1967 Monogram 1/72 US Navy A-5A Vigilante.

[speedgraflex]

[KSaarni]

Vigilante has a wonderful shape !

- Kari

[Stikpusher]

Vigilante has a wonderful shape !

- Kari

That it does. I see a general design similarity to the British TSR.1 and Avro Arrow projects- big long sharp angular fast designs for the same general mission. And even a bit of the F-111, when the wings are fully swept back.

[speedgraflex]

Thanks so much for your replies, Kari and Carlos—and specific thoughts, Carlos, regarding similarities between Vigilante and other jet aircraft—which I now will need to research more.

The seam line processing continued last night with another long push to get the fuselage sides aligned. I find that most, if not all of the battle, is in the grinding and sculpting before the putty stages. I see examples of seam filling all the time where a visible raised line between two mated pieces is exaggerated by adding too much putty.

The overuse of putty is not so much a pet peeve as an approach I try to avoid. To support this, I read a Fine Scale Modeler article on using putty which mentions this as the approach to take (Sculpt first. Putty second.). I often wonder why I see so much putty being used when the goal should be the least amount possible.

The above are notes to me to firm up an approach. You gents get it. You are both scratch builders.

Long story short, I am finally at the putty stage for the horizontal seam. Since the seam also runs along the camouflage line more or less, I think this was Monogram’s design to hide the seam and give the modeler a hard raised line to use as a painting guide. I already shaped these areas using sandpaper and CA, so I lost the opportunity to take that approach. I could not stop myself from wanting a seamless aircraft model—that’s engrained too deeply in my own frontal lobes.

At some point over the weekend I am going to test out Mr. White Putty to see how this works to fill the small areas of the seam line completely—to make the seam disappear.

[Stikpusher]

Bruce, I try to stay away from putty as much as I can. Like you said above, sculpt first, putty second.
On one project where I had a similar step, I like to use strips of styrene, then sand them down to fair in the area smoothly.

before



strips added



final results after clean up

[speedgraflex]

Carlos!

TGIF! Beautiful work with plastic card stock. So clean. I remember seeing your card stock fills on the seams of the K’Tinga—and that was a revelation. A vintage build by you is definitely going to feature card stock. Your magnum opus is the (oh darn I blanked on the name) WWII bomber that has a full scratch built interior. Why m’I blanking on the aircraft type? Gmail search and rescue!!

Flak-Bait by Carlos Cisneros:



Cool NASM article on her name!

https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/edit ... -flak-bait

[Stikpusher]

Strip styrene has the advantages that it won’t flake off like putty, and will conform to the surrounding area flawlessly, especially with a final blending application like Mr Surfacer. Not to mention that if you get distracted and have to step away, it won’t be as hard as a rock like CA can get once cured, if you use that as your gap filler. And styrene is easily engraved/scribed to replace and lost detail in seam clean up.

[speedgraflex]

Good points, Carlos!

My first choice plastic would definitely be stretched spruce, but in this case the parts were cut free from the sprue trees and the sprues discarded.



I still CA even after it cures. Adding ground plastic dust to CA as an accelerant makes a bond that is workable in seconds. I know CA has limitations, it is a brittle bond that will break when dropped or struck too, and is susceptible to “popping apart” when subjected to cold air (a GREAT debonder is the freezer), however speed of assembly is not one of them, which works best for my level of ADD. I think CA takes scribing pretty well, too, but you are right that nothing beats plastic itself.

[speedgraflex]

[KSaarni]

B-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l !

- Kari