Jack12477

Cool photos of the eclipse, Gary. I do love your weathering, are you gonna add a wee bit of lighting in the fish hold?

Great work up to your usual standards, Gary!  
 
My son, his family, and a close friend all live directly in the Eclipse’s path in Indiana.  All had reactions similar to yours..
 
Roger

Ditto ! 😇

Chris,
  Very nicely done!

For now I'm calling Walker tank #1 complete.  I decided to hold off on weathering and/or camouflage until I decide on how I want to display it and the Walker tank #2 kit build is completed. But both will have to wait a while until after I deal with a medical issue that just cropped up unexpectedly. 
 
Note to Moderators: This build log is NOT FINISHED YET, only part 1 of 2 is finished.  And there is a possibility of a diorama to be added to this build thread.  
 
The Walker tank model #1:
 

Thanks Alan! Glad that you like it.
 
Thanks Andy! Yes, the Yahu IP was a great addition. After you mentioned it, I got a light bulb switched on.
 
Thanks OC. I also liked this one, with few additions I easily busied it up. However, the Mosquito has a closed canopy, but I am confident that something will be anyway visible.
 
Cheers,
Dan

Count me as a simpleton too, Gary!  I was also mesmerized even though most of the eclipse, including the 90 seconds of totality here in Austin, was obscured by clouds.  Your pictures are fascinating.
 
As for your build, superb work and detail as always.  I particularly like how the ageing on your bulkhead planking turned out.  So well done!

Hello, this is the truck I bought in 1973, less then $4,000.00 (Cad) brand new lol.  It was a great truck, hard on the back tires, but I was 17. 
 When I saw this model, I had to buy it. After rigging the Mayflower  ship, I wanted  something with no lines , lol. 
 So I started  on Monday.



 
 
 The frame went well, the engine was fun to put together.  Everything looked like my truck except the battery.   Then I put what I could, together today. Now I am at a standstill till the paint drys. 
 Maybe I should start a ship while the paint drys lol. Hope you like it, it's bringing back some great memories. The love of my life has told me four times to turn the stero DOWN lol.


Paint takes such a long time to dry. Thanks for looking, 
Bob M.

Ditto ! 😇

Ditto ! 😇

I get that catalogue. Full of stuff you must have - but thankfully the prices stifle any impulse buys
Alan

Great build, Chris. I like the 'curvy' lines of this old fighter.
Well done,
Dan

Lovely work,  the  cockpit area  was my fave  part  when I built the  Revell  version  some years back.
 
OC.

That would be natural, P-40's delivered after Sept of '39 generally carried RAF camo... Didn't matter who they went to they were painted to RAF spec... I know for a fact the AVG's were part of a RAF order that were diverted to them in China...
 
Planes built and painted to USAAF spec would be overall OD Green.... They were selling these so fast that they included stick on decals of various National Insignia's for when they arrived at their final destination...
 
It's interesting to see these painted in RAF desert scheme sporting the Stars and Bars...

Greetings Fellow Modelers
 
After a busy month with little time for modeling, I've finally begun work on the fish hold of this dragger.
 
 
But first, please allow me a quick diversion.
 
The path of the recent solar eclipse tracked over Maine on a day when there was barely a cloud in the sky.  My wife and I traveled several hours north on country roads to get close to the center of totality.  A total solar eclipse is such an astronomical coincidence that it's hard for me to get my head around it. That from a moving 100-mile diameter shadow on earth, two spheres appear to be the exact same size because one being 400 times larger is 400 times farther away, and that they line up precisely with the smaller sphere blocking all the direct light of the larger while leaving the entirety of its corona visible.  Perhaps I'm a simpleton, but I find this extraordinary.  To be honest, I thought this was going to be an interesting but ho-hum visual event, but when it went dark and I took off the glasses to see where the sun had gone, I was mesmerized.
 
I had a DSLR mounted on a tripod with 200mm of lens.  I promised myself beforehand to enjoy the experience and not spend the few minutes of totality tinkering with camera settings.  So, I preset the camera and hoped for the best - manual focus, aperture priority, exposure bracketing, cable release and crossed fingers.  I pushed the cable release quite a few times without ever looking at the results.  Later, I found most were completely blown out and a few were just terribly overexposed.  But I'm not disappointed.
 

 

 
 
The lens flare image below is my favorite.  A lousy eclipse photo, but an interesting image just the same – kind of surreal.
 

 
 
 
Fish Hold
 
My decision to display the boat with the hatches open and maybe a bunker plate or two, requires that the entirety of the hold be modeled as I can't predict what will be visible through each opening and view angle. Mainly that view will be small fragments of individual bunkers and planked partitions, so this modeling will be on the quick and crude side.
 
Before I started in on that, I first washed the hull exterior with India ink/alcohol to give it a little age. About 2 parts ink out of a hundred. I've yet to decide on how the hull will be painted/weathered, but this small amount of coloring doesn't narrow my options, and the alcohol tends to remove shiny sanding spots and helps to unify the overall look – at least to my eye.
 

 
 
I then penciled on the water line. I placed the hull back onto the base and used a squared scrap of construction lumber with a pencil glued to it.
 

 
 
The fish hold uses up almost 17' (5.1m) of hull length. The area is partitioned off into 20 individual bunkers/pens as shown below in the top-view drawing. The pens with green dots hold the ice/fish and the red dot areas do not. The blue dots are the stationary posts that hold the wood slats which make up the partitioning. The four pens in the center over the keel functions as a walkway but can also be partitioned to hold ice/fish.
 

 
 
Shown below is the lower half-section at station #7. The open space against the side of the hull is the area identified by red dots. This area is empty and begins at the lowest bilge ceiling strake. This drawing detail is actually from the “transverse section” plan sheet of a completely different boat by the same designer a few years prior to the Pelican, but it is labeled as the “type plan” for the Pelican.  Consequently, the dimensioning is incorrect for my boat, but the structural construction is the same – presumably.
 

 
 
The bases for the posts are 6” square timbers and on the model the six center bases are mounted on wood strips that span the entire length of the fish hold. The six bases away from the center are beveled to reflect the changing shape of the hull as it narrows toward the bow. The drawing below shows the bevel for the posts in the area near station 6A.
 

 
And for the posts in the area near station 4A. Note that the bevel has changed due to the base sitting higher up in the hull. This is necessary because the interior space is narrower yet the distance between posts must be maintained.
 

 
I print out spacing guides to locate the center line for the wood strips the post bases will sit on.
 

 
I mark the center line for the inner and outer strips on each station bulkhead.
 

 

 
 
The strips are placed, and the outer post bases are beveled and glue on.
 

 
 
As per the plans, there are three planks below the lowest bilge ceiling strake and below that is concrete. Although they are not yet glued down, the image below shows those three planks in position. The six inner post bases have been added as well as some styrene sheet material to act as a support floor for the “concrete”.  Also, note how the post bases (top of photo) incrementally sit higher from left to right as the hull narrows.
 

 
It would have been easier to place the two lowest bilge ceiling strakes as one piece and mount the post bases on top of that. But, I didn't and decided instead to piece it together around the posts for reasons that in retrospect make absolutely no sense. But that's water under the bridge and in the end it won't show anyway.
 

 

 
 
I smeared on some Hydrocal to form the floor of the main fish pens.
 

 
 
Colored up the bulkhead planking with chalk/alcohol (burnt sienna, raw umber and black).
 

 
 
Made up the grating to place over the keel and gurry trough.
 

 
 
I'll be placing some dim-ish lighting in the hold, so a gloppy PVA mixed with black acrylic paint is slathered onto the hull to prevent light leaks. All of this mess will be hidden by the wood plank partitioning.
 

 

 
Next – posts, partitioning and completing the hold.
 
Thanks for taking a look.  Stay well.
 
Gary

I can only guess, that these are acrylics, wefalck. The artist pens from F-C should also work fine for this kind of work. Where the AK weathering pencils really shine, is dampened. You can use them as a multicolored wash and weathering medium. I really love to work with them.

Here are some examples of a Sci-Fi build, where weathering was done with the AK pencils dampened:








 
Cheers Rob

Thank you Craig, I just wanted to try that technique, after I had seen it in described in a book. It´s a bit less time consuming and more flexible, than cutting tiny strips of mask and apply them onto the props, like I did before.

Cheers Rob

Looks great Dan! I’m glad the Yahu IP worked for you!
 
Andy

I do have a P-40 in my stash (another Halinski kit), and, interestingly, its basic brown and green colors are nearly identical to the Hurricane's. But I'm not in any hurry to get to it, so you may have to wait. 😉

Hey, those look super, Doc. I like that technique.

I´m closing in on the finish line. Due to some back spasms, bench time is somewhat limited lately, but I started painting the figures and props.
These were primed and sprayed with Tamiya Buff then.
 


I wanted to try a new technique for the laminated wood and graining with pencils. My AEG has two different propellers, a good opportunity to finish the props a little different. 
Number one was ´laminated´ with AK weathering pencils Dark Chipping for Wood and Dark Rust by hand following the logical ´flow´ of the lamination.



Number two was ´laminated´ with Sand and Sepia for a bit more contrast



The props were varnished differently,
Number one got Tamiya Clear Orange applied by brush, which removed a lot of the laminating effect. Not all propellers of the time had a verry apparent lamination effect, so I let it be.

Number two was varnished with the airbrush using Tamiya Clear Red, which lead the wood layers show through much more.



Cheers Rob

Ha! Maybe I should have painted a tiny Bf-109 in the rear-view mirror.

Hi,
I went on with the cockpit parts. I eventually received the super nice Yahu replacement for the instrument panel which is shown here glued to the other kit parts:

I have added three prominent control levers in the center of the panel made of thin aluminum foil to complete the appearance of the IP. These are the cockpit parts that are now basically completed:

Differently from the instrument panel which was a disappointment, the Eduard seat belts worked fine and added a nice level of details to the kit seats. These are the same parts seen from another angle:

This time, I am going to depict a used aircraft, so I added some grime and dirt by brushing on some pastel powder. Now the parts are basically ready to be assembled, but before I will spray a mist of matt clear to uniform the finishes and mute the glint of metallic parts. On the underside of the cockpit, we have the ceiling of the bomb bay which I also started to color. I first sprayed a black primer followed by a light coat of colors that let the black to be seen through (although not very visible in the picture):

I will finish the bay by adding some more weathering effects to it. Presently, I am preparing the fuselage halves that need to have some of their annoying extractor pin marks to be addressed.
That is all for now, thanks for following,
Dan
 
 

For the prices they charge they had better be.... (I get their catalogue on a regular basis, but only buy if absolutely needed and they are the only source)

Another outstanding masterpiece in distilled wood!