F60 WIP

Work on F60 is picking up speed. Filled in injection marks. Lots of sanding to do. Painted black inside of parts, which will be "closed up" - nose, main body shell, roll hop, etc.

RB5 2009 British GP winner Vettel

While I might agree that CF decals application could enhance model appearance and could be a satisfying task, the time it takes is just enormous. Spent 2 hours to apply decals to front part of bottom tray and another hour for rear wing's lower element. With more experience I guess my skills will improve and time will shorten a bit. However it'll always be an optional for my builds, because of time it takes. I would even call it another nightmare, "CF decals nightmare" this time ;)

F60 WIP

Started Tamiya F60. What a great kit. Fit is basically perfect, parts split is very clever, overall engineering is on very high level. Haven't build 1/20 Hasegawa kit yet, but Fujimi still has a long way to go to catch Tamiya's level. Has been building Fujimi and multi-media kits for most of 2009 and forgot how well engineered and designed kits feel like. Pictures of first mock up, traditional "family" photo and F2007 mock up.

Attempt to paint CF

I've made my first attempt to paint CF pattern on model parts. Painted black as base then put piece of old woman tights around and spayed Light Gun Metal over. Doesn't look right to me. It appears when tights are used, I need to paint Gun Metal as base and then spray black on top. I think squares in tights are too big and too much Gun Metal got onto parts. Will experiment with more rigid patterns - Tamiya's and Hobby Design meshes.

Masking Nightmare

Here is my recent masking nightmare. This part of builds is becoming my least favorite quickly. Comparable to only surface preparations. Tedious and time consuming work. Spent about 9 hours for this and other aero and body parts.

MP4/22 rescue build

As expected I could not stand imperfections in finish on MP4/22. Decided to try to fix bigger ones. Sanded with low grade. Going to wet sand with higher grades next. MP4/22 body is not the easiest subject for sanding. Then I will put new layer of Alclad black base and new PA layer after that.

MP4/22 rescue build

After months of experiments I finally found clear coat which would not affect Alclad paint's shades - Gunze acrylic clear gloss (H30). I've painted couple aero elements in Alclad Stainless Steel and sprayed H30 over. I initially felt that Alclad Polished Aluminium shade was too bright. After I compared SS and PA shades, though, I realized that SS is too dark. So my final choice is Alclad PA. And the fact that PA shade is not affected much by Zero 2K clear coat is great too.

Here is picture of MP4/22's body with Alclad PA on it, but before clear coat. There is a problem with it - every smallest blemish in base coats shows up. I'm really not looking forward to starting all over again, but not sure I could live with current quality either. We'll see how it'll look after clear coat is on.