What's on my desk? Part 131.
Hello and welcome!
Good progress last week! I'm very close to finishing two projects, with a new one well under way.
Let's start with the McLaren F1. I masked and airbrushed two layers of the red colour:
The black band on the underside was also airbrushed. Next up: gloss coat for the decals. Almost finished...
Next: the JA37 Viggen. Another coat of Satin Varnish made it look pretty good. I removed the masking from the cockpit, installed the seat and open canopy and fixed the Master Model pitot tubes. These are very fine. A bit too fine, because the hole in the nose is too big:
Filling/sculpting a new taper is not an easy task. I used some wood glue because it flows well enough and dries consistently, without drooping too much. Maybe I'll do another application, as there's still a visible 'step'.
To do on the Viggen: paint and install the navigation lights. Next week I'll show final pictures.
T-72 time! I finished painting the camouflage. As per usual, most of the vehicle was covered in masking tape:
After removing it all, we have 1) a ball of discarded tape, and 2) a great-looking (if I do say so myself) Finnish-camouflage T-72:
There was one more detail to be painted. I've shown the auto-loader in the tank. As part of the mechanism, the spent shell is ejected out of the turret through a small hatch. This is painted in black and yellow stripes on the Finnish tanks, so as I left all the hatches loose, I removed it, stripped the paint, re-primed and airbrushed it yellow:
It's a neat detail that gives an extra splash of colour. The black stripes are included in the Echelon decal sheet. And that's the next step: a gloss coat for decalling and weathering.
Finally, I'm making great progress with my Corsair. The cockpit was painted and put together. The lack of floor makes for a fragile assembly:
Once inside everything aligns and it won't come apart:
I've taped off the tip of the tail because it's molded very thin and is really sharp. I don't want to damage it while handling the part painting and weathering. I used a Dark Brown wash to accentuate the inside ribs.
Not that a lot of it will be visible when closed up:
Magic Factory have really thought about the engineering of this kit. The entire top of the fuselage are all separate panels, allowing to swap them out on the sprues depending on the specific version of Corsair. So I expect more in the future, specifically an early 'birdcage' F4U-1.
I'm planning on depicting my Corsair with wings folded, so I started on the underwing and gear bays:
There is a small mistake in this area. That window was only there on very early Corsairs. By the time the F4U-1A (or this Corsair Mk.II for the British) came around, it was deleted. Not a big deal because I can just paint over it...
That's it for now.
See you next week!