Italeri 1/72 F-35 B Lightning II

[Guest]

The swift (as usual) delivery from SMS meant I could finish the repainting of the intakes and in turn finish up all the internal white areas before closing up the fuselage.

Here's the finished intakes and then the same mounted inside the fuselage to demonstrate the need for doing this in advance.




I also finished up the white for the area around the exhaust, which is a best guest based on the best references I could find, and then another shot of the same area after I applied a little of my new soot pigment, also from SMS.




Finally for today a shot of the mounted engine, just to show how much of it will be hidden away. As part of the fuselage assembly the main undercarriage is fitted and luckily I remembered I had to remove the kit moulded brake lines when adjusting the oleo's and torque struts, so I reinstated these with a little fuse wire.



Next will be the stabilisers, fins, ailerons, canopy and if I get all that right masking for painting!

[Guest]

Update No. 9.

I've been toiling away at the ailerons and stabilisers. I want to model them pitched but the kit makes no allowance for this, so I've had to modify them. There is precious little I could find on the internet about the mechanism, but some videos suggest that the mechanism is a barrel like hinge which means that there is no obvious external mechanism. Good for me because it just means the model needs to 'blend'!

Here's a shot of how they fit OOB.




Here's where we are now. Some sink marks in the ailerons that needed sorting out too.




Whilst watching videos of these things landing I noticed that the top fan cover that the instructions told me are white are in fact black, so I repainted it. Needs a lick of varnish to remove the sheen.




Cleaned up, adjusted the fit very slightly and kleared the canopy. This is yet to be fixed pending final inspection of the cockpit.




Finally I cleaned up all the bay doors and engine covers. There are alot!

[papa 695]

Looking very good Chris, some very nice work indeed.

[Guest]

Update No. 10.

We have primer!

[Guest]

Update No. 11 - Masking

For those of a nervous disposition that don't enjoy hours of tedious work; look away now.

I was plodding along with this build with the confidence that the eduard mask set would make life easier when it came to painting the panel lines. NOPE.

This is where I was with all the eduard masks in place.



I had wrongly assumed that these would not require any modification and anticipated only filling in around them. The pattern around the nose and canopy needed quite a lot of modification and in the photo on the right you can see a complete lack of masks for the underside. All the images I have found indicate that these also have the lighter grey edges.

This is where I am stopping. I have had to create masks on both sides of the nose and the masks to the underside wing leading edges were wrong, according to the Italeri instructions.




I have blanked off the entire underside for now. I will review how visible this is once I have completed this round of paint. I suspect I have some extra work to do on the tails anyway so a second round is inevitable.

Despite the few areas of adjustment I am thankful for the eduard mask sets. It seems a shame they only did half a job though.

I was considering a second one of these in 'beast mode', but after all this masking I think I'll leave that for a while!

[yak face]

Wow! Top marks for patience chris ! That looks like a real ball ache , even with the mask set . Its going to look fantastic when it emerges from its masking tape chrysalis ! Cheers tony

[Guest]

Thanks Tony.

You can’t have an F-35 without it!

[Tim Marlow]

Hi Chris. This is a lesson in patience, and it shows just how complex modern jets are. Your rendition is near perfect though. Well done!

[Guest]

Thanks for the compliment Tim, very much appreciated.

Doing this gave me something to do at 4am. My son has been up all night coughing and we'll be in all day waiting for his C19 test results, so I'll be getting somewhere with this today.

[Tim Marlow]

Hope he’s OK Chris. Covid is a nasty little bug.....

[Guest]

Hope he’s OK Chris. Covid is a nasty little bug.....

He'll be fine. I'm sure it's a cold, but nowadays you have to be certain.

[boatman]

Yea Chris hope your son is ok as you dont want that at xmas or any time come to that
all best wishes from us for your son
chris an jen

[Jim R]

Hi Chris
Rather late to this - sorry. Firstly I hope your son is OK.
Cracking work so far. Love the cockpit and pilot. Well done with that exhaust. I have seen dimples reinstated with drops of CA but your patch is neater. Good job on the undercarriage legs and I hope the tyres come out OK. Fingers crossed for the masking.
Jim

[Guest]

Thanks all.

The painting on this gets better....

So I have applied the lighter grey and it is almost white.



Started to set myself up to repaint in a darker shade and thought I'd better check references first, and now I am unsure what to do!

Here you can see the colour isn't too far off.



But in this one it seems darker than the primary colour!



It's certainly down to the coating that gives it a strange irridescence, which Tony mentioned much earlier in the thread. It would be nice to do this but I wouldn't know where to start!

[Tim Marlow]

Sounds like a very specialist paint type Chris. There are chromatic shift paints available for model cars, but not sure if you’ll find what you want. Try someone like Hiroboy or Zero paints?