Another Alclad head-scratcher in the paint room

The first of two boxes of new kits arrived on Saturday. This is the one from Sprue Bros, which contained an Airfix BAe Hawk (destined for 2009 display colors) and a deep discount Cyberhobby Sea Vixen. My experience with their Meteor was very satisfactory, but I was not terribly interested in paying $45 for it. So when it appeared at a 50% discount, I decided things weren’t going to get any better than that. I did a bunch of Cold War Brit aircraft in 2011, so this will be a belated part of that series. Anyone interested in the MPM boxing of the Sea Vixen, going cheap?

I also got into the paint room this weekend. Another head-scratcher of a day concerning a current bottling of Alclad paint. This concerned a B-47 where I had an occasion to relive my childhood model-building days by putting a nice glue fingerprint on the surface of an almost finished model. After making several creative suggestions on what it could do to itself, I proceeded to mask a reasonable sized section off and primed it with Alclad primer. Then I buffed it down to get a smooth surface and shot it with Magnesium.

A bit of history: I love Alclad paint, but have been having problems with some recent purchases. It does not seem to want to cover anymore. Have they decreased the amount of pigment in the paint jars? Anway, I shot half a bottle of Magnesium on this patch (maybe 6” x 1”) and it still didn’t cover, except in patchy spots. I would spray it on the primed portion and it would literally just soak up like a sponge and return to grey. I am really quite mystified by all this.

But I am thoroughly tired of this B-47. It may be a bit of wasted effort to have laboriously sanded down all those raised lines and rivets. But I am done fiddling with it. I will get the decals on it, declare victory, and find it a dark spot in one of the cabinets. Maybe if someone (Trumpeter?) gets around to doing a modern B-47 I will do another one and consign this one to the landfill. But I am well and truly finished trying to get this up to minimum standards; just the law of diminishing returns in action. Didn’t help the mojo drought much either.

However, finishing major construction on the two P-47s and the Spit PR19 did. Over the course of this coming week I’ll try to get cockpit construction on the two Hawks in gear and do some more painting.