Commission Build for Bruce Cooper

[Stikpusher]

The interior of the gear doors should match the exterior in color. Just sayin...

[speedgraflex]

I'm gonna agree: blue. Mainly because I just spent half an hour looking for nightfighter photos with folded wings and found this when I realized—the factory paint covers everything—and I know Carlos explained this earlier but I went looking for evidence and found this:

F6-F5n


The interior that is grey is grey from the lower wings - nightfighters have no grey paint on their lower wings.

F6-F


There is no reason for a nightfighter to have grey/white on its interior wing surfaces; it's only when the lowers were painted gray that these areas ended up grey. The factory paint finish matched the lower wing.

[KSaarni]

Those are wonderful pictures Bruce !

- Kari

[Duke Maddog]

Excellent information guys. Everything will be blue then. I'm glad I'm taking my time with this so I can get all this information ahead of time and make this model more accurate.

Stay tuned, pics forthcoming.

[speedgraflex]

Hi Kari! So nice to read your words again, and Duke, I agree with you about taking the time... I believe my Dad taught me a similar lesson when he said, “There’s no difference between doing something and doing it well.” Cheers!

[Duke Maddog]

Thanks Bruce, sometimes waiting to do something gives me time to find out something new to make this even better.

Here's a short update on where I am now with this.

I had finally shot paint on the F-6F Hellcat overall. I had shot the whole thing in dark navy blue.

Fuselage:



Wings:



Afterward as you can see, I added the night fighting radar to the one wing since I'd forgotten to do it before painting.

Cowl and drop tank:



Cowl needs touchup, that'll happen...

Next, I decided to attempt to glue in those parts B-7 through -10 that I couldn't figure out before. A pretty good idea struck me as to how I could get them to glue properly. After gluing the two parts together, I took the retracted landing gear parts and snapped them into place. Then I carefully glued the parts B-7 through -10 in place; lining them up with the 'retracted' landing gear:



Later, when I snapped off the retracted gear parts, the two sections stayed in place where they are supposed to go:



Here's another shot of the wing that got the radar pod:



After getting more information about the interior section of the wing fold being dark blue like the rest of the plane; (thanks again guys!) I shot a new coat of blue on the bare sections, as well as touched up other places. Here's the cowl:



Here's the wings:



As you can see, whoever mentioned the long gun barrels being prone to breakage cursed me! Bruce, go ahead and order that metal gun set for this. I'll have to snip off the metal cannons to replace these plastic ones as I cannot replicate those in plastic

The wheels, struts and landing gear doors were next:



And finally, the fuselage top and bottom:





Some of that paint got a little dull so I'll have to go over it again. Then hopefully I'll be able to apply the decals.

That's all I have for this weekend. Once my battery finishes charging, I'll be able to post more progress this coming week. Until then, thanks for looking in, comments are welcome.

[speedgraflex]

Hi Mark! Great progress! I ordered the nightfighter armament set from a seller I know on eBay. Expected delivery is Oct 1st. Once received, I will forward the set to you.

[speedgraflex]

Mark, I am including deck photos throughout your build for a reason:
I have in mind to make a base for your work once the model is finished.
Check this out:



DUPLICATA makes a photostat version of a deck - painted/unpainted:

https://www.duplicataproductions.com/co ... 1-72-scale

But... SCALE DECKS is the king—and it's real wood:

https://scaledecks.com

[KSaarni]

Ouch with the broken barrell... but Nnnnice with AM barrells !

@Bruce: extremely nice stuff on Scaledecks... if not the price... but handmade, which is of course quality of high degree!


- Kari

[speedgraflex]

Check this out! 1/72 scale resin, PE kit by F4 Models: