Life in Plastic (Styrene, specifically)

Cunningham's Famous Phantom

May 29, 2021 -- 1/72 Hasegawa F-4J Phantom II
The client wanted the kill marks on the splitter plate.

Tiny Streak Eagle

February 2021 -- TOMYTEC 1/144 F-15A Streak Eagle, 2021

 

The Dying Gaul

My baby sister presented me with this challenge. Take this one-piece cast statuette mimicking marble, and bring him to life -- so to speak -- with paint.

Red hair and brown eyes, if you please. The eyes would  be a small problem in that whoever copied this guy from the ancient original, chose to animate his some with sculpted suggestions of irises and pupils. Like most, if not all sculpted humans, the original had smooth and featureless eyeballs.
I filled his as best I could with 5-minute epoxy. Sadly I couldn't do much about their lack of symmetry

It took about two hours to fill and clean up mold marks, fill in pinholes and generally get him as smooth as possible. I don't know what kind of material he is cast in. There was definite evidence that someone took some kind of a sanding/grinding wheel to  where there were rough spots or maybe some flash. It also looked to me that his chin was repaired with some not quite matching filler that needed more smoothing than it got.

The first step was to establish a proper pale skin tone consistent with red hair. This is the first coat, a test coat. Against a blue background, maybe. Against a white background he was definitely too dark. This layer did serve as an excellent primer coat, revealing a whole bunch more rough spots and lumps and bumps.
Whatever the material he's made of is, it filled well with Bondo spot putty.

The base paint I used was  Testor 1170 -- flat light tan. To get the degree of paleness I was after for the upper skin shade, I mixed it about one part tan to three parts flat white. I then mixed two more darker shades of the same for lower skin and shadows. I'd also end up using the straight 1170 for deep undercuts. Time to crank up the compressor and start to airbrush. Probably the biggest misstep came when I did his hair.  My idea was to lay in all the shadows in dark brown and then brush the orange on top of that. Unfortunately I didn't appreciate the orange's lack of covering power and it was quickly evident plan A would not work. And of course I'd started work on his face.Here his face is wrapped in Parafilm to protect it from orange over spray. The paint was Testor orange in the little 1/4 ounce jar. Highlights were done with a little yellow mixed in and shadows were just brown.

This is his face at an early stage. Shading done with artist's oils. The oils were only really effective on his face, fingers and toes. The bulk of the shading was done with the airbrush. There's a hole yet to fill on the tip of his nose.
The fact that he was cast as one with his shield, painting that item would prove to be tricky. Also, with the original ancient guy, the sculpture gave him the broken sword, scabbard and what is clearly a belt strewn under his right side. With this copy, instead of the belt, there's what I can only recognize as, what, shreds of torn fabric? What's that doing there? I have no idea. Ready to deliver. Less the paint and palettes, of course.

 
I read someplace that his wound suggests a sword stab through his ribs and into his right lung. In the real world there would be blood all over the place and probably bubbling down his chin as well. Much easier to paint only what which was molded on him.



Well that was a step out of the old comfort zone.

https://www.designtoscano.com/products/dying-gaul-sculpture-pd1948

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_Gaul

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Retirement?

My wife is taking early retirement at the beginning of this July. Our financial advisor -- one of her cousins -- assures us it’s quite doable. Molly is over the moon. She’s been a communications director for the last nine years (ran the department for ten) at what is essentially a home (a huge home) for aging Catholic nuns. After more than 16 years there, and more that 45 years working in general,she’s had quite enough.

Retirement has been a concept I’ve never considered for myself. I figured I’d be building models to the very end. It’s simply what I do. It’s what I’ve done for literally 60 years. Recently Molly and I were discussing the future and she asked me when I planned to retire. I laughed. I don’t see it, I told her. But the idea, the concept, has remained in my mind.

In its heyday, Hawx Planes had at least six guys waiting in line with their lists of model planes they wanted me to add to their collections. Today there are two and their assignments come at wide intervals. The others have either drifted away or passed away. No one has appeared to take their spots in line. The last “regular” buyer was a guy from Arizona who crossed paths with me via eBay in 2011. After about a year and 17 models delivered, he went silent. I’ve made no attempt to advertise for more business.

The dwindling buyers coincided almost exactly with my becoming eligible for Social Security, which I applied for. And you know what? SS pays better and more regularly than building models ever did.  So in a sense, without any real planning, I am retired. Coming to grips with this new reality, what really jumps out at me is the sheer amount of STUFF I’ve accumulated to cover any job that may have come my way.

Reference books, decal sheets, kits, paint, tools -- the bulk of which is now surplus. I now see most of it as massive dead weight that somebody (me probably) will have to lift and move to someplace else someday. No. Thanks. Thank God for eBay.

Unfortunately I’m finding there’s next to no interest in books and monographs. Even at near-giveaway prices. Maybe the majority of computer-savvy “serious” modelers have come to the same conclusion that I have -- if you can’t find the answer or the picture on the Internet, it isn’t that important. I’ve also started to  triage the decal collection into keepers, eBay material, and why-in-the-hell did I ever hang onto this? Oh, right. The way this professional modeler thing was done was to never throw anything away. You’ll never know when it might be needed. Well, you know what? I’m now in the comfortable position of deciding for myself what will and what will not be needed. As for decal sheet selling on eBay, it’s largely the same story as books. Old Micro/Superscale sheets get hardly any views, again even with attractive discounted prices. And boy-oh-boy do I have a ton of those.

So what to do with my new “free” time? I feel obligated to go back to models I’ve started for my own amusement, when I’d get tired of whatever commissioned job(s) I was working on and probably hating at that moment. I have a frightening and embarrassing number of such models. Countless hours invested in them. I suppose they were therapy projects. Reminders of the days before going pro, when I could do what I wanted to do and only what I wanted to do. Judging by their overwhelming numbers, I’ve needed a shit-load of therapy over three plus decades. So the current plan is finish as many of those that I can and put them out on my Etsy shop or eBay and hope for the best. Which of my starteds will be of most interest to the general model buying public and which ones should I ignore? This will be a trial and error experiment no doubt. Whatever I choose, the finished piece will be easy to ship. Take that to the bank.

So these days I occasionally remind myself that I’m on Easy Street. ALL I have to do is finish those model airplanes I started for my own entertainment back in the day. (And try to refrain from starting any more.) What would the 12-year-old Pat Hawkey think about that? Dream come true or what? That young guy did what he did for the joy of doing it. What compared to the excitement of finding a newly released kit on the shelves of Frentz and Sons Hardware Store? Another cool something to add to his 72^nd scale model collection that could never be big enough.  What a delightful obsession it was. So many little airplanes -- so little money to acquire them all. Could he have ever believed that one day as an old guy, he’d have enough unbuilt kits in his garage rafters to stock a decent sized hobby shop? Nope.

The 12-year-old had excellent close-up eyesight and rock-steady hands. He did not have a reputation to be concerned with. It was a rare, rare thing when anyone other than he looked at his models in the basement with any interest at all. He was learning and improving his skill and knowledge with every finished piece, but good enough was good enough. Adding another one to the collection quickly was the point of the exercise. It was his hobby. He loved it. He all but lived for it. And this was before discovering The Squadron Shop. Hold on to your hat, young guy.

Today, at age 65, building models/painting figures is just an occupation. Physically, it’s not as comfortable as it used to be. Between choosing the correct glasses or Optivisor to enable me to see what I’m doing and the slightly shaky hands, it’s not the easy-breezy activity of the past. At age 12, the idea of an afternoon nap never occurred to me. Lately I find quality model building requires energy that isn’t always there. I really did not see that one coming.

For eight years or so I’d occasionally get a call from Al Slisinger who ran Old Guard Hobbies. “Hawkey,” he’d say, “Get your ass down here. A collection came in.” Dear Al always gave me first crack if it was airplanes. That meant a 40 minute drive ASAP to see what kind of treasure arrived. Better still, treasure at reduced prices. Never mind I had all the work I could handle with the kits clients had provided. My rationale was that I might be able to score something cool at a good price to squirrel away for that someday when I could build it to put on eBay. (Remember all those started kits? Same rationale. Just an excuse to spend money on model airplanes -- one of my very favorite things at the time.) To date, I’ve managed to finish three gear down jobs, as envisioned when I bought the kits and sell them on eBay. I got a decent price for one of them.

Often if kits were mixed together, Al would have me take them home and sort them into complete bagged packages. If anything was missing a part or a decal sheet or instruction sheet, it was mine. He hated having to deal with guys bringing back discounted second-hand kits, bitching about missing contents.

On these occasions, I would wonder how any modeler would come to the decision to sell his kit collection. Certainly I could never do that. Fast forward 20 years. If someone rolled up with a truck and offered to take all I had for a reasonable pittance, I don’t think I’d hesitate. So much dead weight. So many thanks to Al Slisinger.

“Hey, build stuff for yourself!” I can’t think of a single subject I’d want to build for myself that I haven’t done for someone else already. I have no desire for a built model plane collection. I had a meagre desire 15-20 years ago. I had close to 30 done to minimal standards, then we had to move. I donated their case to one of the guys who helped me move. The process taught me first-hand the impracticality of built models. I boxed them up, moved them with only minor damage, and they stayed in their boxes for months afterwards -- quite unmissed.

Since late 1985 I’ve kept a log of the models I’ve built -- either for clients or myself. The last one entered is number 774. I don’t know if that’s impressive or not. It’s an average of 22 per year. Should I make it an even thousand, then quit? At 22/yr., that’s 10 more years. We’ll see.

Clipped-wing Spit

January 2021 -- Heller Spitfire Mk.XVI

Falcon/Clear-Vax canopy (not fitted as tight as I'd like) slightly modified Airfix pilot, slightly reduced in depth radiators, clear navigation lights, Model Maker decals. I started this on in '03 or '04. Got her to the nearly ready to paint stage, then let her languish. So happy to finally add her to the finished list.

A-10C Warthog

December 2020 -- 1/72 Academy A-10A modified to C standard.

The gentleman who requested this one also managed to track down in Spain (?) the sadly out-of-print Caracal decal sheet featuring Air Guard A-10s. (Good job Jim!) We are both Michigan residents, so it was clear which choice would result. (If you haven't used them, Caracal decals are about as good as they get.)

Jim also wanted a full load of weaponry. It's been years, maybe decades since I packed so much stuff under a warplane. Gotta admit, it looks pretty cool.

All in all I found the kit to be above average, although the opening half of the canopy didn't fit very well in the closed position. Also ground out the the front fan blades of the engines and replaced them with a solid styrene disk. Stationary fan blades in this in-flight presentation signals out of gas.

The real kit goof, and I didn't see it until I could do nothing about it, is the seat location in the cockpit. It's too far back, making the pilot also too far back. Hopefully there's enough good stuff going on with the model, that that error can be overlooked.

 

 

F4U-5 Corsair

December 2020 -- Hasegawa 1/48th F4U-5 Corsair

Mostly stock with the addition of a True Details seat, my own pitot tube and gun sight reflector glass. Also "relaxed" the elevators a bit. Revell/Monogram Pro Modeler decals.

1/200th C-141A

September 2020 -- DML/Dragon C-141A Starlifter

Someone else started it, I finished it.

Grumman FF-1

June 2020 -- 1/72nd Special Hobby Grumman FF-1 According to my record book, the last time I rigged up a 72nd biplane was in 1997 -- 23 years ago. It was significantly harder to do this time around. Not much fun at all, truth be told. But I'm pleased to show I haven't lost the ability. Yet. As for the kit, all I'll say is that if you want to take it on, you'd better be a very experienced modeler, and you'd better really want an FF-1 in your collection. The (incomplete) canopy is my own. Rigging is stretched sprue.

Bell X-2

June, 2020 -- 1/48 Fonderie Miniature Bell X-2
This is the Fonderie Miniature kit with the addition of some Collect-Aire X-2 parts. The cradle/tow dolly is all Fonderie Miniature and cast in white metal. Decals are Cutting Edge -- a sheet I don't believe was ever released and had no instruction sheet printed for it. Pilot is a Shapeways product. Let's just say this kit is rough and required a LOT of refining and checks to reference material. It's shown as it appeared before its final flight with the unfortunate Captain "Mel" Apt at the controls.








If you want to know more about the subject, this is a superb presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeuBtZYXSvg&t=885s