Two Imai Thunderbird 2 Builds

[Archive&Future]

I was at the Brighton Modelworld show last month and I picked up the English version of this beauty for £18, partially built but otherwise in great condition. I bought the second, Japanese version from ebay for £10, unbuilt but the box looks (and smells!) like it has been in a cigarette-smoke filled room for the past 20 years haha.
Anyway my intention is to build these up more or less simultaneously, doing one as a gift for my design teacher and the other for myself

(you might notice a bit of discrepancy in the chronology of these)

I soaked off the decals from the first model. This was overkill to be honest, I could have just rubbed them off with a damp cloth but hey, you live and learn

Then started to pay some attention to the seam lines on the bird no.1....not looking too good, I've no idea how to clean up the gap inside the vent...guess I'll jsut have to fiddle around with putty and files

The latest thing I've done is make some profiles of the pod belly, the kit one has horrifically large wheel spaces and a cover for a battery compartment, the kit was intended to be motorized apparently. I'm going to carve an MDF buck and vacuum form a couple of new bellies

 

[joberg]

Yep, putty and files will do

 

[Archive&Future]

So today I created a vacuum form buck from and formed 4 new underbellies. You can see in the first picture how horrible the kit belly is

I made sure to make the buck 1mm smaller all round to allow for the plastic width

I made a riser from MDF also, to minimize webbing and then created the grooves with a hacksaw, but they were too fine and so I widened them with a needle file....making them too wide in the end. Ya just can't win!

Second pull was perfect

It looks too toy like at the moment...not sure how I can fix that but at least the underside doesn't show too much

 

[Archive&Future]

I filled the intake seams with green stuff paste and sanded them smooth

I all looks kinda messy but it's fine. I then basecoated the whole thing black, unusual for me to do but I decided to do some modulated shading.

"It's not a phase mum, this is who i aaaaammm"

hehe, anyway I painted masking fluid into the cockpit windows, I won't leave them straight black (I'll shade them) but I wanted some nice smooth paintwork

Then the first coat of paint down, I'm just using a straight 'sap green' tube acrylic mixed with airbrush medium, with the black basecoat it works well I think. Towards the lighter modulations I mixed in a lemon yellow to the green, the paint was so transparent that the shades came out very subtle but still noticeable enough to matter

In case any of you were worried about colour accuracy, here it is in daylight

The only complaint I have is that the paint has dried with the slightest orangepeel texture. Any ideas on how to smooth out the paint without overly damaging the shading? Thanks!

 

[JBReplicas]

Looks great so far, I loved this kit as a kid! As for the paint, I normally rub my base coat very lightly with wire wool once its dried, and then give it a good rinse off to make sure its a bit smoother, however I think the texture may actually work in your favour for TB-2 as its not perfectly smooth and shiny on screen