Shark Man

A few years ago I picked up this bust at a Jersey Fest (or was it a Resintopia). I have forgotten the sculptor/producer but I'm guessing it's about a 1/4 scale bust.
Anyway, it sat for a long while just in primer -

I figured it waited long enough and started. I first began with the typical squiggles for under the skin - 

Then the skin went on - 

But I could leave that along and after a few stripes and washes I called it done looking like this. Thanks for looking.

Me P. 1092/3 part 2

In this session I ordered a cheap-o** Me. 262 from Megahobby to use the landing gear, wheels, decals, and pilot (I can put the pilot I was using back to the Bronco). 
**I say cheap-o becasue it was only $15, but in full disclosure the Airfix kit looks pretty good and I may order another for a 262 build.

So while I'm waiting, I figure the next step is to install the wings. Etched into the fuselage is an outline of there the wings are supposed to go. So lining up the wings I marked it and then took bits of paper clip wire to make attachment points - 

Inserting the wire into the holes, it looked great - - - until I looked at it from the front and one side was no where near even to the other. Somehow the etching was off by at least a mm.

The only thing to do was to turn the holes into slots and adjust the wings so they looked even from the front.  This had to be done with both sets. Looking the the pic below the red line points to the original hole, and how far one side was off from the other. Since I did all the work on one side the front wings had to be raised a similar amount  - 

With that problem solved, I used some Tamiya filler to close the gaps in the wing root, the holes that were showing and then some scratches in the side of the fuselage. 

Now to wait for the landing gear. If it doesn't come soon, I may tackle the canopy...  Thanks for looking.

Gauges - Scles -- What the Heck?

I have a bunch of soon to be dioramas sitting around waiting to be finished.  I jumped on the eBay to look for some plants other than grass.  Only a few things to see by looking at scale. So I jumped in the model railroad section and there was a lot to see - all set up by gauge.

I had a model railroad as a kid. When I bought something for it, all I had to look for was HO on the box and I had my item.  But now I have a 1:20 scale model.  What gauge would that be? Had no idea. 
Doing a little web surfing, I was able to make this handy chart. Some gauges I never heard of, but if I need that scale *whatever* I know where to look. 

Hope this helps someone else.

Messerschmitt Me P.1092/3

One of the genre's that I like but don't get to model often are the experimental planes. They could be USAF or NASA's X-Planes or they could be the Luft '46 planes.  
In aviation, "Luft '46" refers to military aircraft that were under development in Nazi Germany, but failed to enter service (at least in large numbers) before the end of World War 2. This includes projects that were cancelled during the war, and occasionally real postwar aircraft derived from German research, such as the MiG-15. Most "Luft '46" aircraft are of advanced design, usually having swept wings and jet/rocket engines. 

From Luft'46.com:

 With the Messerschmitt Me P.1092/3 design, the design team made more changes to the P.1092. The cockpit was moved to the rear, where it was faired into the single vertical fin. The air intake was now divided into two intakes, located beneath the nose, and fed the single Jumo 004C jet engine. The landing gear remained more or less the same, and with the forward fuselage now unoccupied, a heavier armament of four MK 108 30mm cannon could be concentrated in the nose. This Messerschmitt design bears a resemblance to the later Me P.1106, and the same problems would have surfaced; namely, pilot visibility from the cockpit located so far in the rear. 

The model of the Me.P. is from the Co., Unicraft, out of the Ukraine. Unicraft specializes in exotic subjects such as experimental and concept aircraft, UCAVs and Luft '46. A number of years ago Fantastic Plastic was named as their exclusive distributor for the US and Canada. In a personal note that is no secret, Unicraft kits are not for the beginner as they usually need a little extra work to make them look good. Be forewarned. 

The box art

This kits came in about 12 pieces of a brittle tan color resin. There is a good amount of flash around some of the pieces and what looks like scratches in the resin on others.  Here's an example of some of the parts that need more work than usual. Thankfully the fuselage was in good shape.  This is supposed to be 2 wheel struts and a wheel. It seems that for these parts, the resin seemed to have foamed a bit - 

 The next thing that was immediately noticed was that the air intakes on the fuselage had no backs. When you put the two halves together, you could see right through. If nothing else, this needs to be fixed. I had to think about this.
That I came up with was to glue two sections of a soda straw to cover the the intakes. when the glue dried, the parts over the opening would be cut away and leave me with a curved tube in the fuselage - 

Shown is the length of straw from both sides. The black things are Liquid Gravity pellets that have been glue in the front. This in combination with hollowing out the rear where the pilot was to sit backward and I also drilled out the tail portion, in an effort not to make this a tail sitter.

I left the straws to dry for a day or two and then with a new #11 blade cut the straw away from the opening. Here the straws are cut away and the two halves are glued together- clamps are need as the fuselage halves are slightly warped - 

I had to add some Aves, to smooth out the front and back of the intakes, and it ended up not too bad. The front wheel well also had no floor, so I also used Aves to creat the floor.
 Taking care of the warped parts, a lot of Tamiya putty was used. The body is still not straight, but I'm hoping that's minimized when the canopy goes on.

While I was waiting for the putty to stiffen up and super glue to harden, I painted the pilot. It's from another kit. As I'm going to have to use a different kit's landing gear (I couldn't make the above one look nice and didn't feel like scratching one) I might as well borrow the pilot too - 

I looked up Nazi pilots and my guy came pretty close. So I matched up the colors as best I could. I know, you probably won't even see him once in the cockpit, under the canopy...
 
To end this session I glued the tail on and of course this too needed a lot of Tamiya putty, and LOTS of sanding. The tail had to be 1mm too narrow all the way around.

Thanks for looking. see if this becomes a silk purse in the next installment.
 

The Deep One Part 2A

Where we last left off was that my paint job was ruined when the Krylon Satin frosted on the model.

While writing the last post, I went to the Krylon website to get the details, pics etc... for the post. While there I noticed they had a Q&A section. Looking it over there were a number of questions as to what to do when it frosts. Apparently this must happen a lot.  Whoever was writing for Krylon matter of factly said "Oh just spray it with gloss."  What?  But I figured how could it hurt and tried it.

Sure enough the frost completely disappeared on the parts that were lightly frosted. where I must have put it on heavier, there was no change.   So yeah, a coating of gloss may help if you get the dreaded frosting. Hope this helps.

The Deep One Part 2 - No Joy

WOW. Didn't realize I had this model build in limbo since January. 
Not having read H.P. Lovecraft's story about the Deep One, I had no idea of the description of how it may have looked. So I just went out and did whatever I wanted to do. I used some greens and blues (being it's at least a semi aquatic monster), black stripes, some tans and browns for the plates.

I was in such a groove I never too a pic.

Then I turned my attention to the base. It's a typical sand base with sea shells. I painted that up with tans and different "shell colors" to which I added a pearl additive to have theme shine - 

It was going to make this an easy one, and with the base done, all I had left was to hit the creature with some Krylon Satin and call it done.  I sprayed the satin and almost immediately it was like I frosted the kit! Certain parts turned white! Plus, I guess, heavier parts also cracked! WTF?

The image actually makes it look not as bad as it really is. So it's time to call the paint job a failure, give it a Purple Power bath, and start over... Sigh.