Scale-Master

1/43rd scale Starter resin kit from 1984. These are the instructions; very simplistic even for Starter's standards. The resin is very hard, I was concerned it might be brittle too, but fortunately it doesn't seem to be too fragile. I used CA to fill the pin holes and it's about as hard as the resin. The windows were fully flashed over and there was too much thickness to the insides of the openings. A Dremel tool and some small chisels worked great for dealing with the thinning out of those areas. I tried a couple scribers and a few different knife blades before I found one that worked pretty well to scribe in the panel lines. Still a little more clean-up before the first prime. The rear wing had a bit of a warp/sag and I tried to straighten it with a hairdryer but the hardness of the resin made me think I would break it before getting it to conform the way I wanted. I got about 50% of the sag out and sanded it the rest of the way.

That's a logical possibility. Makes sense to me.

Just a quickie project. I stripped all of the tampos off this Hot Wheels casting, but kept the pearl yellow paint. I resized the artwork I designed for the Revell C6R Lemans model kit and printed new decals.

I don't know why those parts are yellow; I followed the instructions. But there are photos that show it is correct.

This one is U.S. Marines.

Meng 1/35th scale. This was a very enjoyable project. Not particularly difficult, but a good amount of work and little different from what I usually build. There a handful of parts that are installed during the final assembly which are engineered so that the seams have to be dealt with, and then painted, after installing them on the almost finished model, but it's all part of the job. WIP Thread:

I added more wear to the blade and its arms.

The set:

The #29 is done. These are 1/43rd scale.

The #48 is done.

For the parts that should be Caterpillar Yellow I used Tamiya Camel Yellow. I figure once I'd matted out and dirtied up the parts a bit it should work fine.

The #29 is almost done, just a handful of small parts to add.

The #48 is almost done, just a handful of small parts to add.

I scratched the blade with a wire brush before painting. Then I added some wear to the surfaces.

The cab fits well and some of the hydraulic hoses for the ripper have been installed.

The kit comes with clear and slightly tinted "armored" windows.

The cab is about ready to be installed to the tractor. I made a custom decal as a tribute to honor a friend.

I thought I had the track tension issue rectified when I was dry fitting it all, but when I went to do the final install they had more slack than I wanted. I cut each of the running gear sets in two and removed the section that represented the tensioner piston, and then I machined new aluminum pistons and added them to both sides. It "rolls" pretty well. There is bit of play in each link and that adds up, so the slack on top can still be fine-tuned by bunching up the tracks on the ground or pulling them apart. This is the loose "setting".

The interior was fun. It doesn't look like much will be visible after the model is done though.

The ripper was the next subassembly, it is a working feature.

I guess it's time to start building from the beginning of the instructions.

Both bodies have been clear coated and will cure for a while.

I figured I should build the running gear next due to the similar process of cleaning up quite a few of the same pieces. And I thought it would nice to see how the tracks fit too.

Actually, with the right mindset, it's enjoyable. After doing CAD work that requires a lot of concentration all day, this was kind of relaxing.

Another pleasant surprise, the decals for the McQueen car were good too, although a few of them split partly due to them being such delicate pinstripes. I'm sure age was a contributing factor as well. One of them was missing some ink so I cut a sliver of blue decal material and made a little patch.