With the main cabin completed on the Pavehawk, I got to work on assembling the fuselage halves and moving onto more advanced stages of construction. While I had thought that I had gotten through the majority of the construction phase, I soon learned that I still had quite a bit of work cut out for me.
The main reason for this was my decision to completely re-rivet the model to accurately depict the HH-60’s raised rivets. my initial plan was to just apply the rivets directly over top the recessed holes, however I quickly found out that this solution wouldn’t work for two reasons. The first was that although close, the Qunita rivets I’m using don’t have the exact same spacing as seen in the molded detail. This would mean that after a number of rivets, they would no longer be covering over the molded details. The second was that in using decal setting solution to get the rivets to adhere to the surface, I found that the film would sink too far into the rivet holes and would be too noticeable when paint was applied.
All of that was a long winded way of saying that I was going to have to putty over top the rivet holes before applying the decals.
This was something that I had desperately wanted to avoid. Other than the fact that this was going to take forever, the added complexity of cleaning the putty up had the possibility of obscuring detail.
I opted for Vallejo’s acrylic putty which has quickly become one of my favourites to work with. While it doesn’t have a good surface finish or sand easily, this putty’s greatest strength is that it is acrylic and dissolves in water. This was suitable for this application because it meant that I could apply it to the rivets, let it dry for 30 seconds, and then wipe away the excess with a wet cotton bud, leaving only putty in the rivets.
This approach made puttying over the rivets a viable strategy and while it was still time intensive, it was now an approach that was doable. I was able to completely re-rivet the fuselage in around two weeks, taking one week to putty the model, and the other to apply the decals. While there was still some left to apply, the majority were on the fuselage which was where the bulk of the work was.
Needing a break from endless riveting, I turned my attention to another phase of the build, the engine and gearbox assembly. This assembly is applied to the top of the fuselage and is where the rotor head sits. I had thought that this would be something that I could sort out in a night or two however I found that this was a somewhat complex process and required about a week of work to ensure that the fit was correct and all the necessary parts must be painted before installation. This assembly also required the construction of the main rotor head, of which I used the Reskit part.
At this stage I also got to work on the gear assemblies and refuelling boom. These were thankfully straightforward, if a bit fiddly, assemblies. Reference photos indicated the top of the cabin underneath the gearbox was painted in a yellow green colour which I applied before adding the gearbox. This will practically never be seen however I felt that the detail was needed here.
I then moved on to getting started with masking. Tidy masking work was going to be crucial considering how many holes were present in the fuselage and the big piece of clear styrene up front. Early on I decided that I would be using the kit doors as masks as I felt that they would give the best chance for a seal as opposed to taping off the openings. I decided to use masking fluid to seal off the edges, running a qtip along the openings allowed the masking fluid to perfectly seal these parts in place. I was a bit suprised with how well this approach worked.
With the majority of the construction and masking phase completed, I could finally move on to painting and weathering the model.
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