wm cheng
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Everything posted by wm cheng
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@derex3592 Ouch! I feel your pain - yes so glad that happened before the decals. Been there buddy, you're making me want to build my Star Trek kits (found a Tamiya & Mr. Color pearlescent white paint too) @electric indigo Another smooth as silk perfect paint job!!! Wow, I will try your pre-shading this time (if I ever get to that stage!) - I've always used post shading, but I love how subtle your pre-shading is looking. Thanks for the kind words of encouragement and misery is company so strangely I do feel better. Back to the grind sanding now (although I am trying to cut out the flaps, ailerons and slats to break up that huge wing surface a bit - I think I'm a sucker for punishment :P)
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I HATE SANDING!!! POS kit... Definitely do not recommend, no intake trunking at all, I had to build an internal ramp to smooth out an area that would have been so hard to sand flat and flatten the back to have a surface to spray black on instead of just seeing into the plastic guts of the fuselage and no room to put in the full length of the afterburner interior (had to cut those down way too short to fit into the fuselage. Also horrible way to attach the main wings to fuselage assembly, tabs but nothing to tab into structurally, just glue holding against gravity! Also, I made the mistake of thinking I could just alter and make the Aires F-18 Hasegawa resin landing gear wells work with Hasegawa F-18F kit - you can't without tons of surgery, I ended up grinding down the forward gear bay till it was paper thin and the footwell of the cockpit and I was still short, I ended up slicing the wheel bay and making it much shallower than intended to fit both the cockpit and landing gear bay into the forward fuselage. This has been hell almost in the realm of my Bandai VF-25 transformable kit. Definitely not an easy build that I thought I would dip my toes back into the hobby with. It felt like there was more putty and surfacer than there was bare plastic!
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Beautiful Electric Indigo, your builds are always so clean! I'm having a bitch of a time with my Hasegawa F-18F, so over-engineered, too many parts that all have to align just perfectly - so much sanding and filling for me that its not fun at all! Definitely do not recommend this kit. Unfortunately I bought it a while ago when it was a new tool around 2006 (sucker for the skill and cross-bones) - I think there are a lot of better Super Hornet kits in 1/72 now a days.
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Hey Derex3592, I usually go with Flory's Wash and mix up the greys from their line of white, grey & black. I used a light grey, grey and black. If I weather, I just smear ground up graphite (mechanical pencil shavings) with a smudge stick - but you have to clear coat afterwards to protect it. I haven't chose to do that on these VF-1s yet.
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Looking great Lolicon! What kind of thinner (lacquer thinner, emamel thinner, mineral spirits, varsol, acrylic thinner, iso alcohol, ethy alcohol)?
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If I were to modify anything on the toys, the foggy sparkly canopies on all the VF-31 are a much bigger annoyance to me (why can't they all be like the VF-31A Kiraos?!) but I'm too chicken at the moment. I'd worry that some of the black would come off as well as the white on top, that black looks painted on. Yes as mentioned earlier I use Flory (water based clay washes) from now on, they are just so easy and I don't have to worry about them reacting to anything underneath. I mix a few shades of grey with the white that comes with Flory set. I usually use a light light grey for all the panel lines, then a darker grey for some panels that move or gets removed, then black for the vents or flaps - the varying panel wash gives the toy some life. I only did the panel wash, no shading or pencil/graphite weathering like I did on my older Yamacadia VF-1s or VF-25s as I haven't decided on whether I want to clear coat it yet. I like the Bandai plastic finish and it pretty much has all the markings (even a bit over kill for me) I would want. If I weathered it, I would need to clear coat it to protect it, plus the older toys needed the protection to cover the decals I added and I hated the glossy finish the VF-25s had so it made sense to do those - but I had always worried about the clear coat scratching off or yellowing over time. I'll take a picture tomorrow of the top side in better light during the day.
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Yep, the good ole' days. I still have a bunch of 1/100 transformable valkryies from that era (with the metal hinge, landing gear and rubber wheels). Good memories but I doubt I would ever build them now with so many great kits out since then.
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No I didn't - it doesn't bug me enough yet... I can't imagine I can find a proper white font decal in the proper size to fix it without it looking odd or catching my eye. I think the cure is worst than the sickness. Maybe if a corrective decal sheet came with Roy's I might consider it (if I can actually get a pre-order whenever that's going to happen), but I'm not buying Kakizaki.
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Hahaha.. thanks for the tutorials. Well the trick is dunking the tires into a mug of hot water, they just slide right on! (THANKS Nerd-linger) I'm going to dip them in a mug of hot water to take them off from now on - it was unbelievable how easy it was with hot water (maybe it was harder for me being up in Canada so my basement work area isn't that warm - those of you in warmer climates might have a much easier time. I did use an airbrush and masked around the area with yellow post-it notes, only using tamiya masking tape just around the edges as I was told by Lolicon that the Bandai Tampo printing could be lifted by the tape so becareful to not let any tape touch the printed details (thanks so much for that tip, I would have swore really loudly if that happened). I used Tamiya acrylic gloss white as that's the only gloss white I had - I would prefer a lacquer or enamel gloss white if I had some as they are more durable and better suited to sticking to the metal. What a difference the white landing gear makes!
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Started to get back into modeling again in this self isolation break. Thought it might be good to get my feet wet again with a real world aircraft, the 2006 1/72 Hasegawa F-18F kit. Main takeaway from this is that my eyes are certainly not what it used to be from the last time I built anything real, I'm constantly putting on my glasses, taking them off and wearing those magnifier lenses and armed loop - hate getting old! I did decide to upgrade the kit with some photo-etched parts, resin seats and hacked away to replace the landing gear well with F-18A resin landing gear wells (unfortunately they don't have F-18F specific wells) so please excuse the inaccuracies to the plumbing ;P
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Had a little time to finally paint the landing gears white - what a difference it makes. Most importantly, I found an amazing silver chrome that's in the form of a marker, its called Molotow Chrome markers, its simply the best silver ever (better than the X-11 Tamiya Chrome marker). Question for those of you that have taken off the rubber tires - how the heck to you get them back on again? The back ones are a bitch to get back on and I've already almost twisted/damaged the hub/axle a little bit and I am afraid to take it further. Please I need your insights.
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Yep same here in Ontario, its a crap shoot. Sometimes its $60-100 per package (nasty surprise), sometimes its nothing. I find better luck with EMS though. Couriers (FedEx & UPS) is guaranteed to have Customs, Brokerage, Import Fees applied though.
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Uh, and I thought I was the only one that didn't complete the squad or had multiples. (from the armchair it sure felt like I was the only one!)
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Oh darn it, I thought it was one of the more obscure ones. Oh well, I don't really need it - so I guess that's good.
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Any VF-31C available for a decent price? I wasn't going to collect the entire squad, but getting one here and there for the armored or super packs, I find that now I'm only this one short. So if a VF-31C comes available for a cheap price, I might as well complete it. It was never a really popular model was it?
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NICE!!! I like the scheme, I wonder how much of the blue is decals?
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WOW!!!! Absolutely fantastic. This is how the F-22 Raptor should look! I hate the upward turned nose of the F-22, but this has great nose proportions. Great call on toning down the panel stenciling, it looks great. Yeah, I'm only sticking with 1/72 scales, 1/48 are too big to display for my tiny house and I would take too long detailing them up because you can see so much more. Any rivets on the molding? I like lots of surface details even when it probably wouldn't read in real life at 1/72 scale. Any chance of a Hasegawa, Fine Molds, Academy or GWH version? You've inspired me to get back into real world aircraft - I might get one of my many F-14 stash to start on to get back into things.
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OMG, your painting is always so smooth and flawless! Absolutely amazing. Now I want this kit. That digital camo, is that all masked?! Its amazing, but looks so labour intensive. Can;t wait to see it finished. The tailcones look so thin and detailed, did they come with the kit or are they resin aftermarket?
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Totally agree, Arcadia has totally priced themselves out of my collection now.
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Your most recent Macross or toy purchase! General thread.
wm cheng replied to Gakken85's topic in Hall Of The Super Topics
Bought myself my Christmas present to make me feel better (way too expensive, but I'm worth it!) Joints are a little floppy, but wow, what paint finish, such a gorgeous mech! Really makes the Bandai/Arcadia/Yamato stuff look and feel like toys compared to this collectable.
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Thanks! I bought the Fewture Garland to make myself feel better :P This was the piece I just couldn't justify the price to myself, and now after how Christmas went, I figured, what the hell! $600cdn later and $75cdn in customs & duties fees, I hope its worth it.
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Even though getting delayed sucks, I just wanted to thank everyone who has chimed in on this thread/boards. During the Holidays, I don't get on these boards as much as I would like to, but it calmed me down when I got the NY email and went WTF?!?! Then I see I'm not alone, misery is company I guess (had a horrible Christmas, my parents totally forgot me - not expecting much, more token than anything - as the extended family was exchanging presents around me, the only thing I got was the huge dinner restaurant bill!) Thanks to everyone for being here, and happy holidays.
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Yep got my delay to April as well from NY even though I was in the first pre-order batch. So has anyone gotten any SSP from NY? Did NY deliver any to anyone in the first batch?
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I don't know if the Tamiya silver spray is anything like the paint markers.
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I use the Tamiya silver paint marker, I push down on it to retract the felt tip to get a pool going in a plastic lid, then dip my brush in it to paint from it (its a lacquer so you can thin it if you need to, but its a very smooth chrome finish without any visible glitter speckles).
