Hi Damien,

Sprue-Goo! Of course! I'd let it slip my mind but it's a great suggestion. One evening this week will be spent slicing old sprues into a partially used bottle of Tamiya Super Thin. Et voila - Sprue-Goo.

Thank for dropping in and for the reminder too.

Have a great day.

Steve.

Hi Steve, I took the plunge and started my TF-104G in earnest...First time I actually decided to fully dryfit the kit after having read the trials and tribulations you went through...
I’ll be posting a first building report here today. But as much as I am a fan of the 104 this kit has many many areas to improve...and to fill with putty. So, your efforts here are not in vain...it is the engineering / design of the kit that causes issues that will require patience, patience and patience to get it right. I find the tail fit the most awkward and the cockpit is really too spartan for this scale...
I’ll keep following your build for sure!!

Hey Tim,

Great, its a sort of buddy build. I've been filling and sanding, mucking it up then re-filling and re-sanding, so not much to show except dust. Watch out for the fit between the fuselage and the air intake parts - not so good!

Good luck with the build.

Hello chaps,

Remember me? Well you could be forgiven for forgetting. It has been three months since I last posted. The truth is that I lost faith in this project. For a while all I could see where my mistakes and the problems ahead with the build. I'm happy to say that some time away has put things in perspective and now I'm ready and eager to get going again.

So, if you're still interested the build will resume, and thanks for being patient.

Happy modelling,

Steve.

Hi Steve,

I’m not an aircraft guy (not anti, just not my thing), instead, I just enjoy watching a good build come together whatever it is - and I’m sort of a scratch building, detailing enthusiast - the more ridiculous the better. Hence, I drop by to see your progress which is always a pleasure to look at. So, when the mood strikes you, hope you’ll start posting - just once you feel like it. It’s a hobby, not a job! Or, that’s my story and I’m sticking with it.

Cheers
Nick

Glad to hear you're back at it, Steve!

Steve,
Even this car guy is glad that your Mojo tank is full once again. Looking forward to your next update.

Joel

Steve,
Absolutely interested! Just today I was wondering what happened-- I thought to myself "Steve must be onto the paint by now, I wonder what he ended up doing about that?" And it must be deja vu-- because here you are! I'm looking forward to your continued work. Believe me, I know what it is to have a project "hang fire" for a while (my oldest "hung fire" project is going on 41 years now!--it's a a full rigged wood model ship).
VR, Russ

Glad to see this back Steve. I did wonder if you had hit the eject button as I agree complex builds can do that to you. I think sometimes it is useful to have a simple build on the side to allow for less energy while you recharge.

cheers

Michael

Hi guys,

Thanks for the warm welcome back. I'm still at the controls after eyeing the eject handle for a while.

To ease myself back in I chose a simple job - building the sidewinders. Italeri's aren't bad but in keeping with the theme of the build I want to sharpen the details an add some photo etch. I started by sanding off most of the details and replacing them with scribed detail or strips of thin plastic sheet or metal foil. Here's progress so far. It's not much to see really, but it feels good to be posting again.

Thanks a million for the encouragement. I feel it, and really appreciate it. You guys are a good bunch.

Happy modelling,

Steve.

Hey Steve,
Do you have any of that UV light-hardened plastic stuff? It works great for making the seeker head.

Gaz

Hey Gaz

No, but it sounds interesting. I was going to use some clear sprue sanded and polished to shape, but tell me more about the UV thingy please.

Happy modelling,

Steve.

Steve,
It's main use was for quick dental repair. Squirt it on, hit it with UV light for 5 seconds, and it becomes a very hard, clear, file-able, and sand-able substance.

Then it started being sold in Germany under the name of Bondic. Now it is sold in various places, under the name Five Second Fix.

Here is what it looks like one my 104's sidewinders:




I'm sure with your attention to detail it should be awesome.

From my personal experience: The UV Adhesive is a great filler as long as it has a recess to fit into. It doesn't work so well for filing small, shallow depressions. It can come detached from shallow depressions while sanding.

Gaz

Hey Gaz

Wow, I like it. Nice Sidewinders by the way. Wait, does that sounds like a bad chat up line?

Anyhow, thanks for the intro to Five Second Fix. I'm off hunting.

Have a great day,

Steve.

Thanks mate! Always glad to help.

Gaz

After a bit if a break for a holiday with the kids, work has continued slowly on the Sidewinders. Eduard provides some extra detail, including tiny little rollerons which I haven’t fitted yet. Some simple scratch building restored details badly moulded on the kit part. Here are the missiles just needing those extras and a decision from me on how to approach modelling the absent seeker heads.

Have a great day guys.

I need to a new drill bit to make the holes for the sidewinders’ seeker heads. So while I wait, I misbehaved and spent an afternoon with Rosie the Riveter. It was actually sort of meditative. I restored some rivets lost when I blended the intakes into the fuselage, and added them to the rear fuselage. I’ve spent a lot of time adding extra surface detail, and I hope it all survives painting. Here’s the best shot I could get, and a Rosie themed track to enjoy in tribute to the goddess of riveting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGemtjVtfZM

And here’s the real thing. As you can see I’m simplifying somewhat so I don’t go crazy.

http://data3.primeportal.net/hangar/luc_colin3/f-104g_fx-47/images/f-104g_fx-47_11_of_39.jpg



Bye for now,

Steve.

Fixing big bits feels like big progress. It probably is a psychologic trick but what-the-heck. So, with great pleasure, a fair bit of fiddling around and some Mr Surfacer, the tail unit is now attached to the fuselage. That felt good so I set about the nose next, and…. Ugh! It has a surface texture like concrete. Sanding it out was mildly mediative and I also diverted into fixing the PE panels on top of the fuselage spine at one point. Feels like I’m motoring or maybe that should be flying now.







Happy modelling,

Steve.

It's good to see some progress, Steve. If I remember correctly, the spine a difficult area to finish cleanly. Those PE plates help a bit.

Gaz

Hi Gaz,

Yup it feels god to be back in the groove.

I hope all the sanding and filling I did before fitting those plates has covered any gaps and problems, but of course the first coat of primer will (gulp) tell all.

Happy modelling,

Steve.

Steve,
Good luck with your first coat of paint. May your touch-ups be few.

Gaz

With some big construction work done I decided to go back to the cockpit and electronics bay. There’s a lot of photo etch to add around the edge of the cockpit but I wanted to get the inside of the hinged covers that close over the avionics bay done first. Eduard’s photo etch set for these areas is a bit odd. Their choice of parts misses some obvious parts ideal for PE improvement and instead gives us unnecessary extras. For example there’s a lip that runs all the way around the bottom edge of the avionics bay door. Eduard’s PE offers us just one side out of four. There are also brackets that scream out for PE, but nothing in the set. On the other hand we get crude warning plaques with very low resolution colour printing. I wonder why?

What’s not up for dispute is the missing cabling. There’s a nice bundle of twisted cables running from inside up into the roof area. I made these from thin metal wire and also added some details from plastic card and stretched sprue, including making new details for the forward part of the lid. Italeri’s sloppy moulding was sanded off.

That seems like a lot of words for some fiddly details, but I hope that all these little changes will add up to an authentic looking ‘plane once I’m done.

Oh yes. Ejector pin marks. They were nicely stamped into awkward details. Thanks Italeri. I filled them will several coats of Mr Surfacer 500 and cut up little bits of sanding sponge to get them smoothed down. Felt good once they were gone - like getting rid of the flu.

Happy modelling guys.

One of the (many) lessons this build is teaching me is the art of compromise. There’s a limit to the amount of detail that I can reproduce using the tools and materials I have, and a limit to my patience, dexterity and eyesight. Put more simply, trying to scale down every detail is impossible - too many parts would need to be microscopically small and unusably delicate, and therefore beyond my ability to make or work with.

So what to do? Leave details out? Well that’s often Italeri’s approach, and I’m trying to enhance the kit. Invest in a microscope and nano printers to get the dimensions exactly to scale? That’s way beyond reasonable for me. My approach is to create, as far as I can, an impression of the real thing. For example - the tangle of wires inside the avionics bay lid. I made a tangle but each strand is over scale thickness and there are fewer in the bunch than on the real thing. The point is it communicates the desired shape; it says’ tangle of wires’.

When practically applied, that diversion got me here. Not an exact scale replica of the real parts, but an improvement on the original I hope, and enough detail to sell the realism to people looking.

Oh, and one last thing. I think I can see why Eduard only offered two (not one as I said earlier) of the four sided lip. The original part is moulded with an irregular curve along one side, which I suspect is hard to reproduce in PE. It should be straight, but it’s not.



Happy modelling guys.

Steve, it's certainly getting there-- I've been lurking from afar, since first commenting over a year ago now when you first thought about starting this model and were deciding which kit to use. I really enjoy your updates. Have you given any thought about a color scheme?
VR, Russ

Hello Russ and other friends,

I moved apartments recently and it has kept me away from the bench, so sorry for the delay in replying and also the lack of updates. Luckily I moved without any damage to the kit so more updates are coming soon.

Russ, feel free to lurk :-). I do the same all over the place. I'm happy to share the adventure and really pleased you're enjoying it. My plan is to go for a natural metal finish. Originally that meant a USAF aircraft based at Da Nang in 1965 although recently I've been eyeing the Taiwanese decal sheet.

Before that there's more detailing on the way, and I have to figure out what to do about the nose weight I forgot to add. A quick test fit showed this kit might be a tail sitter, so any advice is gratefully received. I've already glued and filled the nose of course. Doh!

Thanks for looking in, and to all the fellow lurkers thanks also for the interest.

Have a great day,

Steve.