Luft46's Blog

This has been a term I’ve used for a model that may just be a passing fancy. Shown here is an anime version of a  Japanese Shinden fighter. This part built kit briefly saw the light of day before the mojo faded and it returned to the Shelf of Doom!

As the kitchen is being rebuilt as part of the ongoing renovations it has meant that kitchen stuff has now migrated into my model room as a temporary measure for a couple of weeks. Fortunately it’s not too much in the way.

Replacing the model above has been the Delphin from the shelf which is being worked on on the old garage bench. This kit is basically up to the painting stage and mostly needs a little planning before starting the painting stage.

Lastly is a new old kit being a E-100 Jagd version from MODELCOLLECT in 1/72 which I’ve just started. The barrel has an etched brass section at the front. This just didn’t fold in a circle as well as I wanted but a bit of judicious sanding and use of Vallejo filler will hopefully see it right.

I’m off for a few days so progress will be slow this week.

It has been good to get my mojo back and I’m really looking forward to the renovations finishing soon as the painters are following straight on after the kitchen is finished.

Yes after a few weeks off I finally returned today to some Shelf Queens.

First up was my part finished Me262 Schnellbomber which dates back to at least 2012 going by the last blog entry. I had a bit of a disaster with the masking of the last colour in the RLM 76/81/82 scheme. Lots of paint runs which is why the kit ended up on the shelf.

As per a friend’s suggestion I tried some liquids to do cleanup. I tried some AK odourless Turps followed by Tamiya thinner. The latter proved much more efficient with the use of a large toothpick soaked in it and paper towel for cleanup.

I’ve done the majority of it now but will return for more another day. Given how old this build is my best guess is I probably used Hannants Xtracrylics for the upper colours as helpfully my blog entry from 2012 mentions using Tamiya for the RLM76 underneath.

I’ve stopped using Xtracrylics these days but still have a stash of them so I’m going to test them to see if they are a match. If so I may even hand brush them rather than running them through my airbrush with the cleanup issues they gave.

Next up is the Kora resin E10 tank kit. This is also a real oldie with the last post from 2014.

This is a different problem to the 262. The outside of the box said missing parts. I thought this was just a return roller for which I could find a rough Russian substitute in my spare box. Closer inspection tonight revealed two movement axles have also disappeared somehow. This combined with the thought of likely issues with the wheels due to the imprecision of the resin parts lack of location pins led me to an inescapable conclusion.

Proceeding further would just be playing into the sunk costs fallacy. So I’m going to scavenge any usable parts and throw the rest away.

Making it an easier decision is that Trumpeter have a 1.35 injection plastic kit with etched brass available and its much more likely to be an easy build so that’s my next purchase.

Sometimes you’ve just got to know when to fold ’em as Kenny Rogers would say.

I’ll pull something else from the shelf soon. Stay tuned!