This was an ICM kit, so there are a few pieces that make you wonder if anyone ever tried to put this together before selling it. The landing gear and clear pieces, especially. The windscreen was OK, but the sliding canopy is far too tall to pose closed and too narrow to fit properly slid back. I have seen pictures of this aircraft with the sliding canopy removed, but I was counting on the canopy to hide the side rear "windows" which didn't fit right no matter how much I shaved and played with them. I may get ambitious and get rid of the canopy, pull the windows off and try and make custom replacements.

I mainly did this to try the hairspray technique. Black/green camo, gloss coat, decals, gloss, then hairspray, then white acrylic over top. You can then use a wet brush to rub off the white (the water loosens the hairspray underneath and only works with acrylic). For larger areas that needed white gone completely, I used Q-tips dipped in alcohol.

I waited for three days to put the flat coat over top because my test piece had the white sort of eaten away by the flat when I put it on right away.. It worked ok but one wing did seem to be affected - it just made it look patchy, which was OK.

I also tried my first oil wash (I had always used watercolors before which...work, but not quite as well). I used pastels for exhaust staining and to make the resin replacement exhausts look rusty.

I was able to tighten up the radio wires with a hair drier after this photo was taken.

very nice work,the hair sprey did the job

Good Save. ICM and a few other kits makers are dogs to put together.

There really are a lot of things that go into designing a good model kit. I had a pricey, larger scale Ju-87 model few years back (brand name is a cloudy memory, so I don't want to name names--though I'm pretty sure it was British), and all the pieces were well formed and everything looked good, fit well, except the bits weren't numbered sequentially on the tree, nor were they grouped remotely per the instruction steps or spatially or anything else I could think of, and so it eventually drove me mad spending a half-hour before each step just finding the right parts and I gave up. I think that's the only model kit I've never at least done a half-assed job of finishing.

I had asked for Zvezda's La-5FN on a birthday list and somehow the wires got crossed and my girlfriend ended up sending to the Ukraine for an La-5(no FN) by South Front (hadn't heard of them before - or since). Nothing fit right, everything was a struggle. But I have to admit, I learned a lot while making it. And at the time, I don't think there was a 1/48 La-5 on the market so I had something unique (I think now Zvezda makes one of those too).

Weirdly, a big part of my growth as a modeler has come from disasters. At first it seems like all is lost but then one day you sit down and say "Well, let me see if I can fix this" and before long, you're past the problem and the next time it comes up it doesn't seem like such a catastrophe.

However, I put together Tamiya's Bf-109E right before this LaGG-3 and it IS sometimes nice to have a "just-falls-together" project!

Great job the outcome and final result looks stunning. I guess its total Irony that the issues you had where not so far of, if not, identical with its real life counterpart!

Nice job! It's good when a kit tests you sometimes. You learn things that help you make the 'shake-the-box-and-a-model-falls-out' projects better or different to anyone else's.

Looking good.


Wheels