DocRob

I guess, that´s the reason why, Carl. If I remember it right, Tamiya made the same with their 1/6 Fat Boy Harley. You have to raise your hat to MFH´s precision with the casted parts. Cheers Rob

Thank you Peter, working with white metal is quite different than working with plastic. The engine casing looks fantastic as it is, with no need for Alclad´s. The holes in the white metal parts are pre cast very precisely, luckily. You have only to drill them out with the appropriate drill bit. There are lot of parts being attached to the engine housing, and all these need to be joined with tiny rivets, bolts or screws and all these holes need to be drilled out. I´m sure, I will miss some, but hope they are in places, where I can reach them later. Cheers Rob

Until now, I haven´t used any. I will mainly use my trusty Colle 21 CA and hope to not need epoxy, as I have none. I will test soldering with some cast residues, but have no experience soldering white metal, let´s see.... Cheers Rob

Thank you Paul, it was a true pleasure project and easier then thought in the end. Thank you Mike, I always try to force myself to include figures to a build, but sometimes chicken out. I´m not comfortable with it and it feels, there is no real development over my feeble tries, but I like the way, figures tell a story, like in a snapshot. Cheers Rob

Well, first building steps are prepared. Note to myself, test fit often and understand the manual, specially where parts need to be drilled. I don´t know about the MFH car kits, but with the Crocker engine parts there are dozens of holes to be drilled and some are hard to reach in later stages. The foot pedal and drill stand for my Proxxon mini drill help a lot to make the job faster. The good thing with drilling white metal, there is nearly no burr to be removed. The engine block, with one cylinder mostly mounted, showing the parts of the other: Mock assembly for test fitting of one cylinder. The ribs and heads are actually removed and primed and will be sprayed semi matte black later. Cheers Rob

Bummer Mike, I´m not on FB and do not intend to. Ebay, I looked a bit, but found nothing of interest so far. Many MFH builders recommended the trays in their build logs and I do understand why, It makes life so much easier with these kits, it´s like the equivalent of the plastic sprue. Cheers Rob

Never followed a Gundam build. But your detailed kit seems to be a very interesting building experience, Carl. I like your weathering approach, as many non weathered robot kits look a bit boring. Cheers Rob

The base looks super cool, Kevin. It adds a nice contrast to the deck tan and grey with it´s red finish. Cheers Rob

Indeed Paul, in many ways and it will definitely be a challenge. Cheers Rob

The smaller parts like nuts, screws and bolts are the most complicated here, Peter. They are grouped on cast sprues and several are needed for different building steps. Cutting them off the casting makes them really hard to identify, so I will keep these separate and numbered. Proper organizing is the key here, there are no sprue numbers to help the builder. Cheers Rob

Tranquilo Kevin, don´t do the @HubertB gig on me, or I ask you, if the time is ready to put the champagne into the fridge for the launching of the Scharnhorst . What I make out of these parts is still in the off, but I hope for the best. Cheers Rob

Today, I spent some exhausting hours to sort the parts, mainly the white metal cast ones, as they are the most numerous. I made it a two step affair, first using the parts layout prints from the MFH homepage, to check if everything is there. These photos of the parts are especially helpful, as they are scaled and this helps to identify the parts. In the second step, I sorted the parts into a plastic box with different sized trays, ordered after the steps in the manual. The tiny parts, like screws and bolts, I left out, as they are easier identified separately. Tomorrow, I will add resin and rubber parts along with screws, nuts and bolts. Cheers Rob

Oh yeah Kevin, there is a load of different materials to master, mainly white metal, but also chrome plated metal, rubber, resin, some wire and tubing, but no polystyrol . Lets wait with the magic part until later, Martin . First some basic steps of preparation. Cheers Rob

Thank you Peter, Scott and Jeff, who knows, if I ever had started the big bat without the GB. Many lessons learned through the build, especially, it´s not the size or emphasize of difficult tasks, that should back you off of desired projects. This was 95 percent fun and never boring, like some ´simple´ builds sometimes are. Cheers Rob

That´s a very appealing color scheme, Kriss, which supports the the flowing design of the airframe, nice work. Cheers Rob

I was immediately in love with the Crocker on first sight and knew, I had to buy the kit. Lets hope, I can do it justice. Browsing through the box is another beautiful sensation, as the parts look so crisp and sharp and no sprues for a change . Cheers Rob

An adventure it will be for sure, Peter. I´m not sure, if I build the Crocker exclusively, as there is the 1/24 Fokker DR.I waiting as a quick build and the started 1/20 McLaren MP4/6 is waiting too. I also learned a lot from other build logs concerning MFH builds and borrow a lot of the described ideas. Cheers Rob

I think, I´ve seen nearly everything about MFH in short time, including these very interesting videos, Carl. I learned, that they mostly have no plans to measure and use photos for the purpose. The magnetic tumbler was indeed a good invest, as I plan to build more of the MFH kits, when this adventure turns out on a positive tune. Cheers Rob

It was my first MFH kit and after I opened the box, I was hooked. Now I have two more and one other will arrive next week, I guess. The tumbler will pay off sooner or later. I tried a rotating tumbler with steel balls also, but the result was not satisfying. The larger surfaces looked better than with the magnetic tumbler, but they don´t enter crevices and round the finer details. Are there especially good deals of MFH kits? I buy directly from MFH, the price is ok, compared to other vendors and somehow their FedEx shipping sneaks it around our customs . Cheers Rob

Fantastic detailing, Martin, this build will be epic. I love the addition of pilots fuel and the hatches inside, not to speak off the bomb racks, phenomenal. Cheers Rob

Coming together nicely, FA. I like your sequential weathering technique, where the layers add up depth, a necessity with that scale, I think. The added details let the build pop and are nice eye catchers. Cheers Rob

Ladies and Gentlemen, lets start our engines and begin a new adventure. Some month ago, I received my first MFH kit, after I saw some pictures of the finished model and fell in love with the bike immediately. There she was, all the great ingredients of an American bike classic minus the to my eye ugly mid section, the classic Harley Davidson models have. I will not tell a lot about the history of the bike, as I´m not an expert here, but it´s a pretty exclusive one. Hand built, the numbers of production bikes range between 60 and 300. The few surviving beauties are among the highest priced motorcycles of today. The Crocker was fast, so fast, that the company complied, to give back the full price of the bike, should the driver be overtaken by a Harley or Indian on a strait road. The kit was bought from MFH in Japan directly for a decent price and the fastest and trouble free shipping, I ever had and reached after six days on my doorstep. Since then, I bought some more MFH kits, as simply browsing through the boxes, the absolute top quality of the kits has an addictive spell over me. The kits are multi-media, most parts are from cast white metal, some photo etch, rubber parts, different hoses and wires, some chrome plated metal parts, nice decals, ... I preparation for the build, I read a lot about MFH kits, to get a hold onto the many new adventures, I was expecting with the build and as one result, I invested into a magnetic tumbler polisher for cleaning the white metal parts. It took my month to finally obtain one to my remote place in the world, but finally, it arrived. After some successful testing, all white metal parts were dumped into the tumbler´s bowl, then, I added water with a drop of detergent and 200 gram of 0,3 mm steel polishing needles. The strong magnet in the base swirls the needles around the non magnetic parts and `hammers´ the surfaces very gingerly. After about an hour of tumbling the water was dark black and the parts looked like this. It was not so easy to remove the tinier parts from the needles and I keep all the bowls with needles and the blackened water until, I made sure, I picked all the parts out. For now, I rinsed the parts with water again and layed them out onto kitchen paper to dry. The finish of the tumbled parts is fantastic, but of course, further cleanup will be needed down the road. Some parts will get polished, as the white metal looks perfectly, like steel or even chrome when polished carefully. Next step will be checking against a copy of the manual, if all parts are there. MFH manuals include only a rudimentary parts list, but on their homepage, they have pictures of the kits parts, which will be helpful for the task. I will add a few detail pictures from some of the parts, to show the fantastic casting quality. The tumble polishing of the parts effect surface detail only minimal, details remained sharp. Stay tuned for more. Cheers Rob

Your interior looks great, Peter. Good to hear about the quality of Eduard´s Mustangs. I´m considering buying the P-51 Royal Class boxing of their P-51-B Cheers Rob

I had similar effects with Mr. Hobby GX-100 gloss clear, mixed with leveling thinner in a plastic jar. Seems the mix dissolved the plastic. Cheers Rob

Thank you Kevin, I think there are still some AEG´s out their, new and for the original price. That and some month work, et voila . Cheers Rob