Good morning fellow modelling enthousiasts!
Let's begin with some admin:
-Friday is May 1st. National Holiday and hence the shop will be closed.
-I'm going to start posting a monthly schedule on the shop window and online, refreshed at the end of every month, so you can keep track of what's going on in Modelist world.
-Big event coming in about a month's time. On the 31st of May: KMK Scaleworld in Geel! One of the bigger shows in Belgium, they have a large selection and display of both scale modelling and wargaming. Of course, I'll be there as well.
-This Sunday is a koopzondag, and on the weekend of 15-17 May, it's the Braderie in Mechelen. Lots of stands and a second koopzondag of the month. To be honest, I lost sight of this, so I'll see if I can move the airbrush workshop to the following week: 24/05.
Ok, with that out of the way, let's move on to the reason ywhy ou're all reading this blog: models!
The Focus has been picked up, so I started on the last commissioned build for the same person: the Tamiya McLaren MP4/5B. Another Senna car, this kit dates from the year 1991. This one was already started too, so first thing to do was to strip paint with VMS Clean Slate and oven cleaner, and give it a new primer coat:
I try to assemble parts of the same colour. Most of what you see here needs a coat of satin black, with some metals for details. That's something for this week to do.
On the T-72, I wired the ignition cables on the engine. It's a V12, which means 6 cables per cylinder bank. I used the metal wire that comes with the trash bags of Mechelen city. You always get some spares, so they're getting confiscated for modelling purposes.
I can't get the wires completely the same as the original, so what you're seeing is an approximation just to give some extra detail.
First step: drill 12 holes into the cylinder banks:
Step 2: insert the wire, fixing it with a drop of superglue:
Next, take a sturdy tweezer and bend the wire into shape. Cut off the excess. In between the V of the engine there's a distributor, so the other end of the wire needs to fit onto one of the stubs there.
As you can see, I touched the wire too much on the opposite side and some paint rubbed off. I'll fix that later.
Here's the final result:
The hardest wires to install were the ones on the bottom of this picture, because they go underneath the oval thing and its brackets. I started out planning to go right-left-right-left with the wires, but somewhere I got them confused. Can you spot where I went wrong?
As I said, it's not 100% correct, but it's a nice detail to add.
Next week, all of this will be hidden. :-) As per usual with full interior builds, I'll see what I can keep loose to be able to show off all my work.
Finally, the Bloch has been decalled. My gloss coat didn't really work out, so that made it a bit difficult. Generally the decals are good quality. I do have a gripe, though. They're a bit too thin. That's generally a good thing, but look at the white stripe going underneath the roundel and number '11':
Due to my shoddy gloss coat, the decals also didn't flow into the panel lines very well. I was able to fix that with Micro Sol and a slightly sharpened toothpick.
You can see I had to break off the rudder. Because this is the reason why I usually paint the rudder. (I didn't in this case, because this shade of blue is difficult to get right.) The decal is very oversized:
This is meant to ensure you can cover the curves around the bottom and front, but due to the previously mentioned thinness it also means the decal breaks very easily. In the end I succeeded with minimal damage (which was painted over).
With all the decals done, I proceeded with a panel line wash. I used Deep Grey on the underside and grey areas of the camouflage. I didn't take a 'before' pic, but you can see the panel lines stand out clearly from the surrounding grey paint:
On the top, I used Green Brown. The effect is less pronounced, but still visible:
The red-yellow areas received an Orange Brown wash.
Finally, I fixed the antennas in place and glued the landing gear doors to the legs. The wheels themselves don't fit very well (maybe too much paint on the contact surfaces), so I need to be careful to align them properly:
The Bloch will probably be finished next week.
Concerning the Viggen: mojo needed...
That's it for now.
See you next week!
