Hasegawa 1/72 T-33A Shooting Star

[TommyKillander]

Okey!

This was supposed to be a soft, mojo-recovery, "under-the-radar" build. I just grabbed a 1/72 scale kit from the stash to build it OOB.
However, things does not always turn out as planned and now the build have evolved into something else....

So, I better start a buildthread so you can see for yourself...

Okay, the kit is far from a relaxing shake'n'bake thing:











There are plenty of cleanup work that needs to be done, and the fit may not be the best....

Let's start with the cockpit:






I just had to fix those seats












Okay... brace yourself; here comes ugly part....


The IP decal literally exploded when it went into the decal bath


I found an old IP decal in the spares box...


This is not accurate scalemodelling... this is pure damage control


Ok... the engine exhaust is quite a piece of work


There is an ejection pin mark in the middle of the turbine








And there is no seat for the exhaust in the fuselage so I had to scratch build that




But never mind, lets glue the fuselage halves together!


O'kay...








Stay tuned!

Tommy

[TommyKillander]

Okey, let's continue....

Dryfitting the wings....


There are a lot of seams, steps and sinkmarks to deal with...








This bird needs a lot of dissolved styrene (Liquid Sprue)








...and we can start thinking about attaching the wings










More Liquid Sprue




Slowly getting there....


Attaching the wing tip tanks




And the horisontal stabilisers




It's starting to look like an aircraft now...



Tommy

[Twokidsnosleep]

You are already well into it
I think the build needs some theme music:

[TommyKillander]

You are already well into it
I think the build needs some theme music:

Thanks Scott!

That is a perfect theme for this build


Tommy

[TommyKillander]

Okay...

Let's continue with the cockpit area...

I added some plasticard to fill some gaps




That canopy had a lot of scratches, so it needed a good cleaning and some polishing...


I decided to use a technique that I experimented with on my Viggen build a while ago; make precision canopy masks with my Silhouette Portrait cutter.
First I made a rough drawing of the outline of the glass area using a sharpie. I scanned the image using a flatbead scanner, imported it into Silhouette Studio software, cleaned up the lines and cut a mask using Tamiya masking sheet


Here is the result:



I'm happy with that!

Some painting of the IP cover and rear bulkhead in the cockpit


We can glue back the rear bang-seat


And glue the canopy in place. There's an awful gap that needs to be fixed also.


Let's continue with the masking...




I really have to do something about that hole(!) into the fuselage




I brushpainted that to be on the safe side....


....masking continues







Tommy

[TommyKillander]

Hello,

While I keep my mind occupied with the decision if I should trust those dodgy decals or not, let's continue with all the small parts for the undercarriage and such

Some small antennas to fit on the belly. I will scratch-build a new pitot tube later on...


A lot of cleanup work ahead...


Headlights


Primer on!


Making some more masks using the Silhouette Portrait...


Painted with H309 and Chrome


Weathering....




Painting the wheels






Touchup with some Molotov Chrome




Okay..... now it's time to put the decals to the test so I can make a descision:



Looking good sofar - the carrier film seems to hold up





Maybe the incident with the IP decal was just a freak accident ?

I have decided to move along with the kit decals!


Tommy

[TommyKillander]

Time for some paint!

Preheated Ultimate White primer - I made 4 thin layers


I had to sand down a couple of imperfections (mostly splatter and dried chunks of paint)


But after a second pass everything was smooth


Tamiya X-2 thinned with Mr Colour Leveling Thinner (MLT)


Taking some precautions here to avoid overspray


H23 Shine Red thinned with MLT



Tommy

[BigWall]

It's looking nice!

[TommyKillander]

It's looking nice!

Thanks BigWall

Okay... it's time for paints!

But first - masking (big time)


White paint is very sensitive to overspray....


Painting XF-69 Nato Black on the inside of the wingtip fueltanks


More masking


Some metal tones






But I made a mistake.... actually so bad that I was thinking of aborting the build

As you can see, the wings and horisontal stabilisers should be natural metal.....

This changes everything....
My preferred approach would have been to gloss the white primer and then paint the bare metal first, and after that I would mask an paint white and the other colours

To my defence I have to say that there are not many reference pictures available of this livery...
...but that is quite a lame excuse for not reading the colour callout properly before starting to throw paint at the model...

Anyway, I will paint the topside in polished aluminium, but I will skip the lower side

But let's continune








Had to touchup the Nato Black on the fueltanks




...when will I ever learn...

I got impatient and let the guard down for a second when spraying the orange tips on the stabilisers
The result; orange overspray on the fuselage...

White paint does not care about your feelings

I will touch up that and prepare for the most exciting part of this build - the decals


Tommy

[digger303]

Over spray another modelers nasty burdens...I 'm always thinking I can get away with not masking everything and it gets me every time and when I do mask a bit of the tape lifts and in it goes.

[TommyKillander]

Over spray another modelers nasty burdens...I 'm always thinking I can get away with not masking everything and it gets me every time and when I do mask a bit of the tape lifts and in it goes.

Yeah, normally it could be hidden with some creative weathering, but in this case it's a commemorate last flight thing, for an airshow I suppose (I haven't read up on the background I must admit) - so it's supposed to be shining like a brand new Ferrari

Okay.... decals!

But first fix that overspray


Going OK sofar....




I guess this is the most difficult part (where I expect the decals to crack)


There where some small issues, but that was easy to fix.




Through the worst part - now there are only the stencils left




Done!






The decals didn't put up too much of a fight

It seems that Cartograf is still Cartograf after almost 20 years - the kit is from 2001


Tommy

[BigWall]

Wow! Great job!

[digger303]

Nothing like paint and decals for changing the look of a kit for the better.....nice job

[TommyKillander]

Thanks guys!

There is one final touchup to do before it's time final assembly; the leading edges of the wings (near the wingroot) needs some red paint. I decided to wait with this until after decaling, since I wanted to match it with the black walkboard.

However, it was too difficult to mask and paint it, so I decided to go for another approach; using decals
I took some leftover red decals from an old kit and trimmed the outline to match the red area.


Never throw away old decals - they have saved me twice in this build

It looks more complete now I think


Time to remove the masking and prepare for flatcoat



Tommy

[digger303]

[TommyKillander]

Thanks, digger303!

Ok, final update!

Airbrushed all parts with a flatcoat made from GX-113 thinned with MLT.


Adding nav lights to the wingtip tanks, starting with a drop of metal tone


Added Tamiya X-23 Clear Blue and X-27 Clear Red




Remove the masking tape on the canopy....






Nose landing gear


Main landing gear parts




Scratch-build of the pitot tube, I soldered a thin wire to a scrap piece of photoetch




And finally it stands on it's own legs!


I will post proper Reveal Photos soon!


Tommy

[digger303]

great result...decals really bring it together. Nice bit of scratch building too.

[BigWall]

Very nice! Great job!

[TommyKillander]

great result...decals really bring it together. Nice bit of scratch building too.

Very nice! Great job!

Thanks a lot for following this "quick"-build. I spent a couple of weeks filling and sanding before I started the build-thread and that ofcourse saved all of you the boring and timeconsuming part of the build.

The tooling is from 1969(!) and the production date of the kit was 2001, so it is quite an old kit. I wouldn't recommend anyone to build this kit really - to be honest it's quite horrible

Reveal-pictures can be found here:
viewtopic.php?f=45&t=28641


Tommy