1/48 Collectaire F-86H  Sabre

by Brett Vecchiarelli

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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.  

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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.  

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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.   

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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.  

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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 

Photos and text © by Brett Vecchiarelli