Landlubber Mike

Made some additional progress with the F3Fs the past few days. Had some fit issues with the cowl for the F3F-2, but managed to get it on ok. Cowl for the F3F-1 is going to need the red re-done. Some of the aluminum color had run under the masking, and no matter how many coats of red I've added on top of it (even trying to add primer) it's a bit dark in that area. Probably would be ok if I weather, but I'm going to keep the weathering to a minimum given that these didn't see combat and likely were kept in fairly nice condition (plus, the colors on these are just too vibrant to darken too much). So, I'm just going to start over on the red section, using Mr. Surfacer, then a coat of Tamiya white primer, then the Vallejo red. Otherwise, everything so far is going ok: I think I mentioned earlier that I tried painting the US insignias using the Montex stencils. Decals would have been a lot easier, as paint ran a bit under the various stencils. Have been spending quite a bit of time trying to touch them up. They aren't perfect, but they came out fairly nicely I think: I think I'm going to apply the decals and weathering directly, and not add a coat of Future. I don't want to dull the metallic colors too much by adding multiple clear coats. We'll see how that goes. After, I'll use Vallejo's metal varnish to seal things. Thanks for looking in!

Beautiful work!

Beautiful work!

Looks fantastic Ernie! Add a little sawdust filler and you’ll be good to go. I’m sure Speedy appreciates the company on the work bench 😉

Really beautiful work Chris - fantastic job!

Thanks Lou! I actually did just that in setting it up in the display cabinet. Who knows, maybe I'll get a laugh out of it once I get a few more models under my belt.

Beautiful job man, looks fantastic! Just like the real thing!

That's probably doable, but I'm sure I will end up busting off the detail pieces, mucking up the body finish, etc. I'll just chalk this one up to a learning experience and move on, especially since I have other kits on the shelf that I can work on. Disappointing as now that's the only thing I'll notice when I look at it 😕

@wefalck, just to get back to what you're saying about the front wheels, I looked at the model and you are totally correct Ugh, now I remember that a few months ago when I broke off the rear axle, the front axle broke off as well when I had to separate the chassis to reattach the rear axle. There was no indication of where either axle were supposed to fit because again, the kit didn't have good anchoring for either axle, but just trapped it between the chassis and the tub. So, I guessed, and it looks like I guessed incorrectly. Oh well, live and learn I suppose. One lesson - use epoxy when you are worried about connections that aren't very secure and that may be subject to stress. Hopefully the Tamiya kit will come out better. I had some time today and got started on building the engine and priming a number of the parts. So far so good. Even on the engine, you can see where the Tamiya developers took care in where the sprue tab connections should be, where potential sink marks could occur (minimal in this kit, and to the extent there are some, they are in hidden areas), better connection points, etc. The Airfix had a number of sink marks in visible areas that had to be filled and sanded, and some parts came in two halves that didn't match up very well and needed a lot of work to make them look decent. Tamiya took the approach of molding a number of these as full pieces so you don't run into those issues.

Thank you! The kit had the umbrella stick - problem is, the way the kit is designed, you need to insert it from the engine into the body, which then goes through the firewall on the chassis and into the interior of the car. I couldn't get the stick to fit through the hole in the body into the interior so I just left it off. I ordinarily would have test fitted things, but after trying to add the body to the chassis early in the build and busting loose the rear axle, I wasn't too keen on doing more test fittings. Like a few other items on the model, the "dashboard" also didn't have a good system of anchoring it to the model, so I was worried that pushing the umbrella stick could cause the dashboard to fall off which would be a disaster (it had broken off twice before when I was preparing the body). This was a problem with most of the kit - instead of having typical pins and holes to align parts together, there were little nubs maybe 0.5mm and dimples rather than holes. I found I had to drill out the dimples and switch to two-part epoxy (from CA and plastic cement) in order to provide extra strength to keep parts together. I just looked at the Tamiya kit and it similarly runs the umbrella stick from the engine into the interior of the car. But, it looks like the body/firewall give better access and anchoring points. Hopefully it works better as I am considering building the model with the top open. The parts also look much crisper - looking at the final pictures of the Airfix, I should have tried to sand things like the bumpers more - without paint they looked fine, but after painting and trying to do the two tones, you can see how the plastic isn't particularly smooth. I think the front wheels are fairly centered - I took the pictures from my phone close up, so from the angle, they probably look further back than they are.

All done! Had some fit issues with getting the hood on the car (others apparently have had similar issues), and I had to cut off a high part of the fan to get it to fit. Ended up gluing the hood on anyway, so not a big deal. The back wheels are a bit tight to the wheel wells, and one tire is slightly elevated versus the other three. A few of the detail parts didn't really fit, or had poor anchoring, which was a bit frustrating - especially when it came to the chassis/axles, which as I mentioned earlier, were assembled by trapping the axle between two chassis pieces. The rear axle broke off when I was test fitting early in the build and required me to break apart the chassis to fix it (possibly why there some issues with the tires). All that being said, it was a fun little kit and a good intro back into plastic car modeling after more than 35 years. Learned a lot and got to experiment, so all good here. I ended up scratch building the grill on the hood. I didn't really like how it was a solid piece, and figured I would try to first hollow out the spacings between the grill cars with a tiny ball bit on my micromotor. The bars were really too thin though, and I noticed the tendency of the plastic to fuse to the bit tip, which tended to make more of a mess of things and not give the precision with the clean bit (cracked the bottom of the frame which was annoying). So I scrapped the idea, hollowed out the interior, and rebuilt the grill works. Was tricky, and took a ton of time, but was a good learning experience. It's not perfect, but doesn't look bad from a normal viewing distance. While things were drying, I pulled the Tamiya Citroen 2CV off the shelf. It looks like a better kit, with crisper details, pieces have proper anchoring components, etc. Will be interesting to see how this one builds relative to the Airfix. I'll probably just add the Tamiya build to this log. Thanks for following and for the helpful advice!

Fantastic! I have a 1/700 destroyer I'm working on and your work is giving me incentive to finish it. I feel for you on the PE - that stuff will make you go blind for sure!

Thanks for the kind words! I feel like I still have a long way to go up the learning curve, but have greatly benefited from folks like you and others here who have graciously posted your tips and experiences and have answered my many questions. I couldn’t thank you all enough.

Very nice! You're very talented. Best wishes as you recover my friend

I haven't used gloves, but good idea - I better start!

Thanks Nick - that’s very helpful on the pens. I noticed that also. The finish is pretty amazing when done right - reminds me of the liquid terminator from Terminator 2 with the vibrant metal color.

Thanks for the kind words everyone. I've made good progress on the Duck, and am on the home stretch. Chassis, and engine are complete: Also painted the exterior of the car body. I started with Tamiya Dark Yellow (rattle can) as you can see on the body, but it was more tan that I would have liked. So, I added a couple of layers of Vallejo Yellow Wash which you can see on the hood. Looks much closer to the yellow color I was looking for: I don't have pictures, but I've been playing around with some Molotow markers that I have. I used black to outline the doors, which worked nicely. Only problem was I applied the wash thinking the black markings had dried, and ended up with some black smears that I needed to paint over. Now I know that the Molotow black markers need time to dry. 🙄 I also tried using the Molotow chrome pens on some of the accents, including the mirrors. The color is absolutely incredible, but I found the markers a bit tricky to use. Will have to try them again. At this point, I'm close to being done with this kit with everything being painted - just need to stage things including touch ups which takes more time than I usually think. Even though this kit is fairly simple, and not the crispest in terms of the details, it's been a fun first car kit since I was a kid. I have the Tamiya Citroen 2CV kit as well that I might build after this one. Looks a little better in terms of crispness of details, etc., so it should be interesting to see how they compare.

Well it's been a month, but I've slowly made some progress on the F3Fs. On one of the models, I dropped the model maybe 3" to the table, and one of the landing gears became disengaged and with one of the support breaking. The kit has you insert a piece and then flip it 90 degrees and then 180 degrees which helps put pressure to keep the landing gear and supports at the right angle. However, there's enough tension that dropping it can be problematic as it was in my case. The landing gear also only has a slight depression at the top where it's supposed connect to the fuselage body - it is very hard to keep that in place while glue sets given all the tension with the lower pieces. Eventually I got things fixed - required some epoxy and cutting out and replacing a couple of the supports so all is good until I drop it again. 🙄 I also had to work through some issues with the belly bands - first time I painted them, they were a touch too narrow. I tried to repaint, but I sprayed too heavy and lost detail. 😡 So, I had to strip a bunch of the paint off and try again. Time consuming on the red because I realized that if you paint red, the underlying color will affect how the red turns out (at least using Vallejo Model Air). So, because I wanted a brighter red color, I used Tamiya's white primer straight from the rattle can as the base coat, and then painted the band on top. Tip to pass along - Tamiya's Lacquer Thinner is great at removing Vallejo acrylic paints! Dip a Q-tip in, rub a little, and it comes off fairly well. To redo the bands, I made them wider the second time around, given that I would eventually be using gloss black primer as the undercoat for the aluminum body. Stupid me, why didn't I do that sooner? Would have saved me days of time (I've been trying to wait at least 24 hours for the paints to cure before masking). Speaking of masking, I found using Tamiya's white curve masking tape to mark the edges worked very well. Then I used the Tamiya yellow tape to mask the remaining items. Then I used Vallejo Gloss Black followed by Vallejo Metal Color Aluminum - am very happy with how things are looking thus far! Need to do a few touch ups on the red and a bit on the aluminum, but the colors are beautiful. The Vallejo Metal Color series really puts on a gorgeous metallic color. For next steps, I need to figure out if I want to paint the identifying numbers along the belly band using the Montex stencils. For the F3F-2, there is also a small US insignia above the landing gear that I can paint using the Montex stencils. I could instead use decals, but I've already tried out the stencils to add the US insignia to the wings and and am fairly satisfied with the results. It's a pain though, as you first paint the white disk, then add a stencil for the star in the middle while adding the blue background, and then add a third stencil to add the red center dot. The Montex stencils worked fairly well, but did get some color bleeding under the second two stencils. I used a toothpick to scrape off a bunch of the blue and red errant paint - worked fairly well, but I still need to touch stuff up. Makes me think I might have just been better using decals from the beginning, but thought it would be a good learning experience. Otherwise, I've got pretty much everything but the canopies painted at this point, so I'm on the home stretch. Thanks for looking in!

Wow, looks incredible man! Very good job!!!

Those sails looks fantastic, really nice job!

Nice stash! Those Gotha G.IVs are worth a fortune now. I was fortunate to pick up a few kits at retail just when Wingnut announced they were closing. Now that they indeed seem to be done, the prices have really gone up the last few weeks.

Excellent! They are fantastic!

Very nice!

Nicely done!!

I started with this lathe years ago on my first build. I really enjoyed it. Ended up selling to upgrade to a Sherline, but it's a great mini lathe for small wood turning. Worked a treat when it came to sanding taper into masts.