I was asked to help bring Ee's models home from his stash in office. When I showed up, He whopped my arse with a very expensive present! A almost done F18D from Academy! Yahooooooooo! With some minor work and its ready to rock and roll. He even primed it black to check for mistakes. Which I took over from there.
The top mid section there was a part that were not very well fitted and reqired some work of filling up and sanding it flushed. Then returning the lines and 2 rows of rivets. I also rever masked different panels and sprayed on olive, grey, beige and white to give it tonal excitement.
I used the masking tape as a guide for the riveting with 0.4mm drill bit, which I broke 2! Urgh....it also protects the other side while we tried sanding.
I prefer to normally put on the windscreen before I paint the actual plane. This is where I deferred from the other guys. So Ee left the canopy part off, I had to glue it on and putty it several times with liquid putty. Then cleaning up with ethanol. This is to prevent harming the details. There was some shape mismatch, so there is sanding, which is not preferred unless absolutely necessary.
Drilling back rivets.
This picture shows the effects of clouding and reverse masking. The extra effort will pay off.
The oval panels were acrylics that was hand painted in using the glazing methods.
There is a need to mottle the single tone grey so that we will have some form of salt induced weathering. Since its not a battle scene plane that I am depicting, I tried to tone down on the contrasts with a 40% restraint over the efforts I put on my Tomcat. This I did with Masking fluids.
I chose two shades of grey and painted them on the paper to compare the tones, Once I have decided, I did dusting with two on the topside of the aircraft. This do not usually occurs on the bottom as the sea spray collects mainly on top. Besides, the bottoms is not easily observed by the people looking at the models.
Once the paintwork has cured over about 8 hours, I put the model under slow running water and washed it with a fine bristle tooth brush to remove all the masks. This revealed a mottling effect which is quite nice to look at.
The flaps were also painted in the same way and increased contrast as these parts normally takes on heavier beating and will need the contrasts so that it will show through and allow for a more interesting look. There are often oil streaks in these areas.
Some reference photos to show the flaps and differing tones on the actual planes. Some mottling on the top picture, the bottom one is Canadian which is land based so there is no mottling due to salt weathering.
I decided to junk the decals on the walkways and go for painting. At this scale, decals becomes a joke. I did the black, grey and mottling in lighter grey toning.
Turned out quite nice.
Some painful reworking on the nose area, so the masking! Also too the opportunity to paint the wheel wells.Unfortunately Ee did not have the chance to paint the wheel wells before assembly somehow! Man, orr he has some sick agenda to torture his friend! FIENISH.....FIENISH man!
The decals at the tials were a real pain. Its so thin in collapses onto itself once it leaves the backing paper! It took me 8 hours to do the two and cut the film insitu!
Another subject of extreme pain! The decal is rectangle, the surface us multi curved. How to keep it optically correct? Melt the whole damn thing in Mr. Colour Softer over 6 times and 2 hours and brushing it till the thing turns trapezoid so that finally it becomes somewhat rectangle!
Washing the plane, part by part. Its so big, it takes a week to do what we normally do in 1 session for 1/48 scale Hornets.
The details coming up nicely after some washes and the panel reverse masking is coming out nicely too. Happy with it so far. Before I streak it further to give it some more grime.
Weapons time!
I opted for triple tanks since this is the usual bombing run configuration, and two Side Winders for self defence. I also opted for the Lantirn III pods.
Added the Rhinestone to the pod. When the top cover goes on, it looked more interesting than painting the back of this cover silver.