Luft46's Blog

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.

Moving along with this yesterday I now have the underside done along with some light weathering via some dark earth dust from Flory Models. I will probably paint the petrol drums in the dark yellow from xtracrylics soon as well as some oil stains around the engine area. As you can see the steering wheel and front seat have fallen off again but as shown in the photo below i now have the walls on the cabin and am up to stage 11 of 13 so the end is in sight.

No major problems so far , just following the instructions. Minor problem is the back windows which seem too big and need the gap enlarging.

I’ve been working on bits of this kit today. Lots of different steps that will eventually be pulled together. Sometimes with kits there is just not enough to do without approaching a kit in this manner. I find trucks in 7 2nd scale are often quite fiddly to assemble the frame etc and require a lot of messing around to get the wheels to sit properly anyway. I have left the stair treads off until later so I only knock them off a half a dozen times before I finish. 

Finished the first run of painting and now onto assembly. This is most of stage 1 out of 13. No problems encountered so far.

More painting work today. To the right of the picture are the tyres. These have been painted after some sanding with a hand mixed combination of Citadel Adeptus Battlegrey and their Abaddon Black. I have this premixed for painting aircraft tyres and this should go a long way. The seats have had their first coat of a light brown Humbrol acrylic which has no name and is so old you would be unable to find it anyway. The leaf springs have had a quick wash of black and await fitting. The exhaust after being painted black last night has had some Mig rust pigment mixed with Future applied. The only other piece of work was to find some diamond tread for the steps and this will be applied tomorrow. Back tomorrow.