DocRob

Indeed Chris, the development from wood, canvas and string, individually put together to mass production of powerful and reliable full metal planes was very rapid. This kit represents in a way this development in kit quality. Having just finished the ancient Tamiya Renault RE20 kit, you can see a clear progress in every aspect of tooling and engineering. Cheers Rob

Thank you Yves and Mike, I will try my best, to have a shiny representation of Wicked Woman in the end. Cheers Rob

Hola fellow modelistas, on to a new project. As a short holiday is nearing, I was looking for an in between project and Tamiya's P-38 was on my list since a while. I have both, the -J and the -F version, but I want to use Eduards positive rivets on a high shine aluminum finish, so it could only be the -J. Aftermarket will be limited, I will use Quinta cockpit decals for the first time, Master brass barrels, only because I can glue them in after painting and said Eduard rivets and canopy masks. Because of the high shine aluminum finish, I'm after, I wanted good decals and a simple paintjob, to reduce masking, so no invasion stripes. I decided to use Bombshell Decals for 'Wicked Woman', which is only accentuated in gloss and matte black. The build log will be very brief, as everything fits like a glove and until now, I had no difficulties of any kind. If you are in search for the perfect kit, you possible can't come closer. The engineering is even better than with Tamiya' 1/32 Corsairs, hard to believe. If you are an engineering aficionado, you should build one of the three P-38's. I started with the cockpit, scraped detail away, to accept the Quinta decals and airbrushed the base colors, followed by some brush detail painting and a very light oil pin wash. The Quinta decals, which I used for the first time look mostly very good and were applied using water thinned PVA and CA for very small parts. The seat belts look a bit unreal and HGW's offerings are looking better, but are a pain to assemble in 1/48. The dashboard has a slight rasterized look, but only through the macro lens. In all the Quinta set is a huge time saver and easy to work with. Cheers Rob

A definite jaw dropper, what a piece of excellent craftmanship, fantastic. Cheers Rob

Thank you Mike, it was a fun and rewarding project and and will be followed by other cars and motorbike builds soon. All chrome parts were airbrushed after stripping, including the spoilers. I described my process in post #96. I was positively surprised, how good the chrome finish came out. Cheers Rob

Nice interior Craig, I really like all the detail you show. I have the same kit in my stash, so I will continue to look over your shoulder. When I inspected the sprues, I had trouble to get them back into the box. Cheers Rob

Thank you Ken, far from a master, but I'm learning constantly. When you diversify as much in modeling as I do, it's hard to reach master grades ever. To me, modelling is about self challenge and fun, I compete only with myself and am my hardest critique, but without having fun, I would surf more or do more of my other hobbies. Cheers Rob

Shunko models produces a decal set for the 72D, including the tobacco ad, not cheap, but might be a choice if yours did not age too well. Cheers Rob

I hope you got it for a good Price Gary, Tamiya re-popped them out exactly now new and I guess with Cartograph decals. I keep asking myself, If I want one. Cheers Rob

Thank you Egilman, it's a colorful addition in the display shelf. I build this one as my first large scale car, because I like it the least of my stashed ones. The engine characteristics reminds me too much of our second car, a Dacia, which has minimal power from it's engine, until the turbo kicks. A bad combination for our steep hills. I German we used to call these type on engines 'Luftpumpe' (air pump) with minimal ccm and maxed out turbo power. Cheers Rob

Thank you Gary, these large scale F1 cars are great kits, demanding due to the complexity of the originals, but not overwhelming, why not starting one? Cheers Rob

Thank you Yves, the build went mostly well, but I'm far from the detailing level of some of these car model gods. In the end, I'm a bit proud about the outcome, because it was my first large scale car and second overall. Cheers Rob

Chequered flag, yeah, after a bit more than a month, the Renault RE 20 is crossing the finish line. I added the wheels and still think about adding some chalk markings on the tyres, connected the last hoses and mounted the body onto the chassis. It was a pleasure build, with only a few letdowns, namely the huge amount of clean up and some overcomplicated subassemblies mainly around exhausts and turbo chargers. I will make some final adjustments and then step to the next project, but still have no idea, what it will be. Thanks for your support and help. Cheers Rob

Oh, I nearly forgot, the braided line you spotted, is only temporarily attached. It's one of those, where the manual shows, where it stats, but not where it goes. There are a few others which need to be addressed. Cheers Rob

Thank you Yves and Gary, the wing with the Renault and Elf decal was the worst chromed part, but good enough, not to respray it. One thing, which keeps me driving in modeling is to replicate materials and let plastic look like metals, wood, cloth or whatever. It's kind of a passion. Metal for a long time was difficult, with often grainy and unreal results. That changed with Alclad and I thought, I found the holy grail of airbrushing metal colors. I liked many aspects of the Alclad range, but the coats are not very durable and masking over them, can be nighmarish. Xtreme Metals from AK are mostly much better in this area, except Titanium, which is very fragile and naturally chrome and polished aluminum. I used a lot of the Extreme Metal colors over the last years on many projects, but never liked their high shine finishes a lot. Remembering this, I switched to Alclad for the chrome on the Renault and tested for a while on different parts. Application is the secret for metal colors and for the high shine finishes, that's even more important. I use a gloss black base, a mix of 75 % leveling thinner and 25% Tamiya LP1, which sprayed with low pressure gives a perfect gloss surface. The following Alclad was applied with the same low pressure in very light misting coats. You can see, how the hypergloss black transforms into high shine chrome. The grade of 'non-blackness' tells you, when you're done. Don't apply more, then the outcome is like on my 'Renaut Elf' upper rear wing . Some metal colors react well to 'flooding' the plastic with one heavy coat. Alclad chrome is definitely not one of these. Cheers Rob

Near the finish line now with the Renault. With the added gearbox, rear wing and loose attached nose, this car becomes longer and longer. I added the decals to the chromed wings and glued them in place. I'm lucky, that I dared to strip and repaint the chrome, as it looks much better. The Cartograph decals again behaved perfectly well, important, because I didn't want to use any solvents other than water on the chrome. The exhaust installation was again a bit adventurous, due to ill fit and in case of the exhausts, only one contact point to glue. I used CA for that job. Many additional pars were added using super glue, because I didn't want to ruin my paintwork. What's left do do, is the installation of some lanes, where I couldn't find the place they end in the manual and of course the rims and wheels. Cheers Rob

Thank you Mike, I'm enjoying this part of the build, when everything starts to come together, it's kind of cash in time. Cheers Rob

Thank you Peter, I added more bits and pieces and painted Alclad chrome paint onto the gloss black based parts. I was fearing this, because chrome finish is so difficult to achieve, but all went well. Alclad is less durable than Extreme Metal, but as there is onl decaling and no further painting and masking involved, I hope, I leave the parts unharmed to the end. Black base, I love the Tamiya LP gloss black with 75% leveling thinner, looks like polished. Alclad chrome, misted in very thin layers with low pressure setting. It looks even better to the natural eye and much better than the plating. Cheers Rob

Thank you Ken, I'm not only trying to give something through my build logs, but also use them selfishly as notebooks . Sometimes, when I forgot, which color I used in the beginning of a build, I reference back to my older posts, specially the long term threads, like the Arado 234, which took about three years to finish. Cheers Rob

Thank you Yves, many years ago, I was like a semi pro photographer, but that were the analogue times. I got rid of all my analogue equipment, when it was not anymore possible to purchase my beloved black and white slide film anymore. My favorite subject was to work with as little light as possible, often with an exposure time of minutes or even hours and to paint with the light, so to say and create pictures, which can't be captured by the human eye. The transition to digital photography was a slow and rocky one. I always think, the infinite possibilities of digital photography lead to the loss of instinct for the only thing important in photography, to capture the exact right moment, at least in my case it is. I detest post processing and still think, that only the top 1% of digital cameras offer the same density of color than a good analogue slide. Anyway, I have a decent camera and lenses now and try to improve my photographic skills all the time, but find capturing models a difficult task. Cheers Rob

The Renault is coming together. Yesterday, I married the rear part with suspension and gear case to the engine and added more braided lines to substitute the ugly thick vinyl tubing, Tamiya provided. The chassis is finished, except some details and the exhaust system, I can see the chequered flag . All the parts waiting for chrome paint, were airbrushed high shine glossy black. I thinned down the Tamiya LP color with ca. 75% of leveling thinner and it gave flawless results. I have to remember that mixing ratio for my John Player Special Lotus Type 79. Cheers Rob

Thank you Craig, clean up is indeed the most time consuming task with this build. I have to pull out a feelgood kit afterwards, after the USS Arizona, the Arado and now the Renault. Surprisingly the short run Fly Arado kit, was the best of these in terms of clean up. Maybe a Tamiya P-38 in NMF, ... The detail grade of the Renault kit is not bad and I guess, even a modern kit would not be much better detail wise, but the moldings are not up to todays standards. You can endlessly hyper-detail these 1/12 kits, but I found, exchanging the tubing and connectors added a lot of realism. Cheers Rob

I think like always, the most braking power is performed by the duo calipers on the front wheels, but seeing the large air intakes, I guess, the double rear calipers are about heat distribution. Cheers Rob

The rear section was mostly finished today and is ready to be attached to the engine. Again, the moving parts design proved to be a bit fiddly, but beside some very crude moldings, which needed lots of clean up and later lots of masking, all went together well. Have I ever mentioned, that I absolutely love Tamiya's LP5 semi matte black. It sprays so evenly and has the right near no shine to replicate plastic or metal black. I added some resin connectors again, which were drilled out and added silver braided line with inserted brass rods. Since the beginning of the build, I was pondering about de-chroming the wheels and wings, a process, I never did before. With my oven cleaner stripping was easily done in a minute on a test part and were followed by the rims, which didn't look real. The wings didn't look too bad with their plating, but then I decided to strip them too. Lets hope, I can lay on a decent finish. Cheers Rob

You are absolutely right Yves. The kit helps you understand, how this car was designed and build and often you can contemplate about used materials and function as well. You can clearly see, how the turbo chargers influenced the layout of most of the main components with the Renault. Cheers Rob