DocRob

...but you fought her back, Kevin, she´s a beauty. Cheers Rob

Nice and colorful rendition of a P-51 and also interesting, considering the story behind the Tuskegee airmen. Cheers Rob

Starting to get into a kind of building flow, big decisions block my progress, but nonetheless, some steps were finished. I added the first front part of the suspension housing, seat and seatbelts. The latter are a joy to assemble, compared to lets say HGW belts. MFH supplies double sided adhesive type for assembly and placing the belts, easily done. The seat parts are made from black rubber and there is no need for painting. I also added some PE frames for the sideskirts, which can hardly be seen on the picture. The next step would be adding the prepared front suspension, but wait, one of the arms needs to be fiddled through the sideskirts, which needs to be painted in bodycolor. I want to prepare and airbrush all body parts together, to prevent color variations and I´m not up to do that now, which means, I will start with the 1500 horsepower heart of the missile soon, plan changed. Cheers Rob

Well hombres, I had to laugh about the twanger thing , but it´s part of the tweezer reality. I have lots of tweezers and use them permantely for different type of builds. There are wooden ships with rigging, WWI biplanes with rigging and of course the MFH kits with tons of rivets to set. Strangely some well made tweezers are worse than others, which were much cheaper, there is no way, other than testing. On the right side are my good tweezers for different causes, the lower you get, the more useful they are. The ones on the left are twangers, and the lower one from Tamiya looks good and is well made, there is no obvious reason for not trusting it, but it´s a fail. These, I use permanently, with the second from above being especially helpful with turnbuckle tubes for WWI planes and for bending tiny PE parts. My relatively new kid in town is the one on the bottom, where despite the sharpness of the tip, the twang factor is relatively low. Here is where I bought it: Classy 'n Dressy Tenir Tweezers (Standard) Here is a picture, showing some of the tiny whit cast rivets of the kit. You can imagine, how hard it is to grip these, apply CA glue and let them slide into their tiny hole. BTW: I frequently hone the inside of my tweezers tips with a fine sandstone, after freeing it of CA residues with a blade. Dirty, ragged tips are the number one culprit, making tweezers to twangers to my eye. The Hasegawa small parts applicator with it´s sticky tip is not tested yet, but will soon, lets see, how that compares. Cheers Rob

Thank you PW and Paul, most parts of the MFH kits are not overly difficult to build, but as you mentioned PW, patience is necessary. The kits seem to be overwhelming at the beginning, but with some discipline and a good building process, all is manageable. I´ve built plastic models with higher swear factors, but the MFH kits are definitely more rewarding than these. Cheers Rob

After loads of prep work, I have finally some progress to show. I usually prepare all the parts needed for the next three or four steps in the manual, to get a grip of how everything fits together and which order is best. Preparation means, drilling a LOT of holes, sanding and filing parts smoot and to fit, TEST FIT and then priming and airbrushing. As there is a lot of blackness in the monocoque, I used an airbrushing technique on top of the brushed on clear metal primer, to slightly break up the dull blackness. I spray the semi gloss black Tamiya LP5 highly thinned at about 50% with leveling thinner. After application, everything is black, but during the curing period the protruding parts slightly get a hint of metallic sheen looking through. The floorboard with the fire extinguisher looks simple, but wasn´t, due to the extremely fragile belts around, fitted with super tiny rivets, not an easy task. The firewall got detailed and again, getting the tiny rivets in place was an eye straining task. They are about 1,5 mm long in total and you need good tweezers to place them correctly. I added all the hoses and wires, which will be connected in later stages. The monocoque in it´s actual state. Cheers Rob

Thank you Martin, it´s a splendid kit, not as refined as some of the newer MFH kits I own, but still fantastic. Cheers Rob

Nice one, Paul. they were called Gummikuh (rubber cow) back in Germany at the time, because they lifted the backside as a reaction of the cardan drive train when accelerating. I visited the Berlin BMW motorcycle factory, when I was young and they had specialists there, doing the pinstriping by hand. BMW motorcycles were never my cup of tea, too streamlined, well thought and downright boring, but undeniable they are classics. Cheers Rob

I have to chime in, Kevin. Your Hurricane looks fantastic, I love the tonal balance with paintjob and weathering and you near finished a Fly kit, always a reason to cheer. Cheers Rob

The turnbuckles look much better than the kit PE, I plan to do the same with mine, when time comes. Your "mottling of the engine fairings came out great, I have some untested plans for mine as well, lets see. Cheers Rob

Careful drybrushing or with a weathering pencil. Cheers Rob

I guess the OD went some years ago and got converted to CP (corroded primer). Love the boxy vehicle and what you´ve done with it, although I think speed tractor might be an exaggeration. Cheers Rob

There you go with your signature weathering of some heavy metal, FA. Your Panther looks great. Cheers Rob

Thanks for that Carl, it was my suspicion for a long time, that humidity has something to do with my matte coat issues, as well as some clear coats like GX 100. We had a crazy day today, temperatures in the night about 10 degrees Celsius in the day varying between 15 and 25 degrees Celsius, but the real crazy thing was the humidity, which was about 90% in the morning, about 15% on midday and back to 85% in the afternoon. We have a climate change from the usual 80-95% humidity to Calima caused dryness of 15%-20% humidity. Calima is a (often) a storm from the deserts of Sahara, but this time there was no wind. Cheers Rob

I like the post turbo era best, like you said, not too many strange wings. The low nose profiles are my favorites, the "hanging" front wings look a bid silly. Before the turbos there were great designs too mixed with the worst. Surely a time, where everything technically possible was tried. Cheers Rob

I can´t see rivets anymore, phew. I managed to add all the rivets for the monocoque. Strangely the supplied ones were short by ten or so, but I had spares left from my Cobra Coupe. I painted some of the rivet heads black and left others in metal, according to my Komaki reference book. Before adding the rivets, I used a steel needle to punch through the decal, which worked without issues. There seems to be something with every step of the build and here it was the matte coat, which left some strange white residues in some spots. I can only assume, these were drops, unseen and translucent when sprayed and visible after drying. I may lay another layer of thinned matte coat on top, but try first with a tiny brush. Speaking about matte coats, I always have trouble to find them working properly. In this case, I used Tamiya LP flat clear, but tried AK Real Color flat clear before, which worked well on other projects, but not this time. I also tried Winsor and Newton matte varnish, which also wasn´t up to the task. Cheers Rob

Indeed Carl, I need to prepare for getting old and doing less sports Cheers Rob

Not one, but two MFH kits arrived at my doorstep. I ordered a while ago and let them ship together, as I was in no hurry because of traveling around. The Norton Model 18 will be the European counterpart to my already built Big Tank Crocker. I love the looks of the bike , but dread the chain construction, which was painful with the Crocker and the Norton has two chains. Anyway, MFH bike kits are fun and I hope for a re-pop of their Ducatis. I missed initially buying the Ferrari 412 T2, but bit, when some flashed up on the MFH site for an hour or so. At least, the the painting stage will be a lot simpler than with other F1 cars I like the looks of this last 12 cylinder powered F1 car and especially the wheels are absolute sexy. Pictures borrowed from MFH homepage, as there are no box arts to show. Cheers Rob

Very cool, indeed, good catch FA. Cheers Rob

Like Martin said, you almost feel the cold, nice dio, PW. I would bend the fellow with the carabine in his hands a bit forward, or does he tilt in the strong wind? Cheers Rob

Thanks Carl, there will be about 200 rivets total, the next batch will be applied into the cockpit front cover. Cheers Rob

I finished with the carbon fiber decals, which I cut in the former step along the supplied template. The carbon fiber decals are titled silver carbon, type 1, which interestingly is used for 1/20 or 1/24 scale. To me the fiber pattern looks very good and the templates were very exact luckily. Despite the decals behaving very well with just a bit of soapy water under, I have some tiny blemishes, but these will be less visible after a matte coat of varnish. I also applied the first set of dozens of rivets into the backside of the monocoque. The heads of the rivets were painted black beforehand according to my reference. Cheers Rob

Thank you, it is my fourth MFH build and they are kind of addictive, so more will follow. I know the feeling, where the kits seem to be overwhelming, but usually there is a way and finding it is very rewarding. This is my second F1 build and I have to say, they are easier than the Cobra Coupe, I built. With lots of vac formed clear parts and doors, bonnets, etc., full bodied cars are more difficult. I also considered starting with the engine, always the most fun part, but decided to get through the carbon fiber decaling and riveting first with the monocoque. Cheers Rob

I want to have some of the daring steps out of the way and therefore started with the monocoque. After drilling all the holes for the rivets and necessary clean up, slight sanding, I washed the parts in soapy water and finally sprayed them with my trusty Tamiya LP-1 gloss black, to have a good base for the carbon fiber decals. One sheet of CF-decal is supplied along with a paper sheet as a template. I cut the copied paper sheet to the same size as the decal sheet and fixated them together with kabuki tape, to have no movement while cutting. Some hours later, I had all the pieces cut out with a fresh blade and a 3mm punch for the four small holes. The larger holes were cut by hand MFH kits from the pre Cartograph era have a protective clear foil over the decals, that´s why they are so reflective And this is, how they should be applied. I have to say, I really love pre cut CF-decals a lot. Cheers Rob

No interior green, US-style, Carl? Cheers Rob