Pete's Black Arrow

[stillp]

True Jakko, but it won't cost much to weight it and leave the stand removable.
Pete

[stillp]

Thanks Doug.
Pete

[stillp]

Gosh, I haven't updated this for nearly a month! I'm over the worst of the Covid but still very tired and have the attention span of a goldfish. I've managed to make a tiny bit of progress on the Hunter: pilot is in, although he doesn't fit the seat very well, and the seat doesn't fit the fuselage well, but I suppose considering the age of the kit it's acceptable.

I splashed a bit of aluminium paint on the landing gear legs and the bay before I remembered that I'll be adding weight to the bay. Also added some locating tabs to the lower edges of the fuselage halves - the upper edges have locating pins that seem to work well, but nothing on the bottom edge. When they've dried I hope I can get the fuselage together. The next job will be to try to mask the canopy, which won't be simple as it has almost no moulded framing so I'll have to wing it from photos.
I just realised the decals look as though they've been damp, so I need to give them a coat of Liquid Decal Film to strengthen them.

Pete

[adt70hk]

Living good Pete.

Hope the COVID wasn't too bad.

Andrew

[stillp]

Well, the fuse halves are sort-of joined.

This was like trying to glue a banana to a corkscrew! I had to use TET wherever the halves touched, and a lot of clamps. I've run a load of tuble glue on the inside of the join to strengthen it, as it's going to need a lot of sanding.
Pete

[stillp]

A couple of setbacks. As mentioned above, I ran some tube glue down the inside of the fuselage joint, but overdid it somewhat, so the glue has softened the fuselage, which has sunk in places. More filler work. Even worse, gluing the upper and lower wing pieces together - finished one wing, applied glue to the lower half of the second wing, picked up what I thought was the upper half and tried to fit it before I realised it wasn't the upper half, it was the other wing! So, the glue had made a mess of that. It should sand off when it's dried hard, but I'll lose a lot of moulded detail. :sad:
Pete

[Sunburst Finish]

I sympathise, I managed to leave a glue thumbprint on the P51. Luckily it’s buffed out.

[Jim R]

The Gods aren't with you on this are they. You'll get there in the end though. You have the skills but do you have the patience :thinking:

This was like trying to glue a banana to a corkscrew!

Wonderful description - made me laugh :smiling2:

[stillp]

Patience? No, but I'm stubborn.
Pete

[stillp]

Sorry for the lack of updates folks. I'm still struggling with some health issues since having a dose of Covid in September. I'm also getting pretty fed up with this kit - as well as the problems getting the two halves of the fuselage to line up, the canopy doesn't fit the fuselage and is mis-shapen at the front, one side being different from the other. There's almost no moulded canopy detail, so after several attempts to use the usual tape for masking I thought I'd give this stuff a try:
since they say you can cut it with a knife, so my idea was to create a canopy frame using 1mm wide masking tape, paint the whole canopy with masking fluid then cut along the tape where there should be a frame and remove it, leaving the masking fluid on the clear parts of the canopy.

Sadly it didn't work - yes, you can cut the masking fluid, but it doesn't stick to the canopy very well so just lifts where it's been cut. Latest plan is to mask all of the canopy and brush paint some framing on it afterwards, or perhaps even leave it clear. Yes, my patience is wearing thin. I'm going to put a coat of primer on it but it's close to being binned.
Pete

[colin m]

Some wise old modeler once said, 'we are illusionists, not just modelers' or something like that. So how about just doing an approximation of canopy framing ? So where the rear canopy meets the front will need a bit of a frame, but should be easy to mask. The other frames, forget them, and see how it looks. If you feel they are needed, they can be added later.

[stillp]

Good suggestion Colin, thanks. I got fed up with the endless repetition of fill/sand/prime, so I decided that some of the many blemishes will just have to remain, and gave it a couple of coats of Tamiya Semi-gloss black. Looks a lot better less awful now it's all the same colour. Started with the canopy:

I'll need to paint a 'frame' where canopy meets fuselage - actually it doesn't really meet. The canopy could almost be from a different kit. The hard part is going to be the front screen but I think I might be able to cut a paper tape mask and then use a strip of curvy tape just outside that.
Hope to get some more done tomorrow.
Pete

[stillp]

The frames came out acceptable. I should have left the masking on until after the clear coat though. I'll have to mask the canopy again.
Pete

[Andy T]

The frames came out acceptable.

More than acceptable I'd say!

I can understand why you'd want to take the masking off, to check how it looked. I think I would have done the same.

[stillp]

It might be simpler to brush the clear coat. Anyone know how Galeria brushes? I'm thinking of using satin.
Pete