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Revell 1/72 SR-71 Blackbird


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Evening all, have been making slow but steady progress on the scribing and have just received three more rolls of Dymo tape which should keep me going!

 

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The front end was tough because of the curved lines and if I were to do this again I'd leave this until last so that the technique was more honed. Anyway, it's not too bad and I found mr surfacer (for small mistakes) and sprue goo (for deeper lines) can be used to correct slips and mistakes. 

 

I sprayed a coat of Mr surfacer at the front to help show imperfections and you can see where I've sanded and polished again to fix a few bits. The front visor fit horribly ootb so I'm really pleased with the way it now sits following more sprue goo filling and very careful sanding - it's hard to see here but the windows have remained fairly clear as well. 

 

Working backwards the scribing is easier as everything is straight and I've done one side of the fuselage tonight. I'm getting a rhythm: sand off panel lines, mark the corners with a small hole to get positioning right, use fresh Dymo, score 8 times with spike, remove tape, sand, rescore, sand, rescore, polish up, rescore and clean. I'm about half way through this process on the sides of the fuselage in the photo above.

 

There's still lots to do but I'm speeding up, making fewer mistakes and I can see lots of straight lines and not many curved ones ahead so I hope to make good progress over the next week or so. Thanks for dropping by to share in my madness 🤪

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Good progress so far. The painful part will be the triangle panels both on the edges of the upper and lower wing surfaces. Recently I also used Dymo tape to rescribe panel lines of the 1:48 Italeri/Testors Blackbird but it lifted the plastic surface off. The old plastic peels off like the onion layers...

I sealed the entire plane with primer and hopefully I can continue working on the model.

Serkan

 

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On 3/25/2022 at 7:18 AM, Serkan Sen said:

Good progress so far. The painful part will be the triangle panels both on the edges of the upper and lower wing surfaces. Recently I also used Dymo tape to rescribe panel lines of the 1:48 Italeri/Testors Blackbird but it lifted the plastic surface off. The old plastic peels off like the onion layers...

I sealed the entire plane with primer and hopefully I can continue working on the model.

Serkan

 

 

Sounds like you've had some trials and tribulations with your scribing Serkan! Dymo tape has been ok for me, succumbing to the temptation to re-use it when it's not quite sticky enough, and then it slipping, has been my biggest problem. Fortunately no delaminating plastic, though I'm sure you'll get yours fixed! I'm just about to get to the triangle panels, here's the state of play currently with most of the upper fuselage done and now moving on to the nacelles and wings:

 

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The rescribed surfaces forward of the wings have been polished up with finer grades of sandpaper and micromesh but the bits further back are still rough with the lines needing clearing out (I'm now using cocktail sticks for this) and surface polishing. Thanks for taking a look, Sam

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Terrific work Sam. Superly neat as always.

 

I generally use Dymo tape and a sewing machine needle to start my rescribing chores before using a 0.1 mm or 0.2mm engraving cutter (tamiya or equivilant) to get a nice clean cut.  And I’m another who uses TET to seal the engraved lines.

 

 

 

 

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Gradual progress here... Got the port nacelle and wing done, including triangles, lots of triangles! T'other wing next and then time to glue together with the lower half and start filling!

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Evening all, I've finished rescribing the top surfaces so thoughts have turned towards gluing the two halves together. Before getting to this a few things needed sorting; first I've added an m8 nut to the underside which will allow the model to be mounted, slightly banked, on a metal strut. I drilled out a hole in the wheel well and boxed in and glued the nut with araldite:

 

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Next I focused on the canopy area. The transparent windows were glued in and the fit is okish. I filled around the edges and then took to the clear parts with various grades of sand paper, micromesh and polishing compound. This had the additional benefit of thinning the windows down a bit and in the end I'm happy with how see through they've turned out and how well they've been fared in:

 

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So with all that, the next steps are to say goodbye to the cockpit and glue it in place (you can see a bit inside honest!) and then get the two main halves glued together. Then... lots and lots (and lots) of filling and more rescribing. Cheers, Sam

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Evening everyone, the two halves are together and being left to set. Now we can see the main problem with this kit, the seam line which runs all the way around the model and which is going to need a lot of work to fill. All the filling and sanding will obliterate the raised panel lines and hence why I've been working away at rescribing the whole thing! Anyway it's great to have her together and the scribing underneath doesn't look too bad as the lines are mostly straight. More photos to follow once I've got some gaps filled!

 

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15 minutes ago, billn53 said:

You may do well to use stretched sprue to help fill those long seams between the top & bottom halves.

Great minds Bill! Stretched sprue, thin plasticard and sprue goo are my go to tools here, will show some progress later. Cheers, Sam

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Up and running with the filling, sanding and re-scribing on the underside - I've got most of the port nacelle and wing done here:

 

52008978640_ecd004ef51_z.jpg

 

This will get polished up with finer grades of sandpaper and it'll probably need some further touch ups once I get an undercoat on which will show up the slips and mistakes. 

 

I'm working my around the fuselage now, here with sprue goo applied along the seams on one side (will give this a day to set really well):

 

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Nice extra from revell here:

 

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Same year I was born (though not in China...). Hope everyone is having a good Easter weekend, Cheers, Sam

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  • 2 weeks later...

Evening all, lots going on in real life here so not getting masses of modelling time but been plugging away with the filling and rescribing. I'm pretty much there now, every raised rivet line removed and redone top and bottom, and final step before an undercoat goes on is to sand all over with a few progressively finer sheets of sand paper. Here's how she looks tonight:

 

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It's such an awesome looking plane!

 

The tail piece fits particularly badly and has had a tonne of filler and sand paper thrown at it - it's not too bad now but really tough to get perfect, we'll see how it looks under paint, I suspect there will be a bit more work needed in this area.

 

Thanks for checking in, hopefully I'll have a coat of paint on for the next update! 

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Evening all, I hope you are having a good weekend. I've sneaked in a bit of time at the bench over the last few days and decided to pay some attention to the exhaust nozzles. I had a look at the aftermarket sets but they're pretty pricey for what they are I wasn't convinced how well they would fit. It did make me think how great it would be to have a 3D printer at home for details like this and I'm sure I'll invest eventually but for now I've gone for some artistic license to give the insides some life. I thinned the nozzle out a little bit, cut small notches to highlight each segment more clearly, then added some embossed Aluminium tape and a bit of plasticard. Ta-da! 

 

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This afternoon I finally decided to put down the sandpaper and filler and shoot some undercoat. I've used Mr Surfacer 1000, thinned with Mr Color Levelling Thinner and it's done a good job of smoothing out the remaining sand paper marks and highlighting bits which need tidying up further. Overall, the panel lines look pretty good but I'm going to have be careful to paint with thin layers so they don't get clogged up and disappear. The nozzles and fins are just dry fitted here but I'll get these glued on once I've painted and weathered their insides.

 

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Looking cool in grey, more to come soon hopefully. Thanks for dropping in, Sam

 

 

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Evening all, gradually making a bit of progress with the Blackbird. This week I painted the inside of the nozzles - I started with a matt white base coat and then sprayed brown streaks, followed by brown oil paints to represent the heat distorted patterns you see in photos of the real thing. The snaps below appear a bit lighter than they are in real life and overall I'm pretty pleased with this effect - how do others paint the inside of supersonic jet nozzles? These will now be filled up with sponge and maybe a bit of masking tape to preserve them while the external painting goes on. 

 

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After gluing the freshly painted nozzles in place (they fit really well) I moved on to the remaining parts which were the fins and intake cones. The positioning of these parts is very "vague"; the cones want to settle in a slightly cross-eyed downward facing position so in the end I fitted them as best I could by eye and didn't rely on butting them up against the rim on the inside of the nacelles. The fins were a similar story as they wobble about and there is nothing to positively fix their angle - again I've relied on the mk1 eyeball and some references on the internet to fit these - I definitely won't be getting a protractor out to check their angles! 

 

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Next up I need to give the underside a bit more TLC and then apply the grey undercoat. Hopefully after that I can start thinking about the black paint job. Thanks for taking a look! 

 

 

 

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Dear Sam

 Nice internal nozzle painting but you may want to do a Google search on the SR-71 engine nozzles as they look very much like the rest of the Titanium colour of the rest of the plane. Ceramic white petals seem to be something found on planes newer than the F-4 Phantom.

regards Toby

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On 5/15/2022 at 11:16 PM, Planebuilder62 said:

Dear Sam

 Nice internal nozzle painting but you may want to do a Google search on the SR-71 engine nozzles as they look very much like the rest of the Titanium colour of the rest of the plane. Ceramic white petals seem to be something found on planes newer than the F-4 Phantom.

regards Toby


Here’s an example:

 

sr71_afterburner

 

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On 5/8/2022 at 6:24 PM, SaminCam said:

It did make me think how great it would be to have a 3D printer at home for details like this

The exhausts look very nice.

 

Both in my 1:72 A-12 and M-21 builds based on Italeri/Testors kit I had to do significant scratch build modifications to give a bit depth to the afterburner can and improve nozzle assembly:

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But the Revell/Monogram kit is even worser than the Italeri/Testors one and I will use my 3D printed parts:

1916.jpg

2421.jpg

 

The mean wheel bay is another story...

 

Serkan

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