(no subject)
Matchbox is reknown, notorious even for the heavy panel lines of their kits. they are referred to as the "matchbox trenches" in the scale modeling community. The halifax too has them, which adds to its rather toy like appearance. I was determined to try to get rid of them, they were too deep and broad, and also inaccurate.
I tried the following experiment.
first I found some spare plastic in the form of the sprues, the windows to which all the parts are attached. next, I heated a section over a candle, and stretching it.
next, I glued the streched sprue into the matchbox trenches of the wings, but also of the tailplanes
the final step at this stage was to cover all the panel lines up with putty to make sure everything was covered and filled.
after everything had dried thoroughly everything needed to be sanded smoothe again
result!
after sanding, priming
with the parts painted, I could start mapping the actual pattern of all the panels with the aid of the scale drawings, and some typical highschooler's equipment
one wing half done, one to go
after several hours I had drawn all the panels on all the parts:
the second to last step in the process was to scribe the panels with a needle along the lines I had drawn earlier
again, the result:
in this photo all the panel lines have been scribed. the last step was to sand everything smoothe again, since the pressure of the needle creates a bit of a raised edge along either side of the newly scribed line, but I don't have a photo of that.
this is what I've done in the last weekend, I made the tubular frame above the engineer's station.
after painting:
also note the suspended fire extinguisher.