I have to admit, I´m addicted to MFH kits, I do some plastic model building in between, but feel unsatisfied and bored while being at it, which meant, I need a magic potion to let the Mojo flow again.
After tthe Cobra Coupe, the Brabham BT45 and the Brabham BT52b, all white and blue, I need a different color dot for my display case and it had to be RED and the 412 T2 fitted perfectly.
I´m not really into car racing, but to me certain type of cars ring some bells with me, esthetically and from a technical point of view. There are a lot of beautiful F1 cars, especially from the 70´s, 80´s and 90´s, afterwards, to me, most of the cars loose attraction.
What about the 412 T2? The last 12 cylinder engine used in formular on, check, low nose design, check, not over-winged, check, not turbo charged, check, nice paintjob, check, so let´s pull out the box.



A tiny bit of history: Talented French F1 driver Jean Alesi had a long lasting, successful carrer in F1, but managed only to win one race and that was the 1995 Canadian Grand Prix at his 31 birthday. The 412 T2, I will build depict the car, he used in Canada.
The Ferrari itself finished third in the manufacturer ranking, with Alesi finishing 5th in the driver championship. Lots of changes took place in Formula one in these years. Most teams changed to high nose designs and the twelve cylinder blocks were history. The next Ferrari, the F310 had a V10 engine, a high nose and was the start of Michael Schumachers Ferrari carrer, all three points would let me ignore the F310 as a kit.

Cheers Rob

Excellent choice Rob looking forward to this. I know exactly what you mean about doing plastic potentially becoming unsatisfying. I’ve got Kinetic’s F16C on the bench and the detail, moulding etc is poor but I will finish it but probably without the “that’s nice” euphoria. Time to order another Vanguards masterpieces or as you have find a different medium.

4 hours ago, Bomber_County said:

Excellent choice Rob looking forward to this. I know exactly what you mean about doing plastic potentially becoming unsatisfying. I’ve got Kinetic’s F16C on the bench and the detail, moulding etc is poor but I will finish it but probably without the “that’s nice” euphoria. Time to order another Vanguards masterpieces or as you have find a different medium.

Thank you Phil, I hope, I will come back and have fun with plastic kits as well. I have many and some, I am looking forward to, like WNW`s WWI planes. I just never liked the pure building experience of plastic kits, the fun starts when this is done with most kits. The MHF kits offer another world with their many metal and multi media parts.
I have to come back into the "I absolutely want to build this" mode, which I lost a bit recently. Hopefully the 412 T2 will be the fire starter.

Cheers Rob

I don´t want to show the complete box contet, as it can be looked up on the MFH homepage, where there are decriptions, what´s in the box with pictures and some kits like this have a downloadable manual as well. Here are some highlights:

The body and many other parts are made from white resin. The cast quality is near perfect, without any bubbles or blemishes, only a tiny bit of flash here and there. The main components also seem to fit very good.


Another highlight are the rims with MFH kits in general, often turned aluminium with an insert from cast metal, but here you got the holy grail rims of all in readily gold anodized aluminum.


The rubber tires are pre printed with the makers branding, very nice.


Before starting a MFH kit, you need to be disciplinized and take your time with preparations. As I said, most kits have parts lists on the MFH page, and you need to be sure, that everything is included, so make sure, you check ALL parts against these lists. Others had missing parts, which MFH replaces very fast, but I have to say, my kits were complete. Nevertheless, while checking the contents, you got the first idea, about what you´ve gotten into.
After checking, I usually clean the parts in a magnetic tumbler filled with water and 0,3 mm needles. I skipped this step here, because there are no unpainted or polished parts in the kit and you always loose a tiny bit of detail sharpness with cleaning.
Next is a very eye tearing job to do, sorting the parts according to the steps of the manual, best into sorting boxes. It is exhausting, but you get a good feeling for the parts and where everything belongs.

Here are the (mainly white metal) parts sorted.



The last box also contains also a lot of the supplied goodies, like PE, some clear resin parts, turned aluminum funnels and axles. different types of aluminum rivets, a suede leather sheet for the seat cover, fabric and metal parts for the seat belts, ...
Not shown are the decals, in this case printed by Cartograph. There are thre sheets, one with the decor, including tobacco sponsors and two with carbon fiber decals.

Cheers Rob

Gentlemen (and Ladies of course), start your engines, or better let´s start with the engine.
The first pages of the manual are devoted to said twelve cylinder engine. As it is mainly painted black, I didn´t tumble polish the parts. I will etch primer later, before airbrushing. There are many parts included into this step and I took my time, to identify everything, understand where it goes and with what it will be connected. Cleanup was minimal, the cast quality is very good. I drilled many and I mean many holes in preparation, always looking ahead in the manual.

Maybe that is the point to add some suggestions, which I feel are essential during a MFH build. You don´t need to be a model building super hero to tackle these kits, in fact most parts of the build are extremely enjoyable, but there are always some obstacles.
During preparation:
- Check the box content using the manual and parts lists provided on the MFH page.
- Some kits have errors in the manual and there are some corrections available on the MFH page
- Sort the parts in sorting cases, following the manual.
- If you plan to leave a lot of metal bare, tumble polish the white metal parts. The metal can be easily polished and looks very convincing.
Building phase:
- Test fit a lot and then again.
- Make sure you understand the placement of the used parts and their orientation.
- Plan logical building steps
- Pay extreme attention to moving body parts like doors, bonnets.
- Don´t commit errors. Of course, everybiody makes errors during such a build, but essential is, if there is a gap somewhere on the engine block you might not be able to close the body.
- Errors with these kits tend to add up and can be a pain to solve later on.
- Make sure, you drilled all the necessary holes, as some areas might be impossible to reach later.
- Clean the resin parts thoroughly before priming. A bit of fine sanding helps the color to adhere better.
- Windscreens, windows and other parts consist of vacuum formed parts, which need to be cut out. A marker or flexible tape helps visualize the contours. Don´t sand these parts, cut them little by little, until they fit.
- Have lots of good drill bits at hand. The PCB drill bits "eat" into the metal wasily, the classic HSS drill bits are better. I prefer mostly hand drilling, as it is so easy to drill too deep, using a power tool.
- You should have a caliper


Cheers Rob

First real construction steps. I build up the main part of the engine in it´s full 12 cylinder galore. The 412 T2 power house consists from white metal and some etch parts only. Most MFH engines have a engine housing made from resin, which somtimes leads to a little bit more of adjusting work, because of minimal differences in shrinkage. I prefer it all metal and it is quite heavy.
There are some more parts to add, which I also build up, but add after airbrushing the engine. It is almost exclusively black, other than all my built MFH engines. The fit was very good and detail is very sharp and I hope, I can show that detail with my special painting technique.
I used some transparent Tamiya metal primer as a base layer then.



Cheers Rob

The engine and all other surrounding subassemblies got airbrushed in my signature spray variant. Therefore, I use Tamiya LP-5 semi matte black highly dilluted with leveling thinner and spray carefully over the parts, to hinder the very thin paint to run. The idea is to let the metal shine through for a tiny bit. It´s an effect, similar to drybrushing, but more regular and gives the painted parts a more realistic metal look. In reality, you mostly can visualize materials from their looks. You can see, what is plastic, metal or wood only by the shininess, reflections, color depth and surface characteristics. With a scale replica, you have to use airbrushing or painting techniques to simulate this. The effect might look a bit crude on the picture, but this will change while adding the subassemblies and wiring.

The Ferrari lettering was painted, using a white ball roller pen, which I used for the first time and I like the result. It dries matte and will also be helpful to paint brand logos on tyres.


Cheers Rob

I continued with the engine and added numerous rivets, the clutch and some other components.


The box around the intakes and ignition needs to be covered with heat protective foil. This self adhesive embossed foil needs to be cut out with a sharp blade, using provided paper templates. I have some decal applicators with different shaped rubber heads, which really helped to wrap the foil around the finer details of the box.


Into the box, the air intakes and ignition system will be installed. You need to glue a round PE disc onto the base and then add the turned aluminum funnel. To make alignment easier, I used Tamiya craft glue, which is possibly usual whit glue, but with a very finy applicator tip. This glue allowed to move the PE discs into place properly. The funnels are glued on top of these with CA glue.


Cheers Rob

Engines are always a great joy to build with MFH kits. They are delicate and consist of many parts, but usually they go together very well. Care has to be taken, that all parts sit flush, not always easy to see, with black on black parts. A milimeter too high may have serious consequences later.
I added some more sub- assemblies to the engine, like water pump, etc. and build up the inside of the airbox with the delicate spark plugs and ignition wiring. I decidded to paint the sockets of the spark plugs red (it´s a Ferrari), but some pictures show them yellow. Unfortunately, all the detail will be covered by the huge carbon air intake, which I hope will be removable finally.
Too enhance detail on the engine parts, I use a toothpick and blade, to scratch away black paint on screw heads and metal belts, which looks better than brush painted details.






Cheers Rob