Thomas Bischoff
brave man 🙂
I may try my first Tomcat with a Hasegawa kit - lol

J35J
Taking a seat, will follow with great intrest as I just have started a Tomcat project myself.

David H Author
Thomas, this is my first Cat in 48th, thought I'd start with a cheap one that I could afford to bin without thinking about the cost. 😩

David H Author
J35J, interesting project RN f14 "what if" , I'll be following it 👍🏻

David H Author
Sorry all as I've been neglecting to update this, busy with other projects , but here's the latest ..

David H Author
Thomas, I think Daniel did a piece on how to do the Hasegawa kit avoiding the pitfalls..good luck . I have 2 so they'll be next on the tomcat list 😬

David H Author
Thankyou for the likes everyone ..

David H Author
So trial fitting the canopy , I dropped it and it vanished. Now, where has that gone ? CRUNCH, ah, that's where ( or similar words were used) . So this project is on hold until I can get a replacement canopy.

J35J
I feel with you, did exactly the same thing with my current Tomcat project.😬
After a lot of frustration I managed to find an incomplete F-14 kit with a canopy on Ebay.

Hope you find a new canopy soon.

David H Author
Thanks J , I'm going to email one of the companies that make f14s to see if I can get a replacement. It was a bit narrow and that was part of the trouble. I'm gonna see if a Hase one fits better 😁

Sergej I
This seems to be anything but a testbed, but the learning curve is steep 👍
Wonderful progress, for canopy just buy a second model, possibly a used one...

David H Author
thanks Sergei,I'll definitely finish it even without the canopy, just for the experience. Patience will prevail and I'm sure something will turn up… 😁

David H Author
Aaaand, something did indeed turn up. An italeri tomcat I was watching on eBay at a stupid low price got reduced !!! Below £20

Jennifer Franklin
Did the italeri tomcat canopy work for this project?

David H Author
😁 yup, good old italeri, the new canopy is just "different " and fits perfectly 🤣🤣 although the kit is " on the shelf" as I got into another couple of projects, but it willl be back

Treehugger
As for photo 12, I'd put on some vallejo putty (assuming you don't plan rescribing into the putty, which won't work well imo), and then cut excess putty off with sharp blade, then sand flat with small smooth metal file.

If one knows, that one plan to rescribe over the putty, then I like using 'sprue goo' (Tamiya's liquid cement + many bits of plastic in the bottle). Some annoying things wiht sprue goo, is that if too dry a little difficult to handle, too liquid and it melts thin surfaces of plastic perhaps too efficiently in larger amounts. Also, sprue goo tend to leave air bubbles unless the goo is allowed to simply slowly flow into a cavity.

David H Author
I use Humbrol putty, which I worked out is really just thick sprue goo 😂

Thomas Bischoff
painting looks good - the grand canyon is an unpleasant surprise.
you can't give up now - lol

David H Author
Thankyou for the encouragement Thomas. It WILL be finished, I'm always up for a challenge 😂 there's a bit of a blemish on the upper fuselage that I need to fix. But I'll finish the filling and then blend the whole area in.

J35J
Looking great so far David, keep up the good work!👍🏻

Treehugger
When I was a teenager, Tamiya had this beautiful color catalogue of all their kits as I remember it, and it all looked so nice (at least by that age's standard).
And I remember seeing in that catalogue, this one paint scheme for the F-14 looked so nice with the red line and all. 🙂

David H Author
Yeah , VF1 was my fave at the time, must admit the early ghostriders scheme has pipped it to the top of my list (VF142)

Guy Rump
Looking good, following for the final leg. 👍