Whats Lying on your Workbench MK IV

[pengbuzz]

UPDATE:

It's been a bit of a slog engraving new panel lines into this model; some of it had to be filled and one spot on the top between the wings and the nose needs some revision. But I'm getting ready soon to mate the two halves (with wings):

 

@peter My apologies on the delay, but we had some stuff to take care of (I got ripped off an another site and had to put in a Paypal claim); I'm planning to go to the post office and get your stuff underway bro!

(Seriously...I HATE thieves who take my money and try to rook me. grrr.....)

Stay tuned... the penguzz is getting ready to go "jaws" on the guy who tried to pull this...

[MechTech]

@arbit Battleship parts - what made Star Wars movie models what they are today! Ship models are great for all sorts of bits!

@pengbuzz That sucks about getting ripped off! Happened to me to by a well known internet vendor, who'll remain nameless. Have fun with the panel lines. The only thing more fun than that is watching paint dry or sanding seems - MT

[pengbuzz]

8 hours ago, MechTech said:

@arbit Battleship parts - what made Star Wars movie models what they are today! Ship models are great for all sorts of bits!

@pengbuzz That sucks about getting ripped off! Happened to me to by a well known internet vendor, who'll remain nameless. Have fun with the panel lines. The only thing more fun than that is watching paint dry or sanding seems - MT

Which is what I'm doing about now...

[Thom]

@Chronocidal Looks like a real good model is on the way!

@pengbuzz for a moment I legit thought you had blowed it to hell! Glad to see it's moving along, and sorry to hear about the rippy-offy. Tear into'em!

[Chronocidal]

Update on that ten hour print.. first one came out as good as I could have really asked for, so the mirror version is currently printing, and I'm cleaning up the first one a little.  Very little to do, except on the back face of the box.

Back face is recessed to accept a plate with the exhaust nozzles, which I already printed months ago, and used to get a grip on the printer's settings, since it's a small and relatively quick-to-print part.

I was rather shocked to see that the piece fits.  Not just fits, it's quite snug, and difficult to remove.  I was absolutely not expecting the tolerances to be that tight, since the model parts do not have any allowances made for fitting.  I was fully prepared to need to file down the edges of the plate to fit in the recess, but all I had to do was clean out the remnants of the support structure.

I probably could have saved myself some trouble cleaning the back face by printing the engine pod in top and bottom halves, but I've never really liked how upper surfaces get printed with panel lines involved, and smoothing out the back of the box really shouldn't be too difficult.  Also, the goal is mostly to make this as easy to assemble as possible, with all of the parts sliding together with a good friction fit, since it will make part clean-up and painting very easy.

Probably just need to do a little filling of the pits with superglue or an ABS-compatible putty, and sanding the whole thing smooth.  The ribbed texturing will take some work to clean up still, but it's really smooth already.

Edited April 7, 2021 by Chronocidal

[arbit]

Got the primer on. Amazing how it brings it together.

[peter]

15 hours ago, pengbuzz said:

UPDATE:

It's been a bit of a slog engraving new panel lines into this model; some of it had to be filled and one spot on the top between the wings and the nose needs some revision. But I'm getting ready soon to mate the two halves (with wings):

 

@peter My apologies on the delay, but we had some stuff to take care of (I got ripped off an another site and had to put in a Paypal claim); I'm planning to go to the post office and get your stuff underway bro!

(Seriously...I HATE thieves who take my money and try to rook me. grrr.....)

Stay tuned... the penguzz is getting ready to go "jaws" on the guy who tried to pull this...

Oh man, don't even sweat it, take care of yourself first.

I have plenty on my plate to keep me busy......it's what happens when you stop building models for 17 years, but keep collecting man-crap during that whole time.

Looking forward to seeing your F14 come alive.....when is Top Gun coming out?  I might be inspired to build one too.

Edited April 8, 2021 by peter
Edited for spelling

[peter]

As Anakin once said, this is where the fun begins....TV Missiles.

What a pain in the buttocks.

I was going to leave the missile engines attached to the runners and paint them but ended up cutting them off anyway.

Uneven primer, marks from where I cut them off the sprues.....what a mess.

Got them covered with some paint and the mess is hardly noticeable.

Canopy masking....another weak point for me.  For my Strike Valks, I even used the Hasegawa supplied decals, but I remembered they didn't like sticking to bare clear plastic very much so I decided I better not be lazy and paint these ones instead.

Ok, so not an exact color match, but I don't think I will ever go stark white on any Macross builds.

Same goes with the 1S.

 

 

[peter]

So after some detail painting on the Valks, I hosed all the parts down with Pledge.  While waiting for the pledge to cure, I started on the base.

Lots of what-do-you-call-these marks?  I'm going to be lazy and not fill and sand these.....

More here, but again, leaving them.  At least they are evenly placed and almost look like they're supposed to be there, haha!

Gray primer, plus these two shades of gray are all I have to play with.

I honestly don't have any idea what I'm doing, but it's fun to play around with the airbrush and experiment.  I was going to paint the individual tie down points a metallic color, but on closer inspection of the real ones, they are actually just painted the same gray as the rest of the deck.  They only appear brighter because they are smooth and not textured like the rest of the deck.

It's hard to make out, but this Tamiya paint marker produces color that almost looks like chrome or highly polished steel.

[peter]

And after hosing the deck down with Pledge, I got started with the decals on the 1J.  I haven't built a TV Hikaru 1J in ages.  The last one may have been an ARII 1/100 fighter maybe 35 years ago.  Up until now, I was still pondering over whether or not I should build the DYRL skull squadron scene from the Sega game, but I guess I could always do that later.

Looks like the rest are extra, maybe for a Max or Milia.

Always good to have spare decals, just in case.

I was really worried about the decals disintegrating since I'd heard nightmares about others experiencing this, but like my Strike Valk kits, these were solid.

I would say these are still light years better than the POS decals that came with the AMT Star Trek decals and these decals are almost 20 years old.

More to follow.

[pengbuzz]

On 4/7/2021 at 8:56 PM, peter said:

And after hosing the deck down with Pledge, I got started with the decals on the 1J.  I haven't built a TV Hikaru 1J in ages.  The last one may have been an ARII 1/100 fighter maybe 35 years ago.  Up until now, I was still pondering over whether or not I should build the DYRL skull squadron scene from the Sega game, but I guess I could always do that later.

Looks like the rest are extra, maybe for a Max or Milia.

Always good to have spare decals, just in case.

I was really worried about the decals disintegrating since I'd heard nightmares about others experiencing this, but like my Strike Valk kits, these were solid.

I would say these are still light years better than the POS decals that came with the AMT Star Trek decals and these decals are almost 20 years old.

More to follow.

Really liking the off-white tone you're using, Peter! I makes the valks look more realistic and sets off the colors on their livery, and the flight deck is looking absolutely on-track!

Yeah...the Hasegawa decals are nowhere near the pain the Enterprise collection ones are! No idea when Top Gun: Maverick comes out though...

 

UPDATE:

Got some more work done on the 'cat:

Got the nacelles glued to the underside of the plane (what a royal pain!!!); I also did some detailing work on the engines:

The two "ship's wheel" things go in the exhaust "cans" on the fighter. But the way Revell molded them, they were solid and would hide most of the detail behind them. So, in typical pengbuzz fashion, I sanded them down from behind until the plastic was paper thin, and simply used the knife to "pop out" the sections filling in between the ribs. A coat o paint and in these went.

Meantime, side seam blues on the nose:

Revell made sure that trying to get a professional result here would hurt like all...ahem. Anyways, I took some Permatex Plastic Welder (cousin to Devcon version), did a small fill-in, and then sanded the areas down with a sanding block.

Results;

I'll need to scribe more panel lines in the area, but that's a small price to pay, as I would have needed to do it anyhow.

Then the big moment: the joining of the halves (and wings) into a whole:

No canopy at this point: just masking tape to protect the open cockpit while I sprayed some primer to get a look at the fit in certain areas.

On another note...as I was building my Tomcat, I got a delivery recently-

the canopy I requested from Tamiya (made sure to mark the box so I wouldn't confuse it)

Well, I couldn't get a decent pic of the canopy (too transparent  and my camera just couldn't get a good one), so I got a couple of pics off the internet for you folks to get the idea (courtesy of Man vs. Model):

 

(much better than the crappy one Revell provided:

So, I now had two canopies and only one would fit the model properly. Knowing that the Tamiya one was not made for the Revell kit and that it would be an entire project to even try fitting it to my model, I knew what I had to do.

 

I sadly put the Tamiya one to one side.

 

So, I picked up the Revell one, examined it carefully for any knicks, scratches or other issues. Once satisfied, I polished it up a bit on the runner, got my glue....

 

... and tossed the wafer-thin Revell reject canopy to one side while I cut, sanded, fit and glued/ plastic welded the Tamiya canopy to my Tomcat:

Stay tuned....

 

 

Edited April 9, 2021 by pengbuzz

[MechTech]

@Chronocidal Your print came out great! The details look good too. Getting rid of print bias is a pain. If it's ABS, you can use a acetone vapor bath to smooth it over. If not, sorry. Priming and sanding are a pain (my least favorites).

@arbit Your door came out great!

@peter Your aircraft and flight deck are looking good! Yeah, ejector pin marks are a pain! I wish they would do other things to get the parts out of the mold, but that's the easiest way for now.

@pengbuzz It probably feels like your wrestling a full-sized lion vs a tomcat, but your work is a HUGE improvement over the stock! - MT

[505thAirborne]

To much good stuff going on here lately, I love it!! Good to see some Tomcats & VF-1's in the works... and yes, the missiles are a royal pain. 

It's been raining for two days now and my camera is just awesome with indoor light (#sarcasm), tomorrow should be dry & sunny for better pics. Here's my VF-19 Advance & VF-31A so far. I went the Bandai DX route with the decals for the VF-19... I figured why not. 

The Kairos is almost done, one more key element needs to arrive for the 19 to be completed. 

 

[arbit]

505th, Wow! Really nice paint work.  You have a nice set there.

[derex3592]

I LOVE those paint schemes @505thAirborne!!!  That blue-grey is GORG!!! . I want something like that for the Cat's Eye.  Over here, the Runabout got one last MATCHING base color, so now I can at least start with a cleaner slate. I've got some tricky soldering to do and then I just need to remake the windows and it's time to attempt mating the top and bottom together! Speaking of the Kittie Eyeball, I AM making slow but noticable progress on the stripping of the Cat's Eye back down to the resin! 

 

[peter]

Almost cooked the 1J today.  Tamiya panel line on Pledge/Futures for the lines, but I made the mistake of trying to clean it with lacquer thinner, which ate right through the pledge and into some paint.

Luckily the really bad parts are on the inside of the leg and basically hidden anyway.  

Also some progress on the base.

The yellow decals supplied weren't quite long enough, or I missed something...will have to make it up with paint.  By the way, the backs of these things are surprisingly clean.  I looked up some real photos for weathering references but a lot of images showed them incredibly clean.

Then I realized I lost the hatch for this hole.  I looked everywhere in the shag carpet.....

Wife found it on top of the freezer in another room of all places.

Started on Roy while other stuff was drying.  I have to say these decals are a dream compared to the AMT decals.  20 years old and no breakages so far.

Edited April 11, 2021 by peter
Edited for spelling

[pengbuzz]

Hey, at least you lucked out on the damage to the paint!

As for the weathering: they basically don't get a whole lot of dirt per se, but i would so a very light wash just to bring out the details, then some light drybrushing.

[derex3592]

@peter - Glad the mess up didn't cook the 1J totally!  I've said it before many times, I'll say it again, Tamiya Panel Liner is nasty stuff.  I don't trust it much at all. I go Flory's now 95% of the time. You just never know what that stuff will eat through/damage when you go back in with lacquer thinner to clean it even after sealing the snot out of the plastic!  I've had good results with it a couple of times, but way more bad results. Not worth it IMHO.

[MechTech]

@505thAirborne That paint scheme DOES look awesome. You can't tell it isn't canon.

@derex3592 I'm glad to see things are going smooth on the paint front for you!

@peter Great progress on your Valk and Deck! The paint is looking good!

Man, if I don't keep checking everyday, there's a TON of stuff I miss! It's good to see this sleepy thread becoming more active! - MT

[derex3592]

A new challenge... for another day.... waaaay down the road somewhere... 

 

[pengbuzz]

15 minutes ago, derex3592 said:

A new challenge... for another day.... waaaay down the road somewhere... 

 

Nice project to look forward to; reminds me of the 1:200 Round 2 version I did from their "man in space" series:

They had included a replica of the original fold-out cardboard "gantry"; well... a Pengbuzz needs more than just "fold out". Someday I'll finish this one...

Update 1:

Got some more work done on the Tomcat's nose;

Canopy seems to have taken pretty cleanly; just need to fix a couple of small issues. I'll also glue the pitot tubes on when the primes is dry enough to not smudge off the plane (Rustoleum 2X takes 5-7 days to bond properly to plastic).

 

Update 2:

First colors on the Refit E! It needs a lot of touch-up (I never can keep white clean, even with gloves!). But she's finally underway, and over the next week or so, I'll refine her even further.

 

Stay tuned...

[MechTech]

@pengbuzz The Tamiya canopy looks like it belongs on there! - MT

[derex3592]

Milestone moment this morning!  New windows made and glued in place and all wires connected with all lights working! Also brush painted a final layer of Future over all the LCARS displays to give them a shiny glass look. Moving on! 

Edited April 10, 2021 by derex3592

[arbit]

3 hours ago, derex3592 said:

Milestone moment this morning!  New windows made and glued in place and all wires connected with all lights working! Also brush painted a final layer of Future over all the LCARS displays to give them a shiny glass look. Moving on! 

Great work. Your excitement is contagious.

[pengbuzz]

6 hours ago, derex3592 said:

Milestone moment this morning!  New windows made and glued in place and all wires connected with all lights working! Also brush painted a final layer of Future over all the LCARS displays to give them a shiny glass look. Moving on! 

Ah...so back to the Future, eh?

[derex3592]

[505thAirborne]

Looking good everyone! 

A couple quick shots of the 31A & 19. Pretty much calling the Kairos done, while the 19 has a few more additions to add on. 

 

 

 

[pengbuzz]

Small update: After going for some time without a printer now, my wife has finally had enough!  We went online and researched some printers, and finally decided on a Canon PIXMA MG2522 color printer. Looked good (read the reviews on Amazon and a few other places), so we purchased it online and will pick it up at the store tomorrow.

Hopefully I'll be able to print decals again...we'll see.

[Chronocidal]

Been making good progress printing some of the little odds and ends of this project, but I'm up to the point where I just need to start digging into the elephant - the big central wing piece that ties everything together.

Estimating about a twenty hour print, but I'm expecting to have to restart once or twice as I test the orientation and support structure.  Big pieces like this tend to lift off the print bed due to shrinkage, so I'm hoping this will be enough to get it stuck at the start, and not work loose over time.  The extra support fins I added to the model will hopefully give it a solid foundation, since they expand the footprint quite a bit.

Time to cross my fingers and toes, clench up my backside, and get to it!  

[Sanity is Optional]

Try putting some kapton tape over the surface of the print bed, and then scratching it up with a piece of sandpaper. Works for me when I do 400mm wide PLA prints at work.

Edited April 11, 2021 by Sanity is Optional

[Chronocidal]

The bed is actually covered by a textured sheet, so the sandpaper probably wouldn't change anything, but I'll see if I can find some of that tape.  Worst case, I can probably try a gluestick on it as well.

I usually don't have -too- many problems with detaching, but larger prints with ABS have been tending to pull up just from the stress of the cooling plastic above the bed.

I won't know until tomorrow though, got too many things to do in the interim, so I won't start this print until tomorrow afternoon.

[peter]

On 4/9/2021 at 2:33 PM, pengbuzz said:

Nice project to look forward to; reminds me of the 1:200 Round 2 version I did from their "man in space" series:

They had included a replica of the original fold-out cardboard "gantry"; well... a Pengbuzz needs more than just "fold out". Someday I'll finish this one...

Update 1:

Got some more work done on the Tomcat's nose;

Canopy seems to have taken pretty cleanly; just need to fix a couple of small issues. I'll also glue the pitot tubes on when the primes is dry enough to not smudge off the plane (Rustoleum 2X takes 5-7 days to bond properly to plastic).

 

Update 2:

First colors on the Refit E! It needs a lot of touch-up (I never can keep white clean, even with gloves!). But she's finally underway, and over the next week or so, I'll refine her even further.

 

Stay tuned...

Man, you build a lot of stuff I like ...rockets, Tomcats and Refits

[peter]

12 hours ago, derex3592 said:

Milestone moment this morning!  New windows made and glued in place and all wires connected with all lights working! Also brush painted a final layer of Future over all the LCARS displays to give them a shiny glass look. Moving on! 

I don't understand electronics or lighting at all, but that looks so professional.

[peter]

5 hours ago, 505thAirborne said:

Looking good everyone! 

A couple quick shots of the 31A & 19. Pretty much calling the Kairos done, while the 19 has a few more additions to add on. 

 

 

 

Man, look at all that stuff on the 19!  I don't think I've ever seen that those boosters before.

 

Nice looking Valks

[peter]

Bit more work on the 1J.  Forgot how tiny these little clear bits are.  

Sort of like the way this turned out, details I never really paid much attention to with the Super/Strikes.  Also, I don't think I ever built a Hikaru 1J fighter before so this is a pretty new look for me.

The Flat Clear hid some of the flaws and blended some of the problems so they aren't that noticeable to the naked eye.  I'm calling any blemishes you see battle damage or weathering, hahahaha.

Adding some soot at the muzzle and ejection port.  I have a few guns I never clean, just to see how long I can shoot them, and they are filthy. Figured I'd try to simulate that look.

Roy's 1S got a bit more work done too.  Nice to see the instructions in 1/72 scale (not the case for Hikaru's 1J).

Good for lining up the missiles.

Bit of a Valkyrie factory going on here.  Running out of desk space, glad I didn't try to build a third one at the same time.

Toying around with the idea of relieving Roy of duty and putting in Ryo in his place.

Don't get me wrong, I really like Roy's character, but he dies too much.  Saeba Ryo on the other hand seems to be absolutely impossible to kill.

Took the old Bandai 1/72 scale pilot on the right, split his legs open, separated them from his hands, shaved off his flight suit and added shoulders for Ryo's blazer.  Also, trimmed a bit of his flight suit to expose Ryo's neck, then tried to add hair.  I've never sculpted anything before, let alone figures, so if it turns out looking like crap, I'll just bin it and put Roy back in the cockpit.

 

Edited April 11, 2021 by peter
Edited for spelling