old stuff

[rjccjr]

Hi All;

Here is an adventure about things that go wrong, then more wrong, then, Aaargh and you hit that throw it against the wall moment. How many of you have had one of these days? The model is an Accurate Miniatures, 1/48 scale TBF Avenger, which was built in the early 1990s. It was an excellent kit and a joy to build. It was expected that due to age the glue would have crystalized and fragile parts would be brittle.

Photo 1r shows the model dirty and dusty, but intact. Photo 2r shows the cockpit area, dusty but not as bad as some of the other models. Photo 3r shows the bottom with bay open and bombs in the rack. Notice the loose entry door in the upper right. The model was dusted off with brushes. It looked pretty decent, and I thought it could do with a bath in warm water and a couple of drops of hand soap. Photo 4r shows it drying off, still looking pretty decent. Photo 5r shows a well detailed engine. Then the storm hit.

The decals had brownish tarnish from old decal set. So a the areas were cleaned with cotton swabs and alcohol. The alcohol did remove the tarnish, but it also ate through the decals, shattering them and drying with a white chalky residue. Photo 6r shows the missing fragmented decal and the residue on the fuselage. Then the rudder hinges and the tail wheel let go. Photo 7r shows the residue on the wing, but the decal is intact.

Ok. Let's think about this. Can the situation be saved? The paint was really hard by now, perhaps it would be hard enough to survive, if the area around the decal was swabbed with mineral spirits and quickly wiped dry. Photo 8r shows the solution. Photo 9r shows the mess on the starboard fuselage, but 10r shows that the port side cleaned up. OK, now we wait to come up with decal replacements for the fuselage and take some time reattaching the fallen parts. The wall can wait, at least for now.

Regards rjccjr

[rjccjr]

Ho all,

The TBF is all back together, just waiting for decals and an antenna wire. See photos 1r and 2r. Now, here is a real old stuff. Take a guess. What the heck are 3,4 and 5r?

[Doubting Thomas]

Photos 3, 4, 5 look like an antique Aurora model of a submarine. Thought I saw one like it on Ebay last year. But I could be mistaken.


Jeff

[rjccjr]

Hi All;

It isn't Aurora, but you are looking in the right era. It dates to the 1960s and is a product of a another well known plastic model company. Actually, it was stored away in a drawer. I was looking for some electrical parts and stumbled across it after years of being forgotten. The contacts are clean and it might possibly work, but at age 86, I'm not about to risk electrocution.

Regards, rjccjr

[rjccjr]

Hi All;

First, that odd thing that looks like an early submarine is a Revell #H404 ship motorizing kit. While in Germany in 1964, I built a Wilhelmshavnener Bismark and Prinz Eugen, both 1/250th card models. After coming home in 1965, I came across this and thought it might work on them.They were over sprayed with clear varnish and an attachment for the motor was glued to the bottom of both. It did work, sort of. Both would cruise majestically on local ponds and pools, until the slightest breeze came along and the mighty vessels suddenly shot sideways. Oh well. Nothing ventured, nothing learned.

After dealing with the Grumman Avenger, the next two aircraft in the cleaning order were a Fujimi Hellcat and a Tamiya Corsair. Photo 1r shows all three aircraft. Notice the vibrancy of color after the Avenger was cleaned. Photos 2r and 3r show a very grubby F6F. Photo 4r shows the F6F cleaned, but the F4U has more antennae than it should have. Photo 5r shows the underneath of the Hellcat. It's slightly weathered. Notice the exhaust and gun residue. Although the paint is pretty intact the Insignia is badly discolored. Until now, the only thing that will help get rid of the discoloration from old decal adhesive seems to be alcohol. Perhaps a fifty -fifty dilution with water will do it without destroying the decal. Photo 6r shows a clean Hellcat beside the Avenger. In photo 7r you can see the bottom of the Corsair. The decal appears more or less intact. Photo 8r shows the cleaned up F4U. When the model was built, the antenna wire was a strand of from my wife's old discarded panty hose. The insulators were beads of white glue. The wire stubbornly holds onto the fuzz. The forward antenna mast broke in the middle. Got the mast back on, but addressing the fuzz issue is a leave well enough alone situation. 9r shows the antenna back on the avenger. The decal issue remains to be addressed. The last shot is all three aircraft refurbished as best that can be done for the moment. Now, to scrounge up a few decals. Obviously these are not competition models, but they still look presentable. One of these days, I'll have to clean the shelf.

Regards, rjccjr

[rjccjr]

HI All;

Here is a Classic Airframes 1/48 scale Lockheed Hudson MkIII, built around 2002. It was an expensive kit at the time, but the Hudson was a favorite aircraft when I was a kid during World War II. One thing about Classic Airframes it that their subject choices were pretty interesting aircraft. The price paid then, was around fifty five dollars, blew my allowance for that month. Looking at the prices today, shows a range from $160 to over $200, which is decidedly beyond the allowance of a retired old goat. I've gone over to the white side anyway.

It was a difficult build. The tremors were just manifesting themselves and had not yet been diagnosed. All I knew was that suddenly parts were not going where they were supposed to, neither was the glue and painting was much more difficult than it used to be. Very disconcerting, not to mention somewhat scary. Shortly afterward came the first visit with a neurologist and the good news was that it wasn't Parkinson's. The tremors were treatable up to a point, but not curable. 2002 was a bad year. There was prostate cancer to deal with, just about the same time. One just has to learn to cope with the curve balls in life and get on with it out of sheer stubbornness.

The kit was short run injection molded with resin interior parts. The clear parts were transparent enough, but no two of the many side windows were quite the same shape and the nose section was slightly narrower than the main fuselage. Considerable filling, filling and sanding were called for. The kit was accurate in dimension and well detailed, far superior to the old 1/72 Airfix effort. The paint job was green and olive drab, with light gray below. Having spent six years around tanks, it was very clear that olive drab had some considerable variation due to the particular batch of paint and weathering. Sometimes it was greenish and other times it had a distinctly red brown hue. The "Dark Earth" paint used at Burbank was American paint and was of the brownish variety. It didn't play well with sunlight and high temperatures.

Photo 1r is a side view after the model was cleaned up and reassembled. The plastic in this kit is rather unusual in that it got very brittle over the years and thin parts fractured in the darndest places. For one thing the tail wheel failed at the glue joint. The fix was to drill down into the strut into the wheel. Then drill into the fuselage, slide a common pin into the wheel, clip it and attach it to the fuselage. Of course a small ring of the strut fractured during the drill work. Well you just keep drilling until it was finished and then reassemble it all. As you can see in the photo, it worked. Photo 2r is the front from above. The completed model was sprayed with Krylon semi-matte finish to hold the decals and hide the glue spots. Photo 3r gives a decent view of the antenna, which was very fine gray thread. The insulator beads were built up layers of white glue applied with the tip of a teriyaki skewer. Photo 4r shows the port side. The antenna mast snapped at mid length, but was semi-successfully reattached. Same for the pitot tube under the nose. The last two pictures are frontal to show the crisp definition of the engine detail. Even after twenty two years, if you come across this kit at a decent price, this model is a worthy challenge.

Regards, rjccjr