Salome Finale

If you read a previous post and thought I left star to the side for a while. This one has been on the table since Nov. of 2024!  To read part 1, click HERE. 

I left off without being able to choose a flesh color.  The first try went on a little too pink for someone from the Middle East, so I got my hands on V's Tanned Skin PAINT SET. I was a bit happier with that look. 

 I added dark hair and then some gold jewelry, and other highlights and she was quickly completed. 

 as seen in the image above the model is shown with her standing on a stone. IMO that was very "princess-y" So I got out some AVES and sculpted some pillows for her to stand on. I didn't seem to take a pic of them WIP, so we'll have to wait for the final shots.

The next task was to put her in a vignette like Star was in, but the pillows were made too large and she wouldn't find. So I found another base for her to occupy. I had some previous luck with creating a marbled look, and thought I'd try it again.  This time I found some Marble spray can. Giving it a try, it comes out of the can like Silly string but was doable. Until I tried it for real; what a mess. This stuff was not made for small scale paint jobs.  The I saw a YouTube VIDEO showing how it's done, and the guy was putting it on a full sized countertop!  So I had to be very selective with my spray. I painted a deep green as a base and then added thick streaks of a lighter green. The spray would give it it's white veins. I masked in where gold seams would be.

Looked good, except all the streaks weren't going in the same direction, again because of how brief the spray need to be. So I got out some white paint and with an filled in what I thought was lacking. Next I looked into ETSY and found a dollhouse vase with a plant that would fill in an empty spot. Yes, I didn't paint the plant. IMO taking a plant out of a package and gluing it directly on a base screams PLASTIC AQUARIUM PLANT!   I put a partial column I had under the vase to add some height.  

The final job was to epoxy the column, vase, pillows and Salome, and I was done. Thanks for looking. 

  

Aztec Princess mini

 Aztec princess mini - at least that's what I'm calling her. I've had this mini around my work desk for literally years. The packaging is long gone, and if you know my note taking skills, you know I don't have any... So no idea of the producer or the name of the kit.

She's about 28mm to her eyes, and 34mm to the top of her headdress. So this is actually past my size comfort range. Again being so old, I don't have any early pics of her - if I even took any.

This is the earliest shot from when I decided to finish her off a few weeks ago. 

 Doing a generic search, I came up with a lot of headdresses in the blue, green range. So that's what I did as well. Tho I don't know where an Aztec princess would find or want knee high leather boots...

 The next thing was what am I going to have her stand on?  I couldn't see just a simple 25 or 30mm circular base. Thinking of Apocalypto, I also couldn't make a giant temple, but I could do a small one.

So I got out my hot wire cutter and used a 1"X1" wooden block as a base. I drew bricks on it and a simulated stair. Next I created a background for her and looking up some Aztec designs, I found one that fit, that could be either a dragon head or fish.  Haha  I painted it a tan stone color and I was done. Thanks for looking. 

 

 

Iroquois Finale

 Go here to see part 1:  

 https://kevtk.blogspot.com/2025/04/iroquois-1755.html

Continuing on with the base, I used some of the grass tufts I had left, and then some of the birch seed "leaves" to busy up for forest floor. Those went on top of some regular soil and chinchilla dust (excellent for small scale realism), and gave it a coat of paint. 

Turning back to the Native, I followed most of the color choices from the box. One thing I needed to change was the war paint. So many examples online contained a lot of red.  But having the red coat, I made up my own design with less red. Next came all the beads and necklaces. And it seemed I got myself so involved in the painting that I never took pics. So here we have the final results. Thanks for looking..

 

 A larger size.

 

Iroquois, 1755

 This kit was given to me as a gift a month or so ago. The maker is Chronos Miniatures.  I'm thinking it depicts an Iroquois who "came across" the uniform of a British soldier. 1755 was a year into the French and Indian War, The Iroquois territory was mainly in upstate NY, so that's where I'm placing this figure.

The first quest that arises is looking at the  box art. This shows the uniform jacket a bright yellow with a red inside lining. Doing a search for British uniforms, all of them, as one would expect, since their called "Red Coats" was that the red on the outside and yellow was the inside.  Now some of their lapels were white, or blue, but since there's yellow on the example, a version of yellow is what I'm going with.

I thought could it be possible that it was a French uniform? But looking all of those were white, gray, or blue coats. I found this image and decided this is what I was going with.

So I started out with a black and white primer on most all the parts. The Indian was given a Cavalry Red primer. 

After that I added the first highlight - 

 While that was drying I started thinking about the base. The provided base was a piece of ground with the stump of a tree. With the piece of wood I found, I got a piece of rigid foam and started to carve. 

With that I was out of time. Check back for the next session.
 

Salome

 Having wanted to try my hand at some freehand drawing on a model, I found this Salome kit from El Greco Miniatures and Kuton. Those that know the Bible know her as the daughter of the King who seductively danced for him in exchange for the head of John the Baptist. The kit is approx 120mm, and comes in 6 parts - the top half of Salome, the bottom half, the front of her hair, two feet, and a rocky step base. The image is her top half in a brown + white primer, and the bottom in gray. 

 The only image I can find of this subject/pose is the one that Kuton used for the box art. 

 so the first I start off with is my "pinkle" base for the skin - 

Then I had the bright idea that since to my knowledge, there was no description of her, so I figure that being Middle Eastern there was a chance of her being a slightly darker skin and a European person. So I over sprayed the pinkle with one of the darker base colors from the Tanned Skin set of paints. 

But now I'm torn between the new color and the original brown/white primer coat. So having to think about things, this is where I'll stop for today. Check back to see which direction I went. Thanks.

 

Edmund Fitzgerald

I've been fascinated by the lore of the Fitz ever since I read that Gordon Lightfoot was compelled to write the ballad when he saw the local newspaper "Couldn't even have the courtesy to spell the name of the ship correctly."  From there I saw as many of the documentaries as I could, read as many of the books as I good to get a feeling for what really happened.  The I saw this ad for Iron Shipwrights. There I saw the 1/700 Edmund Fitzgerald. 

 

I started cleaning up the resin, and ran across one of the reasons why I dislike when companies try to clean things up for the buyer. After a while the get sloppy and thats when accidents happen. Here we have them using the grinder to take off the pour stub and oops whoever hit the side of the hull3 times with the edge of the grinder.

 So that will have to be fixed. A few layers of Tamiya putty did the trick. While that was drying I was feeling especially ambitious, and check to the accuracy of the portholes on the hull. The other thing was that after cutting the decks from the stub, they started to warp. I needed the very hot water treatment for that. Thankfully the decks were thin and straightened out just from the hot water dip.

The next step was painting the ship. Looking at the real ship we're looking at mostly 2 colors~ white and Hull Red.

 

So that's where I started.

 And that where we're leaving it for now. Check back...

Edmund Fitzgerald

This is another kit out of the depths of my stash. The Fitz was done my Iron Shipwright Models, and in looking for the url, I see they are still around being bought by Commander Models. 

The ship is 1/700 scale working out to about 12" .  Being an older kit, the smaller pieces have a bit of flash on them and will take some time to clean. It looks like they took off the pour plug on the bottom of the hull with a grinder. The bottom is a bit rough, but if you are going to sit it "in water" that won't be a problem. The one big problem is that while the grinder was still spinning, it accidentally hit the side of the hull. That needs to be fixed!

The image from the website indicates they redid the molds and things are better arranged. 

 Since mine will be in water, I'm not worrying about the bottom, so the first think to tackle is the gouges on the side. I started out fill them with Tamiya putty, but didn't like the look and redid it with some Aves. The next thing is to tackle the decks. I guess they were in the box so long that each one had some type of warpage. A quick dunk it super hot water fixed that.

The gouge and the warp

 I decided that I would clean the fiddly bits as I needed them, so next is a coat of primer, and when dry, the base colors. The ship is basically two colors - white and Hull Red. 

 That's where we are going to leave it for this session. Check back for more.

Tamiya X-1 Finale

 The finals steps for the construction was to put on the landing gear and doors. Usually I put them on when the instructions say to, and then I always knock them off somewhere along the line. Another was to paint and glue on the cockpit canopy. The final step was to put on the decals. Despite looking rather aged, they went on with no problems. One toward the end did rip, but joined up rather nicely. 

With the number of pitot tubes on the craft I decided to glue the plane onto it's base. For that I took a regular 6"X6" square piece of wood and then cut some styrene grooved with "expansion joints" for detail. With that, I was done. Thanks for looking. 

 

Tamiya X-1

 Back to my aviation subjects. This time I'm digging into the historical that isn't a hypothetical or drawing board plane. It's the Bell X-1.  Most people will remember it as a supersonic research project built by Bell Aircraft. 

The model is 1:72 scale with 2 sprues of gray styrene, one clear, include the making for a see through section of the aircraft, and one sprue of white which will be a base for building the aircraft in flight mode. 

First thing after giving the instructions a once over was to convert all the paint ref. numbers (all Tamiya) to the color names. I decided that I wouldn't make the plane see through so I could eliminate a lot of the planes extra innards... Assembly of the cockpit was first.

The kit comes with a ball bearing to act as a weight, and they have that located in the first cylinder behind the cockpit. I also thought this a good idea to add as I couldn't tell if you could see it or not once the cockpit was installed. (You can't). 

 

Right after the above image was taken I installed the instrument panel, and then the engine cluster in the read. Only other thing to do was close it up. 

Time to get paint on the X-1. Vallejo is notorious for have pretty weak pigmented yellow and orange colors, so I bought the Tamiya brand. However reading it again it's 8 parts orange, 1 part Tamiya Clear Red. I didn't have Clear Red, but Vallejo has Transparent Red. I thought the result turned out pretty well. 

Next was to install the wings and horizontal stabilizers. All went on fairly easily except one of the horizontal ones the tab seemed in the wrong position. I cut until it might has well been a butt joint. So I added some CA glue to the styrene cement, and gave it support. I left it over night to dry. So that where we'll leave it for now. Check back and thanks for looking. 

 

Northrop XP-79B Finale

 For the finale, my main job was to paint the plane and then add the canopy. Websites were saying it was white, the instructions called the color linen. So I decided to split the difference in that I took Ivory, and add one drop of V's Iraqi Sand which is a light beige color.

Next was the canopy. I found that yes indeed, the canopy was split vertically down the middle. So I was just a matter of gluing the 2 halves together.  They are to be butt jointed together, and I had a piece of Tamiya tape at the ready. I had the two pieces and touched it with some Tamiya thin,seeing the glue run around the joint. I then added the tape to make sure they held until the weld was complete. Thinking so, I gently put it down on the tale and let go. Immediately I felt my finger slowly pull away! What?! Yep. Glue came out of the joint and ran to where my finger was, leaving this very nice finger print. Insert multiple cuss words here. 

While I was waiting for the canopy to dry, I created a little tarmac with the plan of gluing the plane to the ground to eliminate the tail sitting or the need for the little post to hold the plane up. 

After the glue was dry I sanded the sanding marathon, first with some 3M sanding sponges from fine to ultra fine. Then I went into the 1000ths grit. After hours with canopy was smooth again, but there was still a cloudy bit to it that wouldn't go away - even after a few dippings of Future. What I ended up doing was mixing Future with V's Smoke and created a window tinting. It ended up mostly making all the work I did to the interior moot, but the cloudy mark was covered up. 

Thanks for looking. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Northrop XP-79B

 I picked up this kit a while ago, just because it fit my  idea of an odd ball plane. It wasn't mentioned on the box that it was a Northrop design until I started to research. 

The military, toward the end of WW2 felt they needed a plane that could ram enemy planes similar to what Germany was rumored to be designing.  Northrop came up with this design complete with magnesium wings to help the plane survive the hit. 

One was built and on it's first trial the XP-79B made its first flight on September 12, 1945, however, 15 minutes into the flight control was lost for unknown reasons while performing a slow roll. The nose dropped, and the roll continued with the aircraft impacting the ground in a vertical spin. There are two accounts of the end. One that test pilot Harry Crosby attempted to bail out but was struck by the aircraft and died. The other that in the spin, with such forces, he was unable to open the door open to bail out. The problem was identified, and Northrop was ready for prototype #2, but they were told with the war over, there was no longer a need for a Flying Ram. 

RS Models, out of the Czech Republic offers the 1:72 scale kit on one sprue with another smaller sprue for the clear windscreen. Directions were exploded views and as I will find out a little vague on where parts actually go. The decals are well done.

 As part of the design, the pilot was to lie prone to better help him with the g-forces. The model comes top and bottom so part of the cockpit area attaches to the ceiling of the plane, the other part on the floor. A box forms the confines of the cockpit.

A bench for the pilot to lay on is to be painted a leather color, and the steering goes underneath the bench. The first vague part comes here. There's no real indication of how far out the wheel sits. So I made my best guess. The color calls for the interior to be "interior yellow." I never hear of this before and thought they meant the zinc chromate color. I only had the green zinc chromate which bears no resemblance to yellow so I painted it lime green (a color which will be changed in the 11th hour).

The tub with two sets of where instruments went. I painted instruments the best I could only to realize that once the halves are glued together no one will ever see them again.  Across the front part of the cockpit more instruments are on a flattened bar.

This let to the problem with the bar and the steering wheel. With no indication of where it went, I had it in my head that it seemed possible for the pilot to be stretched out with his arms holding the wheel on the "outside" of the instrument bar.  

That was until I found this image - - 

 So a little late but the mystery of where the steering wheel went was solved. This solved another mystery of WHY would they make the windscreen in two halves, split vertically down the middle??  Why when it's like that in real life.

But that will come next time after the glue dries and all the clamps come off the plane. Thanks for looking.