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This is the canopy glue I use (its very much like white glue) it dries completely clear, and its somewhat flexible when dried which is great when the canopy doesn't perfectly match the fuselage. I've also used white glue - which works very well.

Yep, the liquid acrylic (Future) seeps into all the microscopically fine scratches (which refract the light giving the foggy appearance) and in effect, flattens the surface of the canopy - filling in all the tiny dents and imperfections. That's why I dunk it in water to see if it goes clear, since the water does the same thing (it just doesn't stay) Now, remember to let it dry overnight - at least 12 hours before you touch the canopy, or you'll get impressions of your fingerprints on the future coat. Always remember that there is a coating over your canopy part now, and if you're not careful, you can scratch it off or etch it away. Future is suseptable to ammonia based products such as blue Windex or Humbro masking fluid - keep these away from the newly Futured canopy - and handle it gently. I prefer to glue it to the plane (which seals in the inside surface) right away as soon as its dry. And I paint a coat of liquid masking fluid to the outside to seal/protect the outer surface too.

Sorry guys for the delay... been away a while with some family health issues, plus I'm still sick... (but don't count me down yet) I hope to do something tomorrow and post... Spatula, don't worry about stealing the thread - that's what it's here for, I'd like to hear your problems too and hopefully be able to help (if I can) The best way to get help is post a picture of the problem - its worth a thousand words! What kind of scratches are you talking about? (1500 grit should not be able to make definable scratches - its should just fog) I suspect you may be dealing with something less than 1500 grit. Future is not a necessity... it just helps out, but if you don't use future, then the only way to eliminate the foggyness is by using a rubbing/polishing compound like Tamiya. I merely said it was like toothpolish, but I don't mean to use toothpolish instead Like Stamen said, I'd hunt down the Tamiya stuff, its purposefully for plastic models and worst case, order it online. David is absolutely right, when you get as good as he is... you can skip a few steps and use fewer levels of grit sandpaper to do the job. However, its been over a year since I built my last model (its kind of like starting over again...) I need a few models to get back into the groove of things before I feel confident enough to start skipping steps. Sanding clear parts is a feel thing, and thus is hard to explain - but once you get the feel for it, its no different than any other opaque part (I just wanted to try to alieviate any fears or the stigma behind scratching and repairing clear canopy parts) All of the tips given is good advice... but just remember that different things work for different people. Basically the long of short of it - get the canopy to a foggy state (no visible lines or scratches), then to eliminate the fog do one of the following; 1. Buff with a rubbing/polishing compound and rag until clear (ie; Tamiya compound) 2. Dunk in Future Floor Finish (which turns the foggyness clear) Or be extra cautious like me - do both I don't think there's a danger of oversanding "through" the canopy (unless you're using 50 grit paper or a file! ) but the danger is pressing too hard and splitting or cracking the brittle canopy. Remember the clear parts are much more brittle than the styrene pieces. And I don't know of any repair that will seal in a crack all the way through a clear piece.

5. Some people skip the next step and jump right to coating it with future floor polish at this point - but I add another step here. I use Tamiya rubbing compound (kind of like toothpaste) and polish out the fogginess in the canopy. I usually use a piece of cloth (preferably lint-free) or paper towel and polish the entire canopy. I do this even on canopies that have no seam (or requires no work), it gives a shinier more polycarbonate like appearance and makes the canopy appear "brighter" 6. Lastly, I dip the entire thing into future floor polish. Make sure that you are in a relatively clean and lint-free room (which is near impossible for my basement work area - but I do this before I sand or airbrush for the day). Make sure there are no air bubbles trapped - keep dipping it back in if there are imperfections on the surface (worst case - you can strip it with windex and try again - I think its the amonia that strips it off). I usually hang it to dry at an angle so that the excess Future builds up in one corner and I would occassionally dab that corner with a paper towel to soak up the excess. You don't want a bubble of excess future to gather at the corners, they turn milky over time. I usually put my work lights on it to help speed up the future curing. And no sanding or airbrushing while the canopy is drying (in fact I leave the room all together to stop debris from being kicked up into the air)

Thanks for the kudos everybody - I like the feedback... Sorry for the delay... I've been sick the past week with a cough - hopefully I'll get better... Great to see your stuff Brett! I really like your details. I was going to weather and detail both the booster and Valkyrie at the same time using the same materials - so I have to get my Valkyrie now up to the same primed state as the boosters. I realized I hadn't sealed the cockpit in yet, so I have to work on getting rid of the seam on the canopy. As most of you know by now, there is a seam running up the middle on the outside (thank god!) of the canopy which was a process of a 3 part mold which allows the canopy profile to bubble out realistcally like modern fighters. I'll briefly outline the steps involved... Always be gentle here, the clear plastic is much more brittle than the styrene and won't stand up to too much pressure (I always try to hold it from behind with my fingers supporting the underside of the bubbled canopy). Its always better to undersand (you can keep going if need be) than to sand too deeply and scratch the canopy too much (just more finishing/polishing work later on). 1. Clear canopy with seam 2. Lightly sand with 800 grit (careful to just sand the seam portion) 3. It looks horrible now... but its gotta get worst before it gets better - now move up to 1200 grit and sand a little bit more (in a larger area) 4. Finally, I move up to 2000 grit and sand in an even larger area (careful to always overlap the sanding areas with a finer grit film) It should look uniformly foggy at this point with no visible swirls or lines. I usually double check the work by dipping it into water from the underside, the part where the water touches should appear absolutely clear (if not, even future won't hide the scratches).

Hey Brett, lets see your stuff... what mods? The rest of the priming went really well, and the sanding/polishing worked well to save the rough areas. Luckily a quarter of each of the engine bells is mostly hidden (portion which faces each other towards the center) so I can mark off which side of the bells are not perfect and face those inwards. I'm going to let it sit until I can get some masking fluid tomorrow. I have to work on getting rid of the seam on the canopy next, and start priming and painting the Valkyrie legs next. However, since its the long Thanksgiving weekend up here in Canada, I don't think I'll get much more done till next Tuesday (or my wife will kill me ) I want to see what Brett's done...

It's been so long since I airbrushed (over a year! ) And I made a real stupid mistake - I airbrushed at too high a pressure. Sometimes you get a really rough surface with flat paints or primer - its because the pressure is too high, and the particles are drying before they hit the surface, and starts to build up a finish like sandpaper or fine hairs. It takes a bit of practice getting back into the flow of airbrushing, and pressure is a finess thing. I forgot that the primer required a much lower spray pressure. I am using the pre-mixed AlcladII primer - I love this stuff. But it uses 12-15psi, and I left my compressor on 20-25psi for Tamiya acrylics. Oh, well, nasty lesson - but its not too bad, it forces me to perform a step I usually am too lazy to do anyways. You should polish the primer with 800grit sandpaper anyways regardless of finish, it creates a much smoother base for the paint. Now I have to sand down the roughness on the areas where I sprayed the primer at too high of a pressure - luckily and sands down easily, and creates a really nice surface without having to re-prime it.

I hope I can get all the liquid mask outta there - its mostly sitting on those thin strips I cut out of Tamiya masking tape anyways. You can see the crackling more with the primer on it. I'm thinking I will go out to get more liquid mask tomorrow and re-apply over this just to be sure. In the meantime, any recommendations of types of liquid mask? Is there a way to thin Microscale Mask?

A final test fitting before priming... Hmm, the liquid mask cracked again, but I thought, there was so much in there, that the chance of the several layers of crack being on top of each other allowing the paint down through to the mesh to be highly improbable. I want to chance it and prime the sucker Starting to get excited about the upcomming steps...

I gooped some into the rear engine ports since I want the crazy glue to actually adhere to the resin instead of paint on the resin after I've painted the booster - I'm a little wary of this small connection point since the engine bells are a little on the heavy side. I may have to pin it later on, but I hope not, since I might want to play with the placement of the engine bells, maybe splay them out a bit more. I just mixed up another batch of the Mr. Masking SOL and gooped it onto the pre-existing cracking surface, hoping that this batch would tie all the previous batch together so they pull out in one losenge shaped chunk after painting. Wish me luck. I'll have to sand those puttied areas down when the masking liquid dries, I just don't want to get a bunch of sanding/putty dust into the wet liquid. Cross your fingers and wish me luck... Off to finish the seam on the Valkyrie's canopy...

Ok, I think I need some help here with the liquid mask... This booster just doesn't want to be primed... I let the liquid mask dry overnight so that I could get a fresh start to the priming today, but I found the liquid mask to have all dried, cracked and peeled. I don't get it. I usually use Microscale MicroMask liquid masking, but my bottle is like 8yrs old, and the medium has turned to jelly-like consistency - I couldn't get it to thin with water, it just broke up into little chunks, so went out and bought Mr. Hobby Mr. Masking SOL (thinking if its from Japan, it must be better! ) - this was last year, and I've haven't used this new stuff since (but how different can it be?). Well, its also a thick goopy mess, so I thinned it down with water (is that right?) to a paintable consistency (at least the Mr. Masking seems to thin down - but a lot of bubbles formed). Should I have not thinned it down with water? But it was too thick to apply. What should I use to thin down masking liquid? What masking liquid do you guys use or recommend? Have you seen this happen to liquid mask before?

I then cut little strips of Tamiya masking tape and filled in the meshed portions. I will paint liquid masking fluid around the tape to get a nice seal between the mesh and the resin struts. The masking tape just allows the masking fluid to be removed easily afterwards and prevents the fluid from "soaking" through the mesh to the other side too much. Since I also want the black sides to the resin struts, I thought this was the only way to preserve it while I painted the rest of the booster.

I drew this circle so I can place putty to eliminate the main lateral seam at where the Macross Kite symbol will be. I put tape at the two ends, and filled it with Tamiya putty, we'll see if this holds onto the resin - if not, I'll resort back to crazy glue again.

I added a few strips of styrene to represent some of the lines on the lineart of the boosters. I also gave the overall booster a bit of final sanding. I drew in pencil the size of the Macross Kite (from a 1/48 decal set that Anasazi made for the Yamato Fast packs - which I think is pretty perfect in terms of size) which came out to 15/16" (0.9375") or 23.812mm to get an approx. idea

I crazy glued the halves together. You need to file down a bit of the mating surfaces to get a nice flush fit. The main lateral seem worked out well as a detail line. I just couldn't resist piecing it all together.

I'm gluing in the fine metal mesh from the inside, be very careful that the crazy glue you use is fairly thick, otherwise, the thin stuff tends to run into the fine mesh and clogs up the holes. Once the mesh is in, I also crazy glued the completed bulkheads with the engine detail - I must admit, I went a little overboard here with the details, you see the details (more so in person than these photos show) but not as much as the effort I put into them ) Oh, well - maybe a more transparent mesh, but then the scale might be too big, if the openings are larger. I also painted the interior of the bottom portion of the booster, just so that when you look into the feet holes, it appears black and dark, and just incase you see through the mesh, I don't want any resin peeking through.

Thanks to the Captn' so much - I just recieved his replacement for my "squishy" engine bell!! Yay! Boy, this one is fantastic, there's only one seam!! and its really minor, the resin is easy to sand, and all of the little four fins are intact and flawless!! Wow, as you can see, it only took a little sanding, and its done! I'd painted a stripe of Mr. Surfacer 1000 to be sanded away just to be sure. I will prime this along with the boosters this afternoon.

I then went over the boosters with Mr. Surfacer 1000 looking for any small imperfections, bubbles or details I didn't want. To the Captn's credit, he included some fine details on the boosters that will match nicely to the Hasegawa kit, but there were two details that I am choosing to omit, the "refueling hatches" on one underside of the booster and some diagonal ladder designs which did not cast well. I also decided to make something of that main lateral line separating the two halves, instead of trying to sand it smooth to mate both the top and bottom halves, I thought I give these edges a bit of a chamfer (sanded the edges at a 45 degree in) so when they mate, it will form a V-groove - hiding the slight mis-match of the top and bottom curvatures and creating an additional detail line latterally across (which will form the top part of the black line on the lineart).

There's this gap here thats been bothering me, its supposed to be there, but it just seems a bit big with nothing inside. I'm not sure yet, but either I'd fill it with machinery gak or close it up, or maybe I'll just leave it alone. I want to get to the painting stage first... When the Valk is removeable, I think I can always come back to address this portion later on. Plus with the entire thing finished it might not be so bad. You can see the clear tip at the end of the resin piece where it meets the Valkyrie - I started hunting for all these little broken bits or bits with bubbles in it and started filling them in to sand them prepping the boosters for priming today.

Just couldn't resist fitting everything together to zoom it around the room for a bit!

I added some styrene to reinforce this area so that I can re-sculpt some of the opening profile that I lost when my dremel slipped I was going to file it down smooth, but I think I'll leave it raised like an attached panel for some interest, maybe add a few revit details to the ends. Another shot below shows a test fit with the Valkyrie legs.

Oh, gawd! what have I done!! I really opened a whole can of worms now... Under the catagory; "WTF was I thinking..." I decided to drill out the holes for the Valk's feet on the lower portion of the resin boosters I guess I wasn't paying attention to the instructions of the resin booster kit, but I built the entire feet assembly, all three pieces and painted them. I was thinking that I wanted to have the Valk pretty intact so I may be able to detach them later on... hmm I'm now not so sure it was such a great idea. According to the instructions, you only really need the "shin" of the lower portion of the feet, and I assume everything else is hidden - then you don't need to hollow out the feet holes. Well, I tried to hollow out the feet holes, I didn't realize that there is actually a fair amout of resin that has settled into this area, and I am tring to route out 2-3" thick of resin! I started by drilling smaller pilot holes with a dremel at the four corners. Then I took a larger drill bit and drilled out the centre. Did I say its a lot of resin... to dig out?! I was almost choking with all the dust in the air - then I remembered my mask... hmm, I'm sure fine resin particles isn't great for the lungs either I felt like a dentist, switching to more of a grinding stone bit to try and hollow out the hole - I slipped a few times, so I need to re-build out the opening. But this was much more work than I thought it was going to be (I'd do it as per instructions and leave the resin in and just modify the feet construction to not include the last two pieces next time...) but I'm in for the job now, since I've damaged the opening and I've started and opened this can of worms. I found it easier later on to also work from the inside hollowing out material - just becareful you don't do too far and create a hole into the body of the lower boosters. The really long and tedious process of finishing the holes with a flat file is what I have to look forward too tonight. The resin is still pretty tough, and my files are pretty fine - so it may take a while, but hopefully when I'm done, the Valkyrie will be removeable .

I wanted to bulk up the rear valley between the two top boosters a little - I thought it might look better a little beefier when we got closer to those massive engine bells. For those of you who have the VE-1 Elintseeker Hasegawa kits - you're in for a treat of spare parts after you've finished the kit. These arm armour parts are extras from that kit - since it has a modified piece for that drop down sensor/antenna array. I thought that these pieces were nicely molded, and had a slightly sloped profile that might fit nicely to the boosters with minimal alterations. I wanted as much surface detail on these boosters to tie them togther with the Hasegawa fast packs, since I wanted them to look part of the same language. I intend to decal them and paint them like the fast packs later on. It seems more consistent in the Macross universe than the white boosters shown in the episode

I thought I'd add a little extra detail to this top portion - it looked a little bare... I just cut some thin styrene sheets into these shapes and glued them down. I then took my pinvise and drilled some small holes in it for detail.

Ok, back at work on the boosters... Try as I may, I couldn't get the forward intake beween the boosters to look smooth - its a really tough area to sand down, especially the back surface. So I thought I might find something to hide this area. I didn't use that trapizoidial vent for the rear tail section of the Valkyrie, so I thought I'd put it in this slot to cover up the mess. It kind of fits, since its like the rest of the super Valks, when the tail section flips up and around to rest on top of the Valks chest piece. I had to sand down a bit of the resin booster slot and the styrene plastic part to fit. I also fitted some extra corrugated styrene strips that I cut to fit into the two sides and the centre of the trapizoidal vent (too lazy to sand out the two injector pin marks inside this vent, I also glued a strip of the corrugated styrene inside it as well)