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ghodges

IPMS/USA Member
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Everything posted by ghodges

  1. Terrific Tomahawk! I have a real soft spot in my hobby heart for the old Monogram classics, especially when made to shine like yours! Gil
  2. Congrats on bringing in one more for the year, especially with the frustrations that could have made it easy to shelve instead of persevering. I really like you choice of the black and green scheme. Thanks for letting us ride along! Gil
  3. Very nice recovery! I used some Tamiya rattle can gloss on my latest build and was very impressed with it. It may move to my "go-to" gloss. Gil
  4. Good looking progress, and interesting size difference between the kit tires and the aftermarket tires/ Gil
  5. It's about 3ft deep..... and though the B-24 fits in it, there's less than a 1/4" clearance where the wingtip and vertical fin almost touch the case. I built it to fit my 1/48 bombers and transports, not 1/32 behemoth bombers. I just lucked out in that! Gil
  6. That looks like a most excellent year to me! Although the masked and painted markings add much to the finished project, they have to slow you down too. As for getting better with age and experience, I've found that after almost 60yrs of building models I have NOTHING down to a science, so don't feel alone in that! Congrats, and thanks for sharing with us! Gil
  7. If you can get them, I highly recommend the spray cans of Tamiya paints and clear coats. They spray better than other hobby brands and they caused no problems over the pencil panel lines. They also dry fast and hard. Gil
  8. No... just used the kit marks. But you could drill holes as long as their angles were exactly correct. Otherwise they might tend to make the wire bend or bow. Gil
  9. I don't know, as I don't brush coat top colors or clear coats. Perhaps if you only brushed one surface at a time so it stays level while drying so it couldn't run? Gil
  10. It's round.... and too hard to flatten by rolling. I think someone does make scale, flattened flying wires for the WWI 1/32 Wing Nut Wings models, but you'd have to do a search to see who. Gil
  11. ghodges

    Gun Girls

    Coll diorama! And that door's not too big, those girls are just short! 😉 Gil
  12. Here's a 1/32 Hasagawa F4B-4 that I did using the floral wire.... you need a good pair of dividers to measure the distance as exact as possible and then care to keep from bending/kinking them, but they seem to be about right in thickness for me. It comes in a dark green color, but I usually paint mine black. Gil
  13. It is simple, but it IS tedious! I used a .5 mechanical pencil to go over every panel line with light to medium pressure. If you make a stray mark out of the panel line, it can be erased with a CLEAN eraser (a dirty eraser tip can be used for smudges!). I'm guessing it took the better part of an hour to go over all of the lines, top and bottom. I used 2-3 passes on "hinge" lines to make them darker. I then wet my finger and dragged it over the surfaces in the direction of airflow and gravity to smear the graphite for weathering. The easy thing about this method is that if a smear is too intense or dark, you can use a damp paper towel to lessen it or remove it completely and start over. Your fingertip will get dirty, so watch where and what you grab after starting this, but then your dirty finger can be used by itself as you go along to make streaks! I used the same method to apply some MIG dark brown pigment to further weather the surfaces. I did all of this after applying the flat coat, and then did another lighter flat coat to seal it all. Personally, I've had trouble with being able to remove washes as completely as needed, especially when trying to get a more factory fresh finish. I've found that regular pencil and colored pencils often give me more control and are neater, though they take a bit longer to do. Gil
  14. That makes for an epic year, especially when considering the extra effort to include lighting and the complexity of some of those. Thanks for posting and also letting us ride along on many of those builds. Gil
  15. It actually fits in my newest display case! Gil
  16. Gotta agree with Mark, your fledgling museum is off to a fine start! That PT-17 is especially eye catching! I haven't been able to find the ceramic wire in anything larger than what is sold by Wonder Wire. My 2 choices for 1/32 rigging are either stretched sprue, or thin floral wire. You can usually get a handful of the wire at your local florist, and they may or may not charge you. The thinnest works well, but is also easy to kink, and thus has to be handled carefully. Videos on stretching sprue can be found on line. It takes practice to do it and also to get it taut once in place, but is also readily available in your kits. Hope this helps! Gil
  17. No.... not much room to spare at all, but there IS a modicum of "air" on all sides! And, there's room to add a couple of smaller 1/48 models in the space between the tail and the wings if and when that becomes needed as the case fills up. My real hope is that the local military museum will have space for it there eventually, and I'll give it to them. If not, it still has a home with me! Gil
  18. I've made good use of display only space in the past and hope they'll have some in Texas. That said, though it does limit the number of models you may want to bring, you can simply bring your models and "display" them in the regular categories. If you're registered for the convention it doesn't cost you anything buy the time to fill out the forms. The only real down side is it makes more work for the judges...... though most of my entries, whether for real or display, don't take long to judge and move on past! Gil
  19. Brilliant work! Ok, I'll leave now..... Gil
  20. Very nice! Completing 4 is a great way to wind up the year, though knowing you, you could have a few more up your sleeve in the next week! Too bad about that canopy.... I gave up on liquid masks years ago as being unreliable at the best and a gooey mess like yours at the worst. Hope you can replace the clear parts as that Harrier deserves it. Gil
  21. I considered installing a mirrored back, but since it cost me twice what the last one did, decided to cut costs. My smallest case in the office does have a mirrored back. Here's the latest pic of the new case with that 1/48 B-29 I "christened" the case with and the 1/32 B-24D I just finished in it.... Gil
  22. The model was painted with Tamiya rattle can Deck Tan topside and Neutral Gray underneath. The top side was then heavily post shaded with Tamiya lacquer Light Sand, and a "mist" coat of Tamiya lacquer Deck Tan was applied to tone it back down. Tamiya rattle can Gloss was used before applying the kit decals, which are quite good. That said, it did take a new bottle of Solvaset and some patience to get the fuselage roundels to suck down over the waist window wind guards. I panel lines were done with pencil, which was then smeared with a wet finger for weathering. MIG brown pigments were applied in the same way for more weathering, along with some selected silver chipping. Tamiya rattle can Flat sealed everything. This thing is HUGE.... tough to get good pics of it overall, so please excuse the background stuff! Comments, critiques, and questions welcome! Gil
  23. Finished this one up today. This is a pretty good kit, that certainly looks like a Liberator when done. The Davis Wing contour on the top of the wings at the root is missing; which is odd because they got the offset leading edges of elevators and rudders correct! The fit over all is good, except for the fit of the gear bays in the wings, which are too thick and require significant thinning to close the wings up. The ailerons and flaps are designed to be trapped when building the wings, but the hinges can be clipped so they can be added later. The kit has over 20 sprues and LOTS of heavy sprue connections and nubs on the parts. You'll need a very good set of nippers and #11 blades to trim all of the parts. Also, many of the connectors run OVER onto the gluing surfaces, making for extra trimming to make parts fit properly. There two other significant engineering anomalies to work around. The first is to clip the top off of the stem from the nose gear fork so it can be added later in the build. The other is the need to clip two big pins inside the wings (top and bottom) so that the wings can be built and then slid OVER the wing spar. The instructions would have you build the wings around the spar making for a massive assembly to handle for much of the build. Doing this mod allows the fuselage and wings to be assembled and painted separately, which eases things greatly. The fit of the wings to the fuselage is very good, by the way! The kit has plastic landing gear, which appear to be robust enough to support the model. However, Aercraft Models makes brass replacement gear and would be a better idea over time. The weakest area of the kit is the rubber tires, which fit their hubs horribly. I heartily recommend the Eduard resin tires if you build this kit! The detailing is good throughout, except for the radio room and the nose. The radio room only has 2 small windows, and the details aren't missed there. The lack of detailing in the nose is baffling. The instructions only show a seat and an ammo box, even though a Norden bomb sight IS in the kit (along with some other "J" parts); and do NOT tell you to add it. I built up a structure for the sight and added extra kit parts to at least detail the nose area. Here are some in progress pics with comments to better illustrate.... I used tape tabs to mark the numerous sprues, making it much easier to find them during the build... The kit cockpit deck is good. I cut the kit decal and used it on the main instrument panel. The blue throttle handles are PE parts, which are easier to apply if they're cut apart. This shows the upper nose gear installed on the nose gear floor. Cutting off the very top of the stem to the nose gear fork/mud guard allows it to be slid in later. Typical waist area detailing... This shows how much grinding/trimming I had to do to make the gear bays fit. You can also see the 2 large pins/sockets that need to be removed to allow the assembled wings to fit over the wing spar. This shows how I first installed the bomb sight (rebuilt a higher support structure later) and the kit parts I added to detail out the nose. I weighted the model with lead fishing sinkers that could be smashed flat/shaped to fit. You can also see the full bomb load added into the well detailed bomb bay. The kit glass is very clear with sharp framing that allows masks to be cut on them using Tamiya tape and a NEW #11 blade (wore out 5!). The turrets are well detailed, though the interior parts for the rear turret need some trimming to get it to close. It also has an unsightly seam on the top center that I hid with a bogus center line frame. Enough in progress pics.... on to the completed model Gil !
  24. Love it! It harkens back to the day when this was the only way to get such a subject. Though it's a bare bones build, it certainly smartly represents that mark of the Meteor in your collection. Glad to see I'm not the only vac madman here! Gil
  25. The older I get, the more attraction I have for "nostalgia" modeling and emphasizing FUN! Love the Airacobra! Gil
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