SPA Modeler

Somebody needs a good ol' fashion ass wuppin' right there.

I am a firm believer, that the "Fragile" label, is an open invite for the guys handling the package to drop kick said package in the general direction of where it's supposed to be...then in anger for missing the target, they pick it up and slam it into place.

I've been pretty fortunate. Shipped over 100 models..only one had to come back for repairs (just superficial damage...not all that different than yours here). Occasionally, a gear door, or canopy might pop loose, but that's about it.

John, seeing the pictures of the broken model nearly left me with a heart stroke. What a mess!
But reading your relaxed comment let me calm down immediately. I'm working for a laboratory in which we do packaging tests for any kind of shock damage. Drop tests on all corners,edges and faces, upset pressure, vibration tests up to 500 Hz and so on. So I've seen any kind of damage that can occure to packaging and goods. Absorbing shocks is quite difficult to achieve, because a stiff packaging layout is more able to absorb shocks with a short pulse duration (high frequency), a soft one the more low frequency pulses like they happen during truck transport. Implementing a two layer-system that provides the best of both worlds is nearly impossible.
Your solution looks pretty well thought-out and I second your opinion on free floating chips inside the package: avoid them with low-weight goods!
Maybe one hint: The filling between your inner and outer package is a bit too stiff due to the crumpled paper. Try only chips next time or, much better, but zigzag-folded cardboard between them.

Good luck!

John,

Using JB Weld is an excellent plan—I remember the first time I saw a batch whipped up was to repair a broken muffler connection on my first car—JB Weld is always in my tool kit. How tight is the join anyway? How will you apply? I would imagine what is necessary would be contact points on all sides more so than contacting the area, to avoid pushing out any excess. Is there a contact point in front of the insert itself or does the connection rely on sides, top and bottom to hold? At any rate, a little JB will go a long way towards repair.

I am curious to see and read how you approach the mixed media repair. I did read about this in your initial report as well. I have had mixed results with resin to styrene unless I add an additional bonding agent which for me is always finely ground resin, preferably “fresh” resin powder, which also acts as an accelerant. Having built more garage resin kits than styrene ones, I read early on about how to strengthen CA joins since these are so susceptible to impact.

I very much want to see how you proceed with these repairs, John. I look forward to your next report.

PS. I use all of the Mr Cement products—including “S” which is a filler type for styrene, simply to take advantage of a consistent range: cement, filler, sanding, polishing, primer and paint are all the same family. I did a stress test with “S” versus Tamiya Extra Thin and Tamiya is not as strong. I do not find the odor to be stronger, either.

Dmminiatures aka Monty uses Mr Mark Surfacer and Setter for decals. I use both as well.

mostrich wrote:I'm working for a laboratory in which we do packaging tests for any kind of shock damage. Drop tests on all corners,edges and faces, upset pressure, vibration tests up to 500 Hz and so on.

Maybe one hint: The filling between your inner and outer package is a bit too stiff due to the crumpled paper. Try only chips next time or, much better, but zigzag-folded cardboard between them!

Torben, you have such a cool job, and I think your hint is spot on great advice for any shipment of delicate objects. I’m learning even more from this thread! Thank you!

Hmmm... didn't think about the aerial antenna. Good point...

Alright, let's get to work. I'm going start off on some small repairs which will be easier when the model is in pieces. The tail assembly came apart. It was a brass-pin-in-hole arrangement to allow the tail wheel to be canted at an angle. I pulled out the small brass pin and drilled bigger holes.




A slightly bigger and longer brass pin is used. Bigger and stronger is the theme here.




After verifying that this will work, I'll pull off the tail wheel and won't glue into place until the tail has been reattached.




Similarly, I used plastic rod to create bigger attachment pins for the radiator cowling.




The aerial post on the tail fin broke. No surprise as this has broken off at least three times during the build itself. I squared off the break.




I superglued a small piece of scrap plastic...




And sanded it into shape. Drilled a small hole for the tension spring.




A new tension spring for the aerial was made using some fine wiring and stuck into the hole. I'll leave this hanging until its time to string the aerial.



The joint between the radiator cowling and cowl flap ring gave way. Since this was a resin-to-plastic joint, I used CA glue to re-establish the bond. I cleaned up any excess CA glue and tried to make the joint around the cowling uniform using a scribing tool. I then forced a bead of White Milliput epoxy into the joint and then wiped the excess with a damp paper towel to smooth out the recessed joint even more. A good way to fill without disturbing nearby detail such as the rivets.





After the Milliput dries, I sprayed Tamiya Neutral Gray on the repaired joint. This serves two purposes: (1) to check the joint to see if it is clean and (2) to act as a base coat for the camo colors.





Recalling the original build, the camo colors were sprayed onto a preshading mottle pattern. Spraying a color on top of the same color would intensify the color and cause a mismatch. Using a grey base and a thinned mixture of the color, I can dial in the color to better match what's already there. If it was a bigger area, I would go through the trouble of re-creating the preshade but its not necessary here. The repainted areas stand out but that's because they have not gone through any type of weathering.



A postshade of brown/black serves to dial down the re-sprayed colors. I'll give this a wash to further dirty it up and maybe add some more chipping.

BEAUTIFUL WORK, JOHN!!

Exciting to see what your decisions are, particularly with the cowling! Because! The P-47D also lacks a strong enough area to join the cowling to the fuse so I am going to bookmark all of this incredible work and study what you have done; also—the tail swivel and the aerial replacement are incredible projects in and of themselves. So glad to have you here despite circumstances.

In a funny sort of way it's good to see progress on this one again as I really enjoyed watching this one come together the first time. Will be watching this beauty come back to life.

Yeah, it's bit strange working on Black 1 again. It's familiar and foreign to me at the same time. I've been working on fixing the center seam. After a couple of applications of Tamiya Extra Thin along the broken joint and getting it fused together again, the seam was sanded down.





Just to be on the safe side, I brush on a thin layer of Mr Surfacer 1200 to fill any small imperfections and sanded again. This was then shot with Neutral Gray to check my work.





The impact that broke the tail wheel off, separated the center seam on the tail unit so I performed a similar glue/sand/Mr Surfacer/sand/primer routine here.




The rivets were "refreshed" by carefully running the rivet tool over the existing holes. Once that was done, I decided to repaint the camo areas. The repainting of the black and white band will occur after the tail is re-attached but I thought it'd be easier to do the other paint repairs while the pieces are apart. The top looks ok.




Can't tell from this image but under the glare of the desk lamp, I could see imperfections in the bottom seam.




So another round of corrections was performed on that bottom seam.




The fresh paint will be toned down with some localized weathering but I want to do that to the entire area, including the tail band, after the tail has been re-attached. From these pics, I can see that I have lost some of the modulation of the original pre-shading, especially on the light-colored bottom. I may try to re-establish that.




Similar deal with the bottom of the tail unit.




If you recall the original build, I had some frustrating paint peeling issues on the tail band. I performed repairs as best as I could but there were still some visible remnants of where the chipping had occurred. I scratched at one of these edges with my fingernail and flakes of layered paint came off (primer+preshading black + white). One thing led to another and I ended up removing all of the white, mostly with my fingernail and the rest with a piece of paper towel moistened with iso alcohol. That was a refreshing cleanup. The border between the white band and the tail camo occurs at a panel line which made the decision to remove the white more logical. I don't think I'll do this with the black portion of the ID band.




I want to try to put some modulation back into the RLM 76 along the repaired seams but that should be a quick deal. I'm almost ready to fix Black 1's broken back.