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Tamiya Grumman F-14D Tomcat
- Thread starter Greg Kimsey
- Start date
Greg Kimsey
Well-known member
I am still on the pilots. I did get the book, and Sharks was right, it is worth it. It is more detailed than you could possibly add. Hundreds and hundreds of photos of every inch of the plane. The kit does not come with decals for the seats. I put them in the cockpit and it looks like they will be pretty visible so I went through my pile of unused decals and found some that "sort of" work. They are not exact of course. They pilots and seats look better in person than these photos show. I couldn't seem to edit out the greenish tint. The seatbelts are flat lead strips painted with green metallic to simulate the shiny material of the reference. The lapbelts are grey, and the buckles are bits of thin metal sheet. The added hoses on the seats are .010" round lead fly tying wire. Anyway, here are the finished (or mostly finished) seats and pilots.
Holy cow! 
Greg Kimsey
Well-known member
For some reason the camera was set on ISI 2000! I certainly didn't choose that. I didn't take them all again, but these two are less noisy.
Greg Kimsey
Well-known member
I am not sure why, and I am sure I will find out, but the instructions had the ejection seats and pilots near the end of the build. I didn't want to have trouble fitting the seats like I did with the F-16 and not have a way to fix it so I put them in now. They fit perfectly. I had to move the joystick to line up with the pilots hand was the only adjusting needed.
Greg Kimsey
Well-known member
Front landing gear bay has about as many wires as it needs I think. Next up is painting it white. That is for another day. My eyes are hurting!
Greg Kimsey
Well-known member
The front wheel well is done I think. I primed everything with 50/50 Mr Finishing surfacer 1500 black/Mr Leveler. After a while came 50/50 Tamiya XF2/Mr Leveler in thin layers to build up to white. I "tanned" the braided lines with Tam XF49 Khaki, then bits of XF7 red, XF1 black, and X23 clear blue to add details. The chrome is Molotow Liquid Chrome pen I put a wash of Vallejo Model Wash Brown on everything. I thinned some XF1 with alcohol and blacked a few grooves here and there. After a good hair dryer application I used Titanium White oil paint to add the feintest dry brush over most things, and a little heavier on the lines. See what ya think.
Greg Kimsey
Well-known member
Crap, I see a sloppy red spot after looking at the photos...after posting of course. I will clean the up with white.
Greg Kimsey
Well-known member
Thank you Paddy! That is indeed how I have learned from you and others here.Very nice Greg and i love your informative descriptionsthats how we learn
Greg Kimsey
Well-known member
Moving on. In case you were wondering, this kits fit so far has been phenomenal. Everything goes into place perfectly.
I want to wire the main wheel wells like I did on the front. It was easier to wire without everything put together so I could drill holes from the outside to insert wires. Because of the way the plane goes together it looks like that approach won't be possible for the main's or is above my knowledge base as to how to do it before assembly.
The sweep wing mechanism went together very easily.
The white painted area is the top panel of the wheel well and intake portal.
I assembled the bay area walls and glued them in. This is where a lot of looking and thinking "how can I wire this now?"
The answer eluded me since a large portion of the wires are on the walls AND on the top (not yet applied). I decided to figure it out later or fake wires going through the bulkheads. Honestly, it is very unlikely this will ever be seen again unless someone picks up the plane and turns it over.
So, I begrudgingly glued the halves together. Notice how the intake will be part of the wheel well walls?
In prep for that, I have modified the fan. Notice the nice, large, sharp reference photo.
To modify the fan I thinned down the splines radiating from the center to a razor edge since they are very thin in the image. There is a gap between the blades and the outer edge walls so I used a dremel and small drill bit to cut a gap where the fan was solid to the edge. As with the wheel well, it is very inlikely this will ever be seen again. I am doing it anyway.
The metal coloring has taken some deciphering. I see a greenish cast to the center but none of my Alclad (or any brand) has that look. I will use two colors. What to use for the bottom color? Gold didn't seem right. Brass seemed the best option from everything I had onhand. (PS: Alclad no longer makes Brass because of the high cost of the ingredients. I have one bottle!). My plan is to thin Steel to glaze the Brass and see if I get the color I am looking for. Won't be seen...still doing it anyway. This is brass over black.
Next is painting the inlets interior. Instructions say to paint white then use the provided masking to preserve the white area and paint the rest of the intake in fuselage color. In my case, that is US Navy Light Grey, not available in Tamiya bottles so I will be using Vallejo 70989 Sky Gray unless you smarter folks can give me an alternative.
Thanks for looking in!
I want to wire the main wheel wells like I did on the front. It was easier to wire without everything put together so I could drill holes from the outside to insert wires. Because of the way the plane goes together it looks like that approach won't be possible for the main's or is above my knowledge base as to how to do it before assembly.
The sweep wing mechanism went together very easily.
The white painted area is the top panel of the wheel well and intake portal.
I assembled the bay area walls and glued them in. This is where a lot of looking and thinking "how can I wire this now?"
The answer eluded me since a large portion of the wires are on the walls AND on the top (not yet applied). I decided to figure it out later or fake wires going through the bulkheads. Honestly, it is very unlikely this will ever be seen again unless someone picks up the plane and turns it over.
So, I begrudgingly glued the halves together. Notice how the intake will be part of the wheel well walls?
In prep for that, I have modified the fan. Notice the nice, large, sharp reference photo.
To modify the fan I thinned down the splines radiating from the center to a razor edge since they are very thin in the image. There is a gap between the blades and the outer edge walls so I used a dremel and small drill bit to cut a gap where the fan was solid to the edge. As with the wheel well, it is very inlikely this will ever be seen again. I am doing it anyway.
The metal coloring has taken some deciphering. I see a greenish cast to the center but none of my Alclad (or any brand) has that look. I will use two colors. What to use for the bottom color? Gold didn't seem right. Brass seemed the best option from everything I had onhand. (PS: Alclad no longer makes Brass because of the high cost of the ingredients. I have one bottle!). My plan is to thin Steel to glaze the Brass and see if I get the color I am looking for. Won't be seen...still doing it anyway. This is brass over black.
Next is painting the inlets interior. Instructions say to paint white then use the provided masking to preserve the white area and paint the rest of the intake in fuselage color. In my case, that is US Navy Light Grey, not available in Tamiya bottles so I will be using Vallejo 70989 Sky Gray unless you smarter folks can give me an alternative.
Thanks for looking in!
Greg Kimsey
Well-known member
Thanks guys. This is the exact plane I am building
This version calls for USAF Light Gray above and below. This is the shadow side so I figure it is much lighter gray than it looks. Light gray can mean a thousand different shades! I know that monitors can and do skew colors. I will look at Insignia White for sure. Maybe that with some "light gray" added? I have a paint mule to experiment on!
This version calls for USAF Light Gray above and below. This is the shadow side so I figure it is much lighter gray than it looks. Light gray can mean a thousand different shades! I know that monitors can and do skew colors. I will look at Insignia White for sure. Maybe that with some "light gray" added? I have a paint mule to experiment on!
paddy
Well-known member
Ah Insignia will not work for you then, this is my F4 from 2009, its the nosecone and underside so too white.
I cant remember the top colour but in those days i only used stock Tamiya colours, thats all that was available in rattle cans and i didnt have an airbrush back then
I cant remember the top colour but in those days i only used stock Tamiya colours, thats all that was available in rattle cans and i didnt have an airbrush back then
Greg Kimsey
Well-known member
My favorite plane all time. It was king when I was a kid
Greg Kimsey
Well-known member
I will go ahead and apologize for not taking photos as I went along making the exhaust. There were probably 50 steps to get them finished. I don't like the way Tamiya made the tunnel because it was very hard to paint being all one piece and closed at one end.
Here is my finished interior of the tunnel:
And here is the tool I used to make the grooves as in the reference:
I will try to explain what I did. First, to create all of the grooves I inserted a bolt through the tunnel to stick out the back and tightened a nut to secure it. I put the end of the bolt into the chuck of the drill and let it spin. Bracing my hand, I held the scribe and cut grooves every millimeter or so. Of course it became more difficult the further into the tunnel I went. After the grooves were done I drew 3 lines with a sharpie on one tunnel and four lines on the other tunnel so that I could line the up, then cut the ends off so that I could paint inside. See the lines in the next photo.
I painted using a brush with white, brown wash, steel, copper, and black wash, going in order probably four times, building up the look I wanted.
The turbos were painted by brush with steel, black, copper, aluminum, and steel with black added for a wash at the end. Same as before, I may have repeated the process 3 or 4 times.
The nozzles started out black, then I airbrushed Alclad Gold Titanium inside and out. The pieces just forward of the nozzles were treated the same. I added some Aluminum to the center band around the nozzle. I sprayed copper on the outlet side, and Steel on the forward edge. I thinned Gold Titanium with lacquer thinner and misted the entire nozzle. Then I did it all twice more. I taped off around the nozzle overlap section and sprayed that with Tamiya XF85 Black Rubber thinned 50/50 with Mr. Leveler. I removed the tape and with a small brush I painted the little ribs on the outlet with undiluted XF85. Inside I used Vallejo Model Color 70951 White to dry brush the raised ridges from both left and right. Then brushed XF85 between each raised ridge to get the white/black striped look.
I taped off the part of the nozzle attachment piece that would be fuselage color and primed with black, made random sqiggly lines with Alclad Highshine Aluminum #126 thinned with lacquer thinner using low pressure with the airbrush needle guard removed to make the tiniest of lines. Then I sprayed with Vallejo 61276 Model Air USAF Light Gray.
This assembly will go on after painting the aircraft.
I have decided to mask off the wheel wells and paint all fuselage color and weather before finishing the landing gear
I have to decide how to deal with the canopy and cockpit before painting the plane. Sorry for the long winded post!
Here is my finished interior of the tunnel:
And here is the tool I used to make the grooves as in the reference:
I will try to explain what I did. First, to create all of the grooves I inserted a bolt through the tunnel to stick out the back and tightened a nut to secure it. I put the end of the bolt into the chuck of the drill and let it spin. Bracing my hand, I held the scribe and cut grooves every millimeter or so. Of course it became more difficult the further into the tunnel I went. After the grooves were done I drew 3 lines with a sharpie on one tunnel and four lines on the other tunnel so that I could line the up, then cut the ends off so that I could paint inside. See the lines in the next photo.
I painted using a brush with white, brown wash, steel, copper, and black wash, going in order probably four times, building up the look I wanted.
The turbos were painted by brush with steel, black, copper, aluminum, and steel with black added for a wash at the end. Same as before, I may have repeated the process 3 or 4 times.
The nozzles started out black, then I airbrushed Alclad Gold Titanium inside and out. The pieces just forward of the nozzles were treated the same. I added some Aluminum to the center band around the nozzle. I sprayed copper on the outlet side, and Steel on the forward edge. I thinned Gold Titanium with lacquer thinner and misted the entire nozzle. Then I did it all twice more. I taped off around the nozzle overlap section and sprayed that with Tamiya XF85 Black Rubber thinned 50/50 with Mr. Leveler. I removed the tape and with a small brush I painted the little ribs on the outlet with undiluted XF85. Inside I used Vallejo Model Color 70951 White to dry brush the raised ridges from both left and right. Then brushed XF85 between each raised ridge to get the white/black striped look.
I taped off the part of the nozzle attachment piece that would be fuselage color and primed with black, made random sqiggly lines with Alclad Highshine Aluminum #126 thinned with lacquer thinner using low pressure with the airbrush needle guard removed to make the tiniest of lines. Then I sprayed with Vallejo 61276 Model Air USAF Light Gray.
This assembly will go on after painting the aircraft.
I have decided to mask off the wheel wells and paint all fuselage color and weather before finishing the landing gear
I have to decide how to deal with the canopy and cockpit before painting the plane. Sorry for the long winded post!
