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- Slovenia
- csiApok
Good to see a new update from you @barryf1fan. I've actually completed the GT-R. Sorry about not many update photos. The kit was just a fairly simple build.
My post is fairly long and kind of picture heavy, so I've decided to split it into two and hide it in spoiler tags.
My post is fairly long and kind of picture heavy, so I've decided to split it into two and hide it in spoiler tags.
I did snap a few pictures of the interior before finishing though. I'm quite happy with it. Not sure why the flocking looks blueish. Doesn't look that way in person.
I'm especially happy with the masking work I did on the steering wheel.
The silver trim in general came out very well.
Snapped a picture of the underside as well. This is one area where the kit is a royal pain in the backside. There is a ton of masking to do for the aluminium pieces. The left side of the exhaust is a separate piece, then it connects to a piece that's moulded into the floorpan. It was an absolute nightmare to mask. And just to rub some salt in the wound , there's more masking needed, since part of the black area is painted in gloss. This was all pretty damn tedious.
I didn't really take any pictures beyond this point. All that I could take pictures of was the engine bay and I didn't think that was too exciting. Just more obnoxious masking really.
Those with a good eye might have spotted that the T in GT-R is missing on the front emblem. I have absolutely no clue how I managed to knock if off at some point, but... lesson learned I suppose. Be ultra careful with metal transfers. I'm also not really happy with the finish. Part of my issue was using a spray can clear coat, which tends to have pretty bad orange peel. At least if I'm using it. That calls for a lot of very tedious sanding and polishing which is a surefire way to accidentally strip the clear+paint off the car. I did that a few times and it was all just a nightmare, so I sort of rushed through it in the end. You can see that some spots are a bit more matted than others, but just the thought of polishing an area and going through the paint somewhere again... not now, please.
To be entirely honest, I'm not the biggest JDM fan in the first place. So sorry to those who really like the GT-R, but this was more of a practice run for cars I like more. For sure my interior work has improved massively since the last car I built. And my masking ability. I think I did a great job masking all the tedious pieces. Just need to nail that finish next time. For my next car I'll certainly get a hold of a clear coat I can use with my airbrush. I think it'll be an enormous help.
I'm especially happy with the masking work I did on the steering wheel.
The silver trim in general came out very well.
Snapped a picture of the underside as well. This is one area where the kit is a royal pain in the backside. There is a ton of masking to do for the aluminium pieces. The left side of the exhaust is a separate piece, then it connects to a piece that's moulded into the floorpan. It was an absolute nightmare to mask. And just to rub some salt in the wound , there's more masking needed, since part of the black area is painted in gloss. This was all pretty damn tedious.
I didn't really take any pictures beyond this point. All that I could take pictures of was the engine bay and I didn't think that was too exciting. Just more obnoxious masking really.
Those with a good eye might have spotted that the T in GT-R is missing on the front emblem. I have absolutely no clue how I managed to knock if off at some point, but... lesson learned I suppose. Be ultra careful with metal transfers. I'm also not really happy with the finish. Part of my issue was using a spray can clear coat, which tends to have pretty bad orange peel. At least if I'm using it. That calls for a lot of very tedious sanding and polishing which is a surefire way to accidentally strip the clear+paint off the car. I did that a few times and it was all just a nightmare, so I sort of rushed through it in the end. You can see that some spots are a bit more matted than others, but just the thought of polishing an area and going through the paint somewhere again... not now, please.
To be entirely honest, I'm not the biggest JDM fan in the first place. So sorry to those who really like the GT-R, but this was more of a practice run for cars I like more.
For sure my interior work has improved massively since the last car I built. And my masking ability. I think I did a great job masking all the tedious pieces. Just need to nail that finish next time. For my next car I'll certainly get a hold of a clear coat I can use with my airbrush. I think it'll be an enormous help.But wait, there's more!
As I've been waiting for the paint and clear coat to finish, I had free time to start on a new model. And this one's interesting. It's a Revell HMS Bounty 1:110 sailing ship model. And it is very old. The mould is from 1958, though I have the rebox from 2002. But it didn't really add anything. It's still just an old kit.
I decided to start with the deck as I saw a lot of work that needs to be done to get this thing up to a higher standard. The next picture shows several of the issues with it. First off is the raised plank detail. Not too awful to be honest, but they make any sort of work on the deck much harder, since fixing anything would require me to try and replicate the raised pattern. No idea how I would do that. And there is a lot of fixing needed. As you can see, Revell of 1958 decided it'd be a splendid idea to mould a copyright symbol right on the deck for all to see. There are also several ejection pin marks all over the deck. Another issue are the grates. They're just holes with a dead end and don't really look that great. I've decided to replace them, which is why there's a hole on the right of the picture. It's not just the grates either. I've essentially removed all detail on this thing and plan on scratch building most of it. There are several features that are outright missing from the kit as well, so I'll make those too.
Another angle showing the entire deck mid mutilation.
For the grates I decided to try something interesting. I've had a 3D printer since January and often wondered if it'd be of any use for model building. Most of the time the answer is not really, because the surface detail on FDM printers just isn't that great. And since the materials you can use aren't as easy to work with as styrene, scratch building is usually easier. But the grates with a lot of geometrically perfect parallel tiny holes? Much easier to print.
So I went to town designing a few pieces based on the ones on the kit. Here are two of them dry fitted. You can also see the planking is all gone, which took a loooot of sanding.
I needed to add some material to the holes I cut out, which I did with styrene and cyanoacrylate. The rear hole was plugged with a piece of styrene, because there actually shouldn't be a grate there at all, but a little shack that covers the rudder head. And a flag shack behind it. Both the rudder head housing and the flag shack will be scratch built, as the flag shack is missing and the rudder head housing doesn't look very good out of the box. I also had to cut two additional holes at the front of the deck, as those should have little grates (called scuttles apparently) as well. Another detail missing from the kit.
With all this done I started scribing planks on the deck. I won't lie, this was extremely tedious. I wasn't worried about making them perfect. I don't know if planks back then would all be the same width anyway, but the illusion is good enough anyway as long as the lines are parallel. But getting them parallel is actually a bigger ask than it seems at first. And every mistake called for some cyanoacrylate to fill the line, then sanding to get it back down to the same level as the deck... yikes.
To make this job less daunting, I decided to do something else to break up the monotony. The hull also has raised surface detail. Which I would be fine with, but it's wrong. The HMS Bounty is known to have had copper plating on the hull. The kit has wood detail. Oh no... I started sanding the hull...
Eventually I finished all the deck scribing. I then painted it, just to see if... or rather where I made any mistakes. I also plugged all the locating pins as I won't be needing them. After all the length-wise scribing was done, I broke up the now freakishly long planks with... a bit more scribing.
And finally, I also scratch built that rudder head housing.
You could say that I've been busy. This old kit is making me wonder how @Volksauto is getting on with his model A though.
And, I hope I'm not breaking any rules here, since this is just a hobby and not something I make money from, but if anyone is interested, I've started live streaming my model building on twitch. I'll probably also make a youtube video when I'm done.
As I've been waiting for the paint and clear coat to finish, I had free time to start on a new model. And this one's interesting. It's a Revell HMS Bounty 1:110 sailing ship model. And it is very old. The mould is from 1958, though I have the rebox from 2002. But it didn't really add anything. It's still just an old kit.
I decided to start with the deck as I saw a lot of work that needs to be done to get this thing up to a higher standard. The next picture shows several of the issues with it. First off is the raised plank detail. Not too awful to be honest, but they make any sort of work on the deck much harder, since fixing anything would require me to try and replicate the raised pattern. No idea how I would do that. And there is a lot of fixing needed. As you can see, Revell of 1958 decided it'd be a splendid idea to mould a copyright symbol right on the deck for all to see. There are also several ejection pin marks all over the deck. Another issue are the grates. They're just holes with a dead end and don't really look that great. I've decided to replace them, which is why there's a hole on the right of the picture. It's not just the grates either. I've essentially removed all detail on this thing and plan on scratch building most of it. There are several features that are outright missing from the kit as well, so I'll make those too.
Another angle showing the entire deck mid mutilation.
For the grates I decided to try something interesting. I've had a 3D printer since January and often wondered if it'd be of any use for model building. Most of the time the answer is not really, because the surface detail on FDM printers just isn't that great. And since the materials you can use aren't as easy to work with as styrene, scratch building is usually easier. But the grates with a lot of geometrically perfect parallel tiny holes? Much easier to print.
So I went to town designing a few pieces based on the ones on the kit. Here are two of them dry fitted. You can also see the planking is all gone, which took a loooot of sanding.
I needed to add some material to the holes I cut out, which I did with styrene and cyanoacrylate. The rear hole was plugged with a piece of styrene, because there actually shouldn't be a grate there at all, but a little shack that covers the rudder head. And a flag shack behind it. Both the rudder head housing and the flag shack will be scratch built, as the flag shack is missing and the rudder head housing doesn't look very good out of the box. I also had to cut two additional holes at the front of the deck, as those should have little grates (called scuttles apparently) as well. Another detail missing from the kit.
With all this done I started scribing planks on the deck. I won't lie, this was extremely tedious. I wasn't worried about making them perfect. I don't know if planks back then would all be the same width anyway, but the illusion is good enough anyway as long as the lines are parallel. But getting them parallel is actually a bigger ask than it seems at first. And every mistake called for some cyanoacrylate to fill the line, then sanding to get it back down to the same level as the deck... yikes.
To make this job less daunting, I decided to do something else to break up the monotony. The hull also has raised surface detail. Which I would be fine with, but it's wrong. The HMS Bounty is known to have had copper plating on the hull. The kit has wood detail. Oh no... I started sanding the hull...
Eventually I finished all the deck scribing. I then painted it, just to see if... or rather where I made any mistakes. I also plugged all the locating pins as I won't be needing them. After all the length-wise scribing was done, I broke up the now freakishly long planks with... a bit more scribing.
And finally, I also scratch built that rudder head housing.
You could say that I've been busy. This old kit is making me wonder how @Volksauto is getting on with his model A though.
And, I hope I'm not breaking any rules here, since this is just a hobby and not something I make money from, but if anyone is interested, I've started live streaming my model building on twitch. I'll probably also make a youtube video when I'm done.
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