Tamiya 1/32 F-15J Umegumi - Complete!

[themongoose]

I'm going to try and recreate my thread from over on Large Scale Planes. I started this for a group build, Turning Japanese, and thought it would be a good add here to kick things off. I'm about 3/4 of the way through it so still lots of content to add over the next couple months. I've got a ship started as well so I should have a couple threads up over the next week or so. 
If things look squirley let me know as this move will be a work in process I'm sure...

[themongoose]

Inserting my place-holder now - She will be all out of the box with a strong emphasis on PAINT!





I pulled the trigger on the only game in town for a camo pattern that I've been waiting 4 or 5 years to do. Hasegawa did a limited release in 1/72 scale. I plan to scan and create a set of masks for the 305SQ Commemorative scheme "Ume-gumi"! This will definitely take all 6 months of this GB to finish. I think I can master this now. My mini Ume-Gumi kit below...





  I can't believe I'm going to jump into this as I finish up the F/A-18F DigiHell but I gotta do it. I always said it was waiting for an LSP group build to execute on.



Opened my kit and found a broken windscreen. Heard back from Tamiya USA and they are sending a replacement completely free of charge! What a great organization.

I've pulled some cockpit parts off the sprue so I'll start posting pics this weekend I expect.

[mustang1989]

Apr 2, 2023 8:30:50 GMT -5 themongoose said:

I'm going to try and recreate my thread from over on Large Scale Planes. I started this for a group build, Turning Japanese, and thought it would be a good add here to kick things off. I'm about 3/4 of the way through it so still lots of content to add over the next couple months. I've got a ship started as well so I should have a couple threads up over the next week or so. 
If things look squirley let me know as this move will be a work in process I'm sure...

Bring it on bro.....

[themongoose]

Let's see, this post was from Dec. 5th 2022. So about 4 months of work to get 75% or so complete...

masks will be cut on my Silhouette cutter :-) the Platz 1/72 Eagle showed up and the decals are absolutely stunningly done. By Cartograph of course. I’ve scanned them at 2400 dpi and they fit perfect and I’ve got good print resolution.

Now the Kanji I have to do some experiments with. I am toying with the idea of hand stenciling them on in gold, where do i get these crazy ideas! The scan of the Kanji is crystal clear, they are just so fine.

I just picked up DXM’s 1/32 JASDF Aggressors stencil set. Lucky to find something to replace these heavy Tamiya decals it seems. They were a bear to find. Also printed by Cartograph!

Well, decision made - It’s going to be all out of the box. Dragged the kit along to my hotel for work this week. I’ve been back and forth on whether to buy some aftermarket. I need 2 wing tanks for sure. Have come close to pulling the trigger on some Kopecky scale models gear for sure, even loaded up the cart but, my daughter’s college bill is in so i have to stay strong, nothing but box builds for awhile.




im working those intakes 1 seam at a time to try and get them as close to flush as i can. 4 nights in the hotel, 4 seams, should be good to go by the time i get home. Thinking about trying some automotive putty in them. Worst case back to my tried and true latex paint option. That’s worked well for me in the past. Ohh so spoiled with seamless intake spending over the last few years :innocent:

[themongoose]

Dec. 14th!

I pulled out Tamiya's F-4EJ that I have on the shelf and sure enough those tanks will work with some scalpel work haha. Cutting off the existing pylon, shortening it, and making it match the contour of the rear of the tank will get me something dang close to what's on the jet. Paused my other project to experiment tonight :mental:

[Tobi]

This livery is a strong opponent to the Shiro Ruyu scheme I always dream of doing.

[themongoose]

I thought I should post up my progress so you all know it’s still in progress Got a little bench time but not near as much as I’d hoped over the holidays. And here i am now heading off traveling for work this week so nothing i can do on Ume-Gumi till next weekend. Almost done with the pit. I took these shots to see what i needed to clean up before the next round of clear coat.





still deciding on whether to do wheels down or not. Pretty sure it’ll be a landing scene with the airbrake up but time will tell. That’s only relevant in that I decided no matter what the pilot would be just cocky enough to wave on touchdown B)

[themongoose]

Made decent progress today. I cut the long Tamiya exhaust nozzles down. A section 7/32” has to be removed so they look right.



i also extended the olio on the nose gear for landing and i finished up the cockpit. Unfortunately I forgot to take pics so i will drop back in the morning while having coffee and add them for you guys :oops:

[themongoose]

Ok catching up with pics

extended olio

[themongoose]

Time for an update on one of the jets…we’ve gotten quickly outnumbered here lol

working on the exhaust nozzles now. While it started out bad I think it’s turning out good so thought I’d share my progress.
im focused on kit parts or parts i already have on builds now (college tuition for my daughter is siphoning off my model funds :wub:)

there’s a nice tutorial on partsrparts covering how to shorten the Tamiya exhaust nozzles. Yea, i’ve been debating whether to do that or not. Originally I was going to build this for an out of box category but once I had to use wing tanks from another kit everything was out the window. So I figured I might as well bite the bullet and modify the kit exhaust nozzles.

It’s a pretty big cut




so I filled all the pin marks before I did this since it was easy to do. I thought they looked good …





until I primer it ha ha, where did those pin marks come from dang! And the difference between where the seamlines fall and that solid section in the other feathers really showed up bad now.





Looking at the real thing I realized the seam line should be an every single feather. So I used the razor saw to cut each solid section between the feathers.




Then I taped up the feathers and filled the area between them with spot putty. Then smoothed that out once it dried with a cotton bud slightly damp with lacquer thinner. Follow that up with 800 grit and then up to 2000 grit sanding.




way better now!






I’m working on the wing tanks now. Put some color on them tonight so check back for an update late Thursday or Friday.

[themongoose]

Feb 3rd

Ready with my 1st solid update since doing the cockpit. I've found doing any of the drop tanks first on one of these crazy paint builds is a good way to experiment with colors and what order to tape everything up in before getting on to the larger surfaces. So I got out those F-4 wing tanks that I modified and went to town.

White primer gave me the best control over the colors. The lighter shade is a orange and pink hue. Definitely a strange one. I mixed it up from Thunderbirds red, gloss black, Gypsy Red (really an orange from the Mopar days), and yellow. Two coats of red left it a little more pink, then I darkened it up toward the bottom of the tanks. As you move up from bottom to top I brought in the orange hue. Compared to the photos it looks pretty dang close. The color on the 1/72 scale version I have really shifts more toward the pinktone and doesn't look as close to me as this does. So on to the pics which is what you all really want to see







And the BIG finish...Out the window, off the billboard, off the road, nothing but PAINT! if you know that old Michael Jordan and Larry Bird commercial i bet that’s funny ? the only decals on here are the lift here pair. I’m lov’n it!

[themongoose]

Feb. 11th, lots done today. The wife and i have been binge watching tattoo shows today. I have a table set up in the dining room now with all my model stuff. She does diamond art in the family room and we have the tv angled so we can see it and banter about the show while we each work on our hobbies :wub:

The main fuselage is together and i have the nose/cockpit combo all cleaned up and ready for paint as well. Did some dry fitting of the two and once the glue dries on the fuselage and i do some painting in future harf to reach places i’ll graft the two together. Hoping to primer it tomorrow before game time B)







the burner cans didn’t fit AT ALL! ended up cutting the circular collar into an octagon to get them on. Everything is closed up perfect so it’s just a fit issue near as i can tell. Weird.

[themongoose]

The fuselage is ready to paint. I need to do a few of the hard to reach spaces, glue the 2 halves together, and do the primer…primer surprise below…


and then the top side of the flaps and airlerons, have you ever seen pink primer!



The LHS had tamiya fine surface primer in pink but not white. And then i thought about it, the primary colors are orange and red, pink primer could prove a great base coat! Maybe Sunday we’ll find out for sure…circle back around then would you ;-)

[themongoose]

Feb. 25th
I did a lot of tweaking and minute sanding to the nose to fuselage joint based on his past builds and the details in his recent thread. No cutting, I was able to get the gap down to something really minimal. A little black CA and some swipes with a wet-sanding stick to get this…







Im really close to primer! My canopy is ready to assemble, so some quick work on that tomorrow. A bunch of taping. Some vents and miscellaneous hardware to add like the slime lights.

Almost forgot to show the tails. I went back and forth on this. Since everything is going to be a high gloss finish…and my tails didn’t fit to well, I decided to sand these flush and CA the seam. I applied the black CA with the back side of a #11 blade to keep it as close to the seam as possible. That did minimize sanding and these were done in 2 sessions.



what reminded me of this was thinking thru the to-do list for primer…have to finish out those panel lines that go nowhere now haha

[themongoose]

Short delay My pilot was a little energetic, he was trying to eject his hand through the canopy! I cemented him to the seat instead of CA so he’s not coming out. So, out came the mini razor saw :oops:


I must have moved it when i was gluing him together, that’s all i can figure, hehehe. You can see I’ve dropped it about 1mm. It’s late so I’m going to do final adjustments tomorrow and then add a little putty to blend his arm back into the shoulder.

[themongoose]

Then about a month delay. Out to March 26th now...

Well I’ve been busy with my THUD for awhile now. Only had time to read our Turning Japanese thread aat that. Lots of great work going on!

today i had some time to get back on Umegumi. Beautiful day in Cincinnati so i did my painting outside. Even got a few shots in sunlight to share. This will be my primer coat for the colors and the finish coat for the white. Should keep the details popping!

[themongoose]

March 26th
I kept the mojo going strong today despite the beautiful weather here in Cincinnati. If my son didn't have my car right now I would have definitely been outside. Aren't you guys lucky, I put some real color on Umegumi this afternoon. Here's how it progressed...

These masks are a full sheet of paper so using recycled backing paper from other masks comes in handy. this keeps stray parts from sticking to the model where they aren't wanted ;-)



Because of the contours of the engines it was important to do initial placement right down the center and then slowly work the mask around and across al the different contours. the dot is the center of the lotus flower and i sketched in the arc across the top to help with alignment.





Tamiya fine Pink primer




This is Chestnut Brown from my 23 window VW Bus build. It's almost black in certain lights so it seemed perfect.




And the money shot!



Just a few touchups to do really. Quite successful given how complicated this design is!





The air brake is just sitting in there now to complete the picture. It will of course be deployed on the finished model. What a fun day. Finally seeing how this will look has been exciting. Going to be a busy week but next week I'm on vacation so expect to see some good stuff by then :-)

[themongoose]

ok this one is from earlier this week and the question stands for everyone here on MSC, I still don't have a firm plan laid out for how to do the gold Kanji script...

Posted Tuesday at 12:59 PM
On 3/28/2023 at 11:33 AM, Stokey Pete said:
Have you figured how to approach the Kanji script yet?


a most timely question :hmmm:

simple answer, no…but i have an idea and am open to any and all suggestions :help:



so while i sit here eating lunch lets lay out some thoughts

i have a 2400dpi scan of the 1/72 scale cartograph decals

the Kanji is part of the whole decal so to separate them i have to spend a huge amount of time in photoshop probably

my daughter is in her 2nd semester of Japanese, maybe she can find a resource to tell me what each of the characters is? Then i could lay them out cleanly and make a mask. Tedious, but hey, often times that’s what makes art special right!

from the looks of it the silhouette can cut it. The problem I’ve had with these tiny masks is that 1) it’s hard to get them to transfer from the friskette (for placement and alignment) to the surface and then 2) once on the surface they don’t stick well and slide around until you hit them with clear coat. Weird how adhesive behaves like that.

the gold needs to be thin or it peels up with the tape has been my past experience. The Kanji have some very fine lines to them. I’m looking for an MCW or lacquer right now. Haven’t looked to see if vallejo has a gold in their new metal line tho. Anyone know or have experience with gold paint?

how about gold foil? Anyone know if that might work?



wow that was a lot. Killed the rest of my lunch hour with that list

[themongoose]

Mar 28th
Just a quick note on progress, Bottom of fuselage is done except for metal color. Dark ghost grey from nose back, then light ghost grey from center out to wings. Very subtle really. The white flows back in between the two. I love their design elements!

[themongoose]

Mar 31st
A rainy day yields much modeling time!!

To try and keep it from looking too uniform, given it will have no weathering and a gloss clear, I decided to try fading the pink primer into the white. Heaviest pink wherever the red goes. I found with the pink under the orange it really makes the orange way too bright. I want the orange to really go between pink and orange and that effect happens when I spray the orange over that bright white. It's really a weird happening





Now here's the orange. Again darker toward the where the red will go was my attemp.



Hmmm, I should have taken a closer shot



And a few to finish it up in bright red!




Tomorrow I can spray the lotus tree on the tails, finish up the metal exhaust and then start on some of the small stuff. I can't wait to pull some of this mask off but there's still so much to do I don't want to risk getting overspray on anything.


*edit*. Ok i got a closeup to add :-)

[themongoose]

Apr 1st brings us totally up to date...
It was a power day at the bench. Turned out to be too cold to do anything outside today, plus it rained all night so it was added cold that comes along with being wet.





I did some experimenting with the black Kanji on the fuse side. It's hard to get the smallest pieces to stick so I think I will have to study each character and then do touchups by hand. Way easier in the long run I think. I'm stoked though that the silhouette with a new blade and new mat will cut like this ...:frantic::evil_laugh:



from this (1mm squares)...




And my best exhaust ever. Dang this has come out way better than anything else I have done. My buddy Chris bowling went over some pointers with me. I was always overdoing the heat effected zones at a minimum.



I think this will be a good start for weathering the underside



ok off to dinner. Will probably not be back on this till next weekend. Wife and I are off for our wedding anniversary this coming week. Then I start a new job April 17th so my modeling time will go right down-hill :sorry: might be awhile till Umegumi is totally done and ready for RFI.

[themongoose]

Apr 2, 2023 10:35:34 GMT -5 Tobi said:

This livery is a strong opponent to the Shiro Ruyu scheme I always dream of doing.

ooooh, I haven't seen that one. Going off to look that up over lunch

[Tobi]

Apr 2, 2023 11:20:02 GMT -5 themongoose said:

Apr 2, 2023 10:35:34 GMT -5 Tobi said:

This livery is a strong opponent to the Shiro Ruyu scheme I always dream of doing.

ooooh, I haven't seen that one. Going off to look that up over lunch

It's a stylized white dragon with black outline and red eyes, going over the complete wingspan.

For me somewhat capturing the essence of a Japanese fighter craft.
Two Bobs did a decal sheet in all three scales, but it is near impossible to acquire and I imagine painting by stencils will look far superior.

[Tobi]

Your F-15 is looking soooo good!

[mustang1989]

Good LORD man!! Now THAT is a lot of information to take in but it's sooooo frickin' GOOD!! This is totally insane Chris!! 


Blown......away.......

[Tojo72]

Those markings are looking good

[Joe Rix]

OMG Chris! Your F-15 is mind blowing beyond belief. It is awesome to witness when modeling is transformed into art. Your painting and masking skills are simply outworldly to me. I have so missed your modeling and it is really a treat to see it in action once again. Also, I absolutely love the metallic with heat affects you achieved on the nozzles. Looks perfect.

[themongoose]

Well thank you gentlemen! Way too much going on for me lately so unfortunately not much modeling. Have finally settled into a new pattern with new job though so I’ve gotten some bench time in on this. I found a bottle of gold paint from MCW to do the Kanji with. This stuff turned out some clean letters. Here’s how it progressed
I decided for today's painting some Lynard Skynard would be inspirational! A couple hours later and we're all done! Here's how the weekend went down :-)

2-1/2 hours to draw all the Kanji. Ran off to make some dinner while this printed. One of the longer cutting sessions on the silhouette at about 15 minutes.



Then another hour thereabouts to pick all the pieces off the friskette




placement another 30 minutes



I did do some practicing Friday night to see how the gold laid down. It needed some Gunze Leveling Thinner for the 1st coats was my read on things.
1st up was a coat of clear. Then grey primer to make everything uniform (had to cover those dark colors).
Then, I did 2 light coats of gold thinned 50/50, then a final top coat straight out of the bottle (MCW acrylic lacquer). Another hour of painting and waiting for paint to dry ;-)




So, this is the finest work I've ever done with the silhouette. The key was a new blade AND a new light tack mat. My old mat must have been letting the masking paper move around as the blade travelled as the cuts weren't crisp and the pieces wouldn't come up when I tried to pluck them off the friskette. I did all that practice work a few weeks ago so I was all set when I got to the Kanji this time.



Here's a little closer view yet...


you can see the 2 grey "eyes" over that middle kanji. I have a few places where the gold came up with the mask. Will fix these before I do the final clear coat after decals.

So after a few hours I will knock the edges down on the lettering with some 6000 grit wet sanding paper. Then I can start assembling all the small bits and get the decals on. This was the big step and I'm glad it came out so well. I was really worried about seepage under the mask and how I would fix that or whether the lettering would come out cleanly. Work and outdoor projects are competing for my time so it'll be awhile again before there's much to show. I'll be watching everyone's progress though every evening! 

[buddho]

What a beautiful livery, a gorgeous build, through and through. Origato!

[Tojo72]

Tamiya made a nice F-15 in its day,but you are taking it to the next level