Israeli Mirage III C with Atar9C

[Kaireckstadt]

7 hours ago, harv said:

Surprised that the alignment is that bad. Great work sorting it out.....harv

Thanks Harv!

Would have been surprised if it was the other way round...

We will see which other surprises the kit offers...

[Peterpools]

Kai

Fantastic work on the wheel wells and Oil weathering -looks so good.

Awesome work

Keep ‘em comin

Peter

[GazzaS]

Kai,

Those wheel wells look quite nice.  Tell me...  have you ever considered the Molotow chrome pen to highlight those hydraulic lines?  Most metal paints just don't look too great painted on small parts.  I really like my pen.  I find it's a nice piece of gear.

[Kaireckstadt]

5 hours ago, Peterpools said:

Kai

Fantastic work on the wheel wells and Oil weathering -looks so good.

Awesome work

Keep ‘em comin

Peter

Thank you Peter! Much appreciated!

When will we see new pictures of your Mustang build? Did you have the time to proceed? 

[Kaireckstadt]

2 hours ago, GazzaS said:

Kai,

Those wheel wells look quite nice.  Tell me...  have you ever considered the Molotow chrome pen to highlight those hydraulic lines?  Most metal paints just don't look too great painted on small parts.  I really like my pen.  I find it's a nice piece of gear.

Thanks for your feedback Gaz!

I have the 1 and 2 mm Molotows which I mainly use for oleos of undercarriage legs. Good idea from your side.

I have tried them also for the pipes but to my personal gusto it’s too bright.

The original pipes in the plane are made of steel and are exposed to the elements and tear and wear. Therefore they appear to have a more matte appearance.  See example in the attached foto. 

[GazzaS]

42 minutes ago, Kaireckstadt said:

Thanks for your feedback Gaz!

I have the 1 and 2 mm Molotows which I mainly use for oleos of undercarriage legs. Good idea from your side.

I have tried them also for the pipes but to my personal gusto it’s too bright.

The original pipes in the plane are made of steel and are exposed to the elements and tear and wear. Therefore they appear to have a more matte appearance.  See example in the attached foto. 

A clear coat will tone them down, and still leave you with a slight lustre.  I just find too many metallic paints turning to gray once everything is done.

[DocRob]

1 hour ago, Kaireckstadt said:

The original pipes in the plane are made of steel and are exposed to the elements and tear and wear. Therefore they appear to have a more matte appearance.  See example in the attached foto. 

I sometimes use light grey on very fine parts, which should be matte metallic. When you lean back and look at your last pic, it looks almost grey. Some carefully rubbed on steel pigments may enhance the metallic appearance.
Most brushable metallic paints have a too coarse grain for my liking and do absolutely not look like the real thing.
The only exception I sometimes make are the Scale75 metallic sets, which behave a bit better than others I tried.

METAL and ALCHEMY STEEL paint set - Scale75 Between history and legend
METAL and ALCHEMY GOLDEN paint set - Scale75 Between history and legend

Cheers Rob

[Kaireckstadt]

2 hours ago, GazzaS said:

A clear coat will tone them down, and still leave you with a slight lustre.  I just find too many metallic paints turning to gray once everything is done.

Thanks for the tip, Gaz!

With what kind of clear coat would you tone them down?

 

[Kaireckstadt]

1 hour ago, DocRob said:

I sometimes use light grey on very fine parts, which should be matte metallic. When you lean back and look at your last pic, it looks almost grey. Some carefully rubbed on steel pigments may enhance the metallic appearance.
Most brushable metallic paints have a too coarse grain for my liking and do absolutely not look like the real thing.
The only exception I sometimes make are the Scale75 metallic sets, which behave a bit better than others I tried.

METAL and ALCHEMY STEEL paint set - Scale75 Between history and legend
METAL and ALCHEMY GOLDEN paint set - Scale75 Between history and legend

Cheers Rob

Your tipp also sounds very good Rob!

Which steel pigments do you use for the treatment of the light gray? 
Also thanks for the Info with Scale75 metallic paints. In which cases do you use them? 

[DocRob]

1 hour ago, Kaireckstadt said:

Your tipp also sounds very good Rob!

Which steel pigments do you use for the treatment of the light gray? 
Also thanks for the Info with Scale75 metallic paints. In which cases do you use them? 

I have different types of metal pigments, but the best, because they are the finest and so far polishable are these from Uschi van der Rosten, but there are only three types, steel iron and chrome. For your case, i would use steel or maybe iron.

The Scale75 metal colours are relatively new, but I used them for detail painting on several builds since then, lately on the innards of the Ammoknight and on the Fokker D.VIII, but only by brush.

Cheers Rob

[Kaireckstadt]

7 hours ago, DocRob said:

I have different types of metal pigments, but the best, because they are the finest and so far polishable are these from Uschi van der Rosten, but there are only three types, steel iron and chrome. For your case, i would use steel or maybe iron.

The Scale75 metal colours are relatively new, but I used them for detail painting on several builds since then, lately on the innards of the Ammoknight and on the Fokker D.VIII, but only by brush.

Cheers Rob

Sounds very interesting Rob! 
I will order both and give it a try. 
Especially when seeing the results on your Ammoknight! 

[GazzaS]

8 hours ago, Kaireckstadt said:

Sounds very interesting Rob! 
I will order both and give it a try. 
Especially when seeing the results on your Ammoknight! 

Usually a matte coat is enough to make it look less brilliant.

[Kaireckstadt]

3 hours ago, GazzaS said:

Usually a matte coat is enough to make it look less brilliant.

Thanks Gaz! Will try that too! 

[Kaireckstadt]

Yesterday I continued with the glueing of the wheel wells to the lower part of the fuselage. I didn’t follow the instructions because this would lead to a bad fit with lots of rework.

Therefore I first glued the big wheel wells to the smaller parts in the lower wing halfs. Perfect alignment possible.

Then I glued the lower wing halfs to the fuselage lower part. Test fitting showed that the rear fixing edge for the wheel well has to be removed from the fuselage lower half to get a proper fit of the wing to fuselage. What remained was a bigger gap which I closed with sheet. Too broad for filling. With these measures the fit was very good.

I also had to rework all small air scoops  on the lower fuselage half. Bad casting quality by Italeri. 

I‘m really disappointed with the fit and engineering of the kit. A newbie to the hobby has no chance to get a good result. 

I also tested the fit of the fuselage halfs and their fit to the lower fuselage half and the cockpit tub. The next construction site!  I love Italeri! This I will post next...

[Kaireckstadt]

And here is the next part. The preparation of the fuselage lower half was finished by glueing the cockpit-tub/ wheel well construction to it. Fit was good and no rework necessary.

Test-fitting of the fuselage halfs showed that the distance between them is very narrow caused by the kind of kit construction. When installing the hull-frame to the halfs a gap occurs which can only be pressed together with force. 
The hull had also to be reworked because the hull won’t fit between the wheel-wells on the lower fuselage.

I also decided not to install the intake tubes because through the small air-intakes hardly anything of it can be seen and cutting it off makes the assembly of the intakes much more simple. But I will describe this in a later post.

Test-fitting of the fuselage to its lower part showed that the sidewalls of the cockpit don’t fit exactly to the cutout in the fuselage halfs. I had to grind away 1 mm on each side and the the fit was perfect. I would not recommend to glue the sidewalls to the fuselage halfs instead to the cockpit tub because the resulting gap at the end between the tub and the sidewalls can simply be not corrected. 

Next step will be to bring the fuselage halfs together. 

[harv]

Well.  You see to be wrestling this into submission.  Really good work !....harv

[DocRob]

Nice work on the wheel wells Kai. I hope the struggles with the kit do not lead to a SOD-ness for the Mirage. You should sentence the Italeri people to building one each, poor sods .

Cheers Rob

[Kaireckstadt]

6 hours ago, harv said:

Well.  You see to be wrestling this into submission.  Really good work !....harv

Thank you Harv! Didn’t think that this build would become such a challenge. But we are modelers so we face them 

[Kaireckstadt]

1 hour ago, DocRob said:

Nice work on the wheel wells Kai. I hope the struggles with the kit do not lead to a SOD-ness for the Mirage. You should sentence the Italeri people to building one each, poor sods .

Cheers Rob

Thank you Rob! I have to out myself because I‘m not a native English. What does SOD stand for? Please don’t laugh!

[harv]

Shelf of doom !!.....harv

[Kaireckstadt]

35 minutes ago, Kaireckstadt said:

Thank you Rob! I have to out myself because I‘m not a native English. What does SOD stand for? Please don’t laugh!

 

2 hours ago, DocRob said:

Nice work on the wheel wells Kai. I hope the struggles with the kit do not lead to a SOD-ness for the Mirage. You should sentence the Italeri people to building one each, poor sods .

Cheers Rob

I will win the fight Rob! SOD (thanks Harv!) is no option

[Peterpools]

Kai

Brilliant work -your test fitting is meticulous and revealed a host of problems that you solved ... nice going for sure. I should have been using your 'test fitting' procedure on my Revell Mustang and may have resolved most of the issues I'm still struggling with.

Completely agree on your assessment of the kit.

Keep 'em comin

Peter

[GazzaS]

Kai,

    Nice work beating this one into shape. 

I can remember another long build of an Italei Mirage, and the LG legs looked more like chicken bones than machine tooled parts.  That guy actually spent a couple years on the build but really did a great job hyper detailing it.

....  so, now that you know what SOD stands for, how would you say it in German?

 

Gaz

[Kaireckstadt]

10 hours ago, Peterpools said:

Kai

Brilliant work -your test fitting is meticulous and revealed a host of problems that you solved ... nice going for sure. I should have been using your 'test fitting' procedure on my Revell Mustang and may have resolved most of the issues I'm still struggling with.

Completely agree on your assessment of the kit.

Keep 'em comin

Peter

Thank you Peter. I‘m really a test-fitter because I made the same experience you had with your Mustang.           Learned this lesson with the first Italeri Starfighter I built. Lots of work if not detected and even sometimes not possible to correct.

[Kaireckstadt]

8 hours ago, GazzaS said:

Kai,

    Nice work beating this one into shape. 

I can remember another long build of an Italei Mirage, and the LG legs looked more like chicken bones than machine tooled parts.  That guy actually spent a couple years on the build but really did a great job hyper detailing it.

....  so, now that you know what SOD stands for, how would you say it in German?

 

Gaz

Thanks Gaz, 

I hope that it wouldn’t take years to complete the model, but I‘m not superdetailing it. Are the landing gear legs really that bad? Hope that I can enhance them with piping. 
 

The translation for SOD in German is „Regal des Untergangs“. 
I would call such models „5 feet models“...