Landlubber Mike

Really great progress, nice job!

I started the kit - the materials are very nice. It's not very accurate though when it comes to the kit plans, and the kit takes some weird liberties when it comes to the figurehead and the stern area in particular. I have a build log in my signature that goes through things until I ended up dropping the build.

Very nicely done Kevin. Came out fantastic! Are you still working on your Flower Class?

Nice work! The metal finish looks fantastic.

Wow, that looks beautiful, very nice job!

Ha, good point! I was watching an episode of Jay Leno's Garage last night and they had a segment on the Shelby Mustangs. Forgot about the P-51

Or just buy a 1:1 version? The Shelby GT500 version is back for 2020: https://www.ford.com/cars/mustang/models/shelby-gt500/

Really nice job. I've seen these kits online - from your work, looks like they build into nice models. Yes, I think the modeling gods were sending a not-so-subtle sign about the Mustang 😉

That came our really well OC. Excellent job!

Very nicely done Carl!!

I'm in for this one - looks like a fantastic kit with a lot of crisp details.

Thanks guys, really appreciate the tips. I'm trying to learn all the tricks of the trade - it's been fun so far, but a big learning curve for sure.

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?