Revell 1/72 SR-71 Blackbird

[SaminCam]

@Planebuilder62 @billn53 @Serkan Sen thanks gents, tips and pics very helpful for the nozzles, I did a bit more work on them with various oils and though they're not super realistic, look ok. I've not given up on this one but life has been very hectic, my father passed away and on top of that I've been flat out with work - I'm being very well looked after by nearest and dearest but not had much time or inclination to do much model... Still it's nice to know it's there waiting for me, still looking awesome as only a blackbird can and this evening I got an undercoat on the underside. There's a few bits of seam to fill and touch up but generally not too bad and hopefully I'll start to get the black / very dark grey laid down soon. Thanks for your patience!

[AdrianMF]

Sorry to hear that life is putting you through the wringer. Still, having a model on the bench that’s had all the scribing done is definitely something to look forward to.

 

Regards,

Adrian

[SaminCam]

Evening all, hope you and yours are keeping well. I've managed to get a little bit of modelling done over the last few weeks and finally reached a point where I thought it was worth taking a snap:

 

 

Lots of effort went into filling, sanding the joins (especially underneath) and tidying up the scribing, and once I was happy I gave it an all over coat of Mr Surfacer 1000 to get a nice smooth surface to paint on. 

 

I usually base coat with tamiya rubber black and then build up preshade by mottling on a light colour. However, for the blackbird, I want to use rubber black as the main colour so I've used xf1 black over the base grey. I've also jazzed up the usual panel line shading method by masking to give the black a sharp edge on one side which then fades into the panel. I've not used this technique before so will be interesting to see how it looks once the overall rubber black gets built up over it - fingers crossed!

 

I've got a bit more preshading to do underneath and then the top coat will start to get built up. More to come soon hopefully! Thanks for dropping by, Sam

[AdrianMF]

I hope getting back to modelling means that life has eased off on the wringer.

 

It looks immaculate. A bit tricky, preshading black. Your preshading looks very sharp though and should give you some nice variation.
 

I wonder if throwing in the odd lighter or darker panel in might help vary it a little? I must confess I haven’t looked enough at the real thing to know if there’s any variation like that.

 

Regards,

Adrian

[Cookenbacher]

You could stop right now Sam - that looks so cool pre-shaded.

[SaminCam]

2 hours ago, AdrianMF said:

I hope getting back to modelling means that life has eased off on the wringer.

 

It looks immaculate. A bit tricky, preshading black. Your preshading looks very sharp though and should give you some nice variation.
 

I wonder if throwing in the odd lighter or darker panel in might help vary it a little? I must confess I haven’t looked enough at the real thing to know if there’s any variation like that.

 

Regards,

Adrian

 

Thanks Adrian, life has levelled out somewhat and I've enjoyed getting back to the bench. Sorry to hear about your recent travails as well, great to see you back on the teeny tiny biplane! Good idea on varying a panel or two, I'll look up some references but I never let reality get in the way too much if I think it looks good! 

[SaminCam]

35 minutes ago, Cookenbacher said:

You could stop right now Sam - that looks so cool pre-shaded.

 

Thanks Cookie! I was tempted! I probably should get braver and try something like this as a post shade sometime, hopefully won't lose the effect completely when the next coat goes on.

[SaminCam]

Evening all, getting some more paint on the blackbird this evening:

 

 

This is the first coat of xf69 getting mottled on, the preshading is still pretty prominent but a few more thin layers, including one of xf85, settle it all down into something very dark grey but not one uniform tone. The topsides have had a bit more work done and are nearly there: 

 

 

More photos tomorrow hopefully when I've got this stage done, cheers, Sam

[AdrianMF]

Looking good!

 

Regards,

Adrian

[Serkan Sen]

Looks really good. In my 1:48 build I did preshading in different way which is barely visible:

 

It seems that your technique will give better result than I did.

 

Serkan

[billn53]

On mine, I didn’t pre-shade but instead used a black-basing technique with various shades of black, followed by a highly-thinned gray wash for weathering select panels.

 

 

 

 

[SaminCam]

@Serkan Sen and @billn53, thanks gents, your builds have provided inspiration throughout and I really like how your weathering turned out in both cases. Interesting that you've both got lighter grey in there, especially around the panel lines, I'm aiming to copy this with thinned oil paints once the decals are on and sealed in...

 

... speaking of which, I got a chance to get the air brush out this weekend and finished painting the underside and then gloss coated. Took a photo in the sun this afternoon so the subtle variation in black / dark grey is clearly visible:

 

 

And then started to get the decals applied and snapped in rubbish light this evening:

 

 

So far so good with these, they've gone on and settled down really nicely, though the instructions aren't the clearest and seem to have some locations flipped. It's starting to look like a Blackbird!

[AdrianMF]

Gosh, all that preparation work is starting to pay off handsomely!

 

Regards,

Adrian

[billn53]

Oooooo! That's looking mighty tasty!

[Serkan Sen]

Looks very eye catching. You are very close to RFI. This is good to see that one of us will finish his ongoing Blackbird project soon.

Serkan

[SaminCam]

@AdrianMF @billn53 thank you! @Serkan Sen, my modelling is pretty slow at the moment so don't hold your breath for the RFI (!) I'll probably fiddle around with the weathering for a bit once the decals are all on. Most of the top side is done now - the red lines were fiddly but went ok in the end, I found it helped to split the long one into three parts and then carefully line up. More to come soon hopefully! 

 

 

 

[ArnoldAmbrose]

Gidday, I think she's an aircraft that can look ungainly yet graceful at the same time, if that's possible. 🙂 I think you've done a great job of her. Regards, Jeff.

[Hook]

10 hours ago, SaminCam said:

It's starting to look like a Blackbird!

I'd say! Looking mighty fine from here.

 

Cheers,

 

Andre

[SaminCam]

Upper surface finished this evening and first light coat of Vallejo flat applied to knock off the shininess. The revel decals ootb have gone down great and settled into the panel lines and ridges with just a bit of decal softener

 

 

Apologies for the rubbish late night light snap but irl there's just a bit of variation still showing through in the black/dark grey and it's not going to need too much weathering with oils, etc. Decals underneath next then into the final straight...

[Serkan Sen]

My deep apologies for such late comment but the root leading edge panels should be in the triangular form instead of the rectangular one, shouldn't they?

Serkan

[SaminCam]

@Serkan Sen, no need to apologise! I copied the original raised panel lines pretty closely so I'll blame Revell if they're not right... Bit of a shame because this would have been easy to fix when rescribing and a good one to note for people following this path in the future. As for me, too late to do anything about it now and I can live with it!

 

All the decals are now on and a flat coat applied to the undersides:

 

 

Not sure if I've shown this before but the hole where the rear undercarriage door should be is where an m8 nut is hidden for a stand to screw in. 

 

Last step is some weathering. Looking at in flight photos of the SR-71 two things jump out to me: first, the panel lines do appear as a lighter grey so I'll try and recreate this with a thinned oil mix. Second, they overall seem kind of "dusty". I'm really wary of trying to reproduce this effect as I think it can be overdone. First attempt using ground up pastels was on an Apache earlier in the year where I went to town with the sandy, beaten up look: 

Something more subtle is required here, though the effect I got on the rotor blades by dry brushing the pastels isn't a million miles off - I'm going to have a think about it and perhaps try things out on the drone which I'm not using, any thoughts / suggestions greatly appreciated! Cheers, Sam

[Keith T]

On 8/7/2022 at 11:19 PM, SaminCam said:

@Serkan Sen and @billn53, thanks gents, your builds have provided inspiration throughout and I really like how your weathering turned out in both cases. Interesting that you've both got lighter grey in there, especially around the panel lines, I'm aiming to copy this with thinned oil paints once the decals are on and sealed in...

 

... speaking of which, I got a chance to get the air brush out this weekend and finished painting the underside and then gloss coated. Took a photo in the sun this afternoon so the subtle variation in black / dark grey is clearly visible:

 

 

And then started to get the decals applied and snapped in rubbish light this evening:

 

 

So far so good with these, they've gone on and settled down really nicely, though the instructions aren't the clearest and seem to have some locations flipped. It's starting to look like a Blackbird!

 

I think Revell have the 'Bunny' markings reversed on this side ?

[SaminCam]

@Keith T thanks Keith, does look like it doesn't it? Actually a few of the other decals, like the red lines, were flipped around (port - starboard placement) on the instructions as well. The backwards bunny was too subtle for me to spot though! 

[Keith T]

7 hours ago, SaminCam said:

@Keith T thanks Keith, does look like it doesn't it? Actually a few of the other decals, like the red lines, were flipped around (port - starboard placement) on the instructions as well. The backwards bunny was too subtle for me to spot though! 

 

Sounds like something that could put your back out too........... !

😉

[SaminCam]

Hi all, well the summer has flown past and modelling has taken a bit of a backseat to other things going on in life. I've been doing little bits here and there on the blackbird and she's nearly done, big reveal in the next few days I hope. Quick question: @billn53 I've been admiring your build again and noticed the little red light on top - are there any others I should add (I'm going to use a dot of UV cured glue)? Do you have a photo reference showing these? Thank you!