This project cost me my modelling sanity for over 2 years now. Some of this I can attribute to this being a very minimal kit (detail is about what you would get with a basic vac-form), and the rest to my letting things get out of control. Most of my modelling friends know I refer to this monster as the ``Clunk From Hell'' but nonetheless, I'm proud of what it has achieved...

Finally, on Easter Sunday, 1997, the beast made the transition from the basement (modelling room) to the model cabinet. It's done!!! I still can't believe it. In the end it turned out better than I had expected, much to my pleasure.

I should probably point out that when I started this, it was going to be a quickie kit that I didn't care too much about doing a great job on, but one I could test out doing natural metal finishes with. And so the snowball started rolling ... so on with the saga!

This is one of HobbyCraft's earlier kits. Their more recent offerings have become VERY nice and are at a quality well beyond their usually modest price. The same cannot be said of either of their CF-100 kits in 1/48.

The kit is generally accurate in outline, though I haven't bothered to measure it to see how accurate it is in size. Frankly, I don't particularly care -- it's close enough. The exceptions that do come to mind are:

• The engine nacelles do tend to slope upwards from the intakes more than appropriate - real thing was much `straighter.' These would involve an inordinate amount of work to fix, and really aren't that big a deal, so I've ignored this.

• The kit fuselage is a D shape, with the flattish part on the bottom, unlike the real thing which was circular. I just wasn't up to trying to rework this -- there 'might' have been enough plastic there to get away with it, then again, there might not, and it doesn't detract from the finished results noticeably.

• The other problems have to do with errors in the panel trenches (yes, unlike most models with recessed lines, these are outright trenches, but that's not an issue to my mind). After all the priming and filling and painting, they aren't THAT bad anymore.

  The spoilers, depicted on the wings by scribed trenches, are in three sections with two `attachment' points between them. HobbyCraft have elected to leave out one of the `teeth' from each section. The ideal solution would be to fill the lines and rescribe, but I felt that was way beyond my talents to make it look decent. Besides, if you don't sit there and count them, you aren't going to know.

  The other glaring problem in the panels, was that the landing light was shown under both wings, not just one. This was a case of fill the other one.

Aside from those problems, I would be being unduly charitable if I said the kit fitted together. I've enjoyed the pleasure of using at least 4 different kinds of putty on this critter, and in LARGE quantities. Those of you who took out stock in Milliput before I started are no doubt very wealthy now. For the rest of you -- I still have the Mk. IV kit waiting to be done -- I'll let you know before I start it.

Finally, it's time to build something -- NOT!

The cockpit, and panels are generally accurate in shape. That's where it ends. This is the first kit where I've actually sanded off all the detail on the instrument panels and scratchbuilt it. I also rebuilt most of the cockpit details:

• The Instrument panels were rebuilt using photoetched brass bezels and switchboxes from Reheat.

  I learned a great way to attach these that beats using superglue. Use clear gloss varnish. I used Xtracolour, but I don't see why the magic elixir (a.k.a. Future/Klear) wouldn't work well too. This gives you more time to position the parts, is easier to put on (with a small paintbrush) and is safer to work with.

  The instrument faces also came from various Reheat instrument decal sheets.

  The actual switchpanel for the Nav, and many other toggle switches throughout, were made by drilling out holes for each switch and glueing in a piece of fishing line, which I later trimmed to the right length and drybrushed to the right colours.

  The radar scope for the pilot was scratchbuilt out of milliput, with a piece of plastic tube on the end. The nub on the instrument panel was too wrong, even for me. The nav's version was mostly made from a larger tube with some milliput. Humbrol Clearfix in the ends after some appropriately CRTish green paint made them look the part.

  Many other details were scratchbuilt out of plastic strip and sheet, such as the Nav's control for aiming the radar.

• I used a set of Aeroclub white-metal Martin Baker Mk 3 seats, instead of the kit supplied seats. The kits seats aren't TOO bad, if you ignore the headrest, but the Aeroclub ones looked the part much better. Besides, they sure help out when it comes to adding nose weight.

  In general, the seat cushions were dark grey leather, with a dark green fabric harness covering much of the seat back cushion. The seats themselves were flat black, but sported many gloss black and silver identification panels.

  The ejection handles had to be scratchbuilt (these are a dull red colour in most cases, but some pictures show a yellow and black striped firing handle, so check your refs. Some were the usual D shape, while others had a downward pointed V shape to them.

  Also, I added oxygen and G-suit hoses using pieces of old guitar strings. These being done in a dark grey.

  Again, Reheat came to my rescue with Photoetch belt buckles and webbing material for the seats.

• Now the first real problem bit me. The Aeroclub seats are MUCH deeper (taller) than the kit seats, so I had to cut the bottom out of the cockpit tub, and scratchbuild a new bottom and interior sides.

  The new sides were all scribed to match pictures in my references, and the control column, instrument panel, etc, were all extended to reach the new floor.

  Various levers and side detail were added at this stage, but the seats were kept back to be added later.

  The other problem related to all of this didn't appear until later -- the hump for the nosewheel bay was now too high to allow clearance by the new lowered cockpit floor. Judicious use of files managed to thin the plastic enough to just barely let things fit (but don't shine a light at the nosewheel bay, or you'll see right though the wafer of plastic I left! ;-}

• Next item was to tackle the various coamings, etc. The pilot gets off easy in the Mk.V -- there's no gunsight (which has to be scratchbuilt in the Mk.IV, as HC neglected to put ANYTHING there). The Nav's area, though got an extensive going over.

  • First, the frame between the seats was narrowed back to provide more room for the pilot's seat, and to make things more accurate.

  • Next, the framework in front of the Nav, was thinned down, and had lightening holes drilled into it.

  • Finally, the dome for the `eject' warning, etc. was cut off (being nothing more than a round flat hump), and a new one fashioned out of a piece of plastic rod.

• After all this work, it would have been a shame to leave the cockpit closed, so I decided to open it. I cut open the canopy from the main windscreen, but then I had to cut the rear part of the sliding canopy free from the back of the cockpit area of the fuselage top, and glued it onto the back of the canopy.

  All this meant that I had to do some real work to get the cockpit tub to fit, without holes showing. Lots of fun!

  With the canopy now separate, it was clear it would never fit in the open position (being a scale 15 cm or so thick!). With help from Scott Hemsley, a new canopy was vac-formed over the old one, which worked out just about perfect, when you consider it has to reach further down along the outside of the cockpit sills.

  Before actually adding it, it does need the rails added to the bottom from plastic strip, and along the inside edge on each side is a handle that needs to be added from thin wire.

  The Nav's windscreen also needs to be vac-formed, but as this defied the usual vac-forming methods without problems, I'm going to try to stretch form it with some very softened plastic.

  Next on the list was another major omission by HobbyCraft -- the canopy rails that stretch back from each side of the cockpit, along the fuselage had to be scratchbuilt from thin plastic strip. I was actually amazed at how well these turned out -- no damage to the fuselage surface when I glued them on with liquid cement or anything. Luck -- utter blind luck!

• Finally, everything was looking good, so it was time to paint. After trying many different combinations, to get an almost black but something that would show real black for the instrument bezels, etc., I opted for a very odd source. I used German RLM-66 Schwartz-Grau (black-grey), which worked out quite nicely. It allows the detail to be seen, while still looking like a scale black or dark grey.

• Finishing touches to the cockpit area include adding the compass along the pilot's windscreen frame, and running some wires from it down into the cockpit. The compass was made using a Reheat photoetch bezel, and a thin slice from a plastic rod, while fishing line formed the cable.

The extended wingtips of the Mk.V, designed to increase it's altitude, were prone to breaking off at high-G. I can relate to this all too well -- not exactly breaking off, but they way they were molded, with both top and bottom of the extension, attached to the top wing half, makes for a gap that just will not fill, and insists on cracking at the slightest provocation. I used at least 3 kinds of putty/glue combinations on these and in the end I just decided to live in fear of them.

The wings also had a very bad droop down towards the ends, instead of being completely flat as they should be. Copious amounts of scalding water and bending finally got them to behave for the most part.

One smart thing I did was with the pitot tube. I KNEW it wouldn't survive being attached, so I drilled it out and drilled out the wing too, inserting a nice strong pin into it. I can practically lift the clunk (without the seats) by the pitot now! It's even survived being dropped.

At this point, I started to really lose control. It was pointed out to me, and rightly so, that no ground-dwelling Clunk EVER has it's flaps raised into flying position. So.... Out comes the razor saw and away we go...

• First, the flaps come off the wings. These, at least, are pretty easy.

  Once off and remounted properly drooped, I took the liberty of scratchbuilding the actuator mechanism, and putting some thin plastic rod into the gaps, which with copious quantities of liquid cement, resulted in just the right effect for the hing area.

  Of curse, the lightening holes (of decreasing size) had to be drilled into the sides of the fuselage that the flaps now exposed.

• Still with trusty razor saw in hand, I tackled the infamous belly flap!

  This actually scribed and cut out pretty nicely, but lead to a whole ratsnest of work:

  • The hole in the fuselage had to be boxed off, and any gaps closed, after the edges were thinned to scale thickness. I also added some framing to the interior.

  • Next, the belly flap itself needed work -- It was thinned along the edges to give the impression of scale thickness, followed by the curved areas getting small half-moon shaped pieces of plastic, inset back from the edges added. A thin flat piece of plastic sheet, to represent the top of the flap, was then added.

  • Next, lightening holes had to be drilled in the ends of the half-moon pieces.

  • Finally actuator arms had to be made from plastic rod, and appropriate holes/slots made in both the top of the flap, and the boxed off area of the fuselage it came out of.

  • The whole belly flap became a very fragile piece to sand as work progressed, actually cracking in two along one of the nacelle lines at one point, due to all the work to make it near scale thickness. That said, the results were worth it.

• Next, we move on to the tail. After much scribing, the rudder pieces actually snapped out very nicely, including the curved part at the top of the top rudder. Very little cleanup was needed.

• The same could not be said of the elevators. After much work scribing and sawing with the tip of the razor saw blade, I came to the unfortunate realization that the panel lines did not line up on the top and bottom of the elevators! Oops! Gee thanks, HobbyCraft.

  Picking the one that looked most correct, I cut through and removed the elevators. The two actuators needed to be cut from each elevator part, and new ones built from laminated plastic card (I didn't have any thick enough. The half-cut through slice that was not used had to be filled with milliput and sanded.

And for those picky so-and-so's out there, yes, I did lean the control column forward slightly, but I didn't bother touching the rudder pedals -- you can't see them anyway, even with an anal-powered-flashlight! ;-)

Now that we've managed to cut everything off the beast, it's time to start putting things together.

The fit of the top/bottom fuselage halves was pretty good, except for along one side. I had to cut the alignment pins off, as they were pushing it well out of true, then I superglued that area throughly first, while bending it into position. Once that dried, the rest went quite smoothly.

At this point I discovered that my attempts to make the exhausts a little closer to scale thin, rather than looking like concrete sewer pipes causes a ``V'' shape at each side where the fuselage joins were. By this point I was disgusted with trying to fix that, so out came the razor saw, and off came the exhausts. I used a couple of slices of 1/2" brass tube (which was just about perfect in size to replace them - MUCH better!

On goes the tail part of the fuselage. This is where the fit problems are REALLY obvious -- the top part fits nicely, but there is a massive step at the bottom, and the front part slopes up to the join, while the back part slops down from it. Can YOU say Milliput!?!? In the end it took about 6 rounds before I got it to where I could tolerate the joint, and I'm decidedly NOT picky.

With that headache out of the way, it was time to somehow jam the @#$%ing stabilizer into the slot in the tail. It does NOT fit. The only way mine went in there (after much work) was because I cut out the rudder which left the tail with a lot more give. Once in, it was glued in place for all time! Well, maybe not. After a visit to the Trenton Airshow (in case I needed something to work on), the whole top of the tail broke off. Just as well, too -- it was sort of lop sided. The fixed version came out much better.

Along about this time I realized that the tail end of the fuselage was a light with a clear cover, not just solid. So, zip, out came the razor saw, and zip, off it came. I built the two bulbs (aligned vertically) with little balls of milliput, stuck in place. The cover is going to come from a hobby `eye' (I got a package of about 100 for next to nothing), with the back cut off -- perfect clear plastic dome.

The airscoop that goes along the top starboard side, was reshaped (it was far from round) and drilled out, then glued carefully in place. Do this right the first time, with a gap filling superglue -- you DON'T want to try and fill in around the joint.

Next, the intakes were added, along with several kilos of putty to make them almost fit. In my case, I decided things looked a bit bare, so I opted to add the de-icing spray arms to the intake bullet out of thin plastic strip. If you do this (check your refs, if possible to see if they were used), take note that one arm is slightly longer than the other.

Painting note: while I didn't paint the intakes at quite this point, you probably should/can? While at the Hobby Show in Malton (home of Avro) I had the pleasure of talking with a gentleman who had worked for Orenda, and he pointed out to me that the tips of the intake blades should be dark compared to the more inner sections. I regret I didn't catch his name, but I'm grateful for the tip.

By now we have something that's starting to look like a CF-100, and a scary sight it is!

With the basic plane together, now it's time to start preparing it for a natural metal finish -- the bane of modellers everywhere.

The entire plane was wet sanded throughly, working up to 1200 grit sandpaper, followed by a good going over with polishing compound, until it almost gleamed. I loath sanding, and this was just the beginning...

With all the kilos of putty on it, there was no choice about putting the silver finish straight onto the plastic as is best to do (I was going to use SNJ Spray Metal) -- it had to be primed or the putty would just absorb the SNJ. Besides, I needed to check the seams and sanding anyway. So... the whole thing got a through coat of Xtracolour gloss white -- the only gloss white I've ever found that will cover worth a @#$%.

Unfortunately, after all the priming and resanding problem areas, it seems I got my mixture wrong, or my airbrush didn't like me. The whole thing wound up with a nice case of orange-peel. So out with the sandpaper and away we go. Months later, and after using a set of MicroMesh that car modellers use to polish paint surfaces, it's finally smooth, and ready for the real paint. Just the sight of sandpaper leaves me queasy now...

You can't imagine my relief the day the SNJ went on! After months of staring at that sickly white monster, things were REALLY moving forward, at last. After waiting the requisite amount of time, I polished individual panels, some with the metal powder, some without. The results, in the end, were quite nice, and once I put a grey wash into the panel trenches and get all the black de-icer boots painted, I'm sure it will look the picture of a CF-100! There was just enough dull aluminum effect to the outcome to look quite realistic. I can see light at the end of the tunnel at last!

The landing gear, as come out of the box, bear little resemblance to the real thing. This, combined with the gear bays being devoid of ANY detail almost makes you want to mount the thing in flight (say, why didn't I think of that sooner -- I wouldn't have had to cut loose the flaps!). In any case, I finally set about trying to make it look a `bit' more like it should.

First, the nose gear:

• The supposed mounting points for the wheels were far too short for them to attach to, so this part was cut out and a piece of plastic rod glued on and blended in. At least now the wheels won't have to float in the air beside it.

• Next, the entire retraction bar was heavily reworked with scratchbuilt details (that's what I get for visiting the real thing out at Trenton on a nice day -- too many undercarriage pictures.

• Moving now to the actual bay, details were added for structural members and a thin slice of plastic rod for a gauge that's visible (a reheat instrument dial was added for appearance.

• Also added were the brake cables, out of fishing line. Holes were drilled into the nose gear leg at the appropriate points to allow them to be attached later.

• Finally the thing was painted in various metallic colours, including steel (MM Metalizer), oily steel (Xtracolour), chrome (MM), etc. This livened things up and kept things looking realistic.

Heading onwards to the main gear, much the same was done there:

• First, the retraction struts were rebuilt to be more than the plastic sticks they were (no detail at all -- just plastic rods are all you get). This was done by first attaching them to the main lets in the exact position needed (letting the glue dry while stuck in their appropriate holes in the model). From this the flat/box structure at the point they connect to the main legs was built up, and the retraction struts scraped to an appropriate non-circular cross section.

• With the upper end in place, the lower end was tackled next. The oleos were cut off and replaced by ones made of thin plastic card. These were attached in the compressed position, rather than the open orientation of the kit originals.

• Holes were again drilled and brake lines added, making things look much closer to my photos.

• Finally, some structural bits and pieces were added to the main gear bay. The main bay is better than the nose bay, by virtue of its shape, but it still looks barren. A good wash and drybrushing should bring this out.

Last, but not least, with the gear, the wheels get a going over:

• My first attempt to hand paint the wheels worked out as usual -- badly, so they got sprayed an overall coat of Xtracolour Tyre Black. Once fully coated (I swear this stuff should be listed as a transparent colour), and dried, they got a coat of Testors Dullcoat.

• Using a circle template, I'm going to paint the various hubs, likely with MM Metalizer Steel. Following this, I'll put a dark wash into the hollows in the hub to bring them out.

• I still have to do something to flatten the wheels a bit, but because the circle template usually doesn't fit when you do that, I'm going to paint the hubs first.

• Finally a good drybrushing of lighter grey along the running surface, and some anti-slip markers should finish them up nicely.

As mentioned above, I used SNJ Spray Metal for the overall natural metal finish. I heartily recommend SNJ -- it gives a great metal finish and when dried, it doesn't just rub right off, and the effects one can get using the metal powder are amazing (try rubbing the powder into an almost hardened gloss white finish for an amazing chrome finish).

Aside from the SNJ, there was a lot of detail painting to do. Almost all of it, was in flat black for the deicer boots, for which MM was used. Some of this was hand painted, due to the awkwardness of getting masks into place, but the rest was sprayed on.

For masking over the natural metal, I used some Post-it-Note tape. This looks like a wide role of tape, about 2cm wide, that you can cut to whatever length you want -- ideal for this situation, and lets the masks be used a number of times in different areas.

For some of the spots along the deicer boots that need to be silver, I will probably add small pieces of baremetal foil, or silver painted decal sheet. This being far easier than trying to mask these off separately.

For the wheel bays, and the insides of the covers, I used various greys with darker washes to pick out the details (such as they were). In some cases, extra details were made by scribing or scraping into the wheel covers.

The Clunk Mk.V is not exactly a colourful subject -- any real colour on it comes from the decals (see below). Aside from the silver and black, there's really not much else to break the monotony.

The kit decals are abysmal. The colours bled so that the edges of the roundels are not at all clean, and the rest of the decals have all the definition of the kit parts.

Fortunately, Arrow Graphics Decals make some great sheets for CF-100s and one of these was acquired to make the kit worthwhile. More on these when I get that far. I used sheet D-5-48, which represents CF-100 Mk.V, #18748, of 410 ``Cougar'' squadron, from summer 1959.

Unfortunately, the Arrow Graphics Decals did their very best to shatter into a million pieces on me. Thanks to Dave Askett for having forewarned me about this tendency, I was able to rescue the test decal and give the others a good coat of varnish. This held them together nicely, but other problems were waiting in the wings.

Next on the list of headaches, was the fact that the decals for shaped areas (the rudders, for example), don't fit. At least they were too big, and not too small, but between the sizes being off, and the fact that they didn't want to conform to any curves at all, made for a challenge indeed.

Once the bulk of the building, painting and decaling was done, there were a whole slew of final touches that needed doing:

• The landing gear doors got a lot of working over. The front-most door was the easiest. A small addition to the nose gear leg to hold it and act as the actuator, and it was ready to go on.

• The rear nose-gear door, got a scratchbuilt actuator added to it, and the requisite black and yellow stripes were added to it.

• The outer main-gear doors had actuators added to the gear legs. My first attempt at this proved to be too short -- the actuators didn't reach the doors when the wheels were in place, so an extension was added, which, in the end, looked more accurate, anyhow.

• Finally, the inner main-gear doors were tackled. These were a major pain due to the fiddley actuators, and the curved hooks that poked out from them. The actuators were made up of thin plastic cylinder stock, while the curved hooks were made by cutting very thin slices of plastic tube, then cutting them in half. The final result was far better than I imagined.

• The wheels themselves proved to be a major pain in the posterior! I hate doing wheels to begin with (the hubs just do not come out right for me), and these were the worst I've ever dealt with. The actual hubs molded into the plastic were nothing more than the inner part of the actual hub. The metal hub extends well out along what HobbyCraft would have you treat as tire. After several rounds of back and forth with the circle template, which always seemed to end up off center, I found myself wondering if the wheels were even round. Finally, enough repetitions lead to results I could accept.

  Then, at the last moment, as I was making the last couple of touch ups before drybrushing them, near disaster struck! One of the wheels leaped off of the tray it was on, and did a perfect 10 point dive into the open bottle of black paint! After moments of mad panic, sanity prevailed and I dug it out. Because I was trying to hurry (nah, that couldn't have been one of the reasons this happened...) for almost the first time, I had opted to use acrylic paint for this touchup. The all black wheel got quickly dunked into the container of water still sitting around from when I did the decals and off came all the fresh black paint. All I lost was a couple of minutes of touchup work! PHEW!!!!

• Finally, and I really mean finally, the small belly antenna was added, the final bits of dark wash in the panel lines were touched up, and the canopy glued in place, and it was over!!!

After going through all the effort to build this kit, I figured it deserved a nice base to live on. After looking around at the wood scraps I had, I realized I didn't have anything big enough, or decent enough to do it. Around this time, my father, who lives on the East Coast, acquired himself a new router and was looking for excuses to use it -- better timing I couldn't have asked for. A nice base, made to order, arrived in amazingly short time, already varnished and looking great. My sincere thanks to my father for this.

To make it look a bit more the part, I cut some sheets of cheap 600 grit sandpaper to fit at an angle, and glued them face up on the base to form a piece of tarmac.

The exposed wood on the base was then masked off, and the tarmac sprayed with floquil concrete. The results looked amazingly like, well, concrete. After then running a fine black marker down the cracks between the sandpaper sheets, and liberally splattering the whole thing with various shades of brown and black wash to represent, well, splatters, it was time to strip off the masking.

The final touch was to add an RCAF flag in the corner, and a small nameplate. Voila, a perfect home for a perfect (?!?!) kit.

Just in case all the things listed above scare you off, keep in mind that well into this project (and well after it had clearly gotten out of control), I went out and got myself the HobbyCraft CF-100 Mk.IV kit (I actually ordered it from my favorite hobby shop -- NorthStar). So, it didn't scare me off of doing another one someday (but not for awhile...).

The one thing I did make sure of, though was that the decals ``I'' got for the Mk.IV, were for a camouflaged version -- one natural metal clunk is more than enough.

Of course, when we presented one of these kits to Gavin following his wedding recently, I made very certain it contained the decals for the natural metal Mk.IV -- we can't very well have him getting off easy, now can we?

Looking at the kit itself, it is identical to the Mk.V kit with only a couple of exceptions:

• The gun pack is included.
• The wings are the proper Mk.IV wings without the Mk.V extensions.
• The stabilizer is the earlier, narrower version.

Aside from this, it has all the failings of the Mk.V kit, and a few more items that need to be noted:

• As I alluded to far above, the Mk.V has no gunsight (appropriate as it has no guns). The Mk.IV DOES have a gunsight, but there isn't even a trace of it in the kit. This will involve some innovative scratchbuilding as the gunsight is a complex piece of equipment, and sticks well up where it CAN'T be missed.

• If you open the cockpit on it, check your refs -- many earlier Mk.IVs had a slightly different canopy where the rear fairing was actually part of the canopy and slid with it, rather than the canopy sliding over it. This will be a very involved job as it means cutting this out of the top fuselage and fixing the hole this leaves.

• While I'm at it, Gavin, has apparently promised to drop the gun-pack on his -- quite an involved endevour, but after doing the belly flaps, why not. The 8 machine guns are probably not too hard to find and mounting them isn't likely to be that big a chore. The ammo boxes and belts will take more work, but I'm sure he's up to it. Thin wire would probably do great to hold the gun pack suspended out of the fuselage, and a carrier for it will have to be scratchbuilt, but again, it can be done. The final difficulty, is in doing the interior -- I'm not sure what it looks like, but I'll bet it's more than a bare hole! Good luck, Gavin!

Model (or is that monster) by Brian MacNamara

(I can finally claim to be a modeller again, and not have a guilty conscience! ;-) ).