Tamiya 1/48 Sea Harrier

[JudgeDredd]

Well...I'm done...in. Literally. This was a bit of a beast from start to finish. Raised panel lines, bad fit, awkward fit, painting issues and the straw the broke the proverbial...really, really bad canopy fit.

The fit was pretty poor throughout needing a fair bit of filler. I did what I could. But not being very experienced at such things, it shows in places. The awkwardness was little bits and pieces that just didn't go on well, making gluing a nightmare.

The painting issues were how I put the model together and how/when I painted. I'm no expert with an airbrush at all, and it showed throughout. Fitting of the Sidewinders resulted in me getting glue on my fat sausage fingers which then "rubbed some white paint of the missile...only for said fat finger to go holding the fuselage at the front and putting a big white stain on it...which obviously couldn't be airbrushed off because of the decals being on now!

On top of that, I had some Humbrol Clear Fix for the canopy. I had forgotten how shite this stuff was. Putting it on just left "contrails" of glue as I pulled the cocktail stick away, resulting in glue on the damn canopy. On top of that, the canopy was an awful (and really awkward) fit.

So that's me done. This is the first modern jet I've done and it was a bear! An old kit too - and the fit and moulding really showed. Is it all the models fault? Absolutely not. A lot was my misunderstanding on how to go about things for doing these...there's so much more to modern jets than WWII fighters or bombers imo.


Anyway - here's the final show. I'm not disappointed with what I did...but I have learned many things in the process that I will take with me to other models (hopefully).

If you look at the front right of the canopy, you can see where the glue got on it :'(




And if you look to the front of the nose, you can see a darker grey patch - where the white paint went and I tried to clean off and cover up :'(


And here - the offending Sidewinder and smudged white paint from gluey fat fingers! :'(


















I was impressed with my extra work on the engine though - the one positive!

[Smiffy]

Great looking SHAR FRS.1, you've done really well with an old dog of a model kit

[JudgeDredd]

Thanks Smiffy. She was a dog of a build and pushed my meager expertise to the limit.

I learned alot of things along the way though - so hopefully they'll stay with me.

[Avgas]

It looks PDG to me. Don't be so hard on yourself, if I had a quid for every cock up I made on a model I would be minted.

[JudgeDredd]

Thanks Avgas.

tbh, I think she does look lovely. Overall, a hard build turned out ok. But the last stages let me down.

I went to considerable work to make the engine look like an engine. I decided on the whole "dark sea grey" look and things were coming along.

Then - when all the major work was done, things started to go wrong. The decals were quite thick and required a fair amount of Micro Sol. Unfortunately, I forgot that too much can make them very weak and then they break. That happened to a few. Also one or two went "missing".

Then the finger print from the white paint that came off the sidewinder because of too much glue

Then the canopy not fitting - and the wrong glue...

It just all went wrong on the final pieces. But lessons learned hopefully.

Like I said - I'm still proud of how she looks...I think I just let myself down in the last stages.

[Avgas]

I think you showed a lot of determination staying with it. We've probably all (certainly I have) wanted to just shove a kit in the bin when things go wrong especially at the end so kudos to you for sticking with it and making a damn good kit out of it.

[JudgeDredd]

Well - thank you

[sprebound]

Despite your challenges, it came out great!

[Sturm]

Another skilled modeler who tackled a Nasty kit and made something worthy out of it. Great job!