mickyg

Perfect! Thanks for the pic. I think I can figure something out...

Very much looking forward to this. I can't afford (or find, for that matter) the toys, so this is pretty much it for me. The bandai model kit looks great perched on a shelf but it's super fragile and I very rarely am game to even move it on its stand, for fear of a leg drooping or worse.

So B13, that's the little hinge between the backpack and "back" right? I don't have the manual here with me. I've been looking at my 1J here in the office to get an idea about how this part will wear and it looks like it's just the rear section of the hinge that needs attention. The front and middle don't seem to touch anything. I could sand the wear part so it doesn't rub (either on the hinge or the part it fits into). "Smarter" chap? Hardly! I am stubborn though and perhaps that's just as useful.

I still have a lot of work to do on the hinge parts but have definitely noticed some surfaces that constantly rub paint off. I'll find some way to deal with it. The parts aren't fully assembled permanently yet. Once you put those screw plugs in all the way, that's pretty much it!

It'll probably spend most of its time that way but no, it'll be fully transformable. I'm hoping to jazz up the arms a bit before I call the painting done. The camo on top, gray on bottom scheme makes for a pretty boring battroid, unfortunately.

So here's what I did the other day... First up, the sweep marks now extend all the way for battroid position: It's a shame those giant manufacturer's stamps are so prominent. I didn't think I'd be that bothered by them but now that I'm having to work around them, I guess it's an issue. Next up was correcting my painting choices around the backpack. As I mentioned, I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking and can only assume I painted this up before it was assembled. At any rate, I've done my best to simplify things. I started by popping the legs into their tabs to see how the pattern could continue with the leg parts. There wasn't a whole lot to worry about, just some more light blue and maybe a bit of gray to re-spray. I quickly masked up the areas, using my preferred method of recycling old tape. The Tamiya tape is great for this but my regular masking tape is starting to get a bit gummy. I won't be re-using it again (plus it's cheap so what's the point?). I was a bit concerned about the light blue not going down well over the gray so I sprayed plain white down first (still using LifeColor, by the way). This gave me a light colour on which to put the blue down. The end result actually appears to be a touch too light now. I'm hoping it'll be less noticeable when the various clearcoats and weathering are finished.

That's a great idea! I'll just have to find a way to integrate that into the white base plastic. On a tomcat, a lot of the marks are dirt and grease, if I'm not mistaken. I don't think it's lack of paint, necessarily. So to make it realistic on mine, the rub areas need to be grimy and not white. I'll see what I can do.

I've paid for photobucket. I feel so dirty... I'm going to scale my images down a bit too. It'll take a while but a lot of my pics are just too big in storage. I'll see what I can come up with. I don't want to pay for this indefinitely and $30 a year isn't exactly a bargain in my mind (seems like I could get my own hosting for that amount?). Back on topic - I did some painting yesterday and a bit more with the wing sweep marks. I'm not sure I like it (the sweep marks). I'll post up some pics soon. The painting was a good thing to focus on though. The backpack/vertical stabs area have always bugged me. I must've painted the parts separately as the camo pattern never looked right to me. So I fixed that up. I'll post those up soon too. Thanks for sticking with me everyone!

I love photobucket... Bear with me, I'll see if I can sort this out.

It won't be left incomplete. Even when I'm working on something else, I always come back to this. Glad it's something others find worth watching as well! Next up: Get fins fixed up so they sit right, glued, then putty up all the seams, and painted (possibly not in that order). Mask tops of arms for more splinter goodness. Solid gray is boring! The bottoms of the arms will still be gray so in jet mode they will blend in with all the rest of the gray of the underside. Paint some of the unpainted arm parts, as they don't rub as badly as I thought they would. Paint/weather wheel bays and gear. Possibly add some wiring? Glue everything else that needs to be done (nose, lights, exhaust internals, fix up some broken parts like the backpack "flap" I recently broke...) Clear coats of various sheens More weathering (including panel lining). As you can see, there's a pretty decent list here!

So, this arrived from SE Asia today: Looks like some of my excuses for not progressing have finally ended! I've already used it on my Hikaru VF-1J that had a pylon mount on the wing break off. The stuff seems to work and as far as I can tell is not just a solvent but also incorporates a resin filler as well. You can tell because there's a glossy residue that's left over when the glue evaporates. This is a good thing for the troublesome wing pylon mounts. In my opinion, there's not near enough strength in these parts and dribbling some glue down into the recess around the post/socket thing in the wing should allow the glue to bond the mount to the wing underside. This is something that should have been done at the factory. There's nowhere near enough strength in just the two mounting points on this part. I went a bit crazy applying it with the built in brush. I was smarter on the other wing and used a sharp pointed instrument to dab it into the holes. I should be able to sand off the residue but given the plastic's natural finish, it won't be invisible. Hindsight... And a shot of where this will ultimately reside when it's finished:

How did I miss te season 4 bit about Saul poisoning Brock? That's a big one! I may have to re watch that ep.

I think I rushed that reply yesterday because that taper you mention was high on my list of things that I didn't get right, and I fully intended to discuss how that affected the fin. Good catch! In hindsight, I should have used the photos to do a quick compare. I'll either go ahead with that, or simply start over again. I really am leaning very heavily to the "just glue the fin pieces together and putty all the seams" option. I don't intend to add a GBP to this (as cool as that'd look) and the folding fins are more a pain than anything. Plus, having a solid fin would go a long way to making this look a bit more realistic. That brings me to another item I should have mentioned yesterday, the matching of the various fin parts. As well engineered as this kit is, the fin parts are not necessarily all the right size/shape to just allow me to glue it up and putty it. The "post" that the fin attaches to, is just a touch wider than the base of the fin. So if I go the glue/putty route, I'll need to file the hinge parts on the post to make it all match up correctly. Then there's the angle of the fins. I suppose if I'm relying on the post to secure everything, I can just cut the angled parts off the wedges before I glue the whole assembly to the leg. If I don't, I don't think I'll be able to just slide the fin in. I should draw diagrams of all this, as it's probably terribly confusing to anyone not familiar with how the fin attaches to the leg. And Chronocidal, I'm not at all worried about sanding/puttying/repainting this thing in the areas around the fin. Any real aircraft gets spot touch ups all the time - if anything this will add to a convincing paint job. The fins will get repainted, it's just whether or not I can get it all done without having to repaint the area around the fin on the leg as well. And if I do, that's also fine. Lastly, agreed on the full Battroid sweep marks. I'd debated it because I was thinking the sealing wouldn't be important for Battroid. And also because I didn't want to ugly up the wing too much. But I'll play around with it and see how it looks. And good call on the sealing plates being under the panel! I hadn't thought of that and it'd be really easy to make a few lines to make it look convincing. I might check the 1/48 model painting guides to see if there's anything represented there too (just out of curiosity). Just checked, it's exactly like the toy, as far as panel lines go. Overtechnology: removing all the extra unnecessary bits since 1999.

I don't know - Ep 11 confused me. I didn't watch the "Brock Poisoning" episode recently enough but I had a very hard time connecting the dots between that ep and this one. All because of a pack of cigarettes? I guess I missed the part where "the switch" was made as well, so maybe that's part of it. But still, let's just assume that I saw it all very clearly - I still don't get how Jesse realising this had happened before = Walt needs to pay! If anyone wants to help me understand that one, I'd definitely appreciate it. I've checked a lot of discussion boards and the theories and explinations just aren't stacking up for me. And I'm mindful that spoilers might be a part of the discussion, so I'm intentionally being a bit vague. On second thought:

Warning, and apologies up front - this is another pic intensive post! I've managed to squeeze in a few more hours of work since the last update. High on my list of priorities is to finish the scratch built "fin wedge" as I've taken to calling it. Despite Chronocidal's excellent suggestion to just glue the part onto the bottom of the fin, ignoring the bit that sticks into the leg, I decided to challenge myself and attempt to replicate the part completely. I screwed up a few things, not the least of which was a file that slipped a few times, marring the surface pretty obviously. But overall, it works and I've learned some new tricks for the next model I need to scratch parts for. The following photos are done with my "proper" camera setup, which consists of a 60mm macro lens. It's great for showing how bad things really look up close. You'll notice the paint spatters far more obviously. Of note to me for next time, is that it appears the spatters dried too fast. Perhaps my thinning needs a bit of help? On to the "wedge." First, a quick comparison with the original (opposite) part - you can see it's got the basic shape right, and certainly looks like it'll fit: The hole this part has to sit in: And sitting in its place: A view of how I still could have made this fit better (gaps around the edges are pretty obvious). Also note the scratches at the sides: I mentioned in a previous post that I deliberately made the part a bit too big, so that I could trim it down properly, against the shape of the fin itself. You can see here, there's a bit sticking out. I simply traced the edge with a sharp mechanical pencil, then used my file to shape it properly: After trimming, the fit is OK compared to the contour of the fin. But I didn't get the height of wedge right, between the leg and the bottom of the fin. The result is a pretty obvious gap: Here's the kit parts on the other leg for comparison: The other side of my homemade wedge (again, note the gaps and the lack of an angle at the end, to match the fin's line): And the "good" one on the other side for comparison: Also worth noting is this really bad seam line on the edge of the fins: Solution: File it down. This also gave me an excuse to shape the fins a bit from their hard angled stock configuration. It's not obvious here but the shape is now much more aerodynamic: After this little excercise, I'm again thinking of taking Chronocidal's advice and completely ignoring the fin fold mechanism, gluing it all up, and puttying the crap out of all of it! So it looks like a solid piece and not this seem ridden mess instead. I'll sleep on it. I've been thinking a lot about some semblance of realism on this thing and one area I need to practice on is the wing sweep. On a real swing wing aircraft, there's usually a sealing plate that makes contact with the upper and lower part of the wing (Damn! I forgot all about the lower side!). This part of the wing usually gets a lot of scraping and dirt effects that leaves a nice pattern. WM Cheng was the first person I ever saw attempt to replicate this wear and I really liked it (possibly on his VF-0S Hasegawa kit?). So I tried it out. I used 3 different colored pencils from PrismaColor (dark gray, light gray, silver) and a "blending pencil" they sell to soften the pencil lines. I didn't like the straight pencil so also followed it up with a bit of "Tamiya Weathering Set" black. The weathering set is the one that looks like cosmetics, and I used the sponge applicator side. For the effect, I simply closed the wing down to fully swept (not Battroid swept, mind you) and positioned the tip of the pencil on the wing, and then just opened the wing up. On a real jet, you'll notice the hardest lines tend to be in areas where panels meet. I don't know if this is paint scratching or the lubricating grease squishing out between the cracks. I suspect it's the latter. Unfortunately, there are only two panel lines in this area on the toy. So I sort of made it up to keep it looking realistic. While I was at it, I added some smudges to the area on the fuselage that usually sees a lot of hands and feet: Still lots to do but I'm making some progress. Thanks for following and I very much appreciate your comments!

Suhhhhhwwweeeeeet!

CF-18 looks sweet! Excellent work on the weathering.

Too bad the store is only a few minutes down the road! She's out all the time but never longer than an hour or so. Unfortunately it takes about that long to set everything up and pack it away again. Regarding fumes and inhaling them, I should point out that I've got a spray booth as well as a proper mask. This stuff's a lot of fun but not worth sacrificing your health over!

That is just all kinds of impressive!

You know, I actually bought some gunze lacquer thinner for thinning some mr Surfacer. I might try it on some Tamiya and gunze paints. Only problem is with the main camo colors, which are Lifecolor. They don't thin well with anything that isn't water based. Even straight alcohol causes them to separate into a powdery liquid sludge. I may need to experiment...

I'm using acrylic paint from Lifecolor for most of it. The rest is either Tamiya or Gunze and there's a bit of Alclad on the feet/exhausts. I haven't really transformed it as it's not entirely together yet. Much of what you see is just pressed together for pictures. While I wouldn't say the paint "chips" it definitely scratches in areas that rub. Fortunately this scheme has a bit of white in it and the underlying plastic isn't too noticeable. It's not great though. Honestly, if I were to do it again, I'd either prime it first and still use the same paints, or even better, use lacquers. I think they'd be a lot more durable for a toy. I don't have the luxury of a dedicated area to paint in and didn't want to buy all new paints just for this project (I have many, many acrylics already). Acrylics don't smell awful and my wife tolerates me spraying them in the kitchen with a window open.

Had I been drinking, I'd have lost it completely. I don't know why they thought to throw that part in but it was genius!

Gluing it straight to the strake-hadn't even considered that! Thanks man, I'll give that some thought. You're absolutely right, the part won't be something I'll mess around with. Armour is not part of my plans for this valk. You've mentioned paint twice now and I keep forgetting to address that. Honestly, I don't think it'll be an issue. I'm happy to airbrush it beforehand and mask the glue surfaces. Pity I didn't do that with the hole as well (both front and back). I've got some Tamiya ABS glue on it's way that I hope to use on this. I'll have to remove paint in the holes so that'll be fun. I'm planning to use windex and a paint brush to spot remove the acrylic. The Lifecolor paint doesn't dissolve as quickly as Tamiya or gunze does but a few applications should do the trick. Thanks for watching and staying with me. I'll get this done some day!

That'd be perfect, but the shaped part fits into the hole in the leg. I have to shape it before gluing, unfortunately. I didn't take any pics of the part I need to shape so unless you're familiar with the kit, my description is a pretty poor one.

I often pull this kit out and just look at what I still have to do. This last week was no different. Often times I get caught up in the "it's too much and I don't have time" trap of any project and simply put it back in the box and on the shelf. Other times I'm more productive and try to do at least something. This week was one of those times I made some meagre progress. You may recall a few pages/picture batches/years ago I mentioned I'd lost a part. There are two tiny pieces that attach under the ventral fins. Why Yamato molded it like this is beyond me. I'm sure there's a reason for it but it escapes me right now. Anyway, I lost one of the smaller parts. I'd also completely forgotten about both parts altogether. Meaning they hadn't been painted or glued or even removed from the sprue. When I'd lost the part, I'd always planned to someday scratch build it. Originally, I'd intended to use some scrap styrene, thinking it'd be easier to work with and shape. Last week I got to thinking that maybe I should use some scratch ABS from the sprue the part came on. I figured it'd glue better and the plastic is actually a little bit more elastic, which made me think it'd be easier to cut and shape. That logic may be flawed but here's what I did, with that in mind. First, I traced the part out. This part wasn't terribly hard, as the bottom is perfectly flat and lent itself well to tracing on the other scrap piece. From there, I cut out the rough shape with my trusty Hasegawa Photo-Etch saw. I started by scribing some light cuts along the pencil marks with a hobby knife. This is enough to give the saw a bit of a guide. From there, the saw provides its own guide for a straight, sharp cut. Another few cuts and I had the basic shape roughed out. Which left me with this: The part is purposely a bit too big, so I can file it down to size. I haven't worked out how I'll file/shape the triangular 3D portion that fits into the leg. This is where it's going to glue so it needs to be accurate and actually make some decent contact with the leg. Any ideas on how best to copy this part from the mirror image twin I do have? My plan is to just trial and error it until it fits.