Martin Seamaster

[Stebos]

Right, well I'm planning to start on this one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P6M_SeaMaster

It's an all resin kit, something that scares me a little. I've dealt with resin detail parts before, but this baby is *huge*. I'm planning to use fast setting araldite for the fuselage.

The parts are:

Test fitting suggests a so-so fit, but until I've cleaned up the parts I won't know for sure.

I can build either the prototype or the production from this kit. Differences mostly being in the canopy glazing and orientation & shape of the engine pods.

In terms of accuracy there's 2 potential issues with the kit. The wing anhedral is that of the prototype and is rather pronounced. The production had much straighter wings so that may need to be considered. The bulbous tail fin is from the production, the prototype being much thinner.

I'm not too concerned over the tail, no one is likely to spot such an error (or care much!). If I go with the production I may sand the wing joints flatter as I feel wing anhedral is important to get right.

First thing I need to do is wash up the parts and let them dry overnight.

Edited March 1, 2009 by Stebos

[Deon]

This should be fun...

[Seamus]

This should be fun...

What a superb subject Stebos, looking forward to seeing this one come together

[Stebos]

Parts are all washed up... I seem to have a bit of trouble with the detail bits. I have 1 extra exhaust pipe and 1 missing cockpit yoke! I might have to scratch the 2nd one together, but anything I do will stand out next the proper kit part alongside. Might be better off just leaving it off or stealing something from another kit.

No pretty pics for day 1 though, I have to clean up all these resin bits

[Stebos]

Hit my first problem area, the cockpit. The inner corners are clogged up with a lot of excess resin that needs scooped out neatly. I doubt I have the tools handy to do that, a dremel might work but I'm not buying one just for that!

I'm tempted to skip the cockpit and black out the glazing as the vac canopy isn't all that clear. I'm loathe to do that as it feels like giving up though.

It would solve a lot of issues thought, scratching up the instrument panel, cleaning out the resin, acquiring pilots. As it stands the cockpit's about as detailed as you'd want for a 1/144 kit.

What do you think chaps?

Edited January 4, 2009 by Stebos

[gunpowder17]

I will be watching this one carefully. I have nearly bought this kit a few times. I look forward to seeing it finished!

As for the cockpit, i always spend the most time detailing cockpits , but i have found that once the model is finished , its the overall appearence that makes the difference. The other option is to just paint the interior black. That way theres a little bit of detail to be seen.

[Deon]

Heck.. given the money you've spent on the kit why not go for it and do the cockpit detail/

even if you cant see it you'll know its there and can post us tasty pit pics for posterity.

[Stebos]

I've found a solution after looking over it again.

That corner needed carved away, the bulkhead should sit into it. A micro chisel would work well, but I realised the two upper stops will likely be enough.

I removed the whole chunk of resin using the razor saw.

As I'm putting in the cockpit now I also went raiding the stash & the spares box for possible goodies.

The seats and the instrument panel are from the kit. No instrument decal is provided, and I have no reference photos... the decal shown there is from the Hasegawa Neptune kit. I'll be using that with the central section trimmed out.

The two pilots are from the Neptune kit as well, they're primitive, but good enough for the hazy vac canopy.

The side panels are from a P-38 detail set I had spare, it's fictional of course, but the size is about right and should detail up the sidewalls a bit.

I've decided to go with the prototype, there's no ceiling glazing on that one so the cobbled together interior will cope better, I rather like the drooping of the wings and I feel the arrangement of the engines is a bit more graceful. I can live with the overly fat tail joint.

The resin cleaned up quite nicely, there's a few corners that didn't get filled and the odd repair needed but I'll handle those as part of the seam filling.

Edit - On looking over ref photos I found another inaccuracy, the wingtip floats are about 1cm too far back, they should be about equally spaced onto the tip. This isn't something I have the skill to correct so I'll leave them as is.

Edited January 4, 2009 by Stebos

[Stebos]

Yikes!

I decided the cockpit will be better assembled with the fuselage already joined. The cockpit fit will need filling and work before painting and it's not possible to complete the pit area and add it later. But! as shown above the fuselage rears up with it's own nasty join.

Reducing back protruding steps are the bane of my modelling existance, I never get them smooth. I've decided instead to add the extensions to each half, and carefully get them set straight before looking at the join again. It looks like a combination of sawing off excess resin, adding shims and filler, a good dose of sanding and some heat bending of the resin will all be needed.

It didn't seem this tricky in the box!

I think I'm going to enjoy this build, just honest back to basics modelling and problem solving.

Edited January 5, 2009 by Stebos

[bexwh773]

Well, from post 1 Ive gone from to and Im not even building this

<fingers & toes crossed>

Bex

[Mike]

Looks like fun!

I'd give some consideration to aligning the front & rear halves of each side, so that you've got the minimum of gap to fill on the outside. Once they're properly joined & the joint reinforced with some chunks of styrene or similar, offer the two halves together & work on them (being careful to get the fuselage parts straight in the first place).

Don't forget that resin becomes pliable when hot, and a lot of modellers use boiling water to tweak resin parts so they fit better

Keep up the good work

[Stebos]

That's exactly the plan for now, anigrand have been kind enough to provide very substantial tabs to the join so I should get a strong join.

I'm planning to saw off the excess as shown below, strap the fuselage up and lay it in hot water to get that bend out of the rear. Hopefully that should let me glue it together without putting too much stress on the join.

The glue should fill the most of the gaps for me, then I hope it's mostly a simple sanding down and rescribing where needed.

[DamienB]

That fuselage join is pretty shocking! And someone had a go at me for saying Anigrand kits weren't the best on another forum...

[AnonymousDFB1]

If anyone can make this one look good it's you Steve. Good luck.

[Stebos]

Thanks Mish, I think I'll need it! This is all going to be on quality of finish and seam work, areas I consider my weakest.

Been a bit slow on this, been furiously trying to finish up the Noratlas, but some progress has been made.

I glued the fuselage together with a bit of a panic, I thought I was clever picking fast drying epoxy but it was setting before I'd had time to add it to all...

I had strapped the flared out end with an elastic band and let it sit in hot water for a bit, it helped straighten things. Removing the projecting stuff as mentioned above gets me a much better fit. The epoxy has filled a lot of the gaps, but lots of sanding and more filling will be needed.

Some of the detail at the rear, a radar dome and rear turret. Fit was good, some minor resin bubbles and seam filling is still to be done. The engraving on the kit is rather crude, some rescribing will be needed as I sand the odd line away.

I'm useless at rescribing, so at least my repairs won't stand out any worse!

The main fuselage join after sanding down. It's not ruler straight, in fact the rear section has a very subtle twist/bulging to it, it's only noticable when critically examining the fuselage against a straight edge. Going to let it lie as my confidence in this kit has improved a lot and I know not to mess with it too much.

Now I'm going to be completing the cockpit area.

I'm starting with this:

To this I've added the kit's central panel and the two sidewall panels I've nicked from the spare Aries detail set.

I'm guessing the middle block shouldn't close up the door to that extent but I'm leaving it as it is, it should be ok when everything's closed up.

If I add more it will interfere with painting so next update I'll have it painted up and the seats & instrument panel added in.

Edited January 12, 2009 by Stebos

[Spazman]

Good work Steve.

This isn't the first time that I've heard someone having to do extra work on an Anigrand kit to get them to fit, but you look like you're not letting it get the best of you!

I've got the Seamaster as well, so I have been watching your build keenly.

Ted

[KS-Flyer]

Wow, I would have given up when I saw how bad the fit was going to be. You've pressed on nicely.

Congrats on not chucking the whole thing. It's going to be a great build.

Jeff

[bexwh773]

Nice to see youve got this under control Steve I knew you could do it

Bex

[AnonymousDFB1]

Nice work Steve

[Stebos]

Many thanks for the encouragement all!

I believe the cockpit is now finished (but I'm after some advice on that - at the end of this update).

First task I had to do was replacing the missing yoke. I decided on a simple fix for this, a short length or rod and a snipped around plasticard shape I was after.

In the grip of scratchbuilding madness I decided to try for some more detail.

There was a gap between the instrument panel and the fuselage. Rather than fill it, I cut out a plastic cap. This also let me make a little sunshade projection over the panel, I think that always helps the look of it.

I've also drilled a pair of 1mm holes in the throttle quadrant, I aim to cut some rode for it to make some simple throttles.

The Hasegawa crew I nicked painted, simple enough and looks fine to me from usual distance. Detail is soft on them, but I don't expect better at this scale.

Here's a selection of shots of the area with the seats out:

Anigrand suggests interior green, I have no info to suggest otherwise so that's what I went with. Nothing fancy on the treatment - drybrushing, black wash and stolen decals for the instruments.

Now back to the query I have. When I test fitted the seats I noticed a problem... it looks like the cockpit floor is maybe 5mm or so lower than it should be. With figures in place they don't fill the space as I think they should.

I have a couple of options I'm showing in the next shots. I can leave the seats as they are, or pad the underside to raise them. I've kept the left one low and raised the right one to nearer the height they should be at (my ref photos show the top of the seat being much closer to the canopy ceiling than the kit OOB has).

Of course raising the seat throws out the relation between the figure and the controls a bit.

I'm thinking it looks better with the raised seats (no one's really going to peeking through the windows to the floor anyway), what do you think?

[DamienB]

I'd raise them even more than that - crew can't actually see out forward as it is!

[Mike]

I'd raise them even more than that - crew can't actually see out forward as it is!

A guy's gotta be able to see to drive

[Stebos]

I think you're right chaps!

This is the best I can do:

Only way to raise them more is to start ripping stuff out... and I'm not doing that!

The canopy is cleary rather large:

I don't think it's too far off, maybe the seats are slightly underscale. I'll fix them in place with milliput plugs, I'm considering this cockpit done.

The prototype canopy doesn't have the ceiling glazing which will help. If I was doing that version I'd have added something to the rear bulkhead, as it is it won't be seen much.

[AnonymousDFB1]

Nice work Steve, good work

[Spazman]

You're doing great Steve!

Looking forward to more of your progress reports.

Ted