1/48 Hasegawa F-14B Tomcat - Part IV

Here's the next instalment.

Anticipating a nasty join between front fuselage and the rear assembly I ignored the instructions and attached the top piece to the front fuselage, rather than joining it the bottom fuselage first and then trying to attach that assembly to the front fuselage.

Prior to this I'd added some card to the top fuselage, and cut holes in the resin pit for these to go through, allowing them to be glued to the front tub. The card also provides a stronger more sure bond between the 2 parts

I also put 2 cuts vertically down the rear of the resin pit, this allowed me to flex the front fuselage out to match the contours of the top fuselage. I also used a piece of sprue as a spreader to keep the front fuselage as close to the contour of the top piece.

One of the disappointments with this kit is the amount of warped sprues. I've had this kit for a while, and it's been in my garage which gets hot (about 45 deg C) in the summer but I don't think that should have caused this amount of warping.

I tried to straighten some of the parts by soaking in hot water and clamping the piece to a flat surface. This was only marginally successful.

Once the top part had set I attached the lower fuselage. This seemed to go together quite well... However this was a bit of wishful thinking, as I was going to find out later. I also attached the lower beaver tail to the lower piece first. This seemed like a good idea at the time.

Advice from mates at my model club was that the join of the lower forward fuselage cover always results in a step at the rear join. You can also see the spreader in this picture which stops the lower edges of the front fuselage assembly from curving in to far.

First dry fit seemed to confirm this advice

The rear of the front gear bay appeared to be a problem. But this was actually quite flexible and bent down. That is stuck up like this actually made it a bit easier to ensure that it located into recess in the lower fuselage piece.

And after some sanding and dry fitting I ended up with an excellent join. The only issue was a little bit of a mismatch a the front outer edges. The white bits of card filled a gap between the lower piece and landing gear bay. They also ensured good alignment along that seam.

The join was good enough that it didn't need cleaning up. Plus as the weapons pallets cover much of it. These Pallets are from Wolfpack and are very nicely detailed.

Here was the first of the big problems I found with my approach of fitting the top and bottom pieces separately.  Fitting the lower Beaver tail first was a bad idea and certainly compounded the problem.

After a fair bit of thought I decided to press on and fill the gap. I first dry fitted the Aires Exhausts to ensure the diameter of the exhausts was
correct.

Then I glued the upper beaver tail to the lower trying to keep the contour between the 2 pieces as straight as possible .

I cut a piece of card and glued it into the void.

Unfortunately the forward piece ended up a little lower than the rear piece so some serious filler was needed to try and restore the correct contours.

A final coat of Alclad primer was used to fill small scratches and valleys. Once dry this was polished with a various polishing sponges.

1/48 Hasegawa F-14B Tomcat - Part III

Been a while since I updated this here. I'm a bit further along than this post shows but here we go.

Although I put lead in the nose, I figured, just to be safe I'd stick some lead in here. Especially as I'm going to use resin exhausts

And here's the pit fitted to the cockpit. I did spend a fair bit of time sanding the tub to get the fit as good as I can. The resin rails do actually sit below the cockpit sills. The tricky bit, which I didn't achieve is to get the rear deck flush with the sills. The square of plastic on the nose is to ensure the nose doesn't split, it's probably not required but I thought I'd add it just in case.

The large gap at the end of the tub seems typical of the Aires Cockpit/Hasegawa F-14 combo. I filled it with plastic card. A bit of card was used on the right as well

Rather than try and clean up the seam behind the cockpit with filler I removed any rough bumps and burrs and covered with with a piece of 10 thou card

Bought the mesh at the NSW show this year. Decided to use it to "mesh up" the vents on the underside. I just used scissors to trim to size and stick it on top of the existing plastic. I then used normal Plastic cement to stick it in (if you use enough the plastic goes sticky enough to hold the mesh)

I'm not a fan of butt joints - anywhere. I added some thin card to the rear of the engine tunnels for the intakes to mate to. I'm using intake blanks so this won't be seen

Added the front of the intakes, including the ramps, just to see how they fit. Didn't bother with the other side.

The intakes were added, a few clamps and glue was all that was needed. Without the tunnels these fit pretty well

Thought I'd add a little a bit of detail inside the vents using some plastic rod, card and solder. This only took about 15 mins and I only added a bit of red to the pipe going to the actuator.

All for this, left side

Right side.