It has been almost a month since the last post. Progress has been slow, as work and life have been demanding attention. Time to play a little catch up and update progress since the end of September.
Northstar.
At last update, the metallic finish had been applied and only needed a protective clear coat before applying decals. That has been completed and decal application is now nearly complete.
I am using decals from Vintage Flyer and really like them. They are robust and will tolerate a fair bit of pushing around, making placement much easier. But you need to watch that don’t use anything sharp, as the colour layer will scratch. It also took some thought to work thru placement, as the decals lack white, relyin on the underlying white paint layer. This means that the paint, and any decals laid down, have to be positioned accurately, as the decals won’t cover up whatever is beneath them. i was nervous about decals being too long so decoded that I had to cut some of the decals in half, such as the fuselage stripe, before application so i could overlap as needed to adjust the length to fit the model. And example of the process Is shown in the photos below. The start of the fuselage stripes is centered on the nose, and wraps back on either side. A little test fitting showed that the stripe would be too long, and would extend beyond the masked circular area. I cut the strip into three pieces, allowing me to overlap the two ends over the middle as needed to get proper alignment at the circular masked area. This is shown on photos 2,3 and 4 below. I had to do something similar with the main fuselage stripe to adjust the fit at the tail.
Nearing completion of the decals. I need to sort out the props, and finish painting the gear doors, to finish everything off.
Some progress pictures:
Photo 1 - clear coat applied
Photo 2 - nose stripe applied and aligned with the circular masked out area
Photo 3 - the main body strip applied, aligned with the circular masked out area.
Photo 4 - the TCA symbol is applied into the circular masked out area
Photo 5 - in progress picture showing the fuselage strips and lettering applied
Photo 6 - decals applied to the tail and wing
Photo 7 - decals applied to the tail and wing
Typhoon
At the last post, the Typhoon was mostly assembled. Next step was to install the replacement cannons from Master.
The Master cannons consist of beautifully turned aluminum barrels and photoetch circular surrounds for the cannon base. Installation consists of cutting off the kit cannons, drilling appropriately sized holes, and then inserting the replacement barrels. Seemed pretty simple, right? Perhaps it was just me, but it was anything but.
The Master cannons are turned from aluminum, and consist of a short length of constant diameter, and then a tapered section that extends to the end of the barrel - see photo 1 to get a better idea of the barrel shape. The cannon barrels need an appropriately sized hole in the wing to insert the barrel. I started the process with a small diameter hole, and then gradually used bits of increasing diameter to enlarge the hole. Frustratingly, the larger diameter bits began to catch the joint between the two wing halves and split the glued wing joint open. That made it harder to get a round hole, as the drill bits kept catching the seam. I tried regluing the seam but it split again when the next larger drill bit was inserted. I decided to finish drilling the holes and deal with the out of roundness later. The instructions indicate the needed hole size, but testing fitting the barrel found the hole was a little too small, and naturally resplit the re-repaired wing seam. A larger drill bit was used and the barrel now fit snugly in the hole.
I am not sure why, but I assumed some portion of the constant diameter barrel section would protrude from the wing. I formed the photoetched surround against an adjecent section of the wing, slipped it over the inserted barrel, and was surprised to see the surround didn’t reach the wing. The internal surround diameter was smaller than the constant diameter section of the barrel. This meant the photoetch “bottomed out” just before the taper ended, leaving the surround proud of the wing. Puzzled, it was back to the instructions, which helpfully include measurements for how much of the cannon barrel protruded from the wing. Lo and behold, only the tapered portion of the barrel protruded out of the wing. Using a felt pen to mark the correct length, the PE surround was slipped over the barrel, aligned with the felt pen distance mark, and the barrel was inserted into the wing to the correct length. It was a sloppy fit, as the hole was sized for the constant diameter section to pass thru. As I sat admiring the barrel, the no longer snuggly fitting barrel slipped inside the wing. Much cursing ensued, as there was no way to release the trapped barrel other than splitting the wing halves open enough that the barrel would fall out. Hindsight says that I should have either have boxed in the holes to prevent the barrels slipping into the wing, or glued them in the correct position before gluing the wing together. Embarrassingly, the barrels would fall inside the wing twice more before finally getting all four glued into the correct positions. But they sure look nice now they are in!
Canadian Typhoons were nicknamed Bombphoons because they were primarily armed with bombs rather than the more famous rockets armament. Rocket armed Typhoons had the landing lights plated over, as the launching rockets apparently melted the landing light covers. Bombphoons didn’t have that problem and so the landing lights were still in position. The kit light was moulded as part of the wing, basically a lump of grey plastic. Painting the light silver didn’t really do much to improve the appearance. I had read of ways of improving scale lights and decided to try a new method using UV curing resin. I had some Bondic from repairing a porcelain cup. I applied a drop to the light casting, hit it with the UV and viola! As shown in photo 4, it produced a much better looking landing light.
Still a few more bits to add and then its off to the paint booth for some primer. Til next time.
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