Landlubber Mike

I got this one across the finish line with no impact to my mental stability - maybe that was always in question when I picked up the kit and aftermarket, but that's another story... After clear coating with the Mr. Hobby matt clear, I let it sit for a few days while mentally preparing myself for the rigging. I wasn't completely sure about the rigging for this ship (or Tachibana class of ships generally), but looked at other models including the one on the box for the Fivestar PE set and just went with what I thought looked correct. I ended up using 0.047mm rigging thread (yep, 5/100 of a millimeter) - very fine tweezers a must! Thanks as always for all the help, encouragement, and kind words. I'm not scared off by 1/700, and in fact, have a decent stash that I'll be working through. For whatever reason, I found this scale to be quite enjoyable and I'm less hard on myself than when it comes to other types of models. Maybe because mistakes are pretty much invisible to the naked eye, who knows. Thanks again! Here are the final pictures. At some point I'll put it in a waterline diorama but maybe I'll wait until I have a few more completed so I can do them all at once.

The one tricky thing with this build was that these cars have been around relatively unchanged for decades. When I pulled up pictures online, the colors of various parts were all over the place, as I'm sure owners replaced parts, customized parts, etc. For example, the surrounds on the small orange lights. In many cases they were black, but occasionally I came across them in silver. So, I just went with silver as more of a brighter contrast against the blue body. In any event, this was a fun little build. I kinda like building the more quirky subjects, and this is certainly one. They may not be as impressive as a McLaren, but I would offer that they are equally a big part of automotive history due to a design that has largely remained unchanged for decades, its customer fan base, etc.

Hang in there! I’ve heard the dreaded ping off the tweezers too many times. Not fun at all!

The kit had an indentation in the firewall as a type of partial shelf for the battery. My immediate thought was that there must have been more to keep things in place!

I thought about the battery wires. As much as I love cars, I know nothing about the interior parts and I hate the thought of adding extra detail and getting it all wrong. Personally, I would just display my cars as curbside anyway given that the interior parts on these older cars aren't particularly crisp and don't look very realistic. I've seen some guys replace a lot of that stuff with resin and other aftermarket, but for me, I like to focus on the body styles. Plus, adding all that aftermarket to deck out the engine bay can get expensive quickly. I do have a few Pocher and Revival kits in the stash, so for them, I'll think about displaying things open. There at least I have good parts, good diagrams and instructions, etc.

Wow Chris, sorry to have not come across this one sooner! What an incredible job! You really knocked this one out of the park, congratulations! Even more amazing that it was your first at this scale.

I forgot to show what's under the hood. I didn't completely deck it out as one of my daughters wanted it. My guess is that it will come back in pieces by the end of the week. 🤨 I think I would have a lot easier of a time building a beat up, worn car. I haven't quite figured out the level of shading and highlighting, etc. that is appropriate. On the body, I used a tiny bit of grey to accent some of the panels (the door jams I used black as that's how the car looks in the various pictures I found). The engine though doesn't quite have the look I want to get to. Maybe next time I'll go lighter on the shading for the engine parts.

This will be another stunner - great subject and lots of goodies there! Does the Flyhawk PE deck give you a lot more detail? I noticed in a bunch of my 1/700 kits and their aftermarket, Flyhawk includes deck replacements. I looked at one of my kits, and the PE looked pretty much exactly like the kit deck. I wasn't sure if there was a particular reason to do that? Maybe to ease the painting task? Maybe for stability?

Decided to dust this one off and finish it. The Tamiya kit is a lot nicer of a kit than the Airfix kit, that's for sure - fit, parts, options, etc. I have to say, I have the utmost respect for people that do model cars. The kits may be a lot simpler in terms of parts, etc. that things like planes and ships, but if you want a flawless paint job and that showroom new finish, it's not easy. I think it's actually harder than with planes and ships where you can get away with weathering and other techniques because the paint job isn't critical. Fun little build, and I learned a lot. At least this time unlike with the Airfix kit, I managed to build it with all four wheels touching the ground. I'm slowly getting better

Isn't that always how it is? Every time my wife picks out the one thing she likes best out of a set of potential options, I don't even bother asking anymore because I know it will be the most expensive.

Congrats on the move! I'm very envious of your workshop. Glad to see that the damage wasn't too extensive!

I have the Anatomy of the Ship book, and didn't see any pictures of what I think you are asking. Have you looked here at these reviews of the kit and PE sets? They have the instructions copied there so they might be of some help? I unfortunately couldn't locate a similar review for the "Super Detail" set. http://www.modelwarships.com/reviews/ships/cv/cve-73/350-hsg/hsg-review.html http://www.modelwarships.com/reviews/pe/hasegawa/350-cve73basic/hsg-review.html http://www.modelwarships.com/reviews/misc/hasegawa/350-deckcve/hsg-review.html http://www.modelwarships.com/reviews/misc/hasegawa/350-usn-ac/hsg-review.html

Glad to see you're dusting this one off. Nice progress! I recently picked up the Hasegawa kit and am surprised to not see more models of these pretty cool escort carriers around.

Looking really great EG. That Nashville looks like a really nice kit. Hadn't heard of Iron Shipwrights before, but I'm trying to be a good boy and not spend too much time on that site

Great work!

That looks fantastic, excellent work as always!

Hey thanks very much! Sorry to have missed that you replied on my log. You should definitely put up a build log as there are a lot of helpful people on here. At some point I do want to get back to this model as I visited the real one a few years ago. Too many modeling interests, too little time unfortunately 😩

Quote of the month there lol

Wow, that's stunning! Again, I'm amazed you guys can do planes in card - really cool!

Yeah, it's sort of a hidden feature I suppose. The wing inset pieces are there, but no instructions for them. Doesn't look too difficult to implement, but certainly a little trickier than putting in the drop in wing sections from Wolfpack that I'm using on the Wildcat. I'm glad I did the Wolfpack first as it's given me some experience on how the wing folds operated.

Did you start this one? I can't believe how well these planes model in card with all the compound curves.

With my foray into plastic, I've done four Accurate Miniatures kits - well, I guess technically two were in-house creations (the F3Fs), while the F4B-4 and the P-6E were repops of some older Monogram kits. I was looking up other kits with yellow wings and came across the AM Vindicator - I had read about the plane, but never knew what exactly it looked like. When I found it, I was like, man this is quite the ugly bird, but kinda in an attractive way. Plus, when I saw there was a yellow wings version available, I was in. The knock on the kit is that a number of them had an ugly depression in the side of the rear half of the fuselage, which was a pain to fix because it was in that area that looks corrugated. When I bought the kit from UMM-USA, I asked if the particular kit they were selling had that issue and the owner, John Vojtech, kindly included another set of fuselage halves that look perfect. What a nice guy! Thanks for the clarification on it being pre-way versus neutrality patrol. I think I had actually copied those words from either the instructions or another build log, so good to have my terms correct! I'll probably go with the kit markings, as they are different and I won't have to paint the cowl a separate color. Otherwise, I have the Yellow Wings decals set for this plane and can do it up in the typical fashion of other yellow wings (like the other planes I built) with the belly band, painted cowl and tail, etc.: For the wing fold, the kit does not include any instructions at all, but includes the insert pieces necessary when you cut the wings in half. Another gentleman actually went through with it, and posted pictures here: http://www.hyperscale.com/2008/features/sb2u1cb_1.htm

Thanks EG for the kind words and your thoughts. Looking at the pictures, I think you're right about going dark over light, especially to bring the line down a bit. Speaking of the line, I didn't mean for that sharp point near the tail, so I smoothed the curve on that one. I need to finish this one as I have my eye on other kits in the stash. Am thinking of doing the Accurate Miniatures SB2U-1 Vindicator kit as a simpler build given that there's not too much aftermarket available for it. I was thinking of doing it as the box cover pre-war neutrality patrol colors - I guess I'm a glutton for punishment when it comes to yellow wings. Anyway, looks like a nice and fairly straightforward kit - except for the fact that apparently the kit has parts to build it with the wings folded, though no instructions on how to do so. 🤔

Looks great - love the interior colors. The flocking came out fantastic.

Nice! These look like some sweet upgrades. Can't wait to see you put them together!