Second Hand Rose
The question of what happens to a model collection when the modeler can no longer enjoy it vexes many folks in the hobby, and can be especially thorny for families faced with valuation and dispersal of the esoterica intrinsic to collecting scale model kits. Fellow blogger Jim Bates has even addressed this in an interview on The Plastic Scale Modeling Hour (episode 30). Jim takes the stage at just about time point 18:30 in that recording.
Our IPMS-Birmingham club, the Phantom Phlashers has faced this issue a number of times in the last few years, with several members giving up big chunks of their collections. One of our guys, Bob, was obviously in failing health when his family turned to another club-member for help. This turned out to be a yeoman effort, because Bob had started many kits in recent years, and had unboxed and mixed parts of many others. The started kits were made available to club members for building, while others were offered for sale. I picked up several from each category, with the hope of honoring Bob's intentions of building and displaying them.
Given the large numbers of kits changing hands from Bob - and others among us - the suggestion for a Club Challenge Build, named "Second Hand Rose" arose, focused on finishing what others had started.
I decided to finish a Hasegawa 1/72 scale kit of the Convair F-102 Delta Dagger on which Bob had completed basic airframe assembly.
Because there is a much more detailed F-102 kit now available from Meng, I decided to build the kit all buttoned up and in-flight. I was satisfied with my last kit-on-a-stick, a presentation model of the similarly old and superseded Italeri F/A-18A, and felt this was the best approach to do justice to the old F-102
Our IPMS-Birmingham club, the Phantom Phlashers has faced this issue a number of times in the last few years, with several members giving up big chunks of their collections. One of our guys, Bob, was obviously in failing health when his family turned to another club-member for help. This turned out to be a yeoman effort, because Bob had started many kits in recent years, and had unboxed and mixed parts of many others. The started kits were made available to club members for building, while others were offered for sale. I picked up several from each category, with the hope of honoring Bob's intentions of building and displaying them.
Given the large numbers of kits changing hands from Bob - and others among us - the suggestion for a Club Challenge Build, named "Second Hand Rose" arose, focused on finishing what others had started.
I decided to finish a Hasegawa 1/72 scale kit of the Convair F-102 Delta Dagger on which Bob had completed basic airframe assembly.
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| Starting Point - How the model came to me. |
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| Italeri 1/72 F/A-18A |
Bob had not started on the underside missile bay doors of the Delta Dagger, and with good reason. I built the similar Hasegawa F-106 many years ago and remain convinced that the missile doors on the Hasegawa 102 and 106 represent the worst pieces of kit engineering in modeling history, but more on that later. The first step in addressing the missile bay area was to build up a solid mounting point for the clear 3/16" acrylic rod that would support the airborne model. I used scrap wood and a generous slathering of two-part epoxy putty to create a firm foundation and diffuse the load-bearing across a broader area of the fuselage.
Next, I had to tackle those mis-engineered missile bay doors. They are kitted as four long narrow doors, and when assembled in the closed position they are supported only at their ends while following a subtle compound curve. The 40+ year-old molds were just not up to the challenge posed by the design, and even with internal cross-bracing the doors would just not mate up smoothly. Evening them out to match a supersonic airframe took a lot of putty. And sanding. And more putty. (Repeat ad libitum / ad nauseum). The next photo shows progress about halfway through the door process.
(Many years ago, Aeroclub created a one-piece resin drop in-replacement for the doors. They are now as rare as hen's teeth. I found 2 of the plugs for the F-106 at the 2016 IPMS Nationals. Sadly, they do not fit the 102. Ironically, I did find an F-102 plug labeled only with its Aeroclub part number at the 2017 Cleveland Model Show - long after I had starting the putty-sand-repeat cycle on Bob's F-102.)
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| Built-up wood and epoxy bracing for the display stand |
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| The early middle phase of fairing-in the missile bay doors. Much work on this area remained to be done. |
Things went fairly smoothly from this point on. I sanded off the raised panel lines and rivets throughout. I drilled an angled 3/16" hole at the aft end of the missile bay and inserted a properly sized dowel to serve as a handle. After stuffing the cockpit with tissue paper, I shot Alclad white microfiller primer went over the whole airframe, except exhaust panels that got Alclad Stainless Steel. I dressed the kit pilot in a bright orange flight suit with white bone-dome helmet and affixed him in the vaguely depicted ejection seat. The kit canopy is not separated along any of the actual canopy-to-fuselage junctions, and seems to have been designed to use the least possible amount of clear plastic. I filled in the canopy seams with white glue as best I could. I then masked off the clear canopy sections, as well as the airframe areas that would receive International Orange for the arctic visibility panels. A coat of Tamiya Flat Black thinned with lacquer thinner went on over the canopy masks to provide black interior framing, and I extended the black to the antiglare panel and radome. I used the remainders of the black paint in the airbrush to add some panel line preshading.
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| Canopy undercoat, panel line shadows, and protection of the white undercoat for the orange area yet to come. |
More masking ensued, first to establish the boundaries of the radome. A quick shot of Tamiya NATO Black went over the antglare panel, which was also masked off. Then, the natural metal intakes got some Alclad aluminum and - you guessed it - were masked off. Finally, it was time for the overall Aluminum lacquer worn by some 102's toward the end of their career. I used Tamiya Flat Aluminum for that. After drying and - of course - more masking, Testors acrylic International Orange went on the wings and vertical tail panels.
After the anticipated touch up here and there, I added decals from the ancient Microscale sheet 72-108 to depict an aircraft from the 57th FIS based in Iceland. This was a VERY old decal sheet, so I used Testors decal-bonder spray to avoid the decal-shattering phenomenon so typical of this generation of Microscale decals. I did OK, except for the red turbine stripes that wanted to fragment on each application. National insignia were from Techmod, and very delicate. I needed to print a new serial number decal for the tail to properly depict the subject after 1966 when the Aluminum Lacquer and International Orange were used. I applied the new serial over a rectangle of aluminum colored decal sheet cut to the right size.
I made the base from a straightforward rectangular wood plaque from Michaels, which I painted with dark gray household latex paint of unknown/unrecalled provenance. I created the base-top image from an aerial photo of a wintry landscape, modified with a motion-blur effect in Photoshop and bordered with the RGB equivalent of the same Orange as used on the kit. I also used Powerpoint to create the nameplate. It is attached to a rectangle of black styrofoam cut from a supermarket meat tray. The final product came out much as I had hoped: energetic, evocative, and emblematic of Cold War interceptors rather than a detailed rivet-by-rivet replica.
The "Second Hand Rose" contest, originally scheduled for Saturday December 9th was delayed by a blizzard - well, 3 inches of snow - so now y'all get to see my entry before its in-person debut in January. I hope that Bob, who is in a better place now, would appreciate that the job he started is now completed.
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