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Last of the Propeller Cats! F8F-1B 1/72 Monogram -- now a double build!


opus999

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My next build is going to be an oldie, but (sort of) goodie.

 

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I say "sort of" because there are well-known problems with this kit.  The worst problem is that the tail height is about halfway between that of an F8F-1 and an F8F-2.  Everything else about the kit seems to lend itself to a -2:  The cannons and wing blisters and the 3 large exhaust stacks instead of the smaller 5 (plus the -2 had a narrower exhaust trench than the -1). 

 

The amusing thing is that the decals included are from an aircraft I found in my "Bearcat in action" book and it is definitely a -1! So the decals have been wrong for years.

 

With the prospect of going back to the office coming in about a month, I find I'm dreading the loss of 1 -1.5 hours a day, which means no more modelling during the weekdays.  I've got this weird desire to do a bunch of simple, quickie kits (like my recent yak-3).  I chose this because I thought it would be (I did the same kit with one of my sons a few years ago and out of the box it was only a couple of weekends).  I've been holding on to this kit with ideas of correcting all of its faults, but now that Hobby Boss has a brand new, and apparently better, kit out I decided I would just do this one OOB.

 

Well, that was the plan.

 

When I found the picture of the subject aircraft and saw it was a -1, I started thinking about modifying this one to match, which means cutting off the cannons, sanding down the blisters, making the tail shorter and doing *something* about the exhaust.  Didn't seem too bad.

 

Then I found Jumpai Temma's page where he details perfecting the Monogram kit (http://soyuyo.main.jp/f8f/f8fe.html), it's a fascinating read his modeling skills and attention to detail are astounding.  It way, way more work than I care to put into this kit (especially since I'll be getting the Hobby Boss F8F)  Best of all he's got scale drawings of the Bearcat! 

 

g19BYjV.jpg

 

This will help me with fixing the tail. At first I thought it would be a simple sanding job... but....

 

First, here's a picture of the plastic against the light -- it has the neatest blue color with a light behind it.  Plus it's molded very thin, which will help with the drawing.

 

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So here's the model and the drawing

 

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When lined up on the drawing it is almost a perfect match (well, except for the tail obviously)

 

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Here's the two tails side-by-side

 

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It just looks like there is some sanding and shaping at the top, and then making the rudder trim tab shorter, right?

 

Alas, when lined up perfectly, and held up to the light...

 

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Its hard to see, but the trailing edge on the drawing can be seen going down the middle of the models rudder. So, it's shorter and the chord is smaller (is that the right way to put it?)  Hmm. 

 

It's interesting, when I line the top of the tail with the drawing, the shapes match almost perfectly.  

 

FimSfl5.jpg

 

So I figured that the best way to fix the tail is to first cut the rudder off, then cut off the rest of the tail fin where it meets the fuselage.  Then I would cut the rudder from the bottom.  I would then cut the bottom of the tail fin until it was the right height and glue the whole kit 'n' kaboodle back together.

 

Is this what I'm going to do?

 

Eh..... haven't decided yet.  I'm afraid that cutting a chunk out of the middle and reattaching it would create a step that would need fixing and the plastic is awfully thin.  Sanding down from the top would work OK, but the tail will be wider (broader chord).  I suppose I could take a little off both the leading and trailing edges to make it look a little better.  Or maybe it wouldn't be that noticeable.  I think I need to cut out the drawings and play with them a bit.

 

Any ideas out there?

Edited by opus999
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10 minutes ago, Tailspin Turtle said:

Thanks!  I've already perused these pages -- although for some reason I had missed the wheel wells entry, until reminded of it last night.  Your blog was a tremendous help when I was working on my F2H-3 a couple of years ago!

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13 hours ago, Marklo said:

I’d be inclined to pack out the tail with milliput first then cut it as you said then sand the parts and prescribe them.

That's a good idea.  However, I cut the drawing tail out and put it up against the back of the model's tail and it turns out I can do some trimming and sanding to get the right shape without any cutting!  Which is a bit of a relief.

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I cut out the tail from the drawing and used my kids' glue stick to attach it to the back of the tail on one fuselage half.

 

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then I cut and filed until the shape matched.  Here it is with the other half:

 

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Putting the halves together you can really see the difference.

 

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I repeated the process for the other half and then set to re shaping the leading and trailing edges.  This is what I ended up with:

 

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Now come the hard parts: Rescribing the top of the rudder and making the rudder trim tab shorter. 😕 

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I forgot to mention in my preamble that I was going to make this an F8F-1, using the kit decals.  As I mentioned, the kit decals were for the wrong type -- I found a picture of it in my book and it is clearly an F8F-1.  I knew I'd be getting the Hobby Boss F8F-1 eventually, and I realized that I was going about this wrong.  Why do all the work to make this a -1, and then make a second -1 down the road, when I can make this one a -1b (which leaves the armament in place, rather than cutting it all off) and have one of each on the shelf?

 

So, I found and ordered the Hobby Boss kit and I will use this kit's decals on it.  I also found that France operated F8F-1b's in Indochina, so I sourced a decal set for those and ordered that too.  So this build will now be a French F8F-1b.  I've been researching those French Bearcats in Indochina and they really got beat up... lots of paint chips and dull paint.  So this will give me an opportunity to make a battle worn Bearcat.

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Time for another catch-up!   Monday and Tuesday I had more work on the tail -- I had to rescribe the hinge at the top and make the rudder trim tab shorter.  I scribed a new outline for the trim tab at the bottom (the top was in the right place) and then filled in the recessed line below the new edge.  I then had to try and fix the raised ribs, which went so-so.  one turned out great, the other is passable.  It will look fine on the shelf but up close its not perfect.  I'm glad it's going to be semi-gloss.  I just realized I have no pictures from that work.  Perhaps it's just as well.

 

I then turned my attention to the wheel bays.  First,  I wanted to deal with the enormous sockets they gave me for the gears:

 

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In the web page I linked to earlier, Jumpei sanded these all the way down.  I didn't feel confident that I could get the gears in the right place, or to stay attached, so I cut these down about 3/4 of the way -- which is as far as i dared.

 

Then, I set out to make the prominent ducting.  I boiled some water on the stove and used that to bend some styrene tubing.  It was slow going, but it worked fine.  Impatiently I held one piece close to the burner, and while it softened up much more quickly, it also had a slight kink in it.  So easy does it, I guess.

 

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Last night I worked to box in the wheel wells and this is as far as I got:

 

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Tonight it occurred to me that I wasn't seeing the forest for the trees.  The wheel bay extends down to the bottom of the fuselage and since this is a mid-wing aircraft, that's a fair amount that I didn't cover with my firewall (or bulkhead, or whatever the correct term is).  Part of the problem is that there is a piece in the bottom of the wing between the two wheel wells that doesn't exist in the real aircraft.  So, first thing I did today was saw that piece out.  Then I set out to make a new "rear wall" to the gear bay.  A little trial and error, but after an hour I had something that worked when I dry fit the whole aircraft together.  I also extended the rear wall (spar?) out to the ends of the wheel well openings.

 

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The last thing I did was put some ribs in there.

 

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Painting is going to be a challenge because I plan to paint the bays the same blue as the exterior, except for the very center part of the rear wall, which according to tailhook topics was either silver or zinc chromate.  I'm going to opt for ZC.  Getting that all painted in situ is going to be interesting.  After that I will add some more "stuff" -- tubing and the like -- that will need painting as well, probably by hand.  Then I need to mask it all!  😕 

 

I've also started thinking about upgrading the cockpit -- I wasn't going to at first, but then I found there was a decent chance that cockpit detail might be seen through the canopy, so I'm going to cobble something up.  I hope I can actually start gluing pieces together tomorrow!

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4 hours ago, The Spadgent said:

Lovely work. Nice to see the OOB option going well for you. 🤣 I’ll tag along if you don’t mind looks like she’s going to be fun. 👏👏👏😃

 

Johnny

Thank you Johnny!  Nice to have you along.  I think it's going to be fun too :D 

 

4 hours ago, Eric Mc said:

Useful information and nice work. I don't know I'd go to all the trouble with the air intake internals but I'd definitely look at reducing the tail fin dimensions as you have shown.

Thanks!  It occurred to me last night that I was pouring all this effort into a part of the aircraft that I won't see when its sitting on the shelf.   Well, it's mostly done now.  I might as well finish it. :)

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I set to improving the cockpit today.  I wasn't going to put too much effort into it because it will be hard to see.  I made some side panels out of right angle styrene pieces I have.

 

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And made a throttle

 

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Then I painted (finally!). I used the Mr. Color midnight blue for the wheel wells, with Testors zinc chromate for the back wall

 

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Mr. Color FS34102 makes a good interior green and the side panels are plain ol' black.

 

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painted the prop...

 

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...and the seat.

 

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That was as far as I got today.

 

The mail turned up my other Bearcat model:

 

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I didn't realize it was an "easy assembly" model.  I have a love/hate relationship with those.  It's nice that they do unusual subjects, but there's usually a big error somewhere on the aircraft.  Plus their canopies are usually really bad.  Oh well.

 

I quickly dry fit it and it compares nicely to the Monogram

 

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The cockpit has more detail than other "easy assembly" kits I've done, and certainly no worse than the stock Monogram, but being one molded piece, it's extremely hard to improve.

 

UVIwd7W.jpg

 

The one piece engine and cowl is going to be a pain to paint.

 

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The wheel wells have OK detail, but are a little shallow.

 

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The mail also had my French decals.

 

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I'm not very pleased with these.  There's a pattern in the backing paper and that pattern is clearly visible through the white portions of the decals, which tells me they are somewhat transparent (translucent?) and will turn dark against the dark paint.  So that means I will need to paint the areas behind the decals white and that will be challenging.

 

I'd hoped to get some parts glued together today, but that wasn't in the cards.  I still need to sand the raised panel lines off.  The paint is dark enough that my usual pencil panel line trick won't work, bit it seems to me that on an aircraft that dark you wouldn't see any panel lines anyway, so we'll see how that goes.

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Just stumbled across this thread, as I have both the Monogram and Hobby Boss kits I'll tag along if that's OK?

 

I agree with your assessment of the Hobby Boss kit, it will make up into a reasonable looking Bearcat but both that cockpit and engine would have to go and need considerable improvement for me.

 

There's also the Art Model kit of the F8F-2 but I've not seen one so I have no idea what it's like.

 

For the decals I would have gone with the Berna decals, I think I've got some old Model-Art decals in the stash too, if I have got those I'll use them instead.

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On 10/30/2021 at 1:12 AM, Wez said:

Just stumbled across this thread, as I have both the Monogram and Hobby Boss kits I'll tag along if that's OK?

 

I agree with your assessment of the Hobby Boss kit, it will make up into a reasonable looking Bearcat but both that cockpit and engine would have to go and need considerable improvement for me.

 

There's also the Art Model kit of the F8F-2 but I've not seen one so I have no idea what it's like.

 

For the decals I would have gone with the Berna decals, I think I've got some old Model-Art decals in the stash too, if I have got those I'll use them instead.

 

Glad to have you along!  

 

The Art model may have been the one I'd read about that was almost unbuildable.  There was some reason why I didn't buy it... just can't remember what it was.

 

I didn't see the Berna available here in the States.  The ones I got were the only I could find on this side of the pond.  I think they'll be OK if I just do some preparatory painting.

 

I got kind of excited to rebuild the cockpit like I did on my Tojo build a couple months ago, but I don't have tools that can reach all the way to cut the existing one out.  I pondered it for quite a while and tried all sorts of things and short of cutting the fuselage in half, I don't think I can clear it out without some real damage.  I think I'm going to just let it be.... 

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Sanding.... sanding.... sanding...  Ugh, there's so much prep work on this. It seems like sanding panel lines off would be a quick 'n' easy task, but it's not.  Mainly because it takes quite a bit of effort to remove the deep scratches and polish the surface.  I did the wings first and it was hard to work around the wing blister, but it turned out OK.

 

yO00Fob.jpg

 

You can also see how I painted my scratch built cockpit.  Not terrific, but good enough for looking through the canopy.

 

Today I started with filling in the really bad sink holes in the fuselage.

 

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I filled those with CA and set them aside to set up.  Then I turned to the canopy.  More evidence that this kit was supposed to be a -2 is this frame that goes over the back of the canopy:

 

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Since the -1 and -1b didn't have this, I needed to sand it off.  So I started with 3600 grit sanding cloth and worked my way to 12000 grit.

 

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"Can't see the line, can you Russ?"

 

After that I sanded the panel lines off of the fuselage.  Tedious, but necessary.

 

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The filled in sink holes turned out well:

 

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I discovered today that I need to scribe a new bottom to the rudder because the current one is too low:

 

NkEirGj.jpg

 

That should be a straightforward task since I won't have to repair any of the ribs after I do it.  

 

I found a piece in the spares that should work for the oil cooler and my next task will be completing the wheel bays.

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On 10/31/2021 at 7:05 PM, Nachtwulf said:

 

Thanks!  I had seen these, but apparently forgot the details, because the windscreen article shows that late -1's and -1b's had the bar across the back of the canopy!  I went back to my reference book and it implies that only the -2's had this.  It didn't actually come out and say it.  :facepalm:  I couldn't find any photos of the specific BuNo, but found several of those in the same unit (I'm pretty sure).  It seems like a mixed bag of canopies with the frame and canopies without amongst the -1's and -1b's.  I found a couple profiles of this BuNo and there isn't a frame across the canopy, so I'm going to stick with that.

 

As far as the angle of the windshield goes -- I knew about that before hand and can't really tell one way or the other.  Besides, I'm not sure how I could fix it. :D 

 

In the other article, the photos of the doors on the bottom were interesting.  There are no panel lines for those doors in either shape that I can find on the model, so maybe I'll have to add those some how.

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I love what you're doing with this! :popcorn:

On 10/22/2021 at 5:26 PM, opus999 said:

Then I found Jumpai Temma's page where he details perfecting the Monogram kit (http://soyuyo.main.jp/f8f/f8fe.html), it's a fascinating read his modeling skills and attention to detail are astounding.  It way, way more work than I care to put into this kit (especially since I'll be getting the Hobby Boss F8F)  Best of all he's got scale drawings of the Bearcat! 

Excellent link, thanks for the reference.

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Nice to see this kit getting the executive treatment. I recently built the Sword kit, one of their earlier ones but probably still the best one out there I think. 

 

I struggle to understand why Hobbyboss charge so much for this quickbuild kit. They have a massive line in very affordable quickbuild kits and then they have this one and the P-61 which are also quickbuild but cost an arm and a leg. 

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12 hours ago, sroubos said:

Nice to see this kit getting the executive treatment. I recently built the Sword kit, one of their earlier ones but probably still the best one out there I think. 

 

I struggle to understand why Hobbyboss charge so much for this quickbuild kit. They have a massive line in very affordable quickbuild kits and then they have this one and the P-61 which are also quickbuild but cost an arm and a leg. 

Was the Sword kit the one with the resin wheel bays?

 

I couldn't find the Hobbyboss anywhere here in the states but at fleabay.  I figured I was just getting fleeced by the seller -- I didn't realize they were more expensive to begin with!  That's irritating!

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Yeah it has the resin bay and fuselage halves that cater for both the short and long tails. Decent package altogether, the main flaw is that the canopy is quite bad, very milky in appearance. I also had to replace the decals with a PrintScale set, I think because the white wasn't at all opaque.

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8 hours ago, sroubos said:

Yeah it has the resin bay and fuselage halves that cater for both the short and long tails. Decent package altogether, the main flaw is that the canopy is quite bad, very milky in appearance. I also had to replace the decals with a PrintScale set, I think because the white wasn't at all opaque.

Funny... I just got a print scale set and the white doesn't look opaque at all to me.  I posted a picture of them on October 29th... They're not the same are they?

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