The 1:144 Convair KingFish

 This latest kit is another to add to my prototypes/experimental/ or never was planes. It's the Convair KingFish in 1:144 scale from Fantastic Plastic. The kit comes in 29 resin parts, and is patterned and cast by Anigrand Craftwork[1]. Good to see they they are sort of still in business.

In 1957 there was a contest to replace the U2 spy plane. The contest came down to Convair's KingFish and Lockheed's A-12, which would eventually became the SR-71. Giving this little piece of the story away, you know how it ends up.  Work on the KingFish continued for a few more months, but when the money ran out, the project was cancelled. 

With no real cockpit, the work started with the two engine nozzles that were embedded in the fuselage. Since they will be buried deep in there, I got out the silver paint right away.

Next there was a "spacer" mid-fuselage that I had never seen on an Anigrand kit before. It fit in there perfectly, and yet still left enough room for me to add some "Liquid Gravity" on each side as close to the cockpit as I could get.  Nothing was mentioned in the instructions about adding weight, but anytime I do not have a wheel in the tail, I add weights. 

*A is that spacer.

 Then came what seems to be the typical Anigrand landing gear. The cockpit had a lot of room and only one  tiny seat. I would have thought The cockpit windows were small as well, but no, it was wide open. So I did the best I could to add instruments with paint. Oh well. Looking back I should have added more to make it look "busier."

 

The paint scheme is an overall black. But black leaves me no where to go if I wanted to add some shadows, so out came V's Black Gray. Having a second thought that the jet was never completed, so it never did anything to get weathered. The decision was that except for a few chips (because I couldn't resist) I left it alone.  The decals went over the dark paint with not problems and with a layer of satin poly over the decals I was done... Or maybe at this scale a coat of matte is needed.  Anyway, thanks for looking. 

 

[1] I've included Anigrand's website for reference. It seems the site has not been updated since 2019, and emails bounce back.

X-1 at the Cosmosphere

 The Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, KS is a top notch air and space museum. Worth a visit, if you've never been. 

 

Law and Order

 This kit is a bit of a puzzle. It's been sitting on my bench for so long, I can't find the box, I can't remember who made it or what the name of the kit really is.  

What I do know is that the figure is 75mm of well cast resin, as is the little porch base. 

Edit: Seems I was a little more organized than I thought. I had made a folder for Law and Order images - that IS the kit's name- and forgot all about it. The kit is from Mercury Models - 

It also seems that in the time it was sitting there, I only took 1 WIP image of it. I started out by finding an assembled image to see how the porch went together.  I figured that these western figures were out under the sun all day and became quite tanned (or leathered). I went to V's skin set of paints and started out with a dark base color. 

 

Example from online to see how the part fit.

When I was first doing a little research I found the figure painted and decided to base my colors on those colors. I figured any wood would have been dried and weathered, so painted the walkway and railing as if it had been out in the sun for decades. The total height including the base made from a wooden coaster and some Sculpt-a-mold is 150mm. I included a US Quarter with the last image as a size comparison.  Thanks for looking. 

 

Size comparison

Close-up

Moebius' Frankenstein Finale

 Back again with the finale of the Frankenstein build. 

Painting the monster was a series of back and forths between a flesh color and a pale green. What I also did, with a very thin brush was to paint in some veining and bruises, tho they can't really be see with my crappy photography.  The suit and shoes was a dirty black, and the shirt was a brown.  

Since I got the kit, I really didn't like the way the doorway opened to nothing. I had no intention of creating the appearance of another room, so I took some sheet styrene, painted black, and covered over the door opening. 

With that he was done. Thanks for looking.

In case anyone needs to see the back of the door. :)

Moebius' Frankenstein

 This kit was bought when my local model club was having a contest based on kits that originated with Aurora. I remember building the Frankie as well as almost all the other monsters that Aurora released.Then I come to find out that No, this is a new kit. Oh well it didn't really matter as I was one of the judges for the contest and I wouldn't have included my kit in the judging anyway.  Can't go to waste, let's build it. 

The kit is very nice with a big stone castle wall and door as a backdrop. The face was a decent sculpt, but I went with Escape Hatch Hobby's Frankenstein replacement head. Seems I didn't take the "before" pic so here's some parts glued up with the original head.

 The wall/door was also very well sculpted - 

 To change things up I started painting the background/base first. This is just the base coating a lot more paint as well as weathering has to go on...

 Check back.

2022 Year in Review

 It's that time of year again. Time to look back and see what I did over the year. While not as many as I've done in the past, I feel it's a respectable amount of kits off the pile and onto the shelves. This year I also have a few OOAK sculpts that I've done. Thanks for looking.