Engine

Couldn't keep my hands off the kit tonight, so I prepared the engine and radiators for painting.



This is a curbside kit, so the engine is pretty unimportant. The exhaust headers will be visible through the ventilation slats on the top of the sidepods, so they are necessary, and what better to connect them to than an engine. Looks a little sloppy and out of scale to me, but whatever, you won't even see it on the completed model.



Total: 25.5 h

Rear wing and last putty application

Today, I made the last, but most cosmetically important applications of putty to smooth out seams in the mating surfaces between the monocoque and the sidepods.



I also applied just a dab of putty on the underside of the sidepods, where they will mate with the gearbox. It's just been driving me nuts that it doesn't create a tight fit.



I'll also do a little touchup of the pilons that connect the front wing to the nose.



Then there is the matter of the diffuser.



I prepared the rear wing assembly for painting.



Here are a couple of test fittings.




The underside of the lower rear wing plane had a couple of mold ejection pin marks molded into it. After a test fitting, it was evident that these marks would be visible from underneath, so we'll smooth those out too.



Total: 23.5 h

It's beginning to look a lot like a F1 car

I glued together a couple more parts of the diffuser today, this is a particulary difficult part of this kit to get right.



I think I got it straight




I also did a bit of work on the roll hoop, sanding smooth the putty I used to get it to mate up with the engine cover. I used the backside of a hobby knife to straighten up the lines between the roll hoop and the engine cover.




Then I filed the engine cover a bit in the back on the lefthand side to get it to mate up with the gearbox better. This now looks real nice.



Finally, I did another test fitting of the kit after preparing the seat for painting.





Total: 22.5h

sanding and gluing

I got some normal sandpaper at the local hardware store to sand down the putty on the monocoque.



Kasia and I missed our train to Hel. This turned into a blessing in disguise. While in Gdynia waiting for the next train, we found a toy shop that had decal setting solution, which I have had a hard time finding elsewhere.



With my new sandpaper, I set to work smoothing out the putty on the bottom of the monocoque. Notice the grey lines, where the bottom of the monocoque didn't quite exactly sit flush with the top.



Then I smoothed out the top of the diffuser. See the grey dots, these are where the pins from the turning vanes underneath fit into the diffuser.



Here is a test fitting, it's not quite perfect, but it's a good as it's going to get until the lower sidepods are attached.




Later, I finally glued together the lower sidepods on both sides, and the roll hoop. Due to previous part preparation they slid together perfectly!





Looks great! I bet real F1 cars don't go together this easy.



View of parts glued together from the bottom.



Total: 20.5 hours

Why it takes so long to build a plastic model

I just got back from my weekend with Kasia in Gdańsk, Gdynia, Sopot and Hel. I thought I'd try to show Kasia why it takes so long to put one of these kits together using the front wing as an example.

The parts are all attached to a tree.



First, I use a pair of nail clippers to snip the parts from the tree.




Then these little plastic nubs are left on the parts



So, I grab a hobby knife and cut them down a little closer to the part



You can still see that a bit of these nubs remain



Then, now that it's much closer, I take a normal emory board that can be bought at any drug store, and file the part down smooth.




Now that the nubs have been filed smooth, I use a regular nail file that can also be bought at any drug store and use it to really polish the edges of the parts to remove any flash or scratches.



And now, one plane of the front wing is ready to be test fitted, but I'm not done with it yet.



I still have to repeat this process 5 more times for other components of the front wing.



Then, I test fit the parts, to check if they will need any modification before painting. As can be seen below, the main plane of the front wing that attaches to the nosecone is nowhere near straight. This would look really crooked on the finished model.



So I get out the emory board again, to file down one of the wing pilons that attach the front wing to the nosecone.



It's not exactly perfect in this picture, but I'm satisfied it will be straight to the eye when painted and assembled.



Next, I test the fit of the turning vanes that will go on the underside of the wing. I'm not gluing these on yet, because they will be painted black, while the rest of the wing will be painted white on the top and black underneath.



And then finally, I test fit all the wing components together with the endplates to make sure that they are straight. This assembly is now ready for painting, and I can move on to the next part assembly.



I recently picked up some tweezers to help in assembly of smaller parts



Total time: 16.5 h

Who likes putty?

Today was a day of sanding and applying putty.

See before and after pictures of the underside of the monocoque:




Also spent a ton of time working on the rear crush structure and diffuser. I have to say that this is the only part of the kit that I think was poorly done. It's tough to make these shapes, but Revell made the rear of the car like a toy, while the rest of the kit is great in detail and engineering. Only one complaint about an F1 kit is pretty great. Really hard to explain what is going on here and why, if you try to build the kit, you'll see the problem I'm confonting. It'll all come together smoothly later. Arrows below show filling in gaps in the diffuser.



And here, the diffuser gets some turning vanes.



I'll be heading off to Gdańsk for the long weekend, so this is a perfect time to apply some putty to the kit and give it about a week to cure.

Total: 12.5 hours