DocRob

A smooth coat of primer is the perfect foundation for further painting. Your base layer looks great Peter, can't wait to see the color on the 'Gabelschwanzteufel'. Just yesterday, I made the first snips on mine, but still have to decide, if it will be my next build. As I'm leaving for some short holidays in two weeks, it might be the perfect in-between build. Cheers Rob

What kind of poll is this, I'm a BIG bag of mixed nuts, as I build also ships, wooden and plastic, cars, motorbikes, armor, sci fi, steam punk, figures, busts, buildings and whatever comes to mind. The reason, I would be bored to death only modeling planes, even more only building jets . Cheers Rob

Indeed Hubert, I feared this step, but it worked out perfectly, lesson learned. The plated parts always look a bit toy like. The final trigger to strip the chrome was the huge round oil reservoir? on top of the engine, The chrome part looked sooooo plastic . Cheers Rob

Thank you Kev, I will definitely build more cars and have some interesting examples in my stash, but I like to change subjects a lot and the next build might be something different. I'm not decided as of yet. I can only encourage you to try stripping chrome parts and repaint them. All my fearful considerations did not materialize, but thorough preparation and application is the key. Cheers Rob

Thank you Carl, why not finishing the McLaren? The tubing Tamiya supplies is really basic and would be ok, if you have the body closed, but with every kit, there is room for improvement. These F1 cars are relatively complex builds, because nearly everything of the real is included, no empty fuselage or hull. The scale is great for extra detailing and adding the tubing was pure fun with the drilled out resin connectors. The chrome stripping was a first for me and it came out good, another lesson learned and ready to recall for the next time. Cheers Rob

That's a well detailed kit, it seems. Looking very good Mike and will be a showstopper with the Walrus onto it. Cheers Rob

Chequered flag, yeah, after a bit more than a month, the Renault RE 20 is crossing the finish line. I added the wheels and still think about adding some chalk markings on the tyres, connected the last hoses and mounted the body onto the chassis. It was a pleasure build, with only a few letdowns, namely the huge amount of clean up and some overcomplicated subassemblies mainly around exhausts and turbo chargers. I will make some final adjustments and then step to the next project, but still have no idea, what it will be. Thanks for your support and help. Cheers Rob

Near the finish line now with the Renault. With the added gearbox, rear wing and loose attached nose, this car becomes longer and longer. I added the decals to the chromed wings and glued them in place. I'm lucky, that I dared to strip and repaint the chrome, as it looks much better. The Cartograph decals again behaved perfectly well, important, because I didn't want to use any solvents other than water on the chrome. The exhaust installation was again a bit adventurous, due to ill fit and in case of the exhausts, only one contact point to glue. I used CA for that job. Many additional pars were added using super glue, because I didn't want to ruin my paintwork. What's left do do, is the installation of some lanes, where I couldn't find the place they end in the manual and of course the rims and wheels. Cheers Rob

Thank you Peter, I added more bits and pieces and painted Alclad chrome paint onto the gloss black based parts. I was fearing this, because chrome finish is so difficult to achieve, but all went well. Alclad is less durable than Extreme Metal, but as there is onl decaling and no further painting and masking involved, I hope, I leave the parts unharmed to the end. Black base, I love the Tamiya LP gloss black with 75% leveling thinner, looks like polished. Alclad chrome, misted in very thin layers with low pressure setting. It looks even better to the natural eye and much better than the plating. Cheers Rob

The Renault is coming together. Yesterday, I married the rear part with suspension and gear case to the engine and added more braided lines to substitute the ugly thick vinyl tubing, Tamiya provided. The chassis is finished, except some details and the exhaust system, I can see the chequered flag . All the parts waiting for chrome paint, were airbrushed high shine glossy black. I thinned down the Tamiya LP color with ca. 75% of leveling thinner and it gave flawless results. I have to remember that mixing ratio for my John Player Special Lotus Type 79. Cheers Rob

Thank you for the review Fran, I already own the book and like it a lot, mainly because I possess all included kits except the SE.5a. Cheers Rob

Thank you Peter, these LP blacks from Tamiya are great, beside the matte, which is not matte enough for my liking and very close to the semi matte. The de-chroming was done without a mask, but outside, wearing goggles and rubber gloves. I used only a small amount of oven cleaner and brushed it on. I hope my chrome will turn out well. Cheers Rob

Good to see you rejuvenated at the bench again. The P-38 looks so good and will restore your mojo soon. That reminds me, I wanted to do one in NMF with Eduard rivets on. Cheers Rob

The jug looks more than ok, Kevin. Haven't seen an overall olive drab one for a long time. Weathering looks spot on. Cheers Rob

The rear section was mostly finished today and is ready to be attached to the engine. Again, the moving parts design proved to be a bit fiddly, but beside some very crude moldings, which needed lots of clean up and later lots of masking, all went together well. Have I ever mentioned, that I absolutely love Tamiya's LP5 semi matte black. It sprays so evenly and has the right near no shine to replicate plastic or metal black. I added some resin connectors again, which were drilled out and added silver braided line with inserted brass rods. Since the beginning of the build, I was pondering about de-chroming the wheels and wings, a process, I never did before. With my oven cleaner stripping was easily done in a minute on a test part and were followed by the rims, which didn't look real. The wings didn't look too bad with their plating, but then I decided to strip them too. Lets hope, I can lay on a decent finish. Cheers Rob

I guess, its like with every model Kevin. When you build it, you know every weak spot and these exhaust tubes which feed the turbo will haunt me, but hey, I doesn't need to open the body . Cheers Rob

Today, my opus magnum of the Wingnut Wings kits arrived safely on my doorstep. After lots of consideration, I bought the Felixstowe finally in a summer sale new, for a price, I couldn't resist anymore. There are still some available and other WNW kits too. My hunger for the hunger for WW1 quality kits is now definitely satisfied. The plane is huge and the 92 cm wingspan hindered me, buying this fascinating plane until now. My plan is to build it without the outer wings in a maintenance scenario, maybe with removed canvas decking, to show the interior detail. I added two RFC mechanics from Copper State Models for the dio. Cheers Rob

The first half of the day was very frustrating. The exhaust to turbocharger tubes were the worst fitting parts, I ever have seen on a Tamiya kit. After two hours of nerve wrecking test fitting, I decided to glue them step by step into place as best as I could, using CA for a fast bond. Some tubes, I heated a bit with a flame and altered the radii to fit better. All in all, it looks horrible, but that's the way it is. The tubes were painted matte black and then received a misted coat of Extreme Metals jet exhaust, followed by metallic blue. The better part of the day was used to marry the engine section with the firewall to the front body. Here the fit was surprisingly good, given the amount of parts, which had to fit at his step simultaneous. After dry fitting three times and looking for all the connections, I finally glued everything together with CA-glue. Afterwards, I connected some hoses and dry fitted the whole assembly into the chassis, to check if everything fits, which it luckily did after some wiggling. Cheers Rob

Thank you Peter, nothing better than a well maintained airbrush. I clean mine very thoroughly all the time after use. From time to time, I do the same like you and clean all the hidden parts and check the seals. Cheers Rob

Fantastic progress Phil, so many described the Mossie build as demanding due to it's complexity. You make it look smooth and easy. The extra detail does some eye catching, superb. Cheers Rob

Thanks Phil, I used the new airbrush only briefly, as I prefer the bigger cup for working large scale and this does not fit too handy onto the Giraldez. I checked the function of course and it works like a charm with a much more sensible trigger, than the normal CRplus. I prepared some pics for a soon to write small comparison of the two airbrushes. Cheers Rob

The engine is now permanently attached to the fire wall and then I started adding some silver braided lines instead of the large diameter black tubes, supplied by Tamiya, which looked downright horrible. To attach the braided lines, I inserted 0,2 mm nickel silver rod into the ends and secured these with a tiny drop of CA. Then these rods were inserted into pre drilled holes. I also started to make some order to most of the fuel lines and added the oil tank (?) to the firewall, which was before fitted with pre painted and pre drilled resin connectors, instead of the simple lug, Tamiya provided. Cheers Rob

As mentioned before, it was time to get some sub assemblies off the bench and I installed the air coolers and turbo chargers. You have to have an affection for clean up, if you build such an old kit of a turbo charged car. Lots of tubes and connecting parts with ill fit and lots of flash and burr. For the air coolers, I added some resin connectors which were drilled out and inserted brass rods, but they are buried under the air ducts, out of sight. I glued the turbo charger units to the air intakes and engine and fitted everything into the chassis for a test. With a bit of tension, everything snapped into place without braking luckily. The chassis gets more and more cramped, to maintain the real car couldn't have been an easy job. Cheers Rob

Thank you Peter, I like the harness too, would be interesting to see, how it compares with the Tamiya supplied one. The wiring was simple, but adds some fine detail. Adding braided hoses and resin connectors is another story, as I have to drill them out with a 0,5mm drill bit and insert brass rods. Cheers Rob

Seems to be a good fit Carl and the surfaces look pretty good to without the typical 3D-printing traces. I have only one full printed plane kit and it has some of these superficial traces. I have to see, how it looks under primer, but your pics look pretty convincing. Cheers Rob