ghodges

Shaping up nicely! Gil

Welcome Chris! Glad to have you here with us! Feel free to make yourself at home and post whatever you've built or are working on. Since you're just north of me here in FL I'd also like to invite you to Jaxcon here in Jacksonville FL in 2 weeks on Feb 6th/7th. Here's a link to our website: https://ipmsfirstcoast.com/jaxcon.html Unfortunately our webmaster passed away last year and we haven't been able to update things so you'll note it says 2025 instead of 2026. BUT.... all of the info and the forms are still good except for the dates. You can also email me at: slowhandshodges@bellsouth.net for info too. Once again welcome! Looking forward to seeing your work! Gil

This will be my 2nd stab at scratchbuilding a model. It's seems to be more seldom done these days since there's SO many kits available that weren't out there just 10yrs ago. Still, there ARE still gaps, especially in 1/48, which is my primary scale of choice. This will take more time than my usual builds and it will be easier to post progress as I go along as opposed to trying to post everything at once at the end. This the Martin T4M-1. It's never been made in 1/48 in vacuform or resin to my knowledge. I've seen 2-3 scratchbuilt over the last 40yrs, but no kits have been produced except in 1/72. After finding some suitable plans I had them enlarged to 1/48. You can see the two pieces cut out of the plans laying under and beside them. I started by first gluing two blocks of balsa together with a sheet of copy paper trapped between them, using white glue. This allows the two "halves" to later be pried apart. Then those cut out plans were taped to the top and side of the balsa and it was cut to the rough shape seen above on a scroll saw. Note that I actually forgot the "dip" for the 3rd cockpit opening for the gunner's position and had to add that later! The two rough halves seen above were then glued back together and the fuselage was sanded to shape. I used rough and medium grit sanding sticks for this step. Although I did cut out one of the side view templates (as seen on the left in the first pic above) to check the shape as I went, I actually found it easiest to just use "mark-1 eyeball" for 90% of the work. I'm satisfied the outline matches the drawings close enough for "government work"! The over-arching idea here is to make a fuselage that can be split back apart into 2 halves that will be used to vacuform the fuselage in plastic. Next up were the wings. I decided to use the KISS principle and just carve them from solid balsa. The wing thickness on the plans is 1/4", so I used a sheet of 1/4" balsa. I decided not to vacuform the wing parts, but to simply use them as "cores" and wrap them in very thin sheet plastic (more on that below with the tailplane surfaces). Luckily for me, the top and bottom wing of the T4M is virtually identical, so all I had to do was cut out the top wing plan and use it to cut the 1/4" balsa sheets to shape on the scroll saw. The next step was to give the block balsa wings their airfoil shapes. The first thing to do then was to draw a center line in fine tipped black marker around the edges of each sheet. Since I also had a 1/8" sheet of balsa handy, it was used as a template to draw the lines. Those center lines would help me judge the evenness of my sanding as I progressed, especially on the trailing edge since both the top and bottom rear surfaces had to taper down exactly to that rear center line! The leading edge was easily done as all it needed was simple "rounding", which was done with sanding sticks. I taped a large sheet of 80grit sandpaper to the front edge of my workbench to do the heavy sanding on to work on getting the airfoil shape. Again, I just used "mark-1 eyeball" to sand a tapering surface on the top and bottom. I switched back and forth between them frequently always trying to sand just as much on one as I'd just done on the other; and to also maintain the same angle I was holding the piece at while sanding. Once again, I found this easier than expected and the heavy 80grit paper helped speed the process along. Once both were sanded to shape I only had to add the pilot's cutout in the center to make the "top" wing. One part of scratchbuilding is knowing you have to engineer things that kits give you. I had to figure out HOW I would attach the bottom wing to the fuselage. Again, trying to go the simplest way, I decided to cut the airfoil shape into the fuselage bottom so the wing can be fit up into it. The scroll saw has more than earned its keep on this project! I tackled the tail surfaces next. Since they're smaller I decided to use thick sheet plastic to carve their blanks. After transferring their plan shapes to the sheet plastic heavy scissors was used to cut them out. They were then hand sanded to their airfoil shapes just like the wings. Note the very thin piece of .005 plastic sheet at the top of the pic. This was what I'd use to "skin" them with, so I didn't have to worry about any sanding marks on the plastic blanks. This and the following pics will show the method used to make the ribbed skinning for the horizontal tailplane, but the same method was used for the fin and rudder too. Note that the tailplane plan has been drawn in pencil onto the .005 plastic sheet, including the "rib" lines. Also note that they do not go all the way to the edges of the drawing/part. The .005 sheet was then placed onto a folded piece of paper towel to give it a slightly padded surface under it. A straight edge and a ball point pen was then used to draw in the rib lines (whether or not the ink transfers to the plastic is not important). This method creates an indented line on the inside and a raised "rib" on the outer surface of the thin sheet. Here, the tail plane blank (which had already been used in 2 previous failing attempts at ribbing!) has been superglued to the first half of its "skin". After it set, more superglue was applied to the other half and it was folded over onto the top. This method isn't perfect.... it produces rough edges at the sides and rear, but those can be carved and sanded to shape. On one of my first attempts I tried using contact cement instead of superglue. It worked ok, BUT when it came time to sand it and the .005 was sanded through, the contact cement did NOT sand well. Superglue solved that problem! Here are the rough sanded and primed tail plane parts. I'm very satisfied with the representation of the structural ribbing as being even and visible enough for my purposes. I believe that once they've been fine sanded and painted they'll look the part, pun intended! That's where things stand as of today! My next step will be to try to "skin" the wings. More pics when more progress has been made. Comments, critiques, questions, and suggestions are all welcome as always! Gil

Welcome Scott! Come right in and make yourself at home! Don't be shy about posting your work, completed or in progress; and let us know how we can help make your model building more FUN! Cheers and God bless! Gil

Looking good! What are you using for the rigging? Gil

Wow! I believe you meant GAPING GAPS! May the Lord of putty be with you! 😁 Gil

How do I do it? The wife's been out of town for a while! 😁 Gil

All of that dainty detail work took that engine from a clunker to jewel! Did you use any sort of mandril to set the curve on the wingtip skid bars before gluing them on? Gil

Thanks for the very kind words! Sorry, but no other pics of the ejection seat. It's OOTB including the kit provided PE belts and foot rests. The only thing I added was I bent some yellow wire to shape to make the top ejection pull handles because that saved having to paint them. But to be really accurate, I believe they actually should drape down over the head pad instead of sticking out as they do. If that Skyraider conversion is engineered as well as this Panther was, that conversion should be a snap! Cheers! Gil

I started the 1/32 Fisher resin F9F-5 Panther last Sunday and finished it this evening. This was the starting point. The resin casting is VERY smooth, extremely nice, and the kit engineering is ingenious. That fuselage is cast as 1-piece and also hollow! The combination cockpit/nose gear bay/speed brake bay is designed to be slid up into the hollow nose from underneath after getting it painted. There's even a tray cast into the front of the cockpit designed to hold pennies or nickels as nose weight (I used fishing sinkers). The wings are cast as 1-piece wing tip to wing tip with the gear wells cast in and the proper dihedral already set. The elevators and ailerons are positionable and the flaps and speed brakes are separate. The resin landing gear are wire reinforced so that they have the strength to hold the model. The kit also includes a fret of PE parts for the cockpit, wing fences, the Tiny Tim rockets, and to help detail the landing gear. The model was primed with Tamiya Silver, which was then masked off on the leading edges of the wings, tail planes, and vertical fin. Rattle can Tamiya T-55 Dark Blue Gloss was used for the USN Navy Blue. When it was dry the red squadron trim was masked off and airbrushed on. The decals are from the kit and represent a typical Panther operating in Korea, but is not accurate for any one plane. This Fisher resin kit is now VERY rare (and expensive) ever since Fisher was burned out of his home in California a few years ago, losing all of his molds and being unable to replace them ever since. If you find this kit at anything near or less than $200 and want it, snatch it up as it's worth 2-3 times that! Critiques, questions, and comments welcome as always! Gil

It's always interesting to look and spot little bits of spare parts so well entwined in with the scratchbuilding that it just blends in naturally! That's a busy looking bomb bay wall! Gil

I gotta say that this build was even more impressive to me when seen for the second time! Once again, kudos to the skills applied and your attention to detail. Gil

WOW! That is a very sharp build and presentation! Did you freehand the camo job or use masks of some type? Love the beefy look of the SUFA, especially when it's loaded for bear like yours. Congrats on a super build! It reminds me I still need to do something in that Israeli camo too..... Gil

Very effective work! Gil

Good looking cockpit work! I believe that the Russians used it at night to harassment bomb the Germans and also to deliver partisans behind the German lines. I've seen tales of them simply wrapping people in hay, strapping one on each wing, and then just letting them drop off into snowbanks instead of landing them! I believe this may also be one of the planes the Koreans used as "Washing Machine Charlie" for night bombing raids on our troops. Looking forward to more! Gil

I agree with Ron.... a quality year with impressive builds and a variety of them! Hope 2026 is as successfully modest for you as 2025 was! Gil

For the third year in a row I challenged myself to getting a model built in less than 24hrs on New Years day. This is the Accurate Miniatures 1/48 P-51B issue of the 1946 Bendix racing plane. I chose it because the parts count was manageable, I had experience building Mustangs, and most importantly for the single color overall scheme. The model was built strictly OOTB also to speed things along as much as possible. 12:03am and time to start the model! Nothing's been done except to study the instruction sheet. This where things stood at 3:35am. The very first thing that was done was to spray rattle can Tamiya Interior Green wherever needed (and the overspray would later cause problems!). I used the Tamiya paint because it would dry very well in an hour or less. In the meantime I assembled the wings and painted the interior parts. I also used acrylic brush paint for the details since it wouldn't interact with the paint it was going over and I could proceed faster. Note some of the parts have already been painted rattle can Tamiya TS-8 Italian Red. By 5:30am I had the model assembled. I used superglue exclusively throughout so I could immediately sand the seams. Note the canopy has been masked off, but not the rear windows because they were overpainted red on this plane. Also notice that in this issue of this kit the fuselage plastic is darker than the wing plastic. This would cause me problems going forward. I sprayed the model at 5:30am with the Tamiya rattle can TS-8 Italian red. Unfortunately this is where I ran into problems. The different colored plastic made for a tonal mis-match between the wings and fuselage. The green overspray on the bottom also caused tonal problems. I tried spraying more paint on the model to try to even it all out and then ended up with some runs behind the wing roots. At this point I went to bed to get some rest and let the paint dry. Got back to work about 2pm and shortly afterward had airbrushed the entire model with Testors Gloss Red (cut with lacquer thinner) to fix the paint problems and even out the coloring. I then stepped away to let it dry for 5-6hrs. Got back to work about 8pm and by 9pm had all of the decals on. Stepped aside for an hour or so to let them set and dry. Finished adding all of the final parts and detail painting of the lights, etc. at 11:13pm for a build time of 23hrs-10mins. It would have been 5-6hrs faster if I'd avoided the paint problems! All in all I'm very happy with the result. More importantly, there's one day down and one model completed for 2026! On to the rest of the year. 🙂 Gil

Good year with a great variety of builds too! Gil

And the final grouping.... 1/48 Wings vacuform O2U-1 Corsair with a scratchbuilt cockpit, replacement resin engine, and aftermarket Scarf ring and Lewis gun. 1/48 UMa AV-8B Harrier Plus II, OOTB. 1/144 Minicraft Boeing 727, OOTB. 1/32 Trumpeter P-51D Mustang with some 3D printed parts added. 1/48 Tamiya Ki-61 Tony, OOTB. 1/48 Monogram AV-8B Harrier with some 3D printed cockpit placards and a home-vacked windscreen to replace the cracked one in the kit. 1/32 Revell P-51D-5 with some 3D printed additions. 1/48 F-100C conversion built using the Cutting Edge resin set and a Monogram F-100D kit. All in all I'm happy with the year, especially considering almost 1/3 of the builds were not injection molded kits (4 resin and 3 vacs)! Here's wishing everyone a boatload of modeling FUN in 2026! Gil

Here's the first 14 (not all in order)... 1/48 AMT F7F-3N Tigercat, OOTB. Built this in 22hr-45mins on New Years day as part of an on-line challenge. 1/48 Academy F-4J, OOTB. 1/48 3D printed (6 parts!) M-48 Patton tank, printed for me by fellow club member Charl Vivier. The Korean War tiger scheme was all hand painted. In March I finally painted and decaled (over 100 of them!) 22 planes for the 1/540 USS Roosevelt I built in 2024. 1/48 Hasagawa F-104D with a resin interior. 1/32 ID vacuform A-7E Corsair II with resin cockpit, intake, canopy, and tires; and scratchbuilt wing folds. All markings were home made/painted/spares box. 1/48 AMT ES-3A Shadow (Viking) with a Black Box resin cockpit, Paragon resin wing folds, and Metal Details resin/PE engines. 1/48 CollectAire resin RB-66A Destroyer, OOTB. 1/144 Academy B-2 Stealth bomber, OOTB with the wheel wells and bomb bay closed and mounted in flight for my mother-in-law. 1/48 Falcon vacuform RB-57A Canberra with a scratchbuilt/spare parts cockpit, resin wheel wells and tires, and scratchbuilt landing gear. All markings were painted/spares box. 1/48 CollectAire resin B-57B Canberra, OOTB; all markings painted or from the spares box. 1/48 CollectAire resin F3D Skynight, OOTB; built as a Marine EF-10. 1/24 Revell Deal's wheels "Go Mad Nomad". OOTB. 1/48 ESCI F-4J Phantom with a resin cockpit and exhaust cans. 8 more to go in the next group! Gil

I built this one for fun, for nostalgia (built most of the Deal's Wheels as a kid!), and as a quick build to get #22 in under the wire for 2025. One of the things I enjoy most is painting the "guy" that's included in these kits. They're simple and large enough to practice your skills on without being too intricate. The flesh color was a matte acrylic "mocha" brushed on and then Sepia colored pencil was used for the shadowing. The hair was painted tan and then a dark brown wash added for tonal variation. Bare Metal Chrome foil was used for the trim on the sides, the rear panel, the windshield trim, and the rear roof posts. It was tedious, but no more so than all of the masking and painting that would have been needed to try to paint all of the chrome. Considering it's been decades since I did this, I'm happy with the results. Although these kits are quite simplistic, they do try to cover the basics. I dry brushed the molded in underside details. The headers needed the most work to get them cleaned up, remove mold lines, and completely hollow out their exhausts. Since the kit was designed back in the '70s to be as much a toy as a model, the axles and tires are designed to roll. The body was sprayed with Tamiya TS-8 Italian Red right from the can. After the foil was applied a sealer coat of Alclad Klear Gloss lacquer was airbrushed on. The lettering on the tires was hand painted in white acrylic. This finishes the year out for me on what was a short, fun trip back to my early teens! Comments, critiques, and questions welcome, as always! Gil

That's an exceptional year Ron! I like them all, but that collection of Aurora Knights is really impressive. By the way.... if there's something in 1/72 armor that is hard to find, let me know. There's a guy in our club who's 3D printing a LOT of small scale armor stuff, especially British and Commonwealth subjects (he's South African). He printed a 1/48 Patton tank for me this year! Hope your 2026 is just as prolific and fun! Gil

THAT is truly AWEsome Duke! While the sheer numbers are impressive, the intricacy of the painting on some of them just complicate things. Kudos to you not just for your prolific production, but also for your organizational abilities in keeping the production line moving. Here's to 2026 being just as prosperous and productive as 2025 was for you! Gil

Welcome back Ed. This is one of the slower moving, less populated modeling sites it seems.... but it is ours (IPMS's). The FaceBook IPMS page does seem to have much more activity compared to this one. Glad to have you here! Gil

Thanks for the kind words! I got the engines from a friend in my local club. Here's a link to their website: https://metallicdetails.com/product/md4831-s-3a-viking-engines/ You can probably also find some for sale on Ebay or elsewhere on line. Gil