BUILDING THE 1/48
COLLECTAIRE F-86H
SABRE
FIRST IMPRESSIONS:
Opening the bright yellow box, the builder is greeted
by an assortment of beautifully
detailed resin and metal
parts.
Included are; two nicely engraved fuselage halves, solid one-piece wings,
and individually bagged groupings of parts.
Markings for two aircraft are accurately printed by Scale-Master on thin
decal film. One from the 101st
FIS/102nd TFG Mass Air Guard and another from Syracuse NY Air Guard.
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POST NEW PURCHASE BUZZ:
After closer inspection one discovers the realities of
working with some types of resin; mind-numbing amounts of dimples, gas holes and
voids on all surfaces of the parts. A
good natural metal finish requires a smooth and blemish-free surface.
Using a common pin, thin layer of cyanoacrylate were applied panel by
panel to fill any gas holes or dimples. Only
small areas were treated then wet sanded immediately.
All the resin parts needed this kind of treatment.
As with any kit, test-fit, test-fit, and test-fit
again. The somewhat crude-fitting
large parts needed generous amounts of shaving/filing for better fit and
alignment. Large mismatches and
gaps at the nose section, nose gear well, and wing-to-fuselage required a lot of
cyano/putty. The ‘Will Hendriks’
method worked great at the wing-fuse gap (Squadron putty smoothed with a Q-tip
moistened with Cutex soft & gentle nail polish remover).
This method required very little sanding to get a perfect joint.
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Areas that were void of resin were fixed with styrene
and/or cyano. Both wing tip
trailing edges were missing material. Cyano
was slowly built up and sanded carefully to restore the correct shape.
The ejection seat is comprised of metal and a resin
frame. I added a Hasegawa pilot
holding the stick and throttle. I
liken the cockpit tub to that of a fried pork rhine.
More air bubbles than resin.
Thoughtfully CollectAire provides two vacformed
canopies. Great for those of us who
always fell better having a spare!!! Like
the resin parts the canopies suffered from some small bubbles and blemishes.
Generous amounts of buffing and Future rectified most of the
imperfections.
All mounting pins on the pylons and horizontal stabs
were replaced with short lengths of guitar wire. This ensured better alignment and a stronger mounting.
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After a coat of Floquil primer gray flaws were found
and fixed. All surfaces were sanded
until super smooth. This was my
first attempt of an entire plane in NMF. I
was squeamish about applying any masking over metalizers.
The gray & black vert tail tip, red wing tips, and green tank tips
were painted first then masked prior to the aluminum finish.
The aluminum paint is an automotive lacquer made by
Sherwin Williams. It came highly
recommended by two trusted sources; a fellow club member and my
airliner-building uncle. It was
used as the base color. Other
panels were tinted by adding Testors Metalizers to the base color.
This paint turned a daunting task into a piece of cake!
It dried within minutes and took Tamiya masking tape with ease.
I experienced no lifting or peeling.
The decals went down fine over Testors Glosscote and
reacted well to Microset & sol. The
panel lines were highlighted with Grumbacher pastels. Lastly, a mixture of glosscote and dullcote was applied for a
semi-oxidized look.
This aircraft was based at Logan Intl Airport in the
days before Otis
AFB. The model will be part of a permanent display dedicated to the
Mass Air Guard in the Massachusetts National Guard Museum in Worcester
Ma.
Special thanks go to Bob Rys & Al LaFleche for
photo references and Bob Tesany &
Tim Vecchiarelli for the magic paint.
Brett
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