Hey all,

I hope your weekends are going well. I have finished all of the interior details, sans the gun mount.

You want me to do what!



Oh because this one is too thick?





Lies! All lies!





Ok, so sometimes doing something in brass doesn't make it better. If you can sand some stuff thin, go for it. It makes it easier to glue in my mind and looks just as good.



Ok, on to some other details. I will go into detail on how I remove detail to add aftermarket etch. By the way, the kit's molded on brackets don't look bad, so if you don't have the photoetch, don't sweat it.





These are my friends......




STEP 1: Do all major cuts with a blade first.

Using a blade before filing will help prevent uneven material removal. If you go straight to a file, you may remove the detail at an undesired angle and lose shape. See my breech filing for an example of how not to do it.



Go USA! ........


I mean go world.

Make sure you get in all the neck joints! If you do a lot of trumpeter kits, get good at this skill!









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Not bad for a blade only. I have often thought about doing a contest:

1) OOTB only. Possibly styrene stock allowed.
2) Blade and glue are the only tools allowed! (clippers are allowed to remove parts from tree)

It would be fun to see what we could do with exacto blades only. Also, we could post how many blades used in total.


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STEP 2: Ok, now use a file.



STEP 3: Give an overall light sanding.



STEP 4: A good stiff brush will remove sanding dust and any flash from filing.







Some etch parts.



Ok, so I added a lot of details without showing the intermediate steps. I have not done any new techniques, so you should be able to accomplish what I did with my previous guides.

The interior sans gun is complete.











A little dusty from all the sanding. Oh well.














Hey, so I had some issues with Mr.Surfacer sticking to the bigger sections of photoetch. It held well, but when sanded it flaked in some areas. I think Mr. Surfacer is an AWSOME product, but I might switch to something a little more aggressive if I am using a lot of metal.

I found this stuff. It seems to hold details well, a problem noted with the more industrial sprays.





No flaking when sanding.



This stuff must have an acid in it. Anybody have experience with this???

I feel like I am spraying this evil doomsday acid etching killer toxin.






Ok Mark. You have to do a little more than just that.



Rats. I guess I have to spend more time with the gun mount. Hey thanks for tuning in. There are a lot of awsome build logs going on now. Good luck too all!!!

Hey guys,

This will be my final update on this project.


First, I wanted to sand the gun mounts a little thinner.





Left one finished.



Both complete!



I cut some additional parts out of thinner styrene to save time cleaning up the kit's parts.







Making sure the assembly sits flat.




Ok! So now I thought it would be a good idea to spray the inside before I put the pedastle mount in. I used that Rustoloeum etching primer I discussed above. Here's what I got.



Do you see those weird tears?



I frantically tried to clean the crap off!



The solvents I used ate my model.





All the fine details were lost!



There was no going back. It was totally messed up! What could I do? I tested the primer on test parts, and I never saw the tearing! Oh man.


Ok. Ok, well here is the super awsome complete feature pictures. Hey Bill Cross, these would be my finished professional shots if we want to do a failure feature on my model!







Sorry folks, thats it. Thanks for following and thanks for the comments. I really appreciate your time.

I will have another kit started soon.



The Jack and this are the only thing that helps now. Beware, extreme METAL zone if you click the link. If you are susceptible to extreme face melting, I advise clicking the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMuJ8u0UkjU