1/72 Academy F6F-3 Hellcat

[wingnutz]

hey folks,

here's the second installment of my fighters for the "Battle of Leyte Gulf" build that i'm doing...

it's an academy kit, and i might say the details are quite good, but the decals needs some mr softener, specially on the cat face markings on the engine cowling...

i did some experimenting on using pastels on shading the control surfaces instead of the usual airbrushed shades of smoke...

the center line tank straps were a tad thick, so i opted to replace these with aluminum metal sheets from a soda can...

guns to be replaced with brass tubes...cowling flaps modified to allow to open up...

i missed the red paint in the engine cowling turbocharger intake, so that needs to be painted on somehow...

after all that, some weathering, chipping, exhaust and gun blast oxidation effects and she should be done...

ordnance or without...maybe...

1/72 Academy F6F-3 Hellcat WIP here...

 

[Wurger]

Looking very good.

 

[Airframes]

I agree, nice one.

 

[Wayne Little]

Very nice!

 

[Maglar]

Great work. That face is mean!

 

[Screaming Eagle]

Looking good!

 

[A4K]

Nice one mate!

 

[wingnutz]

i've done some dusting with grey pastel and it did bring out the panel lines for the darker colored areas...applied with a old fine brush, which was slowly getting gnarly...

which also works specially for this tri-color scheme where there's a clear transition from dark to lighter colors...where i used charcoal black pastel to do some subtle post-shading for the (lighter) intermediate blue...just nice for the intended weathered effect that i wanted for this subject...

i'm starting to appreciate pastels for post-shading effects now as these gives me more control on the amount of shading i can apply, not to mention it's more forgiving when you need to tone it down, which can be easily done by brushing the excess color off with a clean broad brush...

something i used to exclusively do with airbrushed smoke color post-shading...

the roundel decals needed to be carefully scribed as well as they're thicker than normal, which was done with a new knife blade and leveled down with a few helpings of mr softener then a few coats of clear...this is to ensure that the oil wash process wouldn't seep in under the decal after, which turned out ok to my relief...

 

[Wurger]

 

[Wayne Little]

doin' good mate!8)

 

[vikingBerserker]

Excellent!!

 

[wingnutz]

hey folks,

finally finished the weathering, landing gears, prop and center line tank...and replaced the guns with brass pipes...

next would be the aerials and maybe bombs and rockets...

 

[Wurger]

 

[badbear]

Thats very nice like the shading.BB

 

[spit5]

Good work

 

[Screaming Eagle]

Very nice!

 

[109ROAMING]

Very cool! bloody nice work 8)

 

[wingnutz]

hey folks,

got lucky today as i chanced upon this lovely "1/72 scale carrier deck base" by verlinden...

here's a view of my hellcat build on it...

it's available on-line here at the verlinden store... for those who's interested...

it's about A3 paper size, printed on a thick paper base, though it could use a wee bit more wear and tear effects like skid marks, stains, etc., but it's good enough as it is for carrier deck vignettes...

throw in a few deck crews and equipment and this would be just nice...

 

[Wayne Little]

That set's it off just right!

 

[vikingBerserker]

Very nice!