DocRob

Good to have you along, Egilman. I am absolutely no expert when it comes to classic American bikes, except, that I rode some, I borrowed from friends. The price tag is daunting, indeed, but you receive a lot of quality for it. I will see, how this build turns out, to figure out, how many of the MFH kits will find their way into my stash. So far it´s three and one in the mail. Like you said, MFH can´t be praised enough for their portfolio of rare subjects produced as kits. You sure got the feeling, there is a lot of passion involved. Cheers Rob

Great progress with the big cat, Craig. The engineering of the AMK jet kits is fantastic and the fit of their MIG-31 kit was perfect, even on the most complicated parts, like the intakes. The only issue, I had with the kit, were the bang seats, which were horribly out of scale. I hope this is not the case with yours. The pic shows the kit seat on the right, to the left is a seat from a Brassin refined SU-27 kit and in the middle is the seat with pilot, I used, I guess it was made by Aerobonus. Cheers Rob

Ladies and Gentlemen, lets start our engines and begin a new adventure. Some month ago, I received my first MFH kit, after I saw some pictures of the finished model and fell in love with the bike immediately. There she was, all the great ingredients of an American bike classic minus the to my eye ugly mid section, the classic Harley Davidson models have. I will not tell a lot about the history of the bike, as I´m not an expert here, but it´s a pretty exclusive one. Hand built, the numbers of production bikes range between 60 and 300. The few surviving beauties are among the highest priced motorcycles of today. The Crocker was fast, so fast, that the company complied, to give back the full price of the bike, should the driver be overtaken by a Harley or Indian on a strait road. The kit was bought from MFH in Japan directly for a decent price and the fastest and trouble free shipping, I ever had and reached after six days on my doorstep. Since then, I bought some more MFH kits, as simply browsing through the boxes, the absolute top quality of the kits has an addictive spell over me. The kits are multi-media, most parts are from cast white metal, some photo etch, rubber parts, different hoses and wires, some chrome plated metal parts, nice decals, ... I preparation for the build, I read a lot about MFH kits, to get a hold onto the many new adventures, I was expecting with the build and as one result, I invested into a magnetic tumbler polisher for cleaning the white metal parts. It took my month to finally obtain one to my remote place in the world, but finally, it arrived. After some successful testing, all white metal parts were dumped into the tumbler´s bowl, then, I added water with a drop of detergent and 200 gram of 0,3 mm steel polishing needles. The strong magnet in the base swirls the needles around the non magnetic parts and `hammers´ the surfaces very gingerly. After about an hour of tumbling the water was dark black and the parts looked like this. It was not so easy to remove the tinier parts from the needles and I keep all the bowls with needles and the blackened water until, I made sure, I picked all the parts out. For now, I rinsed the parts with water again and layed them out onto kitchen paper to dry. The finish of the tumbled parts is fantastic, but of course, further cleanup will be needed down the road. Some parts will get polished, as the white metal looks perfectly, like steel or even chrome when polished carefully. Next step will be checking against a copy of the manual, if all parts are there. MFH manuals include only a rudimentary parts list, but on their homepage, they have pictures of the kits parts, which will be helpful for the task. I will add a few detail pictures from some of the parts, to show the fantastic casting quality. The tumble polishing of the parts effect surface detail only minimal, details remained sharp. Stay tuned for more. Cheers Rob

Thank you Dan, I copy so much of build logs, books and wherever I can get hold of inspirations. It´s relatively rare that you develop new techniques by yourself, isn´t it. I´m a week off for now, enjoying a week in the Spanish seafood Mekka of Galicia, hopefully without too much rain ,but lots of good wine and delicious food and possibly some maritime inspirations. Cheers Rob

Thank you wefalk, you may be right about the watch and the moustache. Possibly airfields for strategic bombing were a bitt off the frontline and therefore not so much at risk, concerning gas attacks. Like you, I doubt, that a mechanic owns a wristwatch in 1917 or 1918. I store my finished models in a cramped shelf in my cave. With most of my built models, I loose interest after I finished them and store them away. Sometimes, I give models away as a present to friends. The only exception might be the Duchess of Kingston, which might end up presented somewhere in our living rooms, when at last finished. Cheers Rob

Muchas gracias Señhores, finishing this kit brought a nice feeling of satisfaction, albeit in the end the little glitches add up and yes, finally figure painting. I like to choose figures for many of my builds, which tell a story, but when it comes to painting these, I sometimes shy back. It´s a steep learning curve and still a lot to master, but wat is modeling without a challenge? Cheers Rob

Thank you for the praise Gentlemen, I enjoyed the build as much and am lucky to have pulled through, even with my shaky figure painting skills. Cheers Rob

The big bat is finished now, that I found the courage to paint the figures. The young boy with the broken toy plane is exclusively painted with Scale 75 acrylics. I had to strip the oil colors off his skin, because they never cured and I couldn´t touch the figure for further painting. Thank you all again for participating in this log, which helped me a lot in form of encouragement and practical information. Cheers Rob

Thank you James, I still need a lot of experience to develop my figure painting skills. I´m not able to blend the colors to my liking, specially with acrylics. With oils, it´s much easier, but they dry forever, sometimes not at all, that´s why I had to strip my second figure, featured in the next post. Cheers Rob

Well, here are my feeble attempts in figure painting. I try to do one or two figures per build, but often shy away, because painting these is always like a burde for me. Nonetheless, i try to improve my skills and sometimes force myself to finish the figures. The mechanic is painted with acrylic colors from Scale75, except for the skin, which was painted with oil colors. Cheers Rob

All right Craig, this will be interesting. Some years ago, I built the AMK MIG-31 and liked the kit a lot, except for ill scaled bang seats. The plastic was fantastic to work with and engineering was very good. I also have a -D in stash, but from Tamiya, which will remain there for some time, because of STENCILLING . I´m masoistic enough to do it right, but need more than a push to start a jet kit soon, after building the said MIG and a Japanese KAI Phantom. Cheers Rob

Your Lobster came out fantastic, Dave. Congratulations for this vivid looking model and that you have mastered the British rigging. It´s always a WNW moment, when the upper wing falls in place without much effort. Cheers Rob

Thank you Ken, I learned so many things, during my first wooden ship build here on MSW, it is a pleasure to give something back, where I´m in my comfort zone.

No harm done, Chris. With my expertise in figure painting you may did me a favor, but I will try anyhow . Cheers Rob

Thank you Patrick, the ´Finished´ in the header was sneaked in by a moderator, but I have to continue to paint the planned figures, which are only started now. That my take a while, as I´m out of my comfort zone. Anyway, it was great to have all of you around with likes, encouragement and input. Cheers Rob

For the Corsair you can also use the Eduard Brassin engine. I built it many years ago and liked the detail. I think, I substituted the PE wiring harness with my own interpretation made from lead wire. The best, you get some side cowlings made from ultra thin resin as well. F4U-1 engine 1/32 - Eduard Store Cheers Rob

Nice result Craig and thanks for showing another, at least to me, unfamiliar vehicle, which looked great in the end. Cheers Rob

Would have been cool, to find out about a family member through the kit. It seems to be a nice kit and will look terrific with you doing your magic. Cheers Rob

Thank you Mark, quirky as the AEG looks, it was a successful design, meaning, I saw stranger things flying, like pancakes (Chance Vought V-173) or the like. I can only admire the courage it must have taken to fly with these wood/tube/cloth/string crates with relatively unreliable engines in the dark of the night. Cheers Rob

Thank you Alan, glad you enjoyed the log. I benefitted so much of forum input myself, it´s a pleasure to give back a little. It´s not completely altruistic though, as it helps me to keep track of my builds and enhance learned techniques for myself as well. If you are about to enter the WWI plane building universe, I can tell you, it´s quite rewarding and not as complicated as it first looks. Kits of WNW quality help a lot due to thorough design. If you haven´t started exploring these kind of builds, it might be best to start with a German WWI fighter. Less rigging and colorful liveries do help. Cheers Rob

Thank you Gary, I like the look of the AEG somehow, but I have a soft spot for quirky designs. The really interesting fact is, how advanced this plane was, about a dozen years after the Wright Flyer. From a modelers standpoint you couldn´t ask for more, the wide fuselage allows for equally wide cockpits, which show a lot of detail. The engines were often flown without the cowlings, again a possibility to show a lot of detail work. Cheers Rob

The Tamiya Corsairs are absolutely fantastic kits. If you are willing to spend the money, you shouldn´t hesitate. I built two so far, a Birdcage was my re enter the hobby kit many years ago and recently I built the -1A variant, of which the log can be found in my signature. I´m eager to see your progress with the B-25 dio. I have the Gun nose variant and would have started the build as a Navy PBJ version, if another member of Large Scale Modeler hadn´t started the same build in our recent twins group build over there. That´s why I build the WWI AEG bomber instead. Cheers Rob

A strange looking vehicle, Craig, but you make it look beautiful. Cheers Rob

Thank you James and Greg, I learned a lot too through that build. I really like to replay the work I´ve done and write it down in a halfway structured form. This way, I can think about the used techniques and try to do better next time, when I reference at my build logs. I learned so many things through build logs, it´s a pleasure to give back in form of some lessons learned posts. I live a bit isolated, so no model shows, hobby shop talk or even fellow modelers around, which leaves the internet as my only connection to the modeling world. Cheers Rob

Thank you Egilman. He he, indeed, the design is a bit strange. The commander normally left the front cockpit through a crawling tunnel for start and landing, to not get smashed, when nose diving. In general, I read, that the AEG was superior to the more famous Gotha. I have a soft spot for lozenged planes and consider buying the early day bomber variant as well. Cheers Rob