1/72 Hasegawa VF-1 + Booster step-by-step...

[flyboy]

You could try Tamiya's Polyester Putty. It's top notch stuff and won't melt plastic.

... but smells like an open sewer!

Other alternatives to the more expensive hobby-specific putties are Bondo and 3M blue glazing putty. You should be able to find both at auto part stores.

I've been using Bondo lately. I find that it has the same properties as the grey Tamiya putty, but it's three times cheaper. And it's light-years better than the Squadron Green crap.

Warning - these may be a little "hotter" than the typical hobby putty, so as WM suggested, apply in thin layers...

Felix

[Mule]

Thanks for the suggestions. Unfortunately, it may be a while before I get to apply them. My wife an I just moved to a smaller place. The most major sacrifice (for me anyway) was the hobby room.

[HWR MKII]

no model builder should be without a hobby room. do you have a garage to clear a corner into and convert into a hobby space? id get buried if i didnt have a hobby room. i need storage space for my 5 1/16 scale tanks and their smaller brothers and all the macross kits my wife is getting me for christmas.

[Mule]

No garage. I moved into Washington DC. I won't go into details, but it just made sense at the time. Looking forward to get into a real house in a year or so.

[hellohikaru]

WM Cheng

What happened to the booster ?

Can't wait for the restart.

[broadshore]

Have any of you modeled builders tryed um.. Squardron Green Putty?

[wm cheng]

Ugh! Stay away from that stuff like the plague. The liquid that oozes from it melts plastic quite easily, and when hardened its really tough to sand down.

The Tamiya putty is much better, finer to sand for bigger gaps. Better yet, the Mr. Surfacer is great for smaller seams.

[broadshore]

As from the other post! hehe. where can I fine Mr. Surfacers. Would Microsomething can't remember the name. Micromart would have it and what does it run about?

[rpayne20]

You can find Mr. Surfacer and other Gunze Sangyo products at www.spruebrothers.com They are my best source for online modeling supplies.

[wm cheng]

Yep, its not a microscale product. Its a japanese product, I buy it at several local hobby stores in Toronto. Wherever you find Gunze/Mr. Color products, you can find Mr. Surfacer. There are two grades (that I know of) a Mr. Surfacer500 and a Mr. Surfacer1000 - the later being finer and more viscous for smaller seams and finer sanding.

[Ido]

Yep, its not a microscale product. Its a japanese product, I buy it at several local hobby stores in Toronto. Wherever you find Gunze/Mr. Color products, you can find Mr. Surfacer. There are two grades (that I know of) a Mr. Surfacer500 and a Mr. Surfacer1000 - the later being finer and more viscous for smaller seams and finer sanding.

There is Mr. surfacer 1200 too

http://www.hlj.com/scripts/hljlist.cgi

[broadshore]

I'll give that stuff a try! Been using Squardon Green on my Armor stuff for like ever! I guess it time for a changing of the guard. I'll order out some Mr. Surfacer this week!

[Stamen0083]

Squadron Green sucks when it's not thinned. When it IS thinned, it doesn't stick to plastic.

Please, for your sake, buy Tamiya. When it comes to modelling, the Japanese really know what they're doing.

[jardann]

I have to chime in in support of Tamiya putty. I just started using it last week and I have to say that it is GREAT! It's better than anything I've used in the past.

[wm cheng]

Hey everybody - I'm back...

Hopefully I'll have enough time between jobs to finish this baby (after a year long hiatus!) Man! it feels good to be building again... - first day back, kinda rusty, so I just kind of kept to sanding - to get back into the goove again.

I'll keep posting to this thread (until this section closes down - I hope that when that happens Roy could move it over to the appropriate thread and PM me about it).

This shot shows the corrugated "fencing" I put in (with styrene bought from a local train hobby store - comes in sheets) so that you don't see into the fuselage. I originally fitted the Valkryie against the booster packs to get a tracing of the swing wing's inner most swing extents to get the line to glue these styrene strips to. I was too cheap to use the PE parts that Hasegawa provides for this area.

[wm cheng]

Hmm, the new boards handles attachments differently now (is there a way to get it to show like the old way - instead of clicking on them and having them open in a new window?) or do you guys prefer this way?

Anyways, the arms are show below, with the left before the sanding (a little overkill on the tamiya putty - but there are some severe elevational differences sometimes especially with flat parts) and the right after sanding (you see most of it is sanded away, but there are a few sink holes that remain)

(ohh, I like this multiple attachments)

[wm cheng]

Here's the gun pod - originally glued together last year (with excessive glue so that it oozes out to fill in minor seams) plus I "painted" Mr. Surfacer 1000 to make sure its all sealed in. I intend to use that Alclad metalizer here, and its very unforgiving - any blemishes and it shows!

[wm cheng]

Here's the same seam after sanding (notice that I took most of the Mr. Surfacer off - its almost used as a marker for me, especially on white plastic of how far I still have to sand down to the seam). I'm using the Hasegawa PE micro saws to "re-etch" the circular panel lines that have been lost due to the sanding

[wm cheng]

Here's the nosecone forward fuselage - the part I spend the most time sanding. The nose seam has to be perfect - its the thing most people (incl me) see first on the model. I followed the same technique as most of my other pieces - put a little more than needed tube cement on the seams so that some of it oozes out (becareful to not put too much - otherwise the cement may continue to melt the styrene and cause sink depressions) and paint the seam with Mr. Surfacer 1000.

I sand down until the entire seam dissapears and that you can run your fingernails across the seam and its perfectly smooth.

I then washed the assembly, decaled the pilot and cockpit control panels and gave both a bit of white dry-brushing to highlight the details (I did a dark wash last year that picked out the crevices). I'm not going to go overboard on this, since I intend to keep the canopy closed, and with the distortions in the canopy, not real details can be seen. Ok, I've started to cut corners on the cockpit... I rather spend the time on detailing the rest of the Boosters. And yes I know, its the wrong pilot - I'm a bit impatient, and I've really been wanting to see this Booster kit on my display shelf for over a year now - so I thought if I corrected the pilot for the TV-version, that itself could take a week or at least a few days - plus sculpting such small collars is not my strong point anyways. Plus I like the DYRL pilot suits so much better than the disco collars!

Edited September 16, 2005 by wm cheng

[wm cheng]

I thought I'd dig out the pieces required for the legs and do some pre-assembly to see how this thing all comes together to fit with the resin Boosters.

It was so nice for the captain to provide us with the forward intakes so nicely casted allready assembled without the seam. I intend to wash all the resin pieces soon (before I work with them) but I need to go out and by Comet first - its a good idea to scrub all resin pieces with a toothbrush and Comet & detergent to remove any mold release agents that always come with resin kits.

[wm cheng]

I just couldn't resist - I had to piece something together before I could leave the table for today! its looking good so far...

I still intend to make the Valkryie removeable if I can help it - well see if that's possible, but so far its seem as though the Captain has made such a perfect fit that I might not need anything - friction my just do the trick. We'll see when I get the legs together - theres a large chunk of resin I have to remove to get the legs and feet into the Boosters. Plus there's a bit of clean up on the Boosters themselves (my cast had a few bubbles in the vents and forward part of the Boosters that needs to be filled and sanded first)

[wm cheng]

Hey, has anyone built this kit in the last year that can offer me tips?!

Feel free to chime in...

[cokefiend]

Master is Cheng is BACK!!! Dude what have you been working on in T.O. thats kept you away for a year?

Anyway, Ive been dying to see how the Booster set turns out. As far as I know no on else has posted shots of one.

Its the weekend so we better see lots more photos tomorrow night.

[wm cheng]

No work on the weekend (must please wife )

Here's the last for tonight...

Closing the rear landing gear doors - there's no right way to do this, I've done it differently on every one of my models, but with each one, I use less and less re-inforcing. I always glue the doors together first with a styrene strip in behind for reinforcing, since the actual edge of the doors isn't enough meat for the glue to properly work with.

[wm cheng]

Then I glue the doors to the side of the leg that has a portion of the door round over - this side is more important than the otherside because its pretty crutial to get that reveal seam as smooth as possible.

I add some liquid cement to the backside to fill in the gaps.

[wm cheng]

The forward doors are a little bit tricker. I used to just shave back the bump behind the door to get a nice flat door that will lay in flat against the leg opening - but that often hampered the mounting of the green/red leg lights later on. So I decided to cut away the leg portion of the mounts and allow the forward doors to seat in complete with the light housing.

However I still have to cut the support leg off each of these forward doors.

[wm cheng]

Here's a shot of the two leg halves with the gear doors glued in. The doors are not correctly molded to the curvature fo the legs themselves - but its nothing that a final sanding won't cure.

The forward gear doors are left off until the two halves of the legs are glued together, they still needs to be shaved down a bit for a better fit. And I can't glue the two halves together until I spray and finish the feet/afterburning cans.

[Ido]

Awesome skills, what are the two round things in the empty part of the cockpit, two styrene tubes?

[Grayson72]

What color scheme are you going with for the Valk William? I was just going to go with the CF color and white for the booster.

[Berttt]

Good work as always WM.

I am basically up to the same stage. I found that there needs to be some work to the leading edge of the booster, right on the edge of where is connects to the avionics hump on top of the fuselage.

Also have you found that when the booster halves are together, that there is a gap between to the two mating surfaces around the edge? I am trying to work out if it is just my copy of a design feature.

I really need to get off my arse and finish the 7+ projects I have on the go right now, some of them are so close to being finished......

Cheers,

Berttt

Edited September 20, 2005 by Berttt

[wm cheng]

Hi everybody, nothing new to show - just a lot of scrubing and washing the pieces with comet (nothing to see here... move along...)

Hey Ido, the two tubes are just some spare polycaps I had lying around - they look good once the canopy is on (I think the PE parts are wasted if you choose to close the canopy) but styrene tubes do the same job!

Hey Chad, nice of you to join in I was thinking that I'd do the white Valk, in Roy's colours of black and yellow 001 but with Hikaru's pilot name on the canopy (since at this point in the series, he's inherited Roy's plane) but I will depart from canon on the boosters. I'm not sure about the white boosters, I was thinking that I'd do it in a grey/blue like the fast packs. I was going to add a few more grey panels to the Valkyrie itself, then lighten the boosters around the Valkyrie connection points to a light grey, so it doesn't contrast as much, but start working in some darker greys and blue greys (panelled kind of like my shades of blue for the YF-21) so that they look similar beside my Super Valks with the fast packs (since I feel they are part of the same mechanism anyways) I was going to decal them similarily too.

Hey Berttt, feel free to join in and post some pictures (I would like to see where you're at too) As you can see from my pictures, I have two big bubbles right at the same spot as yours where the boosters contact the avionics hump on top of the fuselage too. Additionally, I also have quite a few bubbles ruining every one of the thin delicate members around the three vertical slots that I have to fill and build up again (argh! ) And yes, I too have a gap between the two mating surfaces around the edge. I don't think any of these is a big deal yet, I intend to try my hand at filling them with some crazy glue and baking soda. This will be a first for me - so wish me luck.

[Berttt]

Here is a link to a topic, amongst it is a pic of where I am up to.

http://www.macrossworld.com/mwf/index.php?showtopic=15561

Basically:

Front fuse done

Main fuse and wings done

Tail section assembled

both legs/engines assembled

Booster dry fitted

Man I really need to get going and update that thread, the vehicles are almost done, and the Grey valk has decals on it.

Berttt

Edit: I hate in when I do that

Edited September 20, 2005 by Berttt

[wm cheng]

Hey Brettt, I couldn't find the link?

[wm cheng]

OK, airbrush starting up.

Safety first! I've been wanting to build a proper vented spray booth for years now, but in the meantime, I'd make do with a facemask. I've been spraying with my airbrush for years without any kind of protection, but January 16th of this year, my best friend Dan Lee died of lung cancer at the age of 35. He never smoked a day in his life and lead a very healthy lifestyle. However, we've been building models since highschool - and breathed all kinds of crap into our lungs - we were young and invincible! He was convinced that it must of been the chemicals we've been breathing in. Especially laquers which is an organic compound and highly toxic. So in lue of a proper spray booth for now, I implore you to use a proper facemask. I used to use the filterpaper mask that goes over your nose and mouth, but it didn't form a tight seal around the face. After consulting with our scenic artist, he swears by this mask from 3M which I highly recommend. There are replacable filter cartridges on either side for organic compounds filter 6000 series. So please, even if you have a spray booth, it might be worth considering this mask as well. Especially when we spray not only laquers but the Alclad metallizer stuff with real metal particles in a laquer suspension - double whammy!

[wm cheng]

Ok, enough preaching (modelling is already a dying hobby, we don't want our modellers to be dying themselves!)

Here's a shot of the foot/nozzles, make sure to carefully sand the sprue attachment points with a fine 600 grit paper, these Alclad metalizers are very unforgiving and any scratches and blemishes telegraph through.