Excellent Ian! I'm looking forward to seeing which one it will be!
Okay, now I have everything uploaded so here it goes. There's a lot of pics for not so much work, so bear with me. This is all the work I managed to get done over the past two or three days.
I'll start with my aircraft.
The first thing I did was to mask the windows for the F-102 Delta Dagger:
Then I shot a primer over the whole thing when the masking dried:
I did the same thing with the Boeing 737; I masked the windows first:
As that was drying, I shot a primer coat on the wings:
Later on, I also primed the fuselage:
Simple and easy, all that was put aside to set up properly. Later on, I'll try to see if I can apply a nice smooth coat of paint on them.
Moving on, I was getting sick and tired of the VW bus sitting around taking up space. I decided to get to work on that and see how far I needed to go before I had to stop due to lost parts and such. From the get-go, I screwed up. As I was getting ready to add one of the windshield windows to this, it got messed up. My attempts to clean it turned out thusly:
I don't even know whether to try to clear that up or just try and add some different windows or something....
Moving on, I finished up the interior of this bus:
While trying to add the side doors to the one panel, I broke both the hinges and lost them; making me have to glue this door in:
The other one I was able to install properly so that it opens and closes. Oh well, our VW bus in my youth had the same problem with a stuck door so...
I went on and finished gluing all the side panels on to the chassis of the bus. Then I installed the one door on the front panel; this opens up too. Here are the two 'subassemblies' sitting side by side:
In putting this all together, I found out about two more parts that disappeared with the front door, the back window and the lower body panel below the engine door:
Later on I snapped the front end onto the model to check alignment of the doors and such:
It was actually still pretty flimsy and misaligned, so I snapped the roof on top to help the sides to all glue into place properly:
I could add the wheels to this, but I'll wait. Beyond the wheels, this is as far as I can get on this until I find the missing parts. Back to the Shelf of Shame for this one until further developments.....
Moving on to something that I can finish, I got more work done on three of the armor models I'm working on.
First off, I shot flat black over the tires of all the USAAF vehicles so I could move on with them when I could:
I also detail painted some parts on some of those vehicles but did not take pics of them.
On my Merkava, it is really hard to see in these pics; but I shot a mist coat of Israeli Sand Grey over this model. I modulated the color a bit too, and also dry-brushed the highlights; not that you can tell here:
Later on I painted the tarps on the back of this with Olive Drab. Again, these pics make it hard to see the difference:
These effects are much more visible to the naked eye. Oh well, maybe later I'll be able to take pics that show this off to good effect.
Finally, on my armor, I got more done on the Vauxhall staff car. To start, I built the roof for this car:
Later after sanding the hood too much, I re-added the hinge line across the top:
This might be slightly out of scale, but I stretched the sprue to get this and I was afraid of stretching it too thin and snapping it.
I then finished adding all the parts to the chassis. I had to re-make the parking brake as it snapped off some time ago and disappeared:
After drying, this model was ready for paint. So I masked off the bottom where the two sub-assemblies are supposed to join:
I then shot the first color on this car; the 'deep green' that the instructions said to paint it:
That is a flat color so I'll be glossing that up later on.
In getting this far, I realized that the clear parts are missing for this kit as well. I do believe I have them in a different box somewhere; I just need to see if I can find them. Otherwise, I'm facing some difficult scratchbuilding ahead....
Finally, I joined a Star Wars Group Build on another Forums, thanks to the generosity of a good friend who sent me the Revell Imperial Star Destroyer. This is a well engineered snap together kit that surprisingly needed very little glue to seal seams and went together very quickly. It is also a 'motorized' kit with lights and sounds which are all controlled in this little module:
That clear pull tab will activate the batteries allowing this to work. I'll pull that when I am done with this.
Here it sits all nestled in place right in front of where the engines go:
There are openings in the back that will light up some clear blue parts in the engines.
Once the rear and engines were assembled and installed, the top hull was added to this lower hull. Easy peasy:
Here's a shot of the engines with the clear blue inserts that light up:
And yes, that gap is supposed to be there.
Next is the lower superstructure. You can see how they engineered this kit to go together without seams:
Next I added the upper superstructure to this assembly:
I then installed it on the main hull and slid the bridge neck into place:
Building the bridge itself required a bit of glue to close the seams adequately:
Finally, here she is in all her finished glory:
Finished assembly, that is. I still need to paint and detail this. To start that, I shot a coat of light grey primer over this whole thing:
With all the detail on this, it is screaming for some washes and dry-brushes of color!
That is all I have for now. That Star Destroyer was a real fun and relaxing model to build; it really helped bring me down from some of the more frustrating models I was working on. *cough*VW BUS!*cough*
I don't know how much more I'll be able to do for the next few days, but stay tuned, I'll be working on some of this hopefully soon. Thanks for looking in, comments are welcome.
