 

These had a major effect. Whereas before the fuselage sides had gone together well, if a little imprecisely, now they wouldn't go together at all. I had clearly, as so often before, been a little over-enthusiastic with my tabbing efforts. Much paring away and sanding later, the sides were finally re-united and, while the going was good, glued together. The modelling gods were smiling on me and I remembered to include the tailwheel, the panel on the bottom of the fuselage and the cockpit before irrevocably making the final join. It's almost like I know what I'm doing! The final seam wasn't perhaps as clean as I would have liked it, and the fine detailing provided by Eduard, and extending over the spine of the aircraft meant I couldn't take my usual scorched earth approach to disguising said seam but we're getting there. I also glued the wings together. Yes, I did remember to open up the holes for the bomb racks inboard of the undercarriage.

 

One test fit later and we have something beginning to resemble a Hellcat

 

 

Note also the major parts of the mighty Double Wasp painted Burnt Iron and awaiting further titivation which will in all probability never be seen. The wings aren't glued in place yet but given the force required to locate them, I don't actually know if they'll come off again without tearing the fuselage apart.

 

Finally, in case it may be of interest, two attempts at recreating the R-2800 in 1/72nd scale

 

 

The left hand one comes from the Tamiya Corsair I'm also building at the moment and the right hand one belongs to this kit. There's not a lot in it but if pushed, I think I would have to say the contender from the Far East is slightly more finely detailed.

 

 More progress soon hopefully. Thanks for reading!

 

Craig.

[dogsbody]

Hey, in 1/72 scale, inside the cowling and behind the propeller, no one will really be able to see the differences between those two engines. Use the kit-supplied engine. It will look great!

 

 

 

 

Chris

[Col.]

Nice work and all good practice for your forthcoming 24th scale kit  

[Dandie Dinmont]

1 hour ago, Col. said:

Nice work and all good practice for your forthcoming 24th scale kit  

 

You're a bad, bad man Col (£90 quid on Amazon today, must resist...).

 

Craig.

[Dandie Dinmont]

That can't be the time already surely?

 

When we last joined this build, the fuselage had just come together in more or less pleasing fashion. Blatantly stealing an idea from one of (I think) @Cookenbacher's builds, I coated the seams in YZC to see how things were looking. 'Not too bad' was the result so construction continued. The wings were cemented in place without issue. Not so the tailplanes which are glued into a slot the width of the fuselage. As they come off the sprue, the tabs at the end of the tailplane meet in such as way as to leave a unprototypical gap between the elevators and the fuselage. Sanding the tabs down sorted this out of course but also left the tailplanes with a degree of freedom which made setting them square to the fuselage sides  a tricky proposition for a modeller of my limited abilities. I sweated long and hard to avoid giving the Hellcat a swept back tail but I'm still not convinced that I pulled it off.

 

 

This is why all photos from now on will be taken from a head or side-on aspect.

 

While the glue was setting, I got to work assembling the motor. I'm quite pleased with how this turned out looking, especially considering that most of it will be hidden away in the depths of the cowling behind the propellor anyway.  Looking at it in its final position on the fuselage, I kind of feel the Hellcat should be using the next size of engine up. 

 

 

 

I thought that I would further improve the look of the thing by drilling out the holes on the tailwheel mount. This seemed to go ok (only one drill bit snapped) until I inspected the other side and found that I had failed to take the elementary precaution of making sure that the drill bit was coming out at the opposite point to which it went in. It looks a mess frankly which is why all photos from now on will be taken side-on from the port side.

 

You will have noticed that I ended up using YZC as an overall primer coat, possibly because I couldn't face another tussle with my nemesis, Stynylrez. It actually worked pretty well, though as ever, the evidence provided by the witness coat was more than sufficient to bring in a verdict of "guilty of shoddy modelling". At any rate, it enabled me to embark on the repeated sessions of filling, sanding and (horrors of horrors!) scribing required. Eventually I reached the point with this where I just didn't care any longer so the windscreen and canopy were attached, a process that no longer holds any fear for me since @AliGauld's recommendation of  Formula 560 canopy glue, and masked in my signature "good enough that I'll be able to sort it out with a cocktail stick afterwards" style. It's time for a top coat!

 

To represent ANA623, I'm following the advice of @Troy Smith somewhere on this site and using a 1:1 mix of these:

 

 

To be candid, late war US Navy colour schemes are not a particular area of expertise for me so I'll probably be pretty happy however this comes out, so long as it's not green.

 

Thanks for reading,

 

Craig.

[AliGauld]

See, it's all going swimmingly.

Looking good from here.

 

Cheers,

Alistair

[Troy Smith]

3 hours ago, Dandie Dinmont said:

To represent ANA623, I'm following the advice of @Troy Smith somewhere on this site and using a 1:1 mix of these:

 

light is fading, and this is something best seen under direct sun, as it's a very subtle color,  I'll try top get a better shot, but this is direct low evening sun

 

50621068 by losethekibble, on Flickr

 

mix left, chip right, the bend of the page has caught the sun on the right of the chip,  it's not really glossy, but has a definite sheen.  

I'll have too see if better light will show the color. 

 

@Jamie @ Sovereign Hobbies described it as dark smoky blue  which you can see here, I hope.   it was a surprise to me, I think we are conditioned to expect somethinge like straight Tamiya XF-17 Sea Blue, which is dark blue green.

 

ANA 623  did fade in service,  the reason it got replaced in 1947.

 

As for the mix, I read a @Mike Starmer mix using Humbrol, which was their 77 Sea Blue plus Purple,  so I tried the Tamiya paints I had. 

 

Note, my Tamiya are old, still in 23ml jars, so if they have changed the colors....    Been meaning to order some newer paint. 

 

HTH

T

[Cookenbacher]

She's looking great in YZC, following along in the original paint sequence is satisfying somehow.

[Dandie Dinmont]

On 9/19/2021 at 8:31 PM, Cookenbacher said:

She's looking great in YZC, following along in the original paint sequence is satisfying somehow

 

Thanks Cookie, that was my thinking along with maybe doing some weathering if time permitted (needless to say, it will not).

 

A long long time ago when I was a hulking teenager, my dentist informed me that the bill for my 50-a-day sweetie habit had come due, and that I was going to have to part company with a couple of molars. This was in the wild west era of dentistry where the tooth mechanic would happily knock you out before wielding the pliers if you so desired (and as someone with a morbid fear of dentistry, I  wanted as little to do with the entire procedure as possible). Most dentists used the old laughing gas, beloved of comedy films and programmes to induce unconsciousness but my dentist had a more sophisticated setup and had a device that would actually inject you with a measured amount of anaesthetic. I was strapped into the chair, a needle was inserted into a vein and connected to the device by a clear tube. The dentist invited me to start counting back from 10 and fired up the device. Immediately, my eyes began to close but before darkness completely overwhelmed me, I couldn't help but notice a thin jet of liquid spurting from a pinhole in the tube.

 

I recovered consciousness a few minutes later to find that my mouth hurt considerably less than I had expected, and that I was surrounded by glum faces. It transpired that although I had received enough juice to put me under, I hadn't received enough, thanks to the hole in the pipe, for the dentist to be confident that I wouldn't wake up mid-extraction. And because they didn't know just how much I'd had, they couldn't top me up without risking putting me to sleep permanently. The whole affair therefore had to be postponed. 

 

My mother, eminently practical and Aberdeen born and bred, decided that since no blood had been spilled, we could catch the bus home (had the extractions taken place, I like to think she would have sprung for a taxi).  Once aboard, and still under the influence of the insidious chemicals, my normal shy and retiring nature was replaced by excessive verbosity and desire to share my story with all the other hapless passengers. I therefore reeled from seat to seat engaging my fellow travellers in conversation at the top of my voice, while my mother did her uttermost to convey the impression that we were unrelated. It was an eerie  preview of my habitual behaviour when as a student, I discovered the twin delights of beer and lunchtime drinking.

 

It's possible I suppose that one or two of you at this point may be wondering what this has to do with Hellcats or modelling. I shall elucidate. 

 

You will recall that I had decided to use @Troy Smith's mix of one part Tamiya Sea Blue to one part Purple (and many thanks to Troy for his post comparing this with the real thing). For maximum accuracy, I used a large bore syringe to transfer large, but carefully measured, amounts of paint from both pots to the mixing jar. This worked fine for the Sea Blue but when it came to the purple, the syringe stuck, then freed itself and with great force shot out a great blob of purple paint. Some went in the jar, some went all over my cutting mat, a lot went over my hands and most catastrophically, some went onto the brand new T-shirt, my wife had just presented me with. Thank goodness for water soluble acrylics. If I'd been using enamels, the forecast could have been very frosty at Chez Dinmont. 

 

Inspecting the contents of the mixing jar after I'd cleaned up, it was clear that I had some sort of blue but was it anything like ANA 623? My problem, like my dentist of long ago, was that although some purple had gone it, I had no idea how much so I didn't know how much to add to bring it up to the proper spec. I couldn't start again from scratch because I'd used most of my supplies of the constituent paints to mix up this batch. All I could do is go ahead with what I had, which produced this:

 

 

 

and after a respray of its snout and a coat of klear:

 

 

 

I've no idea how close this looks to the real item, but it's definitely blue, and looks ok to me. Next up, we will find out how good the Eduard decals are.

 

I'd like to take one more opportunity to display my ignorance to the Britmodeller hive mind though. I know that ANA 23 was supposed to be a gloss finish but in reality, would a F6F that had spent more than 5 minutes on a carrier deck have had more of a gloss, satin or matt finish?

 

Thanks for reading,

 

Craig. 

[Troy Smith]

3 minutes ago, Dandie Dinmont said:

I've no idea how close this looks to the real item, but it's definitely blue, and looks ok to me.

the point of the purple is to kill off the green in the XF-17 and make the smoky blue colour.    from the photos that looks to be the case.  Period colour of GSB is rare though.

 

 

 

note how the color changes with light, as your model does

 

 

3 minutes ago, Dandie Dinmont said:

I'd like to take one more opportunity to display my ignorance to the Britmodeller hive mind though. I know that ANA 23 was supposed to be a gloss finish but in reality, would a F6F that had spent more than 5 minutes on a carrier deck have had more of a gloss, satin or matt finish?

 

US Navy paint was tough.  But AFAIK Gloss Sea Blue was not high gloss,  the chip in the book is satin,  and most of the US Navy planes at this stage were new, or new ish,  there was no shortage of them.

 

 

 

this is often miscaptioned, but is in 1946, in the med, and shows some tatty looking ANA 623, bear in mind the USN was being run down at this point.

ANA 623 faded  quite quickly, which is why it got replaced, the faded grayness is clear in this.

 

HTH

[Col.]

That story was worth reading on its own merits but even more so in relation to your paint episode   In the end the result does look good; nice work Craig.

[Dandie Dinmont]

On 9/21/2021 at 10:48 AM, Dandie Dinmont said:

Next up, we will find out how good the Eduard decals are.

 

As it turns out, pretty good. They come off the backing paper easily, stay in one piece, have minimum borders around the actual decal and are opaque enough to avoid the background colour showing through. I am impressed.

 

 

 

Note however the piece of paper in the second picture. That's an entire separate sheet of stencils still waiting to be added. Do I have the patience to do this? Do I have the time to do it before the Sunday deadline? All will be revealed soon!

 

Craig. 

[Col.]

Yes and yes I hope

[Dandie Dinmont]

Quick update. Here's a view of the underside with all the tiny stencils attached. What do you mean you can't see anything? Go on, zoom in  a bit more. Not sure this is adding a lot to the model but it is quite calming nudging tiny scraps of decal into place and the decals themselves are amazing, I can just about read what the stencils say when peering through my strongest optovisor-a-like lens, so I'll probably put the rest of them on.  

 

 

If there's one thing staring at your model through a powerful magnifying device does, it's to demonstrate that you didn't do nearly as good a job of cleaning up the seams and other surface blemishes as you thought you did. Still, I have a child-like believe that a final coat of satin varnish will disguise all ills.

 

Craig.

[Col.]

Good man Almost there Craig.

[Cookenbacher]

Well if your GSB mix is any indication, your dentist might have been fine going through with the procedure all those years ago - looking good.

[Dandie Dinmont]

Well, I soldiered on adding tiny decal after tiny decal until my eyes seemed permanently crossed. I would estimate around a 95% success rate, a couple of the longer items just wrapped themselves up in a knot and couldn't be salvaged. I did find the process interesting though; because the stencils were so readably, it was nice to know that this particular indentation in the skin was the cover for the main fuel filling point or the battery. Never-the-less, it was a strain and some of the larger items (Eduard occasionally gather two or three stencils into one decal) definitely silvered. That satin varnish had better be good stuff.

 

I painted up the 6 HVAR after spending some time trying to work out what colour they should be, especially the warheads. This appears to be another bone of modelling contention with no satisfactory answer. In the end I combined the suggestions of the Eduard (white body and aluminium warhead) and my Tamiya Corsair's (light grey body, olive drab sharp end) and painted them white with an olive drab warhead. Prove me wrong if you can! (please don't).

 

There were  a couple of areas of ANA 623 which needed touching up, which required that I recreated my highly customised mix . I didn't manage it of course and was ready to claim that the strange patch on the left tailplane represented repaired battle damage but...!

 

The satin varnish was applied and proved to be every bit as good as my wildest hopes. The tailplane blended in, the silvering vanished and all and all things were looking good! Throwing caution and parsimony to the winds,  I broke out a shiny new #11 blade and carefully cut around the canopy masking. It came off nicely with only a little touching up required, the HVARs and external tank were attached and it was done! With a clear 10 hours to go yet. These group builds are a piece of cake!

 

 

As I mentioned above, this is my first experience of an Eduard kit but it will not be the last. The kit went together near flawlessly and was one of the most enjoyable builds I can remember. Trouble is, I really want to have a crack at their 1/48th F6F now.

 

Another thing that has really made this build enjoyable is the likes, generous comments, and advice offered by those of you who have dropped by this thread. I really appreciate them all. Especial thanks to @Col. both for running the group build with such aplomb, and for his constant encouragement, even if a lot of that encouragement was aimed towards getting me to buy an excessively large collection of plastic pieces. It's been a blast and I can't wait for the next one!

 

Craig.

[dnl42]

Very nicely done! 

 

This is an outstanding result in what would have been a personal best time for me.