First Build In 28 Years

[lancerunolfsson]

I did build one model back in 1992 or 3, it was a WWII Italian in line prop job but I can't remember specifically which it took me less than 4 hours to build and paint. Spread over two days because I had to leave it over night to let the Testors cement set up.

The reason I'm doing this thread is in hopes that as I build this thing I might get some useful tips with specific problems as I go along. One of the things I'll be doing is stating problems I had and how I overcame them (or didn't). I'm happy to hear feedback on that too.

This one is a MiG-15 Bis. When it gets it's Chinese decals it will be magically transformed into a Shenyang J-2. It's A Smer Model entitled only J.2

I'm about 4 hours in and what I've got done is the Cockpit assembled and the wings assembled. A LOT of time was spent trimming flash and sanding with an emery board.

Honestly my instinct about canopies and Cockpits was to glue the canopy on before I primed the model and spray it flat black with everything else then pick out the panes with the silver like I did with the last model I built.

Instead following the vauge assembly diagram I glued the instrument panel well ahead of the hole I assumed to be the hole for the end of the stick. Later I noticed the diagram of the assembled cock pit later in the instructions and saw that that was wrong. There is no hole for the stick and the hole in the deck of the cockpit piece is for nothing in particular. So I moved the panel without breaking it. I promptly lost the stick after I removed it from the stick. So I cut a very short length of stem wire. Heated up one end with my lighter and stuck it home with the needle nose pliers I was holding it with. Then I dicked around forever trying to glue in the pedals. Finally I wound up grinding a cheap pair of tweezers from harbor freight to more precisely handle tiny parts and stuck a little blob of blue tack on the back of the control panel to hold the cross piece of the pedals. Then I glued the pedal in place with Tamiya ultra-thin. When it set up I used an Xacto to trim away the visible blue tack there is just a little bit I could not get but it is pushed in well enough that it will show as a space when the cockpit is painted.


NOw that I look at the Picture I need to get in there with a dental tool and scrap more of the Tack out. Over Iron Sights it looked OK


Now when I've scraped and sanded the crap out of the Fuselage this is what I get when I check for fit.


JUst spotted a little piece of crud on the cockpit. Most of it is OK.



But the Tail is badly out of alignment. Notice how badly the two projections for the inside of the horizontal stabilizers on the vertical stabilizer don't line up. What do you do with something like this? It is not glued yet I was just checking for fit.
Thanks
Lance

 

[Wolf Star]

Are they completely different sizes or just with misaligned pins?

You could sand the port side down to match the starboard, but that doesn't seem like it would work well if they are completely different sizes. Or use epoxy putty or styrene strip to build out the rudder on the starboard one.

 

[lancerunolfsson]

They are completely different shapes. Notice how the halves of the fuselage lower in the picture align perfectly. It is as if one side of the tail in mold at the upper section was made differently from the other. Not just pins. Also anything I do is sort of going to blow because it has raised panel lines a totally different proposition from scoring indented panel lines. Not that I would be that great at that either.

What kind of epoxy putty do you use? The Kneadatite I use for sculpting is an A-B that heats up and melts styrene while it cures. I've gotten the Tamiya White and the Perfect Plastic Putty in the tubes but have not used before. The A-B I'm used to can be sculpted to almost any shape and hold it, while it cures. My experience with Testors tube putty when I was a kid is that it is drippy and runny. I guess the smart thing to do would be to try out the Tamiya and Perfect on plastic spoons an see what they do. I'm leaning toward using putty to build up one of the sides. But either way it won't align with the other. It will just look a little bit less like a mistake? when viewed from front or rear it will be pretty obvious that the ailerons are set one a couple of mm above the other. Completely aside from the work involved shifting one of the ailerons up or down is probably a no go because the plastic in the tail is so thin that one came off the sprue with hairline crack in the tail.

Thanks
Lance

 

[Wolf Star]

Green Stuff epoxy putty or Apoxie Sculpt are a couple of the better brands. Mix equal parts and they don't get so hot that they melt anything. Testors and the Tamiya types are polyester based, those will melt styrene if applied to thick.

You could try to build out the short tail with a strip of thin styrene and lightly sand it to shape. Once you sand, prime and paint it, it would look okay.

 

[lancerunolfsson]

This stuff Green Stuff ? It's the stuff I use it all the time, I love it! But the one time I tried to use it on plastic it melted the crap out of it. Granted it was a lot of putty on a thin piece of plastic. I'll do some putty experiments tomorrow with plastic spoons maybe I'll even try making a filler piece for the tail out of part of a handel. I can't get to the hobby shop to buy card till next week.

Thanks
Lance

 

[the Baron]

I use Apoxie Sculpt from Aves (some call it "A and B", too). It's a good 2-part epoxy putty. I use it for sculpting, but it serves well as a filler for this specific kind of job.
Is that the only spot where the fuselage halves didn't align properly? Are the nose and the cockpit aligned correctly, between the left and right halves? I ask because when I build Eduard's 1/48 P-39 kit years ago, I was warned to check the alignment, and sure enough, the two fuselage halves didn't align properly. If you lined them up either at the nose or at the tail, you got a very noticeable and bad step. You could reduce this by lining up the halves at the cockpit. That left a minor step at the nose and on the after edge of the rudder, and those were much easier to address.

 

[lancerunolfsson]

Yeah the only place they don't line up is at the rudder.

I just finished taking 4 plastic spoons and cutting down sections of the backs of the handels so there are little steps like the step on the tail were it does not align. I applied on one each Green stuff, Perfect Putty, Tamiya White and Testors. As far as ease of working with the Green stuff was head and shoulders over the others the perfect putty was the worst as far as shaping and sticking to the tool. all except the Green stuff would need a lot of sanding and possible multiple applications. Waiting for them to set up now. I expect the Green Stuff to melt the plastic will be surprised if it doesn't.

 

[lancerunolfsson]

I just realized last night what the fix for this is. This stuff is plastic. It bends. So I Just glue the rest of the hull together then after its set up bend the rudder into position clamp it then glue it with Ultra Thin.

 

[TheRaceforTerra]

I'm sure you'll get it to work, Lance!

 

[lancerunolfsson]

Thanks TRFT. Well That fixed it. Glued the rest of the fuselage then bent the tail into position clamped and glued. Rough time with the jet intake a lot of sanding and still a gap. I can fix that with a little Green stuff. Sort of like blowing an FX shot and saying "We'll fix it in post production."

 

[lancerunolfsson]

So a few sessions later. I had developed such tunnel vison on that tail that I wound up gluing the fuselage together with out without gluing in the intake and the exhaust first. The intake was a simple fix with putty when it would not fit all the way in. The exhaust on the other hand asymmetrically pushed apart the rear section of the fuselage. I looked inside to see if anything was hanging it up and that was nit the case. Maybe it would have worked better if I had glued it at the correct step. But I was stuck with what I did. I tried sanding the crap out of it. It dawned on me that on my next trip to Home Depot or the Hobby Shop I need to get some files. Because one thing I am nt is particularly patient. Any way I could not get it to fit in the amount of time I was willing to invest. So I rammed it home planning on fixing it with putty and this is the ugly result I got. Oh and by the way there was no neck on the thing none of it was supposed to protrude from the fuselage.

I was deeply depressed. While I thought about it for a few days. My first thought was cut it out and try again. But as soon as I put the tip of an X-acto to the putty I realized that if I put enough pressure on the blade to break through I was likely to cut into the Plastic. I entertained drilling the whole thing out and just painting the inside black. But then had visions of tearing the fuselage in half in a breaky way when the drill broke through. Then I thought of milling or grinding wich was maybe a little less dangerous. So I go through all my dremel tool drawers and find a sand impregnated rubber bullet. A tool I have not used since probably 1989. I forgot they even existed. So I went to work with that at a fairly low speed. Hoping it would not blow up in my face (32 year old rubber.) So I got a reasonable improvement in the overall symmetry of my mess. Because of the difference of the color between the putty and the plastic it is not as obvious on the lower left how blended the putty is to the plastic.

When I got that done this morning I decided to sculpt the doors for the nose wheel (the model will be wheels up.) So it will be a day before its hard it's realy cured enough to sand and sharpen up.

So the reason I over reliant on Green Stuff is that it is a medium I'm familiar with. Usually I'm sculpting stuff like this out of Green Stuff and making molds so I can have bunches for Gaming.

 

[TheRaceforTerra]

Oh, nice! What do you play, Lance?

 

[lancerunolfsson]

Thanks TRT
I've got a couple of guys that have been putting up with my house rules for 20+ years. Generally they are much more simple than the commercial sets. We want to get done in an hour or two. Usually buckets of dice some time's card activation movement, sometimes move. I always dick up the points system. Part if it wil work and after a whie we will figure out part of it doesn't. So we'll cycle through the armies I've made playing different things, ScI-Fi, Renaissance, Nile River War and Napoleonics,WWII. Some f them are tape measure and some of them are large Hexagons that hold multiple units.

 

[TheRaceforTerra]

Thanks TRT
I've got a couple of guys that have been putting up with my house rules for 20+ years. Generally they are much more simple than the commercial sets. We want to get done in an hour or two. Usually buckets of dice some time's card activation movement, sometimes move. I always dick up the points system. Part if it wil work and after a whie we will figure out part of it doesn't. So we'll cycle through the armies I've made playing different things, ScI-Fi, Renaissance, Nile River War and Napoleonics,WWII. Some f them are tape measure and some of them are large Hexagons that hold multiple units.

Very cool! Would love to see that. I play Warhammer (not at the moment for obvious reasons), Bolt Action, and various RPGs.

 

[lancerunolfsson]

TRFT, Here is some of my wargame stuff I have not updated in 6 years.
Lance's Wargame Page
Check back on Friday I'll try to put more stuff up.

 

[Thereal9thdoctor]

So a few sessions later. I had developed such tunnel vison on that tail that I wound up gluing the fuselage together with out without gluing in the intake and the exhaust first. The intake was a simple fix with putty when it would not fit all the way in. The exhaust on the other hand asymmetrically pushed apart the rear section of the fuselage. I looked inside to see if anything was hanging it up and that was nit the case. Maybe it would have worked better if I had glued it at the correct step. But I was stuck with what I did. I tried sanding the crap out of it. It dawned on me that on my next trip to Home Depot or the Hobby Shop I need to get some files. Because one thing I am nt is particularly patient. Any way I could not get it to fit in the amount of time I was willing to invest. So I rammed it home planning on fixing it with putty and this is the ugly result I got. Oh and by the way there was no neck on the thing none of it was supposed to protrude from the fuselage.
View attachment 1011
I was deeply depressed. While I thought about it for a few days. My first thought was cut it out and try again. But as soon as I put the tip of an X-acto to the putty I realized that if I put enough pressure on the blade to break through I was likely to cut into the Plastic. I entertained drilling the whole thing out and just painting the inside black. But then had visions of tearing the fuselage in half in a breaky way when the drill broke through. Then I thought of milling or grinding wich was maybe a little less dangerous. So I go through all my dremel tool drawers and find a sand impregnated rubber bullet. A tool I have not used since probably 1989. I forgot they even existed. So I went to work with that at a fairly low speed. Hoping it would not blow up in my face (32 year old rubber.) So I got a reasonable improvement in the overall symmetry of my mess. Because of the difference of the color between the putty and the plastic it is not as obvious on the lower left how blended the putty is to the plastic.
View attachment 1012
When I got that done this morning I decided to sculpt the doors for the nose wheel (the model will be wheels up.) So it will be a day before its hard it's realy cured enough to sand and sharpen up.
View attachment 1013
So the reason I over reliant on Green Stuff is that it is a medium I'm familiar with. Usually I'm sculpting stuff like this out of Green Stuff and making molds so I can have bunches for Gaming.View attachment 1014

I recently went through a stressful situation regarding my 1/350 TOS Enterprise build. I am almost done with it, and last weekend was attemping to try to get it over the finish line. Last weekend didn't go my way. First the shuttlebay, which was not the kit bay but a slightly smaller and more scale and screen accurate one, refused to fit into the secondary hull when I test fit the lower hull together with all wiring for light in the bay and hull. I ended up having to ditch the shuttlebay altogether and use the closed door bulkhead with my now modified doors glued together(I followed Trekriffic's lead and kitbashed the open and closed bay doors so it had a removable piece). Then I had alot of trouble getting the lower hull together due to the wires and the bulkhead needing to be set inside in such a way that it not only locked into a groove inside but forced the slightly out of round end of the hull into round... me and my GF fought with it for almost half an hour. Then I tried decaling the warp engines and screwed up on these grey panel decals that go on the underside of the nacelles.(I have been using both the kit decals and decals from HDA Modelworx, and ruined the same decal from both sets) At this point I was angry and depressed. I decided to take a break for a week... and then I didn't. This build has had ALOT of problems, mostly goofs by me, some because of the kit itself, but I am not one to give up. The kit isn't as perfect as I wanted it to be, but it still has been turning out to be the best job I've done on a model to this point in my life, so I just accept the screwups and keep plugging away.

Point being... if you gotta step back, do it. The hobby is supposed to be fun. But never entertain giving up. Especially if its something you really wanna see finished.

 

[lancerunolfsson]

I recently went through a stressful situation regarding my 1/350 TOS Enterprise build. I am almost done with it, and last weekend was attemping to try to get it over the finish line. Last weekend didn't go my way. First the shuttlebay, which was not the kit bay but a slightly smaller and more scale and screen accurate one, refused to fit into the secondary hull when I test fit the lower hull together with all wiring for light in the bay and hull. I ended up having to ditch the shuttlebay altogether and use the closed door bulkhead with my now modified doors glued together(I followed Trekriffic's lead and kitbashed the open and closed bay doors so it had a removable piece). Then I had alot of trouble getting the lower hull together due to the wires and the bulkhead needing to be set inside in such a way that it not only locked into a groove inside but forced the slightly out of round end of the hull into round... me and my GF fought with it for almost half an hour. Then I tried decaling the warp engines and screwed up on these grey panel decals that go on the underside of the nacelles.(I have been using both the kit decals and decals from HDA Modelworx, and ruined the same decal from both sets) At this point I was angry and depressed. I decided to take a break for a week... and then I didn't. This build has had ALOT of problems, mostly goofs by me, some because of the kit itself, but I am not one to give up. The kit isn't as perfect as I wanted it to be, but it still has been turning out to be the best job I've done on a model to this point in my life, so I just accept the screwups and keep plugging away.

Point being... if you gotta step back, do it. The hobby is supposed to be fun. But never entertain giving up. Especially if its something you really wanna see finished.

I did finally wind up putting that thing together. Then I painted it acording to the Chinese Camouflage scheme on the cover of the box. I was not able to get the patches of green to lay down on the base color evenly. I was really disappointed in the results as far as a scale model would be concerned so it sits in a drawer. There is a chance I'll at some point install a Sci-Fi critter in the Cockpit and repaint it as a Wargame piece.

I did wind up painting some 285th scale WWII planes that for the most part I was happy with to play Dog Fight games with and had some fun with my friends for a couple of months. In the mean time I've got all these 1/72 kits I bought. I don't know if I'm going to get back to that. I did come close to finishing a Hobby Boss Brewster Buffalo There was a lot less pain involved in that. That's in a drawer too. Plan is a Navy paint job for that if I get back to it it seems I can at least lay down solid colors in 1/72 scale.

Thanks for the encouragement.