What's on my desk? Part 104.
Hello and welcome to the last blog post of the year!
I'd like to wish everyone a happy New Year, and hope for lots of modelling joy in 2026.
On my side, I've finished the T-2 Buckeye, on time for the deadline over at the Around the World Group Build on Facebook.
I first decalled and lightly weathered the seats. You can see details standing out better on the right seat, thanks to the Neutral Wash I applied:
There were a few panel lines that got flooded with gloss varnish and so wouldn't take a wash; look, for example, at the lines next to the tip tank:
I used my pencil with 2B lead and a piece of Dymo tape to keep my lines straight and this is the result:
Under certain light angles you see a difference in finish (pencil lead over flat paint gives a metallic effect), but overall I'm happy with it.
There are some streaks at the rear of the fuselage which I forgot to add earlier:
I brush-painted these to match the camouflage.
Finally, the pitot tube on the tail was completely flashed, and nearly impossible to clean up. I decided to just replace this with two small pieces of brass tube sliding into each other:
After painting all the small details I left out, it was time to remove the paint masks and fix the canopy in the open position. There are no hinges provided, so it was a bit of a case of glueing it down in an approximately correct angle. The rod in between the seats does help with this.
So here are some pictures of the finished model:
With the Buckeye finished, I can pay attention once more to the Bergepanther. I applied some mud effect to the tracks and the spade. These will be augmented by lighter-coloured dust effects mixed with flock grass.
One thing I forgot was the sloooow drying time of my bottle of mud, so now I need to wait until it's dry before I can spray a flat coat over the tank.
Finally, I've started on the Ford Focus WRC for a customer. Again, this is an older Tamiya kit. This one was started and the body and rear windows received a gloss black paint coat.
So that had to go first. Out came the oven cleaner and an old scouring sponge.
I forgot to take a 'before' picture, but here you can still see the paint coat on the front of the car:
To be honest, the black paint coat was pretty decent. I had to scrub a lot to get it off, but in the end the body was returned to its white plastic:
The recessed lines are still black, it's near impossible to remove those, but as I'm going to re-prime the entire thing, it's not that big of a deal.
More difficult were the rear windows. Those had received the same black coat on the inside (I assume because the previous owner wanted to depict darkened windows). I started on one of the sides, using the same method, but this one suddenly broke. Washing it off, I saw that the sponge had scratched the surface.
I have a bottle of VMS paint remover and started using that, with cotton buds. Much better result:
Pity about the broken/scratched window, but it's a rally car. Those things get broken all the time, right? Hopefully the break will be less noticable once it's fixed to the body, and I'll try to polish the scratched part back to a shine.
To be continued in 2026!
Thanks for a great modelling year, and see you next week!