In the previous post I weathered the main body of the aircraft. This post covers the last steps: painting and assembling the components underneath the aircraft, and installing the canopy.
Assembly
The pieces were already primed. To proceed I needed to remove them from the sprues, clean them up with sanding sticks and a hobby knife, and glue them together.
For these pieces, the plastic part doesn’t have the same shape as in the picture. There also didn’t seem to be a logical place for these parts to connect. I ended up not including them.
I sanded the fuel tanks to remove the filler putty I had applied when they were first assembled.
Getting things ready for painting…
I applied a few coats of Model Master reefer white.
I did some hand painting of the tires, then started to assemble the landing gear to the aircraft. The fits were very poor, leading to redoing work and screaming on my part!
Now onto the rear set of landing gear and the pylons for the fuel tanks. Parts 26/27 I omitted as well because they didn’t match the picture and didn’t seem to have a logical place on the model. Also I was getting frustrated in general about how things weren’t fitting.
Time to glue on the fuel tanks. The damage near the front of the starboard tank is from when my cat snuck into the office and chewed an interesting thing he saw on my desk. 🙁
The final steps were to apply several coats of Alclad Klear Kote Semi Matte and to attach the canopy using Model Master Clear Parts & Cement.
Lessons Learned
- I should have painted the wheel parts before gluing them to the landing posts. As a result, I had to be steady and careful with the paintbrush.
- The pieces fit so poorly I used CA glue (Zap a Gap) considerably more than I planned. I also had to cut some of the pieces to fit better. This brand of scale model kits is not recommended!
I finished!
