FINISHED: Why not? Victor 1/72

[SallysDad]

You are so blessed to have your daughter building with you. The pictures of her building are very, very touching and sweet. 

I am so happy for you and her.

And it is looking like a great build also.

Merry Christmas.

Randolph (Randy)

[Pin]

It is official, you are a maniac! 

[bianfuxia]

Here we are into the finishing stretch. Started at UTC 22:05 - 0905 here on the eastern seaboard of Australia. I reset the MiG clock to 00:00:00 to measure elapsed time.

 

First thing I did was spray these little guys. At some point yesterday I trimmed off the way-overscale propeller blades on the front of this. Funny how I am slapping together a crappy kit but I couldn't live with those tiny details. Hopefully there will be time to put some plastic card blades on.

 

 

 

As I was puttying the huge canyon between tail and fuselage, the kid took a photo. I said, "cool, I'll upload that to BritModeller" and a moment later she'd edited this up on my phone:

 

 

Then we got some 4B pencils and tried to copy the camouflage scheme from the instructions to the airframe. I know that many people will photocopy the diagram at the same scale, cut the bits out, and stick them to the model for an accurate guide. There isn't time for that today so I eyeballed it.

 

 

Basic masking here because I don't think the white is going to be any problem if there's slight overspray.

 

 

And pretty much an entire can of Tamiya spray paint later...

 

 

 

Perfect? Nowhere near it. Good enough? Yes! 😁

 

Taking a break now while the white dries. 

[ArnoldAmbrose]

Gidday, keep going with this. It's good to see the little one being involved and assisting - and there can be no better assistance than being brought a drumstick icecream. 👍 It's a very impressive model for such a tight time frame. Regards, Jeff.

[bianfuxia]

1 hour ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

Gidday, keep going with this. It's good to see the little one being involved and assisting - and there can be no better assistance than being brought a drumstick icecream. 👍 It's a very impressive model for such a tight time frame. Regards, Jeff.

yes unfortunately last night she ate the last one! Probably a good thing because now it's the 27th it's back to healthy diet instead of the 25-26 annual Festival of No Rules About Eating

 

Still waiting for the white undersides to be really dry - dry enough to withstand the yellow masking tape.

 

I did a touch-up on the wheels, and this, in the meantime:

 

In doing that I discovered these decals are a bit old - they need to dunk in hot water so there's enough glue left. I did the first couple in regular water (which usually works for me) and by the time they were willing to slide off the backing paper they were unwilling to stick to the plastic. A gallon or three of Mr Mark Softer (all I have) sort of helped. Lesson learned for the rest I suppose.

 

Fortunately there is not much to decal on the bottom - a few florescent stripes. No roundels, no huge serial numbers. This means I might still have some kind of hope of getting it done.

 

I am nearly five hours into the remaining 12 hours and still have two shades of paint to do. 

 

Hmmm....

[ArnoldAmbrose]

39 minutes ago, bianfuxia said:

yes unfortunately last night she ate the last one!

Yeah, I guess that's the privilege right of youngsters at Christmas time. 🙂 Regards, Jeff.

[Grandboof]

Looking good .  Keep going 

Martin H 

[bianfuxia]

I've been getting my daughter to hold the spray can while I hold the model out at arm's length with one hand and I guide her aim with the other. As a result, even though I wore a mask and we did it outside, I now have a bit of headache from proximity to the fumes! The last round of green I'll have to do myself.

 

At about 6.5 hrs elapsed, we finished this:

 

Then I got her to help me with the blu-tac worms - I did not fully think this through. I was going to use paper to cover the area where the green should go but then I figured I'd just paint green over the grey. Perhaps I should have gone for grey over the green.

 

 

Too late now!

 

Elapsed time seven hours.

 

So all I have to do now is the green, wait for all the paint to be dry, do the decals and put it on its wheels.

 

I reckon I'm in with a good chance of actually making it!

 

 

[bianfuxia]

Well, I have a little over an hour to go. I just sprayed the green camo.

 

Masking it took a lot longer than I thought it would.

 

 

The paint went on fine, although I mistakenly sprayed the left pod green when i should have masked it off and kept it grey. I can probably fix that at the end.

 

I am not sure I will get this done in an hour and 15 minutes from now. Probably shouldn't have gone to Mum and Dad's for afternoon tea - but it is Christmas after all.

 

Let's see how I go - but I will definitely finish this tonight.

[Bertie McBoatface]

Yay! Sprint to the finish!!!!!

[Retired Bob]

1 hour ago, bianfuxia said:

Masking it took a lot longer than I thought it would.

Every modeller says that.  Impressive work for the time taken, we are willing you on! 

[Grandboof]

Still in with a chance . Keep going 

Martin H

[Adam Poultney]

3 hours ago, bianfuxia said:

Masking it took a lot longer than I thought it would

If there was anywhere that you were going to get stuck on it would have been there. Easy work to the finish line now! I've done so many camo V Bombers so I know how long it can take to mask one, the results are worth it though if done well. I have taken to spraying the early camo schemes freehand because they had soft edges and it means I can avoid the long masking process. The effect is a bit overscale and only appropriate for Vulcans painted before April 1967 (and about six that were repainted in the old style in the mid 70s for some reason) and I assume Victors and Valiants switched from soft edges to hard edges around the same time, but I do like how it looks even if the difference should be negligible in scale

[bianfuxia]

Thank you everyone for the continued encouragement!

 

Well, I didn't get it done within the 24 hours.

 

but...it's finished. Or near enough.

 

Let's pick up where we left off.

 

I had dinner while I waited for the paint to dry. My wife made a pretty incredible lamb roast. 

 

With ten minutes to go, I had peeled off all that tape.

 

It looked better than I expected, but I saw that I had messed up and there were quite a few bits of raw plastic between the grey and green. Going too fast, I guess.

 

Close up was a mixed bag - I think I did an awesome job of the canopy masking, but you can see how much more effort would be needed to get the canopy area looking good:

 

 

You can just barely see my pilots.

 

At about the moment the 24 hours ran out, I was starting on the decals. I did the underside first:

 

I skipped a lot of data markings. Not sure it's worth doing them, given how ugly the bottom looks!

 

The gear was surprisingly good, easy, and functional. I did it all with superglue - no room for error, but very fast and strong.

 

By that point I was 55 minutes overdue.

 

Thanks to the superglue it can easily hold itself up:

 

Time for the topside decals:

 

They are literally drowned in Mr Mark Softer. These decals look nice but are not great to use. I guess tomorrow will tell whether they settle down ok. I mixed up a grey that fairly closely matches the spray and I used it to touch up the bits missed by my poor masking.

 

At 11:54 UTC I was finished. I was under 2 hours outside the deadline. Ironically that is about the amount of time we spent at Mum and Dad's this afternoon! 

 

But I am glad we saw them - it's Christmas and important for the kid to see them (she did on the 25th, but there were others there too).

 

Here is the finished underside:

 

And here is the finished topside, with clock as proof of time:

 

 

This thing is MASSIVE:

 

It won't fit on my display shelves or even in this display cabinet (where I keep my best stuff, so this would be a complete imposter in there anyway). I'll figure out where to put it later.

 

It's dark here obviously but tomorrow I will take some better pics of it outside in the (hopefully) sun.

 

But for now, here is my 1/72 Victor completed in almost 24 hours (and the actual work time must be more like 18, I'd say, allowing for meals, playtime, cleaning up the house, etc, that I also did in those two 12 hour sessions). Amazing what you can do in a short time when you really try!

 

 

 

 

 

 

On balance, I think it looks pretty good for an ancient kit thrown together with almost no real care. It would take many, many hours to make this kit up to my normal standard of quality - and I am by no means a highly skilled modeler! Kudos to anyone who ever got a good result out of this kit. You must have sanded for hundreds of hours!

 

As for doing such a big kit, I don't think I enjoy it as much as your standard 1/72 jet fighter. This thing is so big I found it hard to work on. It's just so unwieldy!

 

But at shelf distance, once I have forgotten all the blemishes the deadline meant I had to ignore or overlook, I think I will come to enjoy looking at it.

 

Thank you all for the encouragement and the messages of support. They were much appreciated!

 

Tomorrow I will take some better pics, but then it's back to Lego and soccer with my daughter! 😁

[Adam Poultney]

It may be in ever so slightly late but it looks great for a 24ish hour effort! I didn't even get my Spitfire in the same scale finished this time.

 

And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you've got your camo colours backwards. All the grey areas should be green and vice versa. Oh well, still looks like a Victor as much as any Matchbox Victor will ever look like one

[ArnoldAmbrose]

7 minutes ago, bianfuxia said:

I was under 2 hours outside the deadline. Ironically that is about the amount of time we spent at Mum and Dad's this afternoon! 

Gidday, I thought one of the options was a segmented build time because of that very reason, friends and rellies over Christmas. In which case you've beaten the deadline, to my way of thinking anyway.

 

You've done a superb job on this but obviously you couldn't have done so well without your daughter's help. 🙂

 

11 minutes ago, bianfuxia said:

but then it's back to Lego and soccer with my daughter! 😁

And icecream drumsticks of course. Oh, hang on, she ate the last one. 😥 Oh well  .   .   .         Regards, Jeff.

[Grandboof]

Too bad you didn't make the 24 hr . Awesome effort though . Looks good too . 

Martin H

[bianfuxia]

Oh, really?! Damn! hahaha just my luck! 

 

I actually wondered about it, when looking at the diagram, but the shades seemed to me to be as I painted it. I thought it was so obvious I didn't check what L and K (or whatever the letters were) actually referred to!

 

Oh well!

 

And as can clearly be seen, there are many other serious problems with my build! 

[bianfuxia]

6 minutes ago, Grandboof said:

Too bad you didn't make the 24 hr . Awesome effort though . Looks good too . 

Martin H

thank you! 

9 minutes ago, ArnoldAmbrose said:

Gidday, I thought one of the options was a segmented build time because of that very reason, friends and rellies over Christmas. In which case you've beaten the deadline, to my way of thinking anyway.

 

You've done a superb job on this but obviously you couldn't have done so well without your daughter's help. 🙂

 

And icecream drumsticks of course. Oh, hang on, she ate the last one. 😥 Oh well  .   .   .         Regards, Jeff.

Yeah, i did the 2 x 12 hr session option. I saved 20 minutes in the first session though so I guess I was only a little over an hour overdue! 

 

Anyway, apart from the MASSIVE BLUNDER getting my green and grey back to front (I've been modeling like 40 years, you'd think I'd have checked that!), I think it looks ok for a Blitzbuilder!

[Swamp Donkey]

Super effort given the time constraint, brilliant!
 

SD

[Angus Tura]

Outstanding!

 

Alan

[Olmec Head]

Excellent result.

[Retired Bob]

Great effort, I don't think anyone could do better with the Matchbox Victor in that time scale, what am I saying, most people spend several months sanding and improving the kit, then throw it in the bin.

As to the camouflage boo boo, perhaps the hemp/light grey finish would have been easier and quicker.  I think it's a winner.  

[Jinxman]

Cap suitably doffed to you sir - what an effort.

What are you gonna do for the next Blitzbuild? Perhaps a Mach 2 kit? 🤪

[Enzo the Magnificent]

7 hours ago, bianfuxia said:

Thank you everyone for the continued encouragement!

 

Well, I didn't get it done within the 24 hours.

 

but...it's finished. Or near enough.

 

 

And it should still go in the Gallery!