Well, I have a few hours to go before I have to leave for Midnight Mass, so here's the latest progress I got done today. It ain't much, just small steps here and there to try and get a few things closer to the finish line. Most of this was done with the airbrush, with a little extra work on the side.
First off, I shot a clear gloss onto the C-46 so that I could start decaling it soon:
Next, while I had the airbrush out, I shot some dullcoat on my Huey Hog to seal in the decals:
Now I can move on with that one.
While I was at it, I decided to test the Italian red that I'd gotten with the decals for the Stearman. It was the closest match I'd found yet. It's the left-most blotch of color:
So, I took a leap of faith and shot the engine cowl Italian Red:
Now that I had a red cowl, I shot another coat of cream over the whole aircraft to cover places I's sanded a little to smooth things out. The top wing is only sitting on the four inside struts:
Now I'll be adding a gloss coat to this for the decals and assembling the engine to install in the front of this plane.
After this, a friend called and while I was chatting with him, I spent the time sanding the bottom of the Space Shuttle smooth:
I was hoping to get the interior installed on this so I could add the clam shell doors and then the wings, but I ran out of time.
That's all I got done on my aircraft, now for the armor progress...
First off, I wasn't happy with the holes in the back of the T-54. I didn't want to fill them, wait for them to dry, then sand them smooth; possibly eliminating a lot of detail back there. So I came up with another idea that is slightly inaccurate, but was far easier and faster to do.
First thing, I cut a piece of styrene strip about the width of the back area and glued it on over the holes:
Here you can see the holes I'm covering:
Then I trimmed this plastic down to size:
After that, I added the upper hull; snapping it into place without glue and proceeded to sand it smooth:
The second band of white above is simply the light reflecting off the still-glossy surface of the rear upper hull.
Here is the new addition already painted. The paint is still a little wet here:
Like I said, a bit inaccurate, but much faster and easier.
While I had the green out, I figured I'd paint a couple more models. One was the little tank for the train. Here it is shot with green, and a little preliminary weathering as well:
The other model was one of the SCUDs that I jumped the gun on. I figured, lets see what it's like to get one of these painted, so I shot a coat of green one one of them:
Not bad so far. I still need to build the missile cradle on both of these first though.
Okay, while I was shooting dullcoat around on the Huey, I also shot the T-54. This one is also weathered a bit with some dusting of brown:
Right after that, I also shot a dullcoat and dusting on the Diamond T cargo truck:
You can see here I also removed the window masking. I also had to replace both the headlights with new ones since one broke off, rolled down my leg and disappeared! So I removed the other one and added two others from a different kit.
Now the T-54 just needs the roof machine gun and it'll be finished; while the Diamond T still needs rear view mirrors, spare tires, and a couple more detail parts before it's done. Maybe a day or two after Christmas, well see.
Well that's all I was able to get done this Christmas Eve morning before my wife came home. Now I'm off to Midnight Mass. Thanks for looking in, comments are welcome.
