A little housekeeping

Ok, before signing off I did a little house keeping on the page and also changed the name of the blog. I was never an Aerosmith fan and the Toys in the Attic name, while a good song, was just bugging me. Not really in an imaginative mood I just made the name nice and simple. Nite!

Cleaning the Mess

As I mentioned these kits are rough. So I too my sanding sticks to the wings and tail planes, And they came out pretty good. Though in the pic you can see a big blob in the landing gear bay. I guess part of the mold tore away and resin filled the holes. There's a little more work to be done. Not bad tho IMHO. Here's the clean up job so far - -

(click to enlarge) the one wing looking larger is just the angle of the camera ;)

The next part will be tougher to make nice. This mess is supposed to be the instrument panel (L) and the seat (R) - -

I think because of this, when I get to the canopy, I will tint the glass so you can't look it. This will also have me avoid making an entire cockpit tub.

And finally for tonight we have the landing gear. I think these are the worst parts. Once having a good look I decided I wonder if I could get another cheap kit and "borrow" the landing gear. I also need the kit for the decals. Despite the Unicraft box art showing insignia, the kit comes with none. 
Before I go on, here's what I have to work with - - 

I went out to the hobby shop today (Avenel Hobbies) looking for a smallish 1:72 German plane with a tricycle landing gear. The *only* one there with the correct landing gear was a Hobby Boss Do-335 Heavy Fighter.

I get the kit home, and get right to the landing gear... and... they are 3 times the sizes of the ones I need. Damn! Well, I'll still use the decals. 

Now I have two choices, I can either model the plane with the gear up, or start kitbashing the gear as best I can. That's a decision for tomorrow.

Fuselage Points to Ponder

Tonight we have just a small update (I'll be able to make more progress once my son is back to school). ;-)
I've never been good at thinking ahead with models- to think about how will it be displayed- flying or on the tarmac, or details needing to be done now for once finished especially when I'm just starting. For the display, while I would like to show the model with it's landing gear down, being a garage kit the gear is made of resin and I think after a time it will start to eventually sag.  Also being a garage kit, there's next to no chance that there's going to be a metal after market landing gear. I'm also not about to start casting my own metal gear (just yet).  So I think I will make it aloft and look like it's just about to touch down.

So that also solves problem 2. A some of time when a model is built and displayed on it's landing gear it will be a tail sitter. That means that the weight of the plane is heavier toward the back and will sit on it's rear landing gear and it's tail. To compensate for this modelers often glue bb's or other small weight to make the front of the plane heavier so it's sits on just it's gear. 

Not sure what to do I took some time to dremel out some of the extra  resin around the front to accomodate some weights. I also dremeled out the solid tail piece to make the back lighter.  Oh well...

Here are the before and after pics of that work - - 

(click to enlarge) You can also see the number of bubbles in the resin. Thankfully they are all on the inside.

A lot lighter now, soon I'll be figuring out where the balance point is to make a spot for rod to sit. I'll also have to figure out what I'm going to do to make the two air intakes (the holes at the top of the fuselage) and also how to make the rear opening (below the tail) look like it has a jet exhaust.

But next I'll be cleaning all the parts of the mold release and clean up some flashing and pour stubs. Hopefully I won't have any/many air bubbles.

New Build - Me.P. 1092/3

Newly encouraged from my trip the the Loveland, CO. IPMS Nationals I decided to dive into a new model. For those that don't know or have forgotten (since I haven't been too reliable posting here) My favorite genres to build are real space, sci-fi, and x-planes that lean toward the space or out of the ordinary look. 

 I purchased 4 new kits in CO., but I "found" a kit that I had stashed away from Unicraft.  You can deal directly with Unicraft in the Ukraine, but a terrific garage kit producer is Fantastic Plastic, and they are the authorized reseller of Unicraft kits in the USA and Canada. As some know Unicraft kits are pretty rough and is advertised for the experienced modeler. But as with many garage kits if you want a certain odd-ball subject they may be the only game in town.
My kit for this build is a 1:72 Me.P. 1092/3 - 

The parts are this weird brittle resin, and have a lot of heavy flash that need to be filed/dremeled off. But as I test fit the fuselage parts you can see that even tho it's small, it's rather warped. In this pic you can also see the opening for the cockpit area - illustrating what I mean by being rough.

I could squeeze the parts together and superglue them, but what I did was drop the two parts into "almost" boiling water to soften the parts, I then put them in the bottom of the sink (giving me a flat surface) and pressed them into shape. Once flattened I then turn the cold water on them and the resin re-solidified. Results came out a lot better than the before image.

More soon ...