Model Box Art Part Two

More action packed closeups of the 1/72 Hasegawa Emily.

This G3M2/G3M3 Nell boxtop is probably my favourite.  Doesn’t appear to be signed, but has a rather extraordinary “you are right there” feel to it.

Again there’s that illusion of floating, and the depictions of the crew are unusually vivid.  If it’s not Koike’s work (I suspect not), it’s certainly worthy of inclusion in the same bracket.

Just a couple reasons why you can never have too many model kits! 

Model Box Art Part One

One of the best answers to the not-infrequently asked question “Why so many model kits?” would have to be “The box art!”  Most of us modellers can probably recall the fascination these colourful boxtop paintings held for us as kids, and it’s likely the agonizing decision of which ONE kit the allowance would accomodate was helped in no small measure by which one had the best box art.

Airfix knew how to grab ya! 

Whoa!

Sometimes it’s just the overall look of the box too – I vaguely remember being able to buy models at the drugstore (!) several blocks from our house, and it seems to me it was there that I first encountered the Tamiya 1/35 WWII figure kits I loved to build and paint during my latter childhood phases of modelling, before other things came along.  Their four-figure Afrika Korps boxing is the one I really remember; the art was nothing too special, but something about it grabbed me.  It might have been my first encounter with a Japanese model box, and doubtless all the Japanese characters fascinated me.  I liked the Tamiya logo too, and the whole thing just seemed to have an irresistible air of mystery to it (Shizuoka City, Japan?  Where is that?)

I can even call back the feeling of that afternoon, sitting at my desk with the old gooseneck lamp, gluing, painting and (helmet) decaling the figures.  I was entranced by the diorama photo on the instruction sheet, and loved how the figures went together. 

It was just coming on dusk as I reached the decal stage; my mom was cooking in the kitchen, and I remember the particular pattern on the small bowl I borrowed from her for warm water to activate the decals.  To this day the sight of the Tamiya logo on a kit box strikes a chord with me, and they certainly have their share of fine aviation art too.

These days I’m more likely to have Hasegawa kits kicking around, since their 1/72 line seems to be a little more extensive, and it’s hard to miss some of the awesome box art on these things.  Their star artist for many decades has been Koike Shigeo, and recently I had some fun taking close-ups of a few of my favourites.

This kit looks pretty venerable; the grossly overscale raised rivet lines kinda give it away as a tooling first marketed back in the 1960s, but Hasegawa keeps on reboxing it to this day.  This unusual yellow boxtop is an example of Koike’s adventurous use of colour, which is apparently one of his trademarks.

Today’s current boxing of the same massive sprues sticks a bit closer to a realistic light, while creating a similar illusion of the aircraft floating in a sea of air (as opposed to merely “flying”).

Personally I think the H8K Emily is one of the most fascinating Japanese planes, which explains why I have two of these monsters and will one day find myself trapped in a world of endless, excruciating sanding and rescribing.  For the moment it’s a lot easier to play around with the camera:

Apparently I've maxed out the available file storage for one post, so I'll continue with part two.

Hasegawa JASDF F86F Sabre 1/72 WIP

Nyutabaru Airbase, Kyushu, Japan, March 1961 – Radar reports unknown contacts approaching from the northwest. Flight Lt. Kamiko Tomoyuke is raring to get airborne…but what’s this?

A Russian plot - his plane is in pieces!  In fact it appears as if someone has yet to even build the cockpit or wheel wells.  Bakayaro!

This JASDF boxing of the Hasegawa F86F Sabre in 1/72 looks to be a pretty old kit.  Judging by the raised panel lines and rivet detail, minimal cockpit, and complete lack of wheel wells (merely indicated with more raised lines) the tooling might even go back as far as the 1960s.  What the hell, even though WWII Japanese planes are really my thing, I couldn’t resist getting a JASDF Sabre because it just looks so cool.  So one night a few months back I decided to build the thing…and upon coming to grips with the kit’s limitations, decided to go ahead and scratchbuild in some of the missing detail, undaunted by lack of experience.  I figure enough will be seen through the canopy to make it worthwhile as the Sabre canopy is mostly one big convex piece of glass with no framing to obscure all that effort. 

Back in the day, Hasegawa figured that an instrument panel decal (but nowhere really suitable to affix it) and a skinny floor/front & rear bulkhead part (mainly there to glue the pilot figure to) took care of any necessary cockpit detail.  Today we know we can do better.  First thing was to make a tracing of the instrument decal, transfer it to styrene sheet and make a mounting piece for the decal.  Then I built the floor out to the sides, added forward and aft bulkheads, and cobbled together a sort of “bench” on either side of the pilot as a base for the various consoles.

I decided I kind of liked the pilot figure in this kit so started painting it up right from the start.  As an experiment I used Tamiya acrylics as I’ve always read they don’t hand brush well, but they seemed to go on nicely here.  Maybe getting good coverage on larger, flatter surfaces is more problematic.  The uniform was XF-13 and the boots Testors Gloss Black, with Humbrol Matt Black for the ejector seat.  For the face I custom mixed what looked to me like a Japanese skin tone using craft acrylics, and it turned out OK.  The visor was done with Tamiya Smoke, then carefully coated with Future for a glossy shine.  Since these photos I’ve repainted the gloves with XF-14 and the oxygen apparatus the same X-2 as the helmet.

Meanwhile the wheel wells had to be routed out.  This would have been a little easier if I hadn’t already glued the wing halves together…funny how I always start out thinking this will be a quick build, then immediately start reinventing the wheel.

Matter of fact, I’ve been reexamining my obvious AMS* in light of the recent 1/144 Hamp build.  Much as I enjoy the torture of attempting to invent a method for transforming the tiniest bits of plastic imaginable into something resembling a radial engine, it was getting a tad bit frustrating.  By contrast, 1/72 seems refreshing…it’s easier to see what I’m doing, and I can actually hold the part I’m working on with my fingers instead of constantly using tweezers.  Sometimes you have to give yourself a break.  No doubt 1/48 and 1/32 modellers are shaking their heads, and I do have that 1/48 Tamiya Rufe I’d love to break out sometime… 

*Advanced Modeller’s Sydrome – a fairly acute condition that renders the well-intentioned modeller just about incapable of building a kit right out of the box without improving, upgrading, scratchbuilding, and generally re-engineering the thing.

1/144 Hamp update

After a couple weeks of hardly any workbench time, I found some opportunities over the weekend to get back to this build.  Got the cockpit base-coated with an oil wash, and started trying to figure out what to do with the engine.


Scratchbuilding radial engine cylinders in 1/144 turns out to be no Hawaiian vacation, and after several attempts I still haven’t gotten it quite right.  There’s a brief mention of how to approach this on page 63 of Brian Criner’s excellent “Modelling the Mitsubishi A6M Zero”, though he does it in 1/72.  He describes using a punch and die to create “over 500” (hey, no problem!) tiny discs, which he then stacks with smaller diameter spacers to create the impression of cooling fins.  Should work just the same at half the size, right?  Well, not quite.

First of all, for an even remotely to-scale appearance I decided it had to be .005 styrene sheet.  This is paper-thin, and the biggest problem is just physically dealing with the discs once they’re punched.  Sized at .038, they’re semi-microscopic and display a stubborn static-cling tendency with tweezers, cocktail stick, fingertips, etc.  Even more than most incredibly tiny parts they love to fly off into space at the slightest provocation.  Keeping them aligned while gluing becomes a very fine balancing act involving intuition, trial and error, and luck. 

Between having a couple dozen of these lying around plus dozens of other minuscule bits, one sneeze at the workbench these days would do as much damage as a Kansas tornado.

At least I don’t need 500 discs, as I quickly found out that even such small bits rapidly fill the available space.  .038 is the smallest punch size I have so smaller spacers were out of the question, but there’s no room anyhow.  First thing was to mark out the seven axes of the front row, spaced about 51.5 degrees apart, on some styrene sheet.  Then using a compass for a circle cutter I marked out a 3/8” circle to use for a backing plate.  Once I got a piece that fit OK inside the cowling I drilled the center hole for the propeller shaft and started gluing.  My first effort went awry when I discovered fit problems after about the 3^rd cylinder, and they didn’t look right anyhow. 

I was slicing a sliver off the discs to make a straighter gluing surface, but this combined with less-than-perfect alignment to give a distinctly uneven appearance.  After some thought I decided it would be better to make the cylinders as standalone pieces that could be sanded flat on the back and maybe narrowed at the bottom for fit.  Starting with the bottom disc stuck in some Blu-TacTM on a flat toothpick clamped in the jaws of Mr. Helping Hands, I tried stacking using superglue applied with a short, slender piece of wire in an Xacto knife handle. 

This was fine til the superglue started to tack up, making first placement the final placement.  After ruining a couple this way, I tried using white glue and found the opposite problem, not enough adhesion even when dried.  Guess I’ll try liquid cement next, if it doesn’t melt these tiny styrene flakes.  Luckily by now I’ve got kind of a production method down so it’s becoming less time consuming, and no doubt at some point I’ll actually figure this out and end up with fourteen (or at least the front seven) passable cylinders glued to the backing plate.  Then I need to get back to crash molding a decent canopy…              

Arii 1/144 A6M3 Model 32 “Hamp”

Alert readers may have noticed a tiny white airplane in pieces behind the Corsair in one of the photos from last time.  That would be the Arii “Hamp” kit (misidentified as a “Zeke” in previous post - duh), which I recently picked off the top of the pile and proceeded to get fearlessly stuck into, despite the number of already unfinished planes lying around.

It’s some challenge too, I mean they give you decent-looking (raised) panel lines (considered rescribing, decided to live with it as is) and a generally OK shape to the thing, but…there’s no cockpit AT ALL (faired over just like the Corsair – what, no half-pilot figure?)

No attempt at engine detail, the canopy is just all wrong…so clearly this is no weekend build, though that’s exactly what I tried to tell myself it was whilst spending a couple hours cleaning up the rather extensive flash on virtually every part.  I’m guessing Nixon was president when this tooling was new…however, I enjoy this type of modelling, taking an old outdated kit and doing the utmost to overcome its flaws and build something better.

First thing was to open up the nonexistent cockpit and build in a floor.  I decided to try something I haven’t seen anybody do in 1/144 (though I’m sure it’s done all the time) and put in some sidewall framing as a background to the cockpit detail. 

Then I put in the turnover truss behind the seat, built the seat (second attempt – first one looked a bit too much like the ol’ porcelain throne), and started detailing the port sidewall with the electrical box, upper throttle quadrant, and elevator trim wheel.  At this scale I’m happy with any kind of halfway decent representation of components like this, and also happy if they don’t launch off the tweezers into a void before I can glue them down.  I’ve learned to use superglue instead of styrene cement, so these semi-microscopic parts don’t melt or distort when glued in place.

Next was the dashboard, some rudder pedals, and on to the starboard sidewall.  Looks a bit rough here, but should paint up nicely.  I used some mighty slender stretched sprue for wiring detail, which of course will be invisible once the fuselage halves are glued together.  Hey, I know it’s there…

Things got more complicated as I realized how lacking the cowling piece was, soon remedied by sanding down the cowl flap section and thinning its edges to a more believable “scale” thickness, then scribing in the cowl flaps.  Had to freehand this as Dymo tape wouldn’t stick in such tiny lengths, and it shows, but I’ll have to live with it and try to figure out a better method.  Also scribed in the fuselage-mounted machine gun channels, which didn’t turn out so hot either, but better than nothing.  I used the cowl from the Sweet kit to mark the exhaust pipe locations, having got rid of the stock “exhausts” which are way out of scale and better described as “exhaust horns”.  Then after drilling out a pair of #80 holes, I glued in a couple short bits of styrene rod that looked about the right diameter and after trimming to length drilled them out, with fairly credible-looking results.  Things are looking up!

Might add a few more cockpit details before painting the interior.  Meanwhile there's some fairly tedious work with the punch and die making discs for the engine cylinders, and a major learning curve crash molding a canopy since the kit canopy is just dire.  Too late to stop now!

  

Testors F4U1 Corsair 1/72 WIP

This is it, the earth-shattering launch of my new blog about whatever's happening on my rather cluttered, yet "precisely organized" workbench.  Got back into building model aircraft 10 months ago and despite continuing efforts & preoccupation have yet to completely finish one plane (sad, I know).  On the other hand considering my ever-wandering interests as well as some of the demands on my time it's amazing I've gotten as far as I have. 

Kits in progress:

- 1/48 Tamiya J2M3 Raiden (first kit started, now finally on the painting table, albeit minus a cockpit and some exterior detail that got removed w/ lacquer thinner, plus other gaffes - truly a sacrificial learning-curve build)
- 1/72 Testors F4U1 Corsair (second kit started, furthest along paintwise, starting to look not half bad - another sacrificial learning-curve kit)
- 1/72 Hasegawa J2M3 Raiden (haven't thought about this one for a while, but do recall making some progress before moving on to something else, as usual)
- 1/72 Hasegawa J7W1 Shinden (got hung up on scratchbuilding cockpit detail, but should build up into a nice model at some point)
- 1/144 Sweet A6M2-N Rufe (2 kits, just at the point of masking canopies prior to paint prep - some OK cockpit detail added)
- 1/144 Sweet GM-FM3 Hellcat (built up just one of the two kits so far, stalled at the enhanced cockpit stage)
- 1/72 Hasegawa F86F Sabre (ancient JASDF boxing w/ raised panel lines, etc - scratchbuilding cockpit detail, planning wheel well detail and maybe a crash moulded canopy)
- 1/144 Arii A6M3 Model 32 Zeke (serious upgrade challenge build of ancient tooling - scratchbuilding entire cockpit, planning engine and wheel well detail and well as crash moulded canopy - my current preoccupation)

So things have gotten a bit involved.  Anyhow, might as well start with the Corsair since it's looking the most like an actual model airplane as opposed to a bunch of parts.

Started this cheap kit ($6 at Michael's) about 9 months ago – I think it's an old Hawk tooling or something like that, probably from the 1960’s, complete with faired-over cockpit and half-pilot figure.  Panel lines a mix of raised & recessed, possibly the kit’s best feature.  Some of the detail is nice, but a lot of it is just missing – engine exhausts, air intake grilles, etc – anyway, it was a learning build and learn I did, mainly a whole lot about compensating for poor fit with filling, sanding, filling, sanding…more filling...there was also a pretty rough first attempt at wiring up an engine and giving it a black oil wash, all of which was prelude to several months spent stuffed in a plastic box back in the shadows.  But then without warning this raggedy, half-forgotten old airframe reappeared for a quick dustoff, assembly, painting prep and overall try for the finish line.  Got the canopy masked and glued (forgot to include the pilot figure though – all painted up and no place to go)

Drilled out gunports, scratched up a few radio antennae on top and a pitot tube (got broken off, natch), and even learned how to repair a raised panel line (!), before finally an all-over polish with 10000 grit and some Testors grey primer sprayed from a can.  Used Tamiya XF-16 Flat Aluminum for a metal undercoat, which I don’t recommend as it left a very pebbly finish that continues to show through the upper colour coats.  I’d read about that too and still went ahead and tried it anyway.  Yep!…anyhow, the underside colour is Tamiya XF-19 Sky Grey with a drop of X-2 White, while the top is X-4 Blue darkened to more of a navy blue using X-1 Black.  During unmasking of the lower half the forward wheel covers somehow disappeared without trace, so I’ll be scratchbuilding a pair of those.

 

Spindly landing gear still masked off with Parafilm, but coming in handy to prop up the model during painting.  Next is masking random panels on the underside and respraying to cover up Tamiya tape marks, bits of navy blue overspray and two thumbprints (one on each wing).  Then chipping the paint a bit to show the aluminum underneath, before a coat of Future, decals, washes, and weathering.