Landlubber Mike

Doing pretty well here Chris, thanks for asking. Hope you're doing well!

Wow, congrats on the finish Rob!! Would never have known it had cracked in two. Looks really, really good. I also like the figure you added. I need a couple of more car kits under my belt before I tackle mine, but your build log is very inspirational! Thank you for posting it.

I saw that - beautiful F1 car!! The details of the kit from the pictures look amazing. I think I'm going to hold out for a repop of the earlier Ferraris - still kicking myself for not jumping on the 500F2.

Wow Rob, sorry to read that. I don't think I've ever seen a model broken in half like that, but if anyone can fix it, it's you. A little time away and hopefully a solution will come to you. I was working this weekend on finishing a Revell VW Samba bus. I was expecting maybe an hour tops of work as I had to glue on some of the more delicate parts like the side mirrors, etc. and make what should have been an easy repair to the engine door where one of the pins broke off so it wasn't supported on both sides. Well, I fix a new pin to the door, and go to ever-so-slightly pull the rear panels apart to slide the door in and I start hearing pops. Well, the side panels, roof and front all popped loose. Then I started popping off things in the interior like the sun visors. I finally got that all resolved, went to put on the passenger front door, and the top half of one of the very obvious door hinges chipped off and went flying. Somehow, I found this probably 2mm piece on the ground six feet from behind where I was working and managed to get it glued back together and finish the model. What should have been about an hour ended up taking over three hours. 🤬 I had to pour myself a stiff drink after that. Good news is my daughter loved it, so I guess it was worth it in the end. All this to say, I'm sure we all have similar stories like this, but don't give up on the model just yet. You're so close, I'm sure this will just be a short detour for you.

Happy New Year everyone!

Looks like Santa put gifts under...errr..inside the Revell box! Maybe a sign that you need to build another one

My condolences to you and your family Hubert.

Merry Christmas guys!

Nice pickup Rob! Those decals look pretty sweet. By the way I have you to blame for my growing MFH stash. There was a 1/12 Eagle Gurney-Weslake on eBay that went for under retail yesterday. I think the seller mislabeled the ad so it probably didn't attract much attention. I was looking at a different auction, and just happened to take a look at the seller's other auctions and couldn't believe my luck.

Very sorry to hear this Hubert. Thoughts and prayers to you and your family. Best wishes.

Geez Ernie, I was wondering what happened to you. Sorry to hear about everything life threw at you, but glad you are on the other side of things now.

Oh good, glad you found it. Sorry, I wasn't online yesterday and didn't see your post until this evening. Hopefully that helps!

Martin, if you haven't already build one, that cargo truck is a very very nice kit. I am just about done building one for one of my Hs 129 dioramas and it went together perfectly. I think I've only built one other Tamiya kit (the F4F years ago, but that was cut up with a lot of AM), but after working on the cargo truck OOB, I can see why people swear by Tamiya's fit quality. I originally had a SOL Model resin kit of the truck but there were a ton of fit and other issues to the point I pitched it and broke down and bought the Tamiya. EDIT - I see on the what's on your bench thread that you already almost finished yours. Very nice!

Hey Chris, hope you had a nice Thanksgiving. Great work on the kit - very cool subject. I've been staying away from Vallejo primers, mostly because I work a lot with PE and I find it doesn't adhere as well. That being said, I do use their Gloss Black as a base for their Metal Colors line (usually, after first priming with Mr. Surfacer for a solid base coat and to look for imperfections) and sometimes use their other primers for areas where I don't need a perfect base coat, like cockpit interiors, etc. When I use Vallejo, I do thin it - usually only a drop or a few drops per their instructions - using their thinner. 50/50 seems like quite a bit. When the bottles get chunky I pitch them. For the airbrush, I had similar problems with mine spitting when I first started. I do two things - at the end of a session, I'll run some lacquer thinner through the airbrush like you do. I also use one of these nozzle cleaners as a physical means of removing any gunk. I find that no matter how well you think you clean the airbrush, Vallejo tends to leave a very small amount of residue that builds up over time. Forgive me if you know all this, I just thought that I would pass along what works for me.

Wow, I could feel the stress levels rise as I was reading your post. What a brave approach, but it worked out fantastic in the end. Well done! That's so odd that only those portions of the decals reacted that way.