Thank you kindly, Sir.your making this kit shine, great work so far!
It's slowly starting to look like something.
Thank you kindly, Sir.your making this kit shine, great work so far!
All credit to you for your patience and application, it's looking good. I admit that I gave up with this kit as a result of similar problems to those you have encountered; in my case the main fuselage joint proved insurmountable, a combination of asymmetry, size differences and twisting was too much for me.
Yours is going to be great by the look of it.
Really impressed with what you've been able to do with this kit so far.
Colors look sharp. Can't wait to see it finished.
Did you run a metal rod through the fuselage to connect the engines?
KMD, you are doing an excellent job building this model. Sometimes we get a bit 'jaded' by some of the high-precision, modern injection-molded kit & think all kit media / process can achieve similar tolerances. Given that Randy essentially hand-builds his kit masters from scratch, you can expect a different level of constructional challenge. I have tackled some truly hideous "kits" in the past & can say this one is far from being 'bad' (but you say as much, too.) It strikes me that you are 'modeling' and not 'kit assembling' as you work to improve the basic fits and correct the admittedly minor accuracy errors. I'm not, btw, saying 'kit assembling' is a bad thing, just that it is a different standard on the spectrum of modeling skills.
That said, since I am 'catching up' with your project I wanted to toss a couple of constructives for you. One is when using your 'needle scriber', keep it chucked in as much as possible to reduce the amount of unsupported length. This reduces the amount of 'chatter' the needle will exhibit, providing you better control (aka, fewer 'skips and jumps'.)
Second, did you look at a pearlescent finish for it? The full scale mockup has a kind of semi-metallic sheen that reminds me of mother-of-pearl.
Lastly, when masking, you can seal the mask with a compatible clear coat (I use Pledge Multi-Finish acrylic floor coating) to seal the masking & prevent any bleed-under. Because it is clear, if it bleeds, no problem.
Keep up the good work!
R/ Robert