1/72 F-15J (Hasegawa) - I am not good at this

[Lysus]

Ok, so my space is set up (http://www.intscalemodeller.com/viewtop ... 10&t=15893 ) and it's time to start a kit. I want to just focus on technique and getting acquainted with my new airbrush, so I'm not going for a completely accurate build. A test run, if you will. I'll probably do two more like this, one Gundam and one other plane--possibly in NMF since I've never ever tried that.

I wanted a simple kit, something with broad surfaces and not a lot of greebles and fiddly junctions, but most of all, cheap. This would be rational and responsible. But rather than be either of those things I picked up a Hasegawa F-15J.





I think the phrase "bit off more than you can chew" might be appropriate:





Oh well, onward, shot and shell, yadda-yadda. Time to get started:



If anyone has built this kit, or a similar one from Hasegawa, and wants to lend me some tips or warnings, please do contribute below.

[Konstantine]

My biggest advice to you is just to take your time. The nice part about this hobby is that there is never really a deadline. You mentioned it is a test build so feel free to do some trial and error to get a feel of what works and what doesn't.

[PrivateMansoor]

The better tools you have the easier it becomes and looking at your set up - you have already set yourself up for success.

As Konstantine said take your time - I would start slow if I make a mistake - take a step back reflect and try again in a bit.

[Lysus]

Thanks for the support. It's funny that you'd recommend taking my time; I have very little free time what with two kids under two years old and pursuing a masters degree, so progress comes in drips and drabs. That being said, when I do get time at the bench, it's hard to resist not rushing through as much as I can...

Not a lot of progress so far. Apologies if the pictures are a little blurry, only a cell camera at my disposal.

Got the seat and cockpit put together. Aside from getting the flight stick in place, the rest of the assembly fell together so well that the seat didn't need any glue. I dabbed a drop of extra thin just to be sure, but otherwise this was super easy:



This kit, while well molded, does have its issues. Aside from more flashing than I thought I'd find, it has a few defects to correct:



And some finessing to do (just a dry fit):



Intakes are together, and though I sanded the forward edges of the intakes to match (they looked like cursive "m"s rather than straight lines there was so much flash) they still need some more work at the joining:



With any luck I'll have this assembled this weekend and ready for final filling/sanding and maybe even a coat of primer...fingers crossed.

[Svenne009]

Looking like a good start and any start isn't without some bumps in the road

Good luck on the build.

[Lysus]

Finally found some time to sit down with my monster, and following an adventure with a strange design decision on the maker's part, I have made a few notes for myself:

1: Double check the fitting before priming.
2: Thin the putty next time...
3: Buy something easier.
4: Spraying is fantastic fun.

I will say this, the designers did a great job placing the sprue connector nubs in places that will be attached whenever possible. This was nice, after some sanding to get things flush you didn't have to then go and make it pretty.

That being said, the kit quickly asserted its dominance over me with a number of gaps and a slew of fiddly bits meant for someone with much more experience than I. The gaps are probably 70/30 my fault/the kit's fault, I spent a great deal of time fixing and re-affixing the nose to the fuselage as it just wanted to torque 1-2 degrees every time. I'm sure that's mostly my doing in not refining the parts enough during dry-fitting. Still, even then spots like the wing roots would seat perfectly on one side, and horridly gapped on the other:



Great, time to try some putty and see how that goes.



Yeahhhhh....some time later and a lot of scraping and thinning I cleaned that mess up. I will say it was a proper lesson in what not to do, and this will come in handy later.

Then there's the engine nozzles:



Sadism. On the one hand, the idea of 5 separate flaps each with three actuator arms is simply an amazing touch of detail. On the other this is my first real kit since the 1990s and I wasn't even skilled then. I decided after 10 minutes of playing with one actuator that this amazing detail is simply too amazing for me and I'll skip it. The whole purpose of this kit is, after all, so I can play with the airbrush and learn how to use it, not build the perfect F-15.

They still were a pain in the butt:



45 minutes of cursing, held breath, and inhaled TET later I had all 10 pieces set in a fashion that didn't make me cry too much. There was a lot of placing, re-placing, and re-re-placing to close gaps. Fitting isn't great, there's only the tiniest of nubs to guide you in and if I'm honest this should have been done very slowly over a few sessions to allow pieces to cure a little better before inserting the next one. In fact, the less said about these the better. Moving on...

Canopy on and masked, let us to the booth!



This is where my lesson about double checking the fit of the build before spraying comes in. While finishing up I noticed a gigantic gap had opened on an intake. A bit of pressure to bring the pieces together in order to apply some glue nearly resulted in tragedy, I could hear the contraption straining to the breaking point almost, and thus this would need filler, not brute force and glue. I thinned up some putty (hooray for learning by doing!) and dabbed it in with a pointy cotton bud:



After the gap had been filled up a little bit (not all the way) I dragged some Tamiya surface primer directly on with an old brush to fill up the trough the putty helped create in the grand canyon. I was wary not to use too much putty since I didn't want it to dribble into the inside of the intake where it would become a nightmare to clean up.



Once this cures up a bit, I'll get that last dip on the corner and clean it all up.

One other thing worth mentioning, the kit can be built wheels up or down, however they clearly want you to build it wheels down. The doors do not sit well in their places and required a LOT of sanding and fitting to seat correctly. The tooling is so bad, in fact, that while the starboard doors didn't give me too much trouble, the port doors overhung the fuselage by a disastrous amount. So much so that after two hours of mucking around with it, I called it a day on them and moved on. Again, this plane isn't going onto my shelf, more likely the drawer, since I just want to practice with the airbrush. Still, it's a good reminder for me to take just as much care when selecting a kit as I do building it later...

[Lysus]

So progress was slowly over the last couple weeks, and I made plenty of amazing mistakes. And I mean that, the purpose of this exercise was to get acquainted with my airbrush and see if any of the old model building muscle memory still existed in me. (It didn't really. Maybe a little)

Among my mistakes:

- Shooting onto the model without clearing the nozzle with a blast or two
- Shooting onto the model without starting off to the side and travelling onto it; got a nice blob for my carelessness to deal with
- Too much pressure
- Too little pressure
- Masking shenanigans (more below)
- Set parts down on some kitchen towel that had overspray residue on it

So good times. I value each mistake as a learning opportunity. I played soccer in school (football to the rest of the world) and I know that you don't run onto the pitch and score goals right away without first learning how to dribble, etc. Getting the order of operations for spraying down has been a fun challenge. This is all part of the experience and I'm having a blast.

I decided that since I wanted to play with the brush and learn how to properly do things like color changes and whatnot, a straight build of the F-15 would require really only one color, I'd do something silly and paint it up to look like the old G1 Transformers character Starscream.

His livery:



The nose cone and the intakes are blue and red, respectively. This is where those masking shenanigans come in. Were I thinking right, I would have done the base coat first, then masked off to do these accents, but I was too eager and went for it.



Color on, complete with blue blob of careless spraying on the underside of the nose cone. I decided to let it dry out a bit and found a second coat hid that pretty well. I'll look into how to deal with goofs like that later so the next time I'm careless (because let's be honest, it will happen again as soon as I let my guard down). The blue was straight Tamiya XF-8 Flat Blue, the red was Tamiya XF-7 Flat Red and XF-9 Hull Red at about 90/10% (just to dull the brightness down on the red and dirty it up a bit). All thinned at 50/50.



The tails have an "F" pattern so I decided to try masking the area to be white and red off; I'll come back and mask again to add the red pattern once it dries.



Looks like some of my masking was not tight enough, some red dribbled out of bounds in two spots: near the wing root and the front edge of the intake where it meets the tip of the wing. Also note that damned wheel bay door popped open somehow (too big/too much tension, methinks). I pried both doors on that side off and did a little more sanding and fitting to secure them...AGAIN. This is what I meant about the kit CAN be built this way, but Hasegawa doesn't seem to want you to. The opposite side also seems to have buckled a bit, but as I let it slide for the time being as I'm not really concerned with this being showroom ready.



So yeah, this was the point where I realized that I had masked everything backwards and should have done the white basecoat for the fuselage first. (Bass ackwards? Mask backwards?) Anywho, masking done again and Tamiya XF-2 Flat White and XF-19 Sky Gray at 80/20% (again, to dirty it up--the toy and the animation didn't always agree on whether Starscream was white or gray, so I went with a dirty white) thinned at 50/50.



Gave the white three coats over a couple days until the preshading was nearly gone (just playing with it to see how preshading works). I'll let that sit for a while and come back to mask the tails and wings for the red stripes and then it's on to a clear coat and decals!

[Naedrux]

What an unusual livery!

[Lysus]

Well, a day of minor disasters.

I got it coated with some Alclad II Aquagloss, which went well. It can be a little tricky to keep your eye on what's wet and what isn't, but I took it quadrant by quadrant and I managed to avoid pooling etc. on my first try. So that was good.

I couldn't find any ready made waterslides for the Decepticon logo for the wings. Then I got it in my head to make my own decals.

Yeah.

So I grabbed the Testors decal maker kit full of optimism. It turns out that the software included comes with 7 decal images for aircraft and you cannot upload your own images without going online and paying MORE for an add-on to upload your own. You didn't read that wrong. It's kind of a scam.

Undeterred, I whipped out a sheet and sprayed it using their decal bonder spray can that comes with the kit.



I made 3 symbols at 4 different sizes even though I only needed 2. I wanted some room for error and I wasn't sure that the printer would spit out the images at the sizes I specified.

It turns out that even though I was careful to use a PNG with no background (that is, only the color portion is an image, the rest should "print" as clear) it still printed white into the void areas. This could be user error on my part. Also, the bonder made for a thick decal:



It looked little better than some paper cut out and set on the wing. Another decal from elsewhere on the sheet seemed thinner, but I trimmed out the voids and it happily curled up while I slid it off the backing. Sigh.

And then I nearly dropped the plane and gripped the engine nozzles by accident, sending them all askew and one off completely.

So, I decided to set it down for the day. I'll give the decal maker one more go and try to correct some of the issues I had this first time, and then try and fix those nozzles. Again.

Oh well, in the mean time, it's together and I think the paint--while not perfect--looks ok for my first airbrush attempt.

[aur0ra145]

I like this. Also, what airbrush cleaner are you using? I'm in the US as well and haven't found anything. Plus the only Ultimate retailer for the US is back ordered.

Cheers on the build, I'm digging it.

[Lysus]

I like this. Also, what airbrush cleaner are you using? I'm in the US as well and haven't found anything. Plus the only Ultimate retailer for the US is back ordered.

Cheers on the build, I'm digging it.

Thanks!

Right now just the Iwata-Medea airbrush cleaner (can find them on Amazon) and I'm patiently waiting for my Ultimate order to arrive as well. The Medea does alright, but it takes a couple passes to clear it completely. Being that it's the only one I've used so far I have nothing to compare it to, though.

[Lysus]

Undeterred by the previous homemade decal experience, I tried again. This time I grabbed a set of images (made by someone else--I left their logo on the sheet just to give credit where' it's due) that were not so big and could be scaled down for printing more cleanly. I also set the printer to print for photos (duh...) and then applied a much thinner spray of Testor's decal solution.



They went down nicely and were pretty much like real decals this time.



Ugh...those gaps...

Anyway. At this point I jumped the gun a little and slapped on a matte coat, eager to be done. I neglected a wash of any sort, but that's ok, I have another project up to the wash stage and I'll experiment with that one. So I unwrapped the canopy and called it done.







Sorry for all the blur, I really need a little camera. Anyway, as a first project after a 20 year hiatus I learned an awful lot. The canopy masking was ok, but I did get a little bleed on one side, and I didn't realize just how much fitting adjustment it needed before I sealed it up. Gaps in general abound despite some ham-fisted filling, but I think I have a better grasp of what to look for and have added some products to my toolbox to deal with them other than a tube of thick putty.

Oh yeah, did I mention I sprayed it orange-yellow before I masked it? Maybe I didn't...

Starscream once more for reference:



I made a few editorial decisions on the shade of color and how many logos he should have, also the distance the red on the underside traveled back towards the rear. I figured the inaccuracies from the cartoon allowed me lots of leeway

Anywho, I had a lot of fun, learned a lot about my neglected hobby, and Starscream here has re energized my passion for modelling. I think maybe in a year or so I'll do up another F-15 and compare the two, benchmark my progress as it were. That should be interesting.

Thanks for watching!

[Smiffy]

Great looking Starscream, like the custom made decals too Good to see the original cartoon series from my childhood. I think I still have the original Optimus Prime toy from the 80's tucked away somewhere at my parents.

[Lysus]

Thanks, Smiffy! That Prime is probably worth some coin, I still have mine somewhere, though his leg snapped off some years ago during a move

[Backfire22]

interesting colors. nice build.

[Lysus]

interesting colors. nice build.

Thanks! Was my first one in 20 years, so it was a great experience to see what I remember and what I need to learn. Glad you liked it

[Chelsea]

He's beautiful, I have the G1 masterpiece Thundercracker and Skywarp there ok but transformering they never line up well..... I'm definitely thinking of doing kits maybe 1:48 of the 3 seekers.

I was going to ask where you bought the transfers "stickers" from ???
I looked on eBay and saw a few stickers but unsure of the quality.

I would love to do Starscream too maybe even go to 1:32 maybe c:

[Lysus]

Thanks!

The decals I made myself using a Testor's decal spray and my printer.

I'm actually about to start a Thundercracker or Skywarp in a couple weeks. Hoping to do one a year.

In the mean time you should also check out Astaroth's 1/48 Starscream from the Summer Sci-fi SiG: http://www.intscalemodeller.com/viewtop ... 61&t=20339

[Chelsea]

When I get home I'll upload some pics of my little collection for you c:

That's so cool I wanna learn how to decal, this sounds like something I need to learn c: