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Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!
When I recently went to see my parents, I rediscovered my old stash of model kits. I couln't resist the temptation to take it back home and start with this hobby again.

So what did I find? This thing:

An Italieri CH-53 from the early nineties. The casting itself is quite good, there was no flash at all and very little in terms of moldlines. The few ejection marks are largely in places where there are hard to see, but there's a few sinkholes in unsightly places. Oh well. The real bummer, though, is the fact that the two halves of the body seem to have warped a bit while in storage:

This and the back door required quite some filling/sanding.
The kit suggests to model the back door open, which would reduce the issue somewhat, but the interior detail is so terribly poor that I went with a closed door instead. In any case, here it is all ready for painting:

I came to regret installing the engine nacelles at that point. I did that to have an easier time painting a coherent camo pattern between body and engines, but all those nooks and crannies behind the engines turned out to be a nightmare to reach. There's still two small unpainted specks, but they are somewhat hard to see.

In the end it turned out reasonably well compared to the attempts of my youth (sorry, no pictures a completely glue-smeared Stuka):





Much of that is because as a kid, I had limited access to decent modeling supply (Basically just a toy store with an extended modeling section.), but the biggest improvement is probably the internet with it's endless tutorials. Compared to the olden days I :
  • Thinned my paints!
  • Used putty for filling/sanding. This was a huge improvement here, as the bottom of the helicopter was quite a mess. Too bad that much of the surface detail was raised, that got completely obliterated in order to get a reasonably smooth bottom. I also learned that the putty slightly shrinks when drying. Initially I tried to apply it flush to the plastic edges, but after drying the putty had slightly sunk. It's still light-years better than doing nothing.
  • Used masking tape. This worked exceedingly well for straight edges (e.g. the transition from the gray bottom and camouflaged top), but I had some nuderruns on cruved sections. Easy enough to clean up.
  • An enamel wash to emphasize panels worked out reasonably well, though I need a bit more practice to find the sweet spot between it being invisible and totally over the top.
  • the whole gloss-coat -> decals -> matte coat thing worked out beautifully.
While it was not as easy as I remembered, I still had some good fun.
I'll see if I can find a suitable tank of some sorts for my next project.

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Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!
Sweet! My next project has arrived:


Just from looking at the castings it seems to have much better quality than that ancient Italieri kit I did last.
The only thing that looks like it could be troublesome are the vinyl tracks, but I'll see how much of a problem those are once I get there.
The kit also has some photo-etch parts. Those were unheard of when I did modeling as a kid, so it's my first time doing those. Holy poo poo are the PE pieces tiny. Any hints how to not immediately ruin them?

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!

Molentik posted:

Kurvi, with PE it helps to lightly sand them a bit while on the sprue so any glue/paint will hold better. If you stick some low-tack tape on one side the tiny pieces wont jump away, never to be found.

You have to use CA glue for PE, I prefer to use the gel kind, its less messh to apply ( with a toothpick) and it doesnt seg immediatly so you can correct mistakes.

Thanks! That was super useful. I didn't quite prevent me messing up one ultra-tiny hatch-handle. But it worked pretty well over all:



That thing has a myriad of exceedingly tiny part. It's still been a pleasure to build, though, because everything just fits together. I'm really impressed. The sprues have copyright marks from 1996 but it's just miles ahead of that helicopter I did last that's supposedly just three years older.

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!
The tankette is done!





Worked out reasonably well. The flash of my camera makes is look more glossy than it appears under natural lighting. It's at the edge of my skill-level, though. It has some super-tiny parts. Tinier than what I'd like, considering my unusually high number of thumbs. It's also noticeable when cleaning up the black wash I did: standard size cotton swabs are a bit on the large side for it. Much of the PE that was included in the kit was kind of overkill and is barely visible in the finished model, with the big exception of the exhaust guard. That looks excellent with all the tiny perforations. I need to up my skill with those, though: the CA glue doesn't dry as flat as the usual plastic cement, so there are a few visible globs of CA. Oh well, it came out well enough, but there's always room for improvement.

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!
All this ship-talk is getting my juices flowing, so I got myself a cutie in 1:72:



It's the daughter-boat of a larger rescue vessel. What's a daughter-boat, you ask? Well if mommy-boat and daddy-boat love each other very much, they go to a dry-dock and nine months later, this happens:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqkK1UBdnzg&t=10s

Oh god, writing this post I got distracted watching rescue ships on youtube for way too long.
Well anyway, have an action-shot of the class of boat the model is of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOKxKnghPpc

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!
It's done! And it really is the cutest little bote.




The kit is pretty nice, very little mold-lines and similar to clean up, just some minor sinkholes on two of the thicker parts. I had to do almost no fillings sanding.

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!

Like this, probably: https://youtu.be/fvRAIguYQsU?t=1181

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!
Well, look what the dog postman dragged in:

Let's see how that goes. On the one hand it's pretty much just a single color, so it shouldn't be too difficult to paint. On the other hand, that color is white, which can be troublesome. At least I won't have to do the rally-stripes, those are included as decals. We'll see if I'm up to the task to get those on without wrinkling, tearing or otherwise messing them up.

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!
X-29 trip-report
The kit is quite nice. Lot's of surface detail, no mold-lines, very good fit, there were just a few sinkholes in unfortunate places, i.e. visible from the outside and difficult to fill due to surrounding details. I think I did reasonably well in putting things together. The area around he air-intakes was tricky to get smooth, though, and I'm not really satisfied with my results there. It doesn't really show up on the picture, because the white plastic has so little contrast.

I tried using primer this time around, as I had trouble with the acrylic paint flaking off when weathering or applying decals on previous builds. This seems to have worked alright, but drat, does the primer ever smell terrible.

I also had a go at pre-shading, It may surprise you, but it didn't take forty years of hard drinking to paint lines this crooked. I can do that just fine without delirium tremens.

End-results are mixed: Not being entirely flat white surely helps the visual appeal, but I was a bit heavy handed and the plane looks like it's been wallowing in some oil-puddles behind the hangar. At least the rally stripes distract from this due to their high contrast. The stripes are all decals, which is for the better, as painting those lines by hand would surely have ended in disaster. Applying the deals wasn't totally easy either, they are quite large and thin and I had to use what felt like gallons of softening solution to make them conform to the curved surfaces. I managed to tear more than one (prominently the long central stripe on the right side), but largely manages to align the fragments to still keep a reasonable overall appearance.



Overall good fun. Nevertheless, at basically every step of the build I had the impression that I should be able to do better. I guess I'll need more practice. There's still a few more of the X-series planes that I'd really like to do (for example the extremely pretty X-36). Or comdey-option X-32

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!

Symetrique posted:

Nice work! If you're not happy with the starkness of the preshading, you could always use a lighter grey color on the next kit. Or maybe try out blackbasing.

Those sound like good ideas, will try at the next occasion!

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!

Nebakenezzer posted:

I can sympathize, I just discovered the vinyl tracks Trumpeter gave this kit has an issue:



Are you PLASMO?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJf0JjDS4Tg&t=571s

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!
A new project arrived at my doorstep:

I splurged and ordered a wooden deck, at least while it's still in the package it looks very good. Let's hope that it stays like that after I put it on.
I'll have to go for some sort of sub-assembly build-process, because it's going to be impossible to first assemble everything and then mask the deck, which has a hundred tiny lasercut holes for various greebles on deck. Though I'm still not sure if I should go basecoat → assemble → apply weathering or rather basecoat + weathering → final assembly.
Any experience?

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!
Update on the Fuso:

Coming along nicely. The kit is very nice and has a huge amount of details. The instructions for the main bridge alone take two pages in the instructions:

It has way too many sub-millimeter parts for my gorilla-like hands, but so far it's turned out reasonably well. This is the first time I see a kit that is using some fancy 3D molding technique to get detail on three sides of a part. Notably, the gun-barrels have proper holes in them due to this. A word of caution, though: Fujimi can be a mixed bag. I checked on Scalesmates before I bought this one, to make sure that it's not one of their 70's molds, which they are still selling to this day.
All the detail has some downside, though: there's a lot of filigree that semi-covers stuff behind it:

and I have the feeling, it's not going to be easy to paint. In the end I'll be happy if all the parts I can't reach aren't directly visible. But knowing myself, I'll miss one really obvious spot.

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!

Furism posted:

Also is there any Euro Fire Truck kit somewhere? I can only find those huge American ones.

Are you rich? if yes, there's a Revell firetruck:
https://www.revell.de/en/products/modelmaking/transporters/buses/schlingmann-hlf-20-varus-4x4.html
It's 1:24 and looks quite detailed, but 70€ is still on the expensive side.

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!
Fuso is making some progress. I gave all the subassemblies their basecoat of color and had a go at installing the deck:

It fit almost perfectly, but is a fraction of a millimeter to large, so that it warped in a few places. In some I was able to just glue and clamp it down, but in two places I had to put some cuts to release the tension.
Even after all that it still looks miles better than anything I could have achieved with paint, so I guess that's a win.
Now there's about two dozen tiny greebles that need to be installed on the deck.

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!
For a second I though you were going for an F82: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_F-82_Twin_Mustang

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!
It is done!

It took me quite a while to go from the basic assemblies to the final model. There is a huge number of tiny greebles that need to be attached to the deck. To be quite honest, the amount of effort it took to get all those details on is rather large compared to how hard many of them are to see. At least it helped to have the wood-deck, which saved me from having to mask or individually brush-paint all these tiny bits. The kit is really quite crazy. The small float-plane in the back has 9 individual decals to apply, which was rather fiddly. It also took me more than an hour to put on the rigging, which is very thin to be in scale, but too thin work with in an reasonable manner. I also had to get some practice to get the rust on. I had read on the net somewhere that you can paint small splotches of brown enamel, let it dry, and then smear is out with a brush dipped in thinner. Turns out your need a very very specific amount of thinner or you'll either just wash away the whole rust or not dissolve any at all. In the end it turned out pretty well, but it took me some time.

In general I'm quite happy with how it has turned out, but I'm not sure 1:700 ships are my thing. I'm too clumsy for the tiny details, but I don't really have space in my apartment for 1:350. So back to airplanes it is, I guess.

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!

Smoke posted:

Maybe a stupid paint-related question, but I have to ask it. I normally use Revell enamel paints (with a brush), but their assortment is a bit lacking once you move away from their own kits. Some also require mixing paints which is annoying on larger kits, especially because I don't always have time to keep working on a kit and the mix tends to dry out.

Is there any risk in mixing or combining paints from various manufacturers provided I stick to just using enamel paints? Or would it be safer to mask off areas completely to prevent them from touching? I picked up some Humbrol enamels to fill in some gaps, and today picked up this gunmetal color for a Zvezda kit I'm working on as well as other stuff I'll be building in the future. So far the Humbrol and Revell paints don't seem to have any problems with eachother.

Mixing different enamals should be fine. Just give it a try on a spare piece of plastic and see how it turns out.
The tricky part comes with mixing acrylics: water-based ones (like Revell Aqua Color) don't mix with lacquer based ones (like the Tamiya acrylics).

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!
I haven't been able to start any new projects for a few months due to a move, but I'm finally settled to the point where I can get things done again.
This has arrived in the post:

First impression: Tamiya kit is excellent. Castings are super-clean. Virtually no cleanup required.
The PE set contains a second sheet with cockpit parts, that's on the other side of the package and boy does it ever look fiddly.

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!

Jonny Nox posted:

I was just watching a video about that plane!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0MZauExJDw&t=778s

Interesting! That's very instructive. I'll go for the bare metal look instead, though. I know already that I'd mess up that camo pattern.

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!

Molentik posted:

Doesnt Tamiya have decals of tgat camo pattern for that kit?

The leaflet in the box claims as much, but I've never seen it in the wild (i.e. the catalog of my go-to online shops).

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!
I made some progress on the Ki-61:

I'm slowly getting the hang on working with these tiny parts. The PE kit really makes the cockpit shine. It's a pity that the kit doesn't have an open-canopy option, so it's not going to be really visible in the finished model.

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!
Finally finished the Ki-61






The kit itself is very nice. Everything just fits together perfectly, basically no mold-lines to remove. There were only two spots where I needed to fill/sand (which is for the better, as I'm terrible at it).
The decals are a bit of a mixed bag, tough. The are printed very very sharply, even the tiniest of writing is still legible. However, they do not conform very well, even when doused in buckets of softener.
It's not very visible on the photos, but the white lightning design on the stabiliser in particular does not sit perfectly on all the small surface-detail. Overall I still like the flashy optics that come with all the decals.

I'm slightly less enthusiastic about the PE-set that I got for this. Half the parts it provides are excellent, like the cockpit details or the grill of the cooling intake, which really improve the optics of the whole thing.
However, the other half of the parts is attached in places which are almost invisible in the final model or requires the removal of plastic in tricky places (i.e. trying to remove it is going to destroy surrounding surface detail).

I've also hit a terrible snag in my modeling: my eye for detail is getting better more quickly than my actual modeling skills. Although the plane is probably the technically best I've ever done (pre-shading worked out much better here than in previous attempts, I'm improving with the masking of the canopies), I've gotten so much more adept at spotting flaws that it feels like I'm not improving at all or even regressing.

And now for something completely different:
If there is ever a crap-plane group-build, I have these to offer:

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!

Carth Dookie posted:

That's a nice ki-61. Airfix kit?

Tamiya.

This one: https://www.scalemates.com/kits/tamiya-60789-kawasaki-ki-61-id-hien-tony--1117318

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!

Arquinsiel posted:

Yeah, if we were to crapkit this then we'd need to know what they are.

I had a look on scalemates:
https://www.scalemates.com/kits/krugozor-204-hawker-hunter-fga9--162451
https://www.scalemates.com/kits/krugozor-256-westland-lynx--162475
The exact kits appear to not be available any more.
Nevertheless, if scalemates is to be trusted, reboxes of these exist and are still listed in European stores.

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!

ExtraNoise posted:

doublepostin'

I finished the 1/18 scale pizza I was working on:



Now it's time to make a little box for it.

Wow! That pizza looks crazy good. What did you make that from?

Unrelated: my next project came in:

Castings look good, but we'll see how much I'll be able to ruin it.

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!

Smoke posted:

It's pretty hard to ruin that one, I built it last year in its A version. One tip: Check the fit of the transparent parts before committing as they're flexible rather than brittle and will most likely need some shaving down to fit neatly and the rudder also requires some care. The decals require a bit of planning and aligning, especially on the wings, but they're of pretty dang good quality.



Thanks for the hints, that's useful to know.

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!

Carth Dookie posted:

If you aren't making it while lit as gently caress on vodka then I don't even want to hear about it.



I only had the Swedish stuff around, but it's still going to make this a more authentic soviet experience.

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!

Carth Dookie posted:

I'm genuinely curious if it's possible to thin Tamiya paints with it. Alcohol is alcohol right?

:thunk:

You aren't thinking about this like a real Russian. Why would you contemplate using Vodka as paint thinner, if you could try using paint-thinner as vodka-substitute!

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!
It took a while, but it's finally done





Was a lot of fun to build. The Kit was quite nice, good fit.
I tried to give it a bit of a used look with quite a bit of preshading and weathering. Turned out pretty well.
It took forever to get all the windows individually a masked, though.

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!
That A5M4 looks great. At that size I'd have long given up in frustration.
It still made me look at SWEET-models, and drat are they teases:
Box looks like this:

but if you read closely, it turns out that the cats are note included! :argh:
How can I live my life without cute facist cats?

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!

Symetrique posted:

Here's one that has the cats included!
https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10574935

Awesome! Thanks for finding this. I've lost the fight against my impulse control and ordered this. Let's see how long it takes to ship from Japan.

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!
Now that took a long time. I got this

for the anniversary of the battle of the Bismarck sea, so about half a year ago.
My hobby store had a special offer for additional stuff, so I went whole hog.
It's the first time I got die-cut masks for painting and those were great. The photo-etch was probably a bit too much.
There were like a hundred little greebles for the cockpit that are ultimately barely visible

In any case, I went with an Australian paint scheme to get some connection to the Bismarck sea


Overall it turned out reasonably well, though you'll find all the tiny spots where I messed up if you look closely enough.

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!
The cat-project (reminder: )
is starting to take shape. Got the plane done at least:

The deck-elevator is next and the actual cats will come last. Looking at the cats, they are tiny and difficult to work on, but it's all 144 scale, so in comparison to the plane they have about the size of burly men :stare:

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!

Dr. Phildo posted:

O also, please can we see the cats?
When this was first posted, I had no idea how wee it was. 144 scale cats are gonna be a hilarious pain

Sure:


There's two of these sprues included, and in addition an extra little decal sheet with eyes.
It's still going to be hard to get these painted well. I've already decided that there aren't going to be any torties in my deck-crew :haw:.

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!

grassy gnoll posted:

Hell yeah Sweet kit. I hadn't realized you get twice as many cats and a way bigger flight deck in the IJN version. Does that box come with the film set diorama on the back?



Nope, just instructions:

That made me wonder, though what else comes with which kit. That wasn't particularly helpful, because descriptions seem to be largely inconsistent.
I found this treasure, though (not mine):

:3:
Let's hope I can manage something that's half as good, and I'll be happy.

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!

Sultan Tarquin posted:

Oh god the bowtie. Please tell me that's a decal.

Unfortunately, that specific figure isn't included in the kit I have, so I can't tell.

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!
Catte-crew, assemble!



That was simultaneously super fiddly and great fun.

Next up is:

Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!
Finally done with the lifeboat:





I really like the boat, but the kit has some issues. It's really a reminder why my buddies and me considered Airfix to be bottom tier when we were kids. It's really not up to the standards of their most recent kits. Sinkholes, moldlines and ejection marks everywhere. The worst where the fitting issues though. The whole thing needed quite a bit of filling and sanding. In some places that worked reasonably well, but I had to skip a few because they were not in spots that could be realistically sanded after filling.

It's got a few upsides, though, too. The whole thing is exceedingly detailed including a very elaborate interior:

I strongly suspect that Airfix got access to the engineering drawings in exchange for their donations.
The decals are also top notch, super supple and conforming I got no silvering at all. There's also a ton of marking options for like 20 different boat stations in historic and current marking schemes.

Enjoy some actual footage of the boat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4s-kE99EE7Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCXCawoUEzw

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Kurvi Tasch
Oct 13, 2012

Thats von Derp for you!
Here we go.
Finally a new project on my table:

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