Tamiya 1/350 USS Missouri

And now for my award winner. Ok, that sounds a little more impressive than it actually is, but I did win a trophy for this model. "Best in Show" at a local hobby store, but hey it still counts. This model was the first I built with heavy, heavy photo etched parts, probably over 700 if I was to count them all up. I know there were about 200 photo etched parts in the .50 Caliber machine guns alone. I bought the two USS Missouri photo etched frets available through Goldmetalmodels.com. They greatly improved the appearance of the model and made this one of my favorites.

This was a long model, nearly 3 feet long. Rule #1 for building this model is to make sure you have plenty of space. The hull was a single piece, which made things a lot easier. But the sides had to be pushed out with a few thick balsa sticks so the deck pieces would fit better.





The superstructure looks complicated with all its railings and stairs and poles and decks and guns and everything else, but the construction was actually very simple. Masking off everything to paint the deck, well, be prepared to spend a few nights doing that. All the wiring is thin nylon string which was made taut by waving a soldering iron near it. The heat causes the nylon to shrink producing realistic tight antennae. Just be careful how close you get to the string and the rest of the model. There is one spot on one of the center gun turrets where I had to rebuilt the wall after accidentally melting it.


The anchor chains were a horrible bit of raised detail on the forecastle, almost invisible and a tremendous pain to paint....had I left them there, that is. I carefully scrapped them off and bought small chain to replace it. Having actual chain on the deck made it look instantly better.


The catapults and crane were replaced with photo etched parts. Photo etched parts may be expensive, but they can really take a good model and make it into a jaw-dropper.

Revell 1/32 Ju88 German Bomber

I never had much of an interest in German bombers from World War II, although I do have a fascination for anything aviation during World War II, but I saw this kit in a hobby and it immediately caught my interest. I had built Skill Level 2 and Skill Level 3 models before, but this one was a Skill Level 5. I was curious what made the skill level 5 different than the skill level 3 so I had to check it out. There wasn't much of a difference except the skill level 5 has more detail which makes it a little more complex, but all in all, it was just another really good model. And I think it turned out well.

 

The cockpit was fairly straight forward with a good amount of detail. Looking back I probably wouldn't have used so much of one shade of gray or so many "bright" colors such as on the green bomb sight, but it still looks ok. I dry brushed the streaks of silver to give the surfaces more of a scratched look. If you don't know what dry brushing is, I'll have to write an article about it. It works well.

 

Even the pilot's seat had some impressive details on it. Unfortunately once it's installed, you can't see any of it.

 

 

 

I chose to display the model with the ailerons positioned in a slight left turn as if the pilot had pushed against the yoke when he left the airplane. Thats why the control yoke is slightly tilted. I like the little details of this assembly, such as the little bit of piston protruding from the the brake cylinder behind the pedals.

 

 

 

This picture shows the difference between two methods of creating shining Oleo pistons. The piston on the left is simply painted silver. If you look close you can see the texture of the plastic underneath the paint and this doesn't have nearly the amount of shine that an Oleo piston would have. The piston on the right is actually aluminum foil wrapped around the plastic glued in place with CA. This results in a very realistic appearance, basically because it is in fact shiny aluminum. You can see a lot more of the dry brushing technique here again, assuming that this aircraft would have taken off from grass fields and may have had rocks and dirt fly up into the wheel well that would scratch it up.

 







One thing that did greatly impress me was the instrument panel. The kit came with pretty good decals for the instruments and they fit in their proper positions well. Handling decals this small takes some patience, but the result was well worth it. Again, unfortunately they can barely be seen in the assembled model.

 

 

And now for the biggest pain in any model airplane, and this one had plenty of pains involved. The multi-paned canopy and nose bubble led to many many hours of cutting small strips of tape and masking them off. Total I think it took about 16 hours of masking to cover all the panes. To do this, I laid a piece of masking tape on a piece of glass and used a straight edge to cut it into small strips. I started masking these panels with fancy expensive skinny tape (the blue panel at the bottom) but I found the adhesive didn't like to stick to the clear plastic and the strips liked to slide around. Good old cheap masking tape worked the best. This just goes to show that spending a lot of money doesn't always mean that it will work. 

 

Final assembly and seam filling. I read something online about how some modelers will fill and sand the seams and then paint over the seam with silver paint and this will show it the seam is completely filled. This is why there are silver streaks on the model. I didn't find any advantage to doing this because if the seam is still visible and you go to apply more filler, the filler won't stick to the paint, it mixes with it, and when you go to sand it, you end up sanding a blob of paint and filler. Primer would be a better paint to use than silver.

 

 

I had never painted a Dazzle paint scheme before, but always wanted to try. You can't tell by these pictures, but I first painted the light blue color on the bottom of the aircraft. Then I masked it off and painted the light green color. Then by cutting various angled shapes into the tape, I masked off the Dazzled dark green.

 

 

The Dazzle turned out very well. The light blue paint on the bottom is mostly white with a few drops of Floquil Jade (and I do mean a few drops, like with a toothpick) Jade is more of a green color, but when it is diluted with white it makes a really pretty light blue, which goes perfectly with the other colors. Note how I did not take the masking off the clear parts yet. This was in fact the very last step I did on the model. As tempting as it was to pull off all the tape and see how it turned out, I decided it was best to leave in during final assembly and decals to protect it. The last thing you need is to be right at the end and have a stray knife scratch or drop of glue (or accelerator) damage your clear parts.

 

 

These last few pictures show the completed model in all its grandeur. My only regret is that the decal solution I was using was old and didn't really act how it was supposed to. The weathering I added covered it a little, and of course, more silver dry brushing that really added a lot to the finished model.

  Feel free to post comments or ask questions.

Filling Some Time

While I'm working to get a walk through together for my P-51C Mustang project, I thought I'd go ahead and post some pictures of my two most recent projects. Its a shame I don't have too many pictures of them since they were both a lot of fun and both used a few tricks that I would have surely discussed if I had a blog when I built them, but I'll try to mention a few things along the way.

Introduction

Welcome to my blog! First I'll have to say that there are a million a one blogs about modeling out there and this is yet another one. But I have a purpose in mind with this. I have looked at a few other blogs or websites that talk about modeling and they all seem to have the same information. And although that is all important information, there are still a few holes to fill in. In my articles and walk-throughs I'm going to do my best to give detailed information so the knowledge you gain can be directly applied without having to figure out some things for yourself. Modeling is one of those hobbies that is highly skill and knowledge based. Without the knowledge you can't built the skill and without exercising your skills you can't learn the knowledge.

I will also share my mistakes and trials during my projects, which most people probably wouldn't admit. No one is perfect and failure is a very real possibility when you are first starting out or when you attempt to learn a new skill. I was not born with an inherit ability to slap plastic together and form a masterpiece. I learned what I know over 25 years of trial and error, of builds and rebuilds, of broken parts and sloppy glue, and of horrible pain jobs to the stars. But the knowledge I gained from all this mistakes helped me to make the second attempt so much better and the end result was something I can be proud of. Sometimes in modeling, especially when you are scratch building, you will have to make something or try something several times. In this blog, I want to show you those first, second, and sometimes third attempts, explain to you why they didn't work, and how I decided to change things. Hopefully from my mistakes, you will be able to save yourself some time, money, material, and frustrations. Maybe ideas that failed for my projects will work for your project, and that by seeing my thought process you will be inspired to try things a different way. Either way, there is a benefit and that's what you need to remember. Both success and failures are beneficial. I would say failure is more beneficial because you will learn things every time and that is how you gain skills and knowledge.

Modeling is supposed to be fun. There is no right way or wrong way to do something, there is no proper level of detail or set color scheme. Do it to make yourself happy. If you want a model of a B-17 Flying Fortress painted orange with silver stripe down the side, then do it (just don't expect to when any beauty pageants with it). If you want to super detail, then do it. If you want to build straight from the kit with no modifications, great. If you want to see what would happen if a Spitfire and an ME262 had a baby, then you're a little weird, but we're modelers. We're supposed to be weird!! Take pride in it and do what gives you the most satisfaction. That's all that matters! Hopefully the tips, tricks, techniques, and mistakes that are posted here will help.

I hope to get a few good articles and pictures up in the next couple of weeks, so check back later and bare with the simplicity of the site. I'll play around with the format until I can make this thing look good.