I am new here, but am a regular active member under the same name on the other site and on Large Scale Modeler. My focus is everything, which keeps me interested and I jump from WWi planes to cars and bikes, sci-fi, ships, figures and busts and sometimes to wooden ships as well.
My main driving factor in model building is painting, finishing and weathering with a clear main focus of replicate materials as good as possible, be it metal, wood, cloth, skin, plastic or whatever.

I was inactive for a short while now for different reasons, one very obviously it is summertime, with lots of swimming, mountainbiking and doing things around the house, etc. Another reason is redecorating my workspace, selling unused large woodworking machines and add desparately needed display shelves to my cave.
Not to forget, my boot SSD of my Laptop died away and I couldn´t get a fitting substitute to my place in two weeks, which means, I have another three weeks to wait, untiI I can repair my Laptop and see what damage is done. I still have all the pictures, but my substiute laptop is what it is, a substitute.

Not so obvious, but to my own mystification, the forum situation with Large Scale Modeler and MSW crashed with all data and seemingly many members lost and to add to that the forming of DDM. As LSM and MSW had been my solely connection to the modelling world, I have to admit, I´m somewhat irritated and a bit lost.

After polling on LSM, I started the Italeri 1/12 Alfa Romeo 8C Roadster, building the chassis and preparing the body, but was not in it really and stopped. I´m possibly spoilt by some finished Model Factory Hiro kits lately, which are from another planet quality wise.

Now I´m building the Fujimi Porsche 917K in 1/24 and the start isn´t smooth either, sometimes, there is bad mojo around, but more on that later. The kit itself looks good in the box, sporting my favorite livery, the silver Martini paintjob. There is some very useful PE included in this edition.





Cheers Rob

The kit is build up modular for different versions, not so cool, because you have to fit in some no too greatly fit plastic parts. That tgoes for the filler above the windscreen and two airducts to the rear. The front hatch is also fitting poorly and I had to thin it´s fitting sills around. Then I removed the poorly cast fasteners, which will be substituted with PE ones.
I re scribed all panel lines, a task, where I´m really bad at. In all, it was a lo tof prep work for the body. The fit of the main body parts, was very good luckily, confirmed by test fitting.







Cheers Rob

Glad to see you made it over here, Rob! Nice to know I’m not the only one who goes on hobby hiatus when the weather gets warm!

Andy

13 hours ago, AndyP said:

Glad to see you made it over here, Rob! Nice to know I’m not the only one who goes on hobby hiatus when the weather gets warm!

Thank you Andy, good to be here with so many known and gifted model builders along. I do lots of sports all year around, specially swimming, snorkeling, surfing and biking, but in summer, it seems to be impossible to find time for the bench.

Cheers Rob

Continuing with the build, I added the PE rear spoiler, which looked better than the plastic one. There are fasteners to add, but I mount these after painting the body color.



I primed the body with Mr. Surfacer 1500, which matte black appearance, I masked off after application for the inside of the body and the headlights.



After drying, I airbrushed the body color, Number 5´s, 917K silver. I applied three coats, using more thinner with every coat for better surface quality and after two or three hours desaster struck, there were many blemishes forming, in places, where non were visible after application. The paint and/or thinner ate through the primer and affected the plastic, bummer.





Cheers Rob

After swearing a lot, I tried to save the body and cautiously sanded away the blemishes with sanding sticks and sponges for the delicate areas of the body. Then on with the 917K silver for the second time, again thtree coats, but using less tthinner and allowing for a longer drying time between coats. I usually lett every coat dry for only ten to fiveteen minutes, so that the next coat, heavier thinned can melt into the semi dried surface of the coat before and gives a better resulting surface. As seen, this process is no twithout risks with polysyrene odies. With metal or resin, there are no problems at all.
Now the body looks like this, ready to decal.



Cheers Rob

Rob,

I can feel your pain. I destroyed a model way back then because of incompatible paint and that is when I switched to acrylic paint. You never get the same results though but less headache.

Great start.

2 hours ago, RolandR said:

I can feel your pain. I destroyed a model way back then because of incompatible paint and that is when I switched to acrylic paint. You never get the same results though but less headache.

Great start.

Thank you Roland, I´m a little spoilt with my recent MFH builds, where there are no such problems with the resin bodies and got careless. It happened to me before with a plastic 1/20 formula one car, where I was able to save the build with lots of sanding effort.
I like these "hot" colors, as when applied in perfect manner, the resulting surface is near perfect and needs only a tiny bit of sanding and polishing to be highest shine finish.
I had to smile about the headache, which you would get, using "hot" colors without respirator mask and airbrush cabin. I always spray protected.

Cheers Rob

I started with decaling, which naturally is delicate with such a kit. In places, there are four overlapping decals, which means, you need a plan. Unfortunately many of the decals don´t provide cutouts for the ducts and they often cover two of the three large body parts, so you need to cut them yourself. The decals are relatively thick and matte finished and apply reasonably well. In places, you need strong decal softener, in my case Tamiya Mark Strong, which makes the decals very brittle. I had some minor chips, which I will touch up later.
There are also some errors with the decals and the manual. For the #3 car, you need to cut out the 3´s from the framed and cut on the lower side roundel and apply it on the full circle round white base roundels.





Cheers Rob

Lovely stuff!

I would not worry about little damages to the decal. I just found a photo from Sebring 1971 and the front left of the car has more than a few superficial scratches.

https://www.supercars.net/blog/elford-at-sebring-71/

2 hours ago, RolandR said:

I would not worry about little damages to the decal. I just found a photo from Sebring 1971 and the front left of the car has more than a few superficial scratches.

Thanks for the photo Roland, I hope mine will look better . I had some issues with the decals. The door white roundels wouldn´t settle. Maybe I add some scratches as a disguise .
Cheers Rob

Final pictures before traveling. Decaling is finished, but not without issues. There were errors with the decals and the manual, for example, the Porsche-Audi lettering on the orange nose should be black, but I used the white printed decal anyway. There were more unclear areas with the side door roundels, which should be complete circles without borders, instead of larger, cut on the lower side roundels with borders. The roundels themselves were the hardest to lay down properly, but with help of softener solution and a hairdryer, it went ok.
I cut all the decaled panel lines around the doors with a sharp blade and dabbed softener solution on them.
I would have appreciated, that there were some spare decals with the main colors presen for touchup, like MFH is providing.
Have a nice summertime gals and gents.



Cheers Rob

Looks fantastic Rob!! Precise decal work for sure. Enjoy your travels!

After a long summer absence, due to traveling, rebuilding my laptop computer, redecorating my cave and other stuff, I managed to progress a bit with the Porsche.
I finished decaling the body and clear coated everything with Zero´s laquer clear. First I sprayed an unthinned coat, let it dry for about half an hour, to seal and protect the decals. There followed three more coats, each more thinned with leveling thinner, the last was a ca. 50/50 mix.
Despite the drying time, some of the decals got slightly affected by the hot mix, but most of the blemishes could be polished away after two days of drying, using Tamiya coarse and finish polishing paste.
The kit decals are uncut in places, so I did the cutting around the doors and around the front air intakes, touching up with surprisingly fitting Brabham BT52 blue (the kit, I built before).
Around the doors, I used some panel liner to accentuate.
I was debating my decision to clear coat the body, as historical pictures seem to indicate a slightly matte finish, but I will leave it at that.



The wheels were sprayed with Tamiya´s lacquer metallic black and then decaled. It needed a lot of strong decal softening solution to get them contoutred well.



Cheers Rob

Looking mighty fine Rob, glad the summer hiatus was productive. You’re car builds keeps tempting me.

Looking good, docrob. You may recall I built and logged (on that other site, before the hack) two of these concurrently, one with this livery and one in gulf livery. Good job with all the decals, and especially with those tiny ones on the wheel spokes. I ended up losing one and having to paint one spoke.

And I agree when it comes to having doubts about glossy clear coat on race cars. I still do it, though I've seen some use a semi-gloss clear instead to good effect.