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Tamiya F-14 VF-2 Bounty Hunters


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The Tomcat is coming together nice and quick  Bill, your solution for the pitot tube is simple and effective, love it. I have also successfully used Future on non sticking decals, but have bought a bottle of Tamiya's decal adhesive softener, which I haven't tried yet. No decals on wooden sailing boats ;).

Cheers Rob

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  • 2 weeks later...

One of the last seams to be filled. I think.

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I had one area that I should have sanded prior to installing the intakes. I had to fashion a sanding tool out of Evergreen strip.

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There are a few small panel lines that I missed while scribing. Once I take care of those, I'll need to do some final surface prep and off to the spray booth.

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Those screw holes on the bottom of the fuselage bother me. I cut some sheet plastic, and chucked it into a dremel bit.

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I don't have a lathe, so I use what I have.

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Glued in place, with some 0.060' (1.5 mm) rod to fill the hole.

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A little sanding, and I've got this.

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Thankfully, I only had to do three of them - it was pretty time consuming.

And some white...

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  • 3 weeks later...

In the past, I've occasionally run out of steam once the airframe is complete. I spent some time on the gear doors. Most of the ejector pin marks were raised and only required sanding.

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A coat of Insignia white. I'll add a flat coat once they've received a wash.

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Tail planes are done.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

Bill

Nice progress on the Big Cat and what a perfect solution to the underwing screw hole. hard to believe back in those days, Tamiya had yet learned how to deal with all the injector pin marks - nice going on cleaning them up. Looking good in primer, which I am assuming is Mr Surfacer 1500 Black (Going to be giving it a go on the Whilrwind).

 

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Major update:

I sprayed the bottom with FS17875 (Insignia White), which should provide a gloss finish. I don't know if the pressure was too high or what - but the finished coat had a definite rough feel to it. Almost as if I got a batch of flat paint. Out came the sandpaper, followed by a good rubbing with #0000 steel wool. I thinned the next coat heavily with Mr. Leveling Thinner and achieved the result I was after (same bottle of paint). I forgot to grab a photo at this stage.

Next comes the Light Gull Gray (also glossy). I saw Peter's post on the rolled up tape to provide a feather edge; I'm too lazy and my results would be too inconsistent, so I grabbed a couple of lengths of floral wire...

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Tough to see in the picture, but the tape just covers the wire and sits a bit above the surface.

These were long runs along the fuselage; the wire was plenty long enough. For masking the forward fuselage, I tried something different.

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That's good old-fashioned pipe cleaner. The end result in both instances was acceptable.

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I'll let the paint cure for a couple of days, then on to the next step.

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Nearing the finish line on this one. Canopy is masked; ejector pin divots are filled and drying.

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I started laying down some decals from the data stencil sheet.

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Am I going to have to glue down every single stencil? Never again, Milspec!

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10 minutes ago, Peterpools said:

Bill

Looking good and you're in the home stretch now. 

Did the wing walk decals peel or are you using them as masks?

 

They peeled, Peter. I don't thing there is any glue on the back side of their decals. I has the same thing happen on another of their sheets.

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2 hours ago, Peterpools said:

Bill

Same on them ... Are you going to use them as a mask or go for a AM set of decals?

 

Peter, I could mask the walkways - easy enough. These ARE AM decals, purchased direct from the source. My main issue is that there a s***load of small stencils... Tamiya provides decals for a low-viz version, and this is to be a brightly colored bird.

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