wm cheng

With some putty to help smooth out the contours...

Glued in place...

The plastic behind to hold it together...

Its too bad the old site isn't up anymore, I've done a step-by-step walk through on the VF-1 for closing the gear doors - I'll just post some pictures here...

The chrome on the intake fans is done with the Tamiya chrome silver marker - its the best silver I've ever used. Gotta let everything dry for a bit before some further sanding. Can't glue the leg halves together till I get some of those rare earth magnets.

I sanded away the circular injection pin depressions and have decided to paint this intake area in a sky grey. What I will do later is airbrush the white/off-white grey overcoat and gently feather it back revealing this grey inside the intake fans - this gives the illusion of more depth and shadow as you look into the intakes. I wished that the fans were placed further back in the intakes - they seemed a little too close to the front.

This nose area was tricky to re-scribe because of how small the first ring was - you can see a little bit of the Mr. Surfacer left in the seams doing its job in filling in fine seams.

I am attempting to redefine or re-scribe the panel lines which run through the seams. When you use Mr. Surfacer and sand off - I occassionally sand too much off including the fine lines

Yes, Mr. Surfacer is like a very thin puttly or filler. It has the consistency of really thick paint - I would guess its really fine particles of filler suspended in some solution. Its great for filling in really tiny hairline seams. I have two types (I think there are more grades out there) there is a 500 for the coarse (gap filling) stuff and a much finer 1000 for the hairline cracks ad seams. I brush it on with a thin paint brush which is then cleaned with Mr. Color thinner. For small jobs, it better than putty since you can control exactly where it goes, and can run into the really fine seams.

Here are the arm halves glued together - the grey is Mr. Surfacer 500 again - well will see weither this will be enough to smooth over both sides, becareful to try to align them so the hieghts match - this will save lots of sanding later on to even both halves out. Notice that there are a few areas where I have run the Mr. Surfacer across the direction of the seam - I've noticed a few slight sink depressions in those area and should be filled in. You really only have to concentrate on this lower surface, the other side will be mostly obsured by the top of the fuselage (lazy tip #2 ) Well, thats it for tonight, I"ll let everything dry overnight. A lot of sanding awaits me for the next few steps - the most boring and tedious part for me But it has to be done - if you skimp on this stage - you'll pay for it when you start painting - believe you me, I have had many dissapointments when I try to take short cuts during the sanding stage.

Onto the next steps, I've decided to fill in these injector pin depressions now, since it would be difficult to sand them later when the halves are glued together.

Ah! look, when you glue those little cranked arrow bits or mini-forward canards (correct my nomenclature if you will David) they hide even more (if any sins) of those dreaded intake connections.

Here you can see the rounded over edges and the bit of baffling I added in the opening with the wing fully swept back.

Since therew is so much gap when the wings are fully swept back - you really can see right into the cavity of the fuselage. Again, I broke out my ribbed styrene sheet and cut little "fences" and glued then in place - being careful not to obstruct the swing extent and gear mechanism of the wings. Ah, the ribbed sheet make it look like some kind of retracting baffle system. (Hey David, what's on the real F-14 or F-111 - is there anything that seals up this opening when the wings extend fully?)

Come ON ( don't fear monger)!! that was the worst side, this side is even better. This is nothing , you should build some old Revel or AMT/ERTL kits, they've got seams that you could launch missles through! This kit really is up to Hasegawa standards so far, this portion is the worst fit of the kit thus far, but I haven't even had to break out the putty yet, all I've been using is Mr. Surfacer 500 so far. Mind you, on the bigger seams I've put a few coats on (after each coat dries).

Here's that "dreaded" intake area on the chest plate. Hmm... not so bad (I think Valkyrie's exaggerating just a bit ) don't be scared off, it not really that bad. I didn't build any of it up or perform any type of modification, I just dabbed a few coats of Mr. Surfacer 500 at the two ends - I could of used a bit of putty, but the areas are so small that needs filling.

Of course I had to re-scribe the panel line details that were lost when I rounded over the edges (I used the Hasegawa Tri-tool microsaws for this job - they are tiny photo-etched saws - you can buy them from HLJ) They are invaluable in recovering lost panel lines especially around seams and filled joints.

Here's the after shot, after I sanded down the edges and smoothed out the contours (sorry for the fuzzy photo - the camera had a hard time focusing so close)

I've decided to sand these areas down, to give an airfoil profile to them so that they would appear thinner in the end. (Here is the before shot)

When its fully swept forward - you hardly see anything at all.

Here's the forward section in the worst case with the wings fully swept back - you can see the little styrene card and the Mr. Surfacer around the edges that is now sanded smooth.

This area always bugged me - those really "thick" squared off edges don't look very realistic or "aircraft-like". Plus this gap seems rather large considering that the wings are fully swept back.

Another test fit with the wings in place, you can see how little sanding and filling was really required, there isn't a lot that is exposed (and this is the worst case when the wings are fully swept forward)

I've sanded down the areas I filled in with the styrene sheets and the little injection pin depressions. All I have used so far is Mr. Surfacer 500, there was nothing significant yet that required putty.

Hi all, got another 2-3 hours in tonight - yipee! I ran out of my old Microscale liquid masking film, so I am tring this new stuff from Japan (if its Japanese it must be better? ) made by the same Mr. Surfacer people. Its a bit thick - anyone know of a thinner for this stuff?