Andys.Scaled.Garage

 It's been a while since I posted last time, so let's fix it. Before I moved to the final steps of assembly I need to fix the weaponry. I really like how the fighter looks when it is fully loaded with various missiles, fuel tanks and bombs. And here the additional sets of weaponry from Hasegawa came in handy. Even though it took some effort to prepare those round shaped parts and old decals, I think I managed the whole work with a quite good result. I would've said that Hasegawa missiales kit is much better in quality of weaponry than the default parts included inTamiya's kit. The whole process took me about a week or so and it includes glueing and preparing the parts, priming with a black primer, painting, some missiles required multiple stages painting and masking. Then clear coat was applied for better decal adhesion. Decaling took another several days and then the final coat of clear to protect the work before some weathering with panel line washer. Now I can move t...

  I learned from the internet how to paint the aircrafts, but seems like I don't have proper tools and skills, therefore the painting process took me quite a while and the result is a bit not what I expected.  To shorten the process of preshading I used black primer and microfiller from AK. The I tried to do marble painting with Tamiya XF-2 Flat white color to emulate uneven painting. Something absolutely new for me as for car builder. Then I moved to the darker shade of grey, then masking and the coat of the lighter one. Finally I put a light layer of gloss clear to prepare the surface for better decal adhesion. Decaling process took me couple of days but that was a pure joy.  In the end I glued 2 remaining parts in place: engine nozzle and fuel intake to the nose. I call it's done for this issue. The next steps are: preparing the weapons and coating everything with semi-gloss clear before slight weathering. Stay tuned! Continue reading

  As I understood from different WIPs and YouTube videos there are 3 main parts of aircraft fighter modeling: cockpit, paint job and engine nozzle. The painting of the latter I will show here. My journey started with a fail. First I painted the nozzle in steel color, then applied liquid mask between the blades and painted burnt iron. But after removing the mask I saw that the edges of the blades were uneven and dirty. So it didn't work out. I also tried to cut the mask tape directly on the part, but couldn't manage clean edges also. As the result - removing the paint and starting all over again. Luckily I have a fiber laser cutter which I used to cut the stencil out of piece of steel sheet. Which in turn I used to cut the masks. (Yes there are more convenient tools for it, but this is what I have) Then I primed the nozzle with black primer and microfiller from AK. And painted with Tamiya acrilyc Gun Metal according to the manual. As I don't have exact metalic paint as on re...

  As the cockpit is done, I can continue with the rest and most challenging parts - canopy and the fuselage. The conopy has been molded in a way that during the cutting it off the sprue it left the damage on the border. So I had to sand it down with the different sanding papers and then polish with the polishing pastes from Tamiya. It didn't turn out perfect, but good enough to continue working on it. Then I masked it off to paint the lower border of the canopy and hide the flaws completely. So this is how it turned out in the end after the second round of masking and painting. I think not bad for the first attempt. Now I can start working on the assembly of the body, but first I need to fix obvious issues and check the rest with the primer. The main issues on the top are fixed. Bottom looked clean enough. Assembly is done and masking of the undercarriage too.  The air intake was a little bit tricky since it has to be painted white from inside but leave the backwall black. The...

 The kit proposes you to assemble 2 types of the cockpit: 1-seater and 2-seater. But I have photo-etched parts for 1-seater only. Therefore my way forward is quite obvious. In this photo I positioned the seat backwards. I did it right in the end, no worries. 😅  The seat itself was primed first using AK Gray primer and microfiller. I can recommend this primer due to ease of applying, smooth finish and short drying time. After 10-15 minutes I could apply the main color already. I chose medium gray water based acryllic from AK - FS36270 Then masked and pained the rest with Olive Drab from AK. I need to admit that 1/72 is very challenging when it comes to adding of upgrade-parts, especially for the cockpit. Different belts, bells and whistles were added (I don't know the proper names for all these parts 😋), but it took me few hours to assemble it promptly. The photo-etched parts I used were from Eduard Zoom color series. The rest of the cockpit was primed and painted the same co...