Hello all,
hope it is not too late to join the 2009 Group Build.
I have started a while ago, back in March already, but I am pretty slow in progress. Partly because I'm extremely lazy, partly because I am trying to correct some major Studio27 kit's drawbacks and mistakes.
The "6" is in 2006 year when the car raced, also Kimi's 6th year in F1, and Juan Pablo leaving F1 after 6 years...
I am working on two cars, the orange test version and race chrome car.
Starting the kit I realised that side "chimneys" made from white metal are useless for me, as to drill a hole inside to make it look more realistic is just impossible. Also the shape looked a bit weird to me, so I decided to scratchbuild them using copper sheet. Result is quite nice and then it was also possible to achieve having chimneys different on each car.
Drilling excessive resin from everywhere it should not be took quite a while but was not that tough job, here you see one car already drilled, another still in original shape.
Also the side winglets were semi-scratchbuilt using the copper sheet, as the originals were one piece WM, practically useless... Unfortunately I do not have a photo yet of the winglets
Scratchbuilding those parts was extremely tough for me, achieving same shape on the both sides of the car is important as parts are visible and made the job very hard.
Test car was slightly different, here you see preparations for a new shape of the engine cover. Studio27 did not care too much about the differences of test-race cars and just changed the decals...
Here you see both cars prepared, with side chimneys already in place (again a tough job to shape them to get in-line with the car's sides.
Still some puttying and sanding to be done.
Rear wing endplates - another bad job by kit producer, the upper openings in endplates were not through the plate and thus I decided to scratchbuild again using copper sheet, thicker this time (0.3mm). Will look better after puttying and sanding. Also the adjusting holes for wing drag are made, Studio27 naver makes them on kits.
And this is where I am at the moment, started to spray colour paint, unfortunately my orange paint dried out after spraying just one cover, probably failed to close it properly. Thus I decided to go for a race car, here you see both cars, orange with one cover of paint only, the race car with black base paint.
And this is the chrome test paint on part of the rear wing. Looks much better in reality, photo makes it look not that good. I quite satisfied with this test paint, hope the final lacquer will not ruin it. I did a test chrome before and the final clear cote made it look like a aluminum rather than chrome... A mistake was probably spraying the clear over chrome too fast. Found out a user guide on Zero paint page then, explaining that you should leave chrome at least for 48 hours before clear coating it. Not sure why they don't write it on the paint glass
Comments and advices welcome!
Dalin
