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Progress Report…
After filling in the erroneous panel lines and sanding everything down, the upper wing was hit with another coat of Corogard on the wing planks.
While to Corogard is left to dry overnite, i began work on the areas aft of the main spar.
I began with a coat of Mr Hobby SM 201Super Fine Silver 2.
The stuff is really shiny and brilliant, but juxtaposed next to the Corogard it looks… well,
So next i masked off and started painting control surfaces. The ailerons were first using Mr Color C-8 Silver.
Next the flaps were masked off and i sprayed them with a light coat of LP-11 Silver. This changed the brilliance of the Super Fine Silver somewhat.
The Aileron Control Tabs were painted with Tamiya LP-38 Flat Aluminium. And finally the spoilers were masked and painted with a 50-50 mis of LP-11 and LP-38.
Up Next- The Wing Gloves.
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Great work on the panel shading! Do you know if the original had those exact colors as well, or are you going in with different shades to create more 3D metallic appearance?
I’m not sure about the Northwest birds, but many of the other 720s and 707s had gray spoiler panels:
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Dave, I like all the variations in your metallics and your wings look amazing! But LH707 is correct regarding the spoiler panels — as illustrated by that beautiful photo.
Imagine splitting the spoiler panels (two sets on each wing) into quarters and the outer quarters (of each set) are flat aluminum while the two inner quarters are metallic. Northwest Orient’s 707 and 720 wings are/were this way as well.
You can use decal sets with 707 details (some sets have the dull spoiler panels on the sheet); I think I used Flying Colors. Or you can masked them off and paint. You got this!
I’m glad to see that you’re making rapid progress after reading your story the other day about the wing crack — I can’t imagine a sound that makes my heart sink into the pit of my stomach more than that “SNAP” sound. Congrats!
Cheers!
Tom
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Well, painting the 720 wings has been an evolving process.
I’m happy with the Corogard treatment of the wing box as well as the wing leading edges.
Its the area aft of the wing box that i’m still futzing with and the aft skin and the flaps have undergone one repaint already.
Regarding the spoilers, i know about the multi-coloured segments because they appear clearly in some construction photos of N721US. Just haven’t gotten round to painting them yet.
First time round, the spoilers, flaps and ailerons were too contrasty with the adjacent skin, so i sprayed LP-11 over the original SM201.
Adding a small amount of grey to the wing flaps made things contrasty again but in a different way. And i’m not happy with it.
When i get home, i wil mask and paint the grey segments of the spoilers and the narrow gray strips in front of the ailerons.
The Super Fine Silver and Super Duralumin i think are gonna be great for the fuselage, but for the wings those shades just don’t look right. Not for a Boeing, anyway.
Onward and sideways!
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*I am working from mostly Black and White photographs.
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The big advantage of that is that you can be blissfully unaware of many of the subtleties and still think your model is dead-on accurate
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The 720B wings are more or less… done.
This painting evolution took a lot longer than i thought it would. Seems a bit counter-intuitive, since the DC-8 had an all-bare-metal wing, but it is what it is.
Some of the long, drawn-out process had to do with colour selection, but the real slowdown was because i had to work around the engines.
Thanks a lot, Roden. 😡
The upper wing was finished off by repairing the leading edges and painting the composite section above the wing fillet flap.
Working around installed pylons is one thing, but when the engine pods get in the way it’s an entirely different matter.
Figuring out how to paint the leading edge flaps was easy, but delineating between the Corogard lower wing spar and the painted composite wing glove leading edge was frankly.. educated guesswork.
For those that are wondering, the inboard wing sections will get masked off, and then i’ll attack the fuselage. The complex wing-body fairing will be masked and painted last in order to unify the two areas. There’s a fair amount of BAC 707 grey on the bottom, but it’s usually not clearly depicted exactly where it goes, so there’s a bit of research work in my future…
Fly the Obsessive-Compulsive Skies- with david.
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Posts: 104Location: Salt Lake CityOccupation: Retired. Twice: Civilian HR manager and US Army officerAs always, phenomenal work.
Robert V. Leonard
Here are some quick and dirty snaps of work on the belly…
Getting the precise outline of the BAC 707 Grey areas on the belly and the wing root has required some serious investigation and photo study. What you see here is “Part 1”.
Something else i have learned since the DC-8: If you apply the Mr Hobby Super Metallics directly onto bare plastic, they are kind of delicate and sort of rub/peel off the plastic-even if you use Tamiya tape.
To that end, i’ve laid down a coat of Tamiya LP-11 Silver first, and then the SM 200 series metallics over that and the problem seems to have gone away.
When Boeing delivered their 720s to Northwest, they polished the fuselage skins with a rotary buffer and as a result the fuselage skin was very shiny with surprisingly little variation between sections of sheet metal.
Since i’m doing a 1968-vintage plane, my plan is to carefully wet sand the finish to knock down the shine a bit. As to weathering, i haven’t figured out everything yet, but my first move will be to dirty up the belly like i did with the DC-8…
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I took this picture on an American Airlines flight in 1967. Shows the wing pretty well.
[caption id="attachment_249977" align="alignnone" width="800"]
American Airlines Astrojet[/caption]
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OK, i think the heaviest of the heavy lifting is done.
There are a couple of small glitches to fix before i apply a thin layer of clear coat. The Super Fine Silver and Duralumin lifted in a few places near the wing fillet, and removing the Montex windshield masks resulted in more collateral damage than one would think… so some re-work around the windshield frames is coming.
Couple things i’ve learned, since the DC-8:
1: The use of primer.
You can apply the Super Metallics directly to the plastic and they will stick to the plastic….mostly, but they will lift up here and there, especially if you are laying on a piece of flexible tape and you’re trying to coax it around things like the wing root fairings. It seems like the adhesive in the tape wipes the paint away from the surface, as if you were cleaning down a countertop.
However, if you lay down a layer of Tamiya LP-11 first, these problems seem to go away.
2: The Super Metallics are semi translucent, and you really need to check the surface to make sure you got solid, opaque coverage. In some lighting conditions it can look fine, but in others you can see thin spots and the colour of the underlying plastic, showing through.
Roden provides absolutely zero guidance for masking the curved wing root fairing, so i had to go from photographs and just eyeball it….
The underside of the Boeing 720 is a mysterious place, which remains largely unexplored…
My key reference was *this* photo…
Most of the fuselage was done using Super Duralumin; only one section forward of the wing was done with Super Fine Silver.
Everything else is Tamiya LP-11, though a couple hatches around the nose were masked and painted with Tamiya LP-38.
Time to walk away from the bench and ponder my next move. I’m thinking about drilling out some surge bleed valve vents and oil breathers on the engine nacelles…
Oh- i could put on on the red blinky things. That’s easy enough.
But right now, i could use a drink.
More to come…
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I remember this one.
Gosh it sure looks lovely. I might use it to pattern my weathering.
Thanks for sharing!
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OK, so then the upper fuselage split apart.
Suffice to say i was not happy about this, and it resulted in some rather colourful language.
I managed to get the damage repaired-ish, while limiting to scope enough to preclude an entire repaint of the upper fuselage.
The paint match isn’t perfect, but i’ll just rationalize it by saying it was a spot repair conducted during a periodic inspection. Northwest 720s got rather dirty, anyway.
Perhaps not clearly seen in these photos, but i carefully wet sanded the wings and lower fuselage with 8000 and 10000 God Hand sanding blocks in order to reduce the brilliance of the duralumin somewhat.
I applied the white NORTHWEST decal to the tail, from the Flying Colors sheet…
The decal itself went on fine and responded nicely to Micro Sol and Solvaset.
And then a funny thing happened…
It looks like the right font, it smells like the right font and it tastes like the right font…
But it’s not the right font. It’s close, but the correct font is actually more along the lines of the white NORTHWEST on the DC-8. Differences being in the letters “O”, “R”, and the “S”.
Now, the 720Bs predated the 707s entry into service, so maybe a change crept in there somewhere. However, it doesn’t seem to have changed on the 720 when the scheme was revised in 1968.
Up next is repair work to the white windshield frames and then decaling can pick up the pace.
More to come…
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Thanks for the updates, especially with fixing the issues you’ve run into. It’s heartening to see I’m not the only one who has things crop up, though most of mine are self-inflicted….
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Dave, the model is absolutely fantastic! If you hadn’t told me about the “wrong” font on the vertical stab I wouldn’t have even noticed. Now I’ll have to look at photos of Northwest Orient 720s and compare them to post-1968 707-351Cs!
I was on a trip back to the States last week and following your reports of the final wing painting, and the wing/fuselage fairing and your colorations. Everything looks like it ought to. While in Denver I stopped at Colpar’s Hobby Store. They had a “buy one, get one 50% off” sale on their model kits last weekend so I picked up some X-Scale kits: the DC-8-53, DC-8-61, the Electra II and the ATR-42. I was hoping to find a Roden 707-320B/C on the shelf, but it’s too early probably.
It appears you’re rounding the final turn — just the landing gear and antennae to go! It’s been a neat journey, and I appreciate you bringing us along for the ride.
Cheers!
Tom
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Tom, i’ll post an update with photos soon.
I’m a fan of the X-Scale DC-8 kits. Some some things i’d do differently the next time around but definitely a better level of kit than this Roden 720B. I have an Electra nearly ready for wing-fuselage mate. Just need to restore some missing detail on the engine nacelles.
The windshield frames have been giving me a lot of grief and i feel like every time i go back and try to make things better, they get worse. I’m calling the windwhild frames “done” and i’m moving on… though i’m not happy with them.
I really wanted to give the whole clear cockpit windows thing a chance, and i think the fault lies more in the masks, or operator error.
Presently in the middle of applying cabin windows to the left side….
-d-
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More progress…
Got the windows on the left side. The AA windows worked, though multiple iterations of Solvaset were required in some places, mostly the back half of the fuselage.
Some sheet metal repair in a couple places before i begin decaling the right hand side. A few more decals to add here but the tough ones are done.
Watch this space…
-d-
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The 720B is on hold while i wait for new windscreen masks from Vintage Flyer.
I was never truly happy with how the windshield frames turned out. I’ve carefully masked off around them and sanded most of the paint down to bare plastic.
In the mean time i’ve been working on this….
..which will probably morph into a build thread at some point.
-d-
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