Frontier Modeler

Yes folks, Miminalist Modeling.

As a call center worker/student, I don’t have much time at home for model building.  Ironically, at my place of employment, I can’t bring textbooks to read but I can build models.

As a matter of practicality, I can’t use a Dremel tool or paint because or noise concerns and because you can’t even do detail painting let alone any large surface painting because of intermittent calls.

But one can still do the basic grunt work of modeling - cutting, filing, sanding, shaping, assembling - with a relative minimum of tools.

My kit fits in a Plano tackle tray module:

• X-acto and blades
• pin vise
• tube of drill bits
• files
• cement
• mini-clamps
• super glue
• dental pick
• tweezers
• steel engineer’s ruler
• scriber
• sandpaper
• wire

A few packets of Evergreen strip, rod and sheet styrene stock fit nicely in my cubicle drawer, and I rotate kits in and out as I complete whatever work can be done.

You can see one sample of what can be done with basic hand tools and ‘copious’ free time. In the coming weeks, I’ll be posting little articles on a specific project that involved some one-off technique, intense application of some innocuous skill, or even something relevant on a new or old kit.

I figured this would be the last Revell 1/28 Fokker Triplane I’d ever build when I started it back in 1998 (a thought reinforced with Roden’s 1/32 release of a Fokker Dr. I and the pre-production F. I).

 Actually, this particular kit got started back in the 1980’s by my friend J.E. Morris. He handed it off to me back in the early 1990’s after having done most of the interior and the engine. My focus centered on making the exterior as neat and presentable as possible.

Keep reading →

As I mentioned before, one thing that really detracts from an opened-up large-scale Spitfire is a bell-shaped interior cross-section.

There are ways to correct it, since Hasegawa only did a partial job on its Mk V and Revell never saw fit to do so on its 1/32 classic.

 The best (or least worst) way (above photo) is to lay in your bulkheads and upper stringer and longeron detail and then cut to fit a couple of pieces of .010 sheet styrene for the space between the two bulkheads pictured above and for the space aft of those bulkheads. Pre-curl each section as part of the fitting.

Keep reading →

I keep hoping that 21st Century Toys will do a 1/32 Spitfire Mk IX kit but, until that time, one just has to start from the Hasegawa Spit Mk V or the old Revell Spitfire Mk. I if you want a Mk IX.

In the conversion kit route, there’s two main alternatives: Paragon and Warbird. Frankly, based on my experience using the Paragon set, I wish I’d known about the Warbird conversion first.

But since the Paragon set was all I had access to, you work with what you’ve got.

I’ll be maintaining a separate page here on progression (slow as it has been), but here’s a sample of the initial cockpit work.

As basically right the Hasegawa Mk. V kit was, it lacks some necessary features for a contest-quality open-cockpit Spit. The Hasegawa designers got one point almost right with the lower cockpit sidewall liners between the seat bulkhead and the instrument panel. If you’re going to go head to head with modelers at a contest, however, those liners need to extend back at least two frames behind the cockpit if you’re going to defeat the penlight-and-mirror judges.

I didn’t, but I did make liners on a Revell Spit Mk I kit that’s on the assembly line. I’ll include some pics later to show the basic configuration.

Also, the Hasegawa fuselage includes no frame detail aft of the seat bulkhead. Simple strip may suffice for the visual effect, but T-section longerons are more to scale. I made t-section longerons by cementing thin flat strips and capping them with square-section strip.

This photo shows the T-longerons to better effect. I had to extend the stringers further aft on the starboard side since I had opened the radio hatch and thus the view inside.

The ES-3A Shadow came and went faster than probably any other U.S. Navy carrier jet with the possible exception of the F7U Cutlass or F-11F Tiger.

As for kits of this delightfully ugly twin jet, AMT-Ertl managed to issue a 1/48 scale kit based on the old ESCI 1/48 S-3A Viking before deciding that die cast John Deere and plastic car kits were their bread and butter. That was a crying shame, as most longtime modelers will attest, since AMT had come out with some really nice 1/48 and 1/72 aircraft models - both original moldings and repops - that were affordable and well detailed.

Keep reading →

It’s another Frontier venture, and one where I get to live out my alter ego of model builder. When I finally get the miniature lathe and the giant homemade vacuform done and running, then I’ll adopt the title ‘model maker.’

What you’ll probably see at first will be a lot of mini-articles on prototype subjects, or the real thing. I don’t get to build as much as I like, but I sneak some time here and there to collect photos, articles and web links for those unbuilt kits that someday may feel the cut of my X-acto and the cool petroleum goodness from my airbrush.

At any rate, please feel free to comment, add input or ask questions.

FM (and that’s not Fonderie Miniature)