Luft46's Blog

Since the last update ten days ago I am on my second PSR cycle. Also since then the exhausts have been worked on and the tailplane added. The exhausts involved dremeling out two big holes in the rear fuselage followed by attaching the engine exhaust cover. I then grabbed some spare exhaust onions as shown previously. These along with a small lump of Milliput were pushed into the hole. The Milliput allowed me to manoeuvre and fiddle with the onions until I was satisfied with their position. Unlike blutack the Milliput will harden and hold the parts securely, with a little bit of superglue at the end just to make sure. Next up the whole lot of the exhausts were  painted Citadel Abaddon black. Once that was dry the whole lot was brush painted in ModelMaster Exhaust Buffing Metalizer, despite what it says on the label its fine to brush, just not over large areas, it is a very hot paint so won’t work well with some plastics. The onions were also painted in MM Burnt Metal to offer a difference in colour. Of course with the hotness of the Metalizer some of the acrylic lifted which was why I found myself the next day putting thinned black paint into a syringe to inject down the exhaust, this work

ed fine and stopped me from having to go back and forward with paintbrushes to get it right. Mind you explaining what exactly I was doing with the paint filled syringe to my other half who of course chose that moment to come and see me was a little awkward. Most people don’t inject black paint anywhere 🙂 .
The RLM66 from Gunze is of course for the cockpit which was again dremeled out under the instrument panel to make it look a bit more realistic.
Next up is another lot of sanding and then a preliminary fitting of the canopy cut out with the obligatory new blade.

Tonight’s short modelling session was a little cleanup of the body joins from last time followed by some more filling into that joint and the main u/c bays. Next up will be more PSR tomorrow.

I forgot to add that the inlet and exhaust areas had been thoroughly drilled out with a Dremel over a garbage bin and in my worst clothes along with a respirator and safety glasses on. There is no inlet faces but the area is now thoroughly painted in Citadel Abaddon black with some Mig  Rocket exhaust pigment thrown in, this still looked a little reflective so some matt varnish will be required for the future. I have decided to mount the finished kit on some sort of stand because I can’t face doing the undercarriage on top of all the other fit issues.

The last fortnight has seen a little progress on this build. The white area under the wing is Milliput spread out thinly over the area then some dishwashing soap spread over the wing underside, the wing was then pressed hard into the Milliput to get a reasonable fit. As evidenced on modern swing wing aircraft like the Tornado the fit is never great so an average fit is ok. Next up is adding the tail section to the body. This was accomplished by drilling a hole in both parts, then inserting a brass rod surrounded by Milliput. This allowed some wiggling to get the best fit, followed by some superglue for  wherever the two parts might hit.As mentioned earlier the two parts are not exactly even in cross section so more filler will be required on the front section to blend it all together. Next up will be adding the tail and exhaust areas, again probably needing filler.
This post and some more into the near future proudly bought to you by Milliput.

Just finished painting the two body parts silver so I can find all the divots hopefully. Oh boy there’s still a lot of filler to apply.

This phrase along with “custom fitted ” are used in the building industry to denote a job where there was considerable fiddling around to get the required fit happening. So too with this model. I’m now up to the third PSR cycle and starting to contemplate putting some parts together. As you can see from the photo above the main body part is to be joined to the tail unit. Unfortunately at the moment both parts are curved outward in the middle meaning there is very little surface that is in contact. Additionally as you see in the second and third photos there are problems in terms of the forward part not being sqaure and the two parts having different cross sections – I may need to resort to a brass rod and lots of Milliput to correct this mismatch.The latest lot of silver paint has disclosed more areas to fill including some lovely pinholes along the wing fronts – not an uncommon problem in resin kits where if they are not there then they are on the trailing edges – so take your pick. I spent a little time with a Dremel today hollowing out the inlet and exhaust areas and apart from one minor accident all went well. As I have done this before adding the front and rear sections on this problem will be easily fixed with milliput. 
It will probably be next weekend before this joy receives another look !

Just up to stage 2 of the PSR cycle. One of my favourite tips I have picked up is using Citadel’s silver acrylic paint to highlight filling points. The photo below is after the first cycle. Next up will be more Milliput. I had the joy today of cutting out the intake and exhaust ducting using a small blade razor saw. Now I have to decide whether to drill in the intake or not. The reviews I have ignore this issue. Its hard to figure out how deep they might have buried the engine as that will affect my decision. I’ll sleep on that one. I’m also going to need to think about the exhausts as I have spare parts to do this. A temporary fitting of the wing showed there is some fettling still needed. First up on that was hand drilling the pivot point a little deeper but either end is a sticking point as the points where it hits namely it is sitting too high

Regular readers of this blog may have begun to think the name of this blog is a misnomer. At heart I will always be a Luft 46 modeller because this is the most non mainstream area of modelling. Having said that some of my recent excursions have been to do weird subjects like the Putty Hog. Even the Hanomag is being done in the service of my Munchen 48 diorama which the BV P202 may end up on also.
Having had a good look through my model cupboard I settled on this Toad kit. I have quite a few of their kits and have started a couple but none have ever been finished.
Toad were an English firm from the mid to late 90’s in the golden age of Luft 46 modelling. Around this time volume wise the Czechs dominated with Planet , RS and AV throwing out lots of kits. The owner Peter Long had a very droll approach to his kit instructions and was pleasant to correspond with. Unfortunately circumstances beyond his control led to a decline in quality and sales with some bad reviews pretty much finishing off his enthusiasm for Luft 46 and he went back to his musical career. This kit was not one of the better ones and I can already see lots of Milliput in my future.

Above is the box before opening again. Below is the kit in the box.

Below is it all spread out.

One of the great things Toad did was 2 vacform canopies which at the time the opposition were mostly not doing. Along with this they used metal undercarriage shown in the centre along with a seat and control column. Centre right is the eponymous Toad that they included as a marketing device with their kits. Collect 5 and return them and you would get a cannon and fairing to make a ju88p5. The grey parts above the toad are from a cmk me 262 to improve the engine area though parts from the Hase kit may be substituted.
The instructions are below including the pattern for u/c doors

Above are the reviews i collected and filed with the kit. This was in the early days of the net and model reviews were thin on the ground on the net then.
A close look at the photo below will show you that there is lots of work ahead. The wing has both excess resin and pinholes that need filling.

Ready for painting now but the weather has turned cold again,  it is winter after all so I will be doing this another day. A tiny bit of brush painting left on the types.

This photo was on my Samsung tablet which has nowhere near as good a camera as the Asus so I will be going back to that for future posts.

After some illness and very cold weather I am temporarily on the kitchen table as the garage is just too cold at the moment.  I now have after a fair bit of fettling got this together.  There will be more work of trimming and filling before I am happy with it. Once this gets done then I am up to the last finishing pieces including all the fiddly bits like lights. On the whole this has been fairly typical for a 1.72 soft skin kit.