Landlubber Mike

Hmm, seem to be rubber to me, but not exactly sure. I'll try the toothbrush first, thank you very much!

Here's a question for you car guys - do you do anything to prepare the rubber tires? The tires in this kit are rubber, but there's sort of a whitish film in some areas that might be residue from the releasing agent. I'm not sure that I want to paint the tires, but am wondering if there is a way to clean these up. I tried rinsing them off, which helped a little, but I might need to use a toothbrush or something to get them cleaner.

Thanks Popeye! I've been focusing on my F3F builds, but while paint and glue have been drying, I've put in a little time on the Duck. Got the engine and the chassis put together and painted. The kit doesn't include a hinge to open the hood, so I'm not sure if I'll just glue the hood to the body or not. I know what people tend to just paint the undercarriage black, paint a few parts a metallic color, and call it a day, but it looked way too black and plastic-y for my tastes. So, I ended up using washes and dry brushing to help break up the visual mass of solid black. I'll probably add a clear coat to help even things out on the undercarriage. For the interior, I think I'm probably going to similarly use washes and highlighting to break things up. I decided to go with a black interior, and brown seats and door trims (the brown is Vallejo Model Air US Flat Brown). I think the color matches up pretty well with the exterior, which is Tamiya Dark Yellow. I'll probably add a darker brown wash to help bring out the details in the seats and give a little more rich and nuanced look to the brown. Like the rest of these cars, the interior was fairly basic. The seats for example were just a piece of fabric draped over a metal frame which oddly enough, supposedly was pretty comfortable.

I was on a roll last night, and glued the fuselage halves together, along with the fuel tank/firewall and intermediate cowl pieces. The kit instructions say not to glue the cockpit in, but let it free float on some tabs so you can adjust the position when gluing the fuselage together. Worked fantastic, and fit is very good. I have a little bit of sanding on one corner of both intermediate cowl pieces where the piece doesn't line up flush to the fuselage, but nothing major. I have two more pieces to glue to the fuselage and I'll be done with steps 1-3 of the 15 steps in the instructions. The rest of the model should come together fairly quickly now, especially that 95% of the fuselage is aluminum. The F3F-1 and F3F-2 were very similar and the kits share three of the four sprues. The main differences are the engines, intermediate cowl, and the back end of the fuselage have slightly different shapes (on the F3F-1, the instructions say the kit parts are for the F3F-2, and to just sand away a tiny section to convert it to the correct body type). Even though these are very similar, it's been a little tricky keeping the parts straight. You certainly gain a lot of efficiencies, but I'm not sure that I will build two similar models at the same time in the future.

Thanks Joe! After painting, I used Vallejo's acrylic washes which I don't think need to go down on a gloss coat as they aren't enamel or oil based. I dry brushed a few highlights, but didn't seal with a flat coat. I ended up gluing in the cockpit last night so might just skip that step. Good to know that I should do that in the future though. If the cockpit (or other part of the model) is painted a metallic color, would you still spray a flat coat? These planes were painted aluminum, so to seal the exterior after painting, I was thinking of spraying with a final semi-gloss or satin clear coat. Matt might dull the aluminum too much, and on the other hand, I'm thinking that gloss would be too shiny. Semi-gloss/satin might be just right.

Thanks guys, really appreciate the nice words and advice. In terms of the cockpit interior itself (seat, panels, etc.), do you guys add a clear coat to it? It's not going to be handled, and large decals won't be applied. Just wasn't sure if all parts of a model that are exposed should be clear-coated in some way.

Here's a question - do you guys put a clear coat on your cockpits? Since it won't be handled, and I don't need to change from a flat to a gloss or vice versa, I'm not sure how necessary it is. But, thought I'd ask what you guys do.

Little update here. Finally finished the cockpit and am pretty happy with the way things came out. The one thing I'm not as happy with is how the cockpit instrument panel came out. The Eduard aftermarket had you add a film (like a translucent sheet printed with the dials and gauges) to the piece, and then add a brass face on top that had holes for the dials and gauges to theoretically let the printed film show through. I ended up painting the plastic part silver to help let the dials show up on the film, but it's all pretty dark. The brass face for the instrument panel doesn't really have raised details for the gauges, so I didn't try dry brushing it. The dials do look a little glossy relative to the rest of the panel, so you can tell there are gauges there - you just can't see the details. It would probably be impossible to see much anyway when the cockpit is dropped into the fuselage, so I'm not too bothered. I might drop some white or silverpoint into the dials, we'll see. I used Vallejo's Metal Color line for the cockpit, and really like it. I first put down Vallejo gloss black primer per the instructions, and then shot the metal color after about 24 hours to ensure that the primer had dried and cured. The Metal Color is almost like water and has great coverage and metal effect - and it cleans very quickly from running water through the airbrush at the end. For the cockpit, I used Duralinum which is a touch darker than Aluminum. I figured I would use different shades in different sections of the models. I also started on the engines, which i painted using Vallejo's Metal Color White Aluminum. The engines came out absolutely fantastic I think. The kit parts have a lot of very fine detail, and the paint went on perfectly. First picture below is after white aluminum was used, and the second is after using Vallejo black wash to help bring out the details. The engine on the left is the F3F-1 engine - the one on the right is the F3F-2 engine. Big change in design and size/power. The F3F-1 used a Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp Jr. 14-cylinder 650HP engine, while the F3F-2 used a Wright Cyclone 9-cylinder 950HP engine.

Looks amazing - fantastic work! Looking forward to your upcoming project too

That’s looking really nice. Great job!

Nice job Popeye - coming along great! Wishing you the best on the recovery. Get well soon my friend.

I love where you're going with this OC - very nice job! I'm very fond of dioramas as I think they really bring to life the modeled subject.

Last year I contacted Jotika as I bought a Victory kit off eBay that had been barely started, so I needed some of the bulkhead and other sheets to complete the kit. I corresponded with John Wright directly at his johnwright@jotika-ltd.com and had no problems. I don't know how things are over there, but maybe they are still in lockdown over corona? Did you try calling him?

I bought a knock off on eBay. Haven't used it yet, but it seemed pretty good for about 1/4 of the price.

I was worried about that too. I've been using Tamiya rattle cans for paint and they tend to spit which annoys the hell out of me. I have to wait for it to dry, sand, and then cross my fingers and try again. On the F4B-4 and P-6E builds (linked in my signature) I was wondering if I would have a similar issue but everything worked perfect. Now maybe it spit blobs but you can't notice them because it's a clear coat, but again, I was super impressed by the finish and bought a can of semi and gloss that just arrived today.

Agree about Paul - he helped me replace some cracked items on a couple of Pocher kits I own, and charged me very fair prices. His DVDs also have a kit inventory section that clearly show in pictures what a complete kit should contain. Helps a lot when looking at items up for auction.

Nice work! Love the art work and color schemes on these planes.

I used this (the matte version) on some recent 1/72 plane models I completed and was really impressed by it. They come in gloss, semi-gloss, and matte. Goes on really thin and does a nice job.

What do you think of the kit so far? I just got an email that they are taking pre-orders on Pocher's latest Ducati.

Thanks Carl, this is very helpful! Really appreciate it - things to think about

My pics were off the internet. The Smithsonian opened a new Air and Space Museum out near Dulles airport - it's a huge facility with tons of planes including one of the Space Shuttles. Well worth it if you are out here. Now that I'm modeling planes, I'll have to go back and take detail pictures to help with builds. For example, I have the Zoukei-Mura Dornier Do-335 kit in the stash. I believe that ZM came to the Smithsonian to study the plane to create their kit.

Ha, I have been! I'm just very much a novice (and a slow builder at that) so have been a little reluctant to post my work. 🙈 I live not too far from the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum - will need to head back out there and take more detailed pictures of the planes they have there. The one out near Dulles Airport is fantastic.

Bob, keep an eye on eBay. Prices right now are pretty outrageous for these kits. Only a few months ago, however, there were tons popping up for auction that went for about a third of some of the prices you are seeing now. On the lower end, I've seen prices for the Fiat around $300, Alfa Romeos (except for the rare ones like the Coupe Elegant and Muletto which go closer to $1,000) go in the high $300s to mid $400s depending on kit, and the Mercedes a little more than the Alfas. You're looking at low $500s for the Rolls Sedanca, a few hundred more for the Torpedo Cabriolet, and the Ambassador seems to run closer to $1,000. I haven't been as interested in the Bugatti so haven't been following them closely, but they are up there in the Rolls category in terms of pricing. The Paul Koos DVDs are well worth the cost, whatever kit you get. Very well done with hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures, along with build tips, options for improvements, etc.

Wow, that's very well done. I bet 3D printing will revolutionize the model industry. The detail you can get is fantastic, and my guess is that you don't have to worry about molds and the like.

Amazing work Grant! Those dials look fantastic. Love the real wood effect. I've got the Fiat and one of the Rolls Royce kits on the shelf alongside this one, and I've been considering using real wood in place of the kit "wood" parts. Nothing beats real wood! The Vallejo metal paints look very rich. I'm using them for the first time on my F3F builds. If I get half the effect that you are getting I will be a happy camper.