Honda CB750-F Finished

Sorry for the delay in updating on this project, even though it was finished at the beginning of the month, but bathroom refit has taken priority over updating my blog and other things. 

Well, the response I have had over the colour that I did the Honda in has been amazing. So I was glad that I did not go with doing it in a factory colour and trod the path of the candy paint instead. This Alclad candy paint was so much easier to use than the other candy paints I have in my stock of paints. I will definitely be using it on my McLaren F1 when I start to paint it, possibly with a little twist to it to! Anyhow, back to the Honda.

In the last post of this project, I was in the stages of final assembly and detail painting. The front mudguard was stripped and resprayed without any trouble matching the shade of the candy (sigh of relief). Once the final painting was finished, final assembly continued to complete the model. Mounting the exhaust system caused a few little alignment issues, but these were overcome with a little playing around with their positions. Apart from that, the final construction stage passed like a dream. I was initially thinking about adding heat stains to the exhaust down pipes, but I passed on this idea opting to have the Honda as a showroom example that had never been ridden.

In all, this is a great kit from Tamiya, the first of the motorbike kits I have built from them. I am not into the modern style of bikes, my era is the 1970's through to 1990's, but I also like bikes from the 50's and 60's to. There are a few more motorbike kits in my stash, including a couple of Vincent Black Shadows. So the is still scope to try a couple more of the Tamiya bike kits yet. It is strange. In all my years of model building, I have only ever built four motorbikes. This Honda, the Harley Davidson Heritage Soft-tail and in my teenage years, the large scale Honda CB750 that Airfix used to produce and Barry Sheene's Suzuki RGA500 Grand Prix bike from the 1970's. This will need to be expanded.

So, below are some photographs of the finished Honda before I added the number plate to it. After the photos is a short video taken on my phone of the model spinning on my turntable.

Honda CB750-F WIP #2

I do not know if it is the same with other people out there, but November always seems to be a busy month for me. It is filled with several family birthdays, including my own plus our wedding anniversary. I also have the IPMS(UK) Nationals in Telford falling on the second weekend. But in addition to all of this, I am in the middle of refitting the bathroom to, so work on the Honda has been a little slow.

So a run down on the progress since the first post at the beginning of the month. 

Construction continued with assembling the fuel tank, front mudguard, forks and rear suspension. Re-chroming of the plated parts has continued over two more sessions, with the final parts being done last week.The first photos below are of the bike with the main components assembled to the frame after they had been painted. The mudguard, fuek tank and rear panel are in primer state waiting for me to decide which colour I was going to paint them. At this point I was still thinking about painting the model in the stock red that Honda used on this bike back in the day.

After a few days of changing my mind several times on the paint for this project, I decided to try out the Alclad candy paints that I have in the draw. This consists of a silver base coat, with Alclad say you can spray direct onto bare plastic. After leaving it to cure, you then build up the candy colour in several coats until you get the shade you require. The images below are just the candy coat, there has not been any clear coats added to the parts yet. For this model I used the Ruby Red Candy, mainly to give the bike a more modern feel to it.

Now that I was happy with the colour of the model, it was time to choose which decals to use on the bike. I wanted to keep with the original decals which came with the kit, but which colour stripes was I to use? After some chatting with some fellow modellers and to their agreement, I went with the black and silver stripes that Honda used on the black finished bike. Everyone has said it was the right choice out of the three stripe colours available.

Now to bring everything up to today. The lights, instrument cluster and vinyl hoses have all been added to the model. There is still some detail painting to be done on the fuel tank and rear panel before gluing them in place. The front mudguard had a little accident when something got spilt onto it and reacted with the clear coat. So this has to be re-sprayed, but also sort out the bad fitting of it when the front wheel is in position on the forks. So I need to see what has to be altered to make the fit better. Otherwise, work can continue on the rest of the model with the fitting of the exhaust system and other remaining parts to finish the main construction off.

Before I finish off this post. When I fitted the decals for the dial faces, instead of putting them direct onto the face of the cluster, I stuck them onto some clear acetate sheet. There was two reasons for this. First, the faces on the cluster had ejection pin marks on them, the second was to give the effect of the plastic glass covering the dials. A simple little job to give a better look to the finished model.

So, that is all for now. I will update you on this project soon now that the major work in the bathroom is done. That like the Honda project is down to cosmetic work mainly. So until next time.

Honda CB750-F WIP #1

Whilst the bathroom refit is taking priority at the moment, I still needed something to fill the time when it is too late to do anything on the bathroom in the evenings. So I decided to have a change from the normal projects and dug out this Tamiya 1/12th scale Honda CB750-F kit. This also happened to be a motorbike that a couple of my old friends from back in the early 80's use to ride, so it was a little nostalgia trip for me to.

  

The first job for me was to strip all of the kits chrome plating off it plastic. I will replace it will Alclad, just like I did on my Harley Davidson Heritage Soft-tail model I did about ten years ago. But at least the Honda does not have as much chrome as the Harley did. The other main advantage to doing this is being able to assemble the two exhaust silencers together before painting the Alclad. Hence remove the joint lines visible if I had used the kits plating instead.

Below are the first batch of parts to be redone with the Alclad. These consist of the whole exhaust system and various parts of the engine which happen to be chromed. My usual technique is followed, starting with the primer, then gloss black base, then the honey clear followed by the chrome paint after which was protected by the Alclad gloss clear
.

The assembled engine was painted with Alclad aluminium before adding the chromed panels and covers. here it is seen test fitted in the frame along with the forks and mudguard, rear mudguard and part of the seat assembly.

Jump to tonight and to where the project is now. The frame halves are now painted along with the rear swing arms, wheels, rear mudguard and the rear exhaust/footrest brackets. The forks and all three disc brakes have been re-chromed and are curing as this is being typed. They just need some detail painting to be done before being assembled for fitting to the frame. The completed engine has now been secured inside the frame halves and is waiting for the forks and rear swing arm to be added once they are finished. The next batch of parts are sitting ready to be re-chromed, they will be started on in the next couple of days. But as for this weekend, I will finishing the tiling in the bathroom and start painting the woodwork as the following weekend I will be off to the IPMS(UK) Nationals at Telford for three days. So that it for this installment.

D.H. Vampire T.11

This is another quick build I have done over the last couple of months. This new tooling Vampire T.11 from Airfix is a beautiful kit to build. From what I believe, the marking for this aircraft is meant to be of RAF 239OCU, my father old unit from the late 1950's. So I have decided to try and build one of each type of aircraft from this era of the unit. The Vampire is readily available complete with these marking, now I just need to get a Meteor T.7, plus a Hunter T.7 and F.6 to complete the line up.

This model was built straight out of the box and painted using Xtracolor High Speed Silver. I also added some seat belts inside using thin blue masking tape. "Blue" I hear you say, but I have seen both blue and beige seat belts in these Vampires in different photographs. A little unusual for me, I did not weather this model, or will not any of the other three aircraft. These training unit aircraft always seemed to be kept nice and clean from the photographs that I have seen.

So now, I just need to track down the other aircraft I need for this little project. The Meteor is currently available, but the Hunters might be a little more awkward to find.

Higgins LCVP, 1/72nd Scale Airfix

Why does it happen, that over a period of a couple of months, everything goes wrong?

Through August and September, we have had things go wrong with the car twice, the freezer, the washing machine and then a leak in the main bathroom damaging the floor and resulting in the whole thing being stripped out to be redone. Also at the beginning of the August, Kyran went and fell off the hammock in the garden breaking his arm needing surgery on it. Hence, there not being any updates on the blog over the last two months. 

But in between all of these dramas, I have managed to do a little bit of modelling to keep me in a calmer frame of mind. I decided to keep things simple and not too taxing so I started with the Airfix 1/72nd scale Higgins LCVP. This is a very nice model to build, ideal for someone to create a diorama with. Construction was straight forward, with everything going together without any issues. I got the model built up to the main structure before priming the whole model. I first airbrushed the interior and upper deck with grey, followed by brush painting the white areas of the Royal Navy scheme which I chose for this project. After a couple of coats of white, I mixed the blue shade and hand painted the dark shade of the camouflage. To finish off the main painting of the hull, I painted below the waterline with brick red as in the instructions. The hull now had a couple of coats of gloss clear, before adding the three decals and sealing them with some matt clear.

Whilst it was sitting on the shelf drying, I looked at the model thinking to myself that it was too clean. Now was a chance to try out some new products I had picked up at a show recently. This consisted of AK Interactive's Rust Streaks, Streaking Grime and Interior Wash. The rust streaks I think worked with great effect, I simply just used different brushes and played around. The rest of the model was finished off using the other two washes and metal pigment on the worn areas on the deck. Final detail painting and assembly was done and I added the cables for the ramp using some lead detailing wire.

I was very happy with the end result, Airfix did a good job with this kit. So far, it has been displayed at two shows and has received a fair bit of attention. The weathering has been the main conversation with one person stating it was the best Landing Craft model he has seen built so far.