I have been widely absent for a while for different reasons, one very obviously it is summertime, with lots of swimming, mountainbiking and doing things around the house, etc. Another reason is redecorating my workspace, selling unused woodworking machines and add desparately needed display shelves to my cave.
Not so obvious, but to my own mystification, the forum situation with LSM and MSW crashed with all data and seemingly many members lost and to add to that the forming of Dry Dock Modeler out of some staff and members from Model Ship World, with some strange (not further commented here) background story. As LSM and MSW had been my solely connection to the modelling world, I have to admit, I´m somewhat irritated.

After polling, I started the Italeri 1/12 Alfa Romeo 8C Roadster, building the chassis and preparing the body, but was not in it really and stopped.

Now I´m building the Fujimi Porsche 917K in 1/24 and the start isn´t smooth either, sometimes, there is bad mojo around, but more on that later. The kit itself looks good in the box, sporting my favorite livery, the silver Martini paintjob. There is some very useful PE included in this edition.





Cheers Rob

Edited July 30Jul 30 by DocRob

Can't wait to see you work your magic on this Rob.

Tank you Carl, as you will see, it´s a path not free from obstacles. Oh, by the way, I forgot to mention, that my boot SSD died in my laptop and I couldn´t get one suitable here in two weeks, which means, I bought one in Berlin, where I go next week. I think, most of my data will be there, as I had them on a second SSD, but I have to see, what is missing.

Cheers Rob

Edited July 31Jul 31 by DocRob

The kit is build up modular for different versions, not so cool, because you have to fit in some no too greatly fit plastic parts. That tgoes for the filler above the windscreen and two airducts to the rear. The front hatch is also fitting poorly and I had to thin it´s fitting sills around. Then I removed the poorly cast fasteners, which will be substituted with PE ones.
I re scribed all panel lines, a task, where I´m really bad at. In all, i twas a lo tof prep work for the body. The fit of the main body parts, was very good luckily, confirmed by test fitting.







Cheers Rob

At least your kit is moulded in white. I have the Gulf version which is in blue.

51 minutes ago, FG2Si said:

At least your kit is moulded in white. I have the Gulf version which is in blue.

Be happy Carl, you don´t need to paint it .

Cheers Rob

Edited July 31Jul 31 by DocRob

Continuing with the build, I added the PE rear spoiler, which looked better than the plastic one. There are fasteners to add, but I mount these after painting the body color.



I primed the body with Mr. Surfacer 1500, which matte black appearance, I masked off after application for the inside of the body and the headlights.



After drying, I airbrushed the body color, Number 5´s, 917K silver. I applied three coats, using more thinner with every coat for better surface quality and after two or three hours desaster struck, there were many blemishes forming, in places, where non were visible after application. The paint and/or thinner ate through the primer and affected the plastic, bummer.





Cheers Rob

After swearing a lot, I tried to save the body and cautiously sanded away the blemishes with sanding sticks and sponges for the delicate areas of the body. Then on with the 917K silver for the second time, again thtree coats, but using less tthinner and allowing for a longer drying time between coats. I usually lett every coat dry for only ten to fiveteen minutes, so that the next coat, heavier thinned can melt into the semi dried surface of the coat before and gives a better resulting surface. As seen, this process is no twithout risks with polysyrene odies. With metal or resin, there are no problems at all.
Now the body looks like this, ready to decal.



Cheers Rob

I started with decaling, which naturally is delicate with such a kit. In places, there are four overlapping decals, which means, you need a plan. Unfortunately many of the decals don´t provide cutouts for the ducts and they often cover two of the three large body parts, so you need to cut them yourself. The decals are relatively thick and matte finished and apply reasonably well. In places, you need strong decal softener, in my case Tamiya Mark Strong, which makes the decals very brittle. I had some minor chips, which I will touch up later.
There are also some errors with the decals and the manual. For the #3 car, you need to cut out the 3´s from the framed and cut on the lower side roundel and apply it on the full circle round white base roundels.





Cheers Rob

Final pictures before traveling. Decaling is finished, but not without issues. There were errors with the decals and the manual, for example, the Porsche-Audi lettering on the orange nose should be black, but I used the white printed decal anyway. There were more unclear areas with the side door roundels, which should be complete circles without borders, instead of larger, cut on the lower side roundels with borders. The roundels themselves were the hardest to lay down properly, but with help of softener solution and a hairdryer, it went ok.
I cut all the decaled panel lines around the doors with a sharp blade and dabbed softener solution on them.
I would have appreciated, that there were some spare decals with the main colors presen for touchup, like MFH is providing.
Have a nice holiday gals and gents.



Cheers Rob

Tight! Love those colours.

Nice work Rob😀 Despite the difficulties the decals look great. Which clear coat do you plan on using?

Edited August 7Aug 7 by Belugawhaleman

Wow Rob, this looks fantastic! Great job!

FWIW, I'm in the same boat as you as to the MSW/LSM/DDM drama. It's made me not interested in posting on these forums anymore. I've just been using Scalemates to keep records of my builds.

On 8/5/2026 at 11:37 PM, Jeroen Peters said:

Tight! Love those colours

Thanks Jeroen, me too, it´s the best looking livery for the 917 to my eye.

On 8/6/2026 at 1:59 AM, Belugawhaleman said:

Nice work Rob😀 Despite the difficulties the decals look great. Which clear coat do you plan on using?

Thank you Paul, I will use Zero Paints lacquer clear coat and pray that decals, paint and plastic don´t melt under it. I first apply a "dry" misted coat for fast drying and protection and then add more and more leveling thinner for every coat to achieve a high shine finish.

Cheers Rob

On 8/8/2026 at 6:24 PM, Landlubber Mike said:

Wow Rob, this looks fantastic! Great job!

FWIW, I'm in the same boat as you as to the MSW/LSM/DDM drama. It's made me not interested in posting on these forums anymore. I've just been using Scalemates to keep records of my builds.

Good to hear from you Mike and thanks. Drama is the right word for the forum situation. I don´t know either, how I will approach this in the future. I will let myself some time and decide then. I still could not fully believe, that my whole online modeling world got flushed into the abyss so rapidly.

Cheers Rob

After a long summer absence, due to traveling, rebuilding my laptop computer, redecorating my cave and other stuff, I managed to progress a bit with the Porsche.
I finished decaling the body and clear coated everything with Zero´s laquer clear. First I sprayed an unthinned coat, let it dry for about half an hour, to seal and protect the decals. There followed three more coats, each more thinned with leveling thinner, the last was a ca. 50/50 mix.
Despite the drying time, some of the decals got slightly affected by the hot mix, but most of the blemishes could be polished away after two days of drying, using Tamiya coarse and finish polishing paste.
The kit decals are uncut in places, so I did the cutting around the doors and around the front air intakes, touching up with surprisingly fitting Brabham BT52 blue (the kit, I built before).
Around the doors, I used some panel liner to accentuate.
I was debating my decision to clear coat the body, as historical pictures seem to indicate a slightly matte finish, but I will leave it at that.



The wheels were sprayed with Tamiya´s lacquer metallic black and then decaled. It needed a lot of strong decal softening solution to get them contoutred well.



Cheers Rob

Eh wow. Those wheels.. lovely. This makes me so happy we one day decided not to limit this forum to just aviation subjects.

Nice paint and decal work on the body Rob. Looks fantastic.

Any thoughts to doing Count Rossi's road going 917 to bookend the race car?

18 hours ago, Jeroen Peters said:

Eh wow. Those wheels.. lovely. This makes me so happy we one day decided not to limit this forum to just aviation subjects.

Thank you Jeroen and amen to the open for all decision with the forum. Car builds are so much fun, even when I´m very distracted and not fully focused on modeling, it is fun. I,m glad, the decals layed themselves beautifully with a big dose of softener. The carrier fil was quite large around and I only chopped the inner and outer side.

Cheers Rob

18 hours ago, FG2Si said:

Nice paint and decal work on the body Rob. Looks fantastic.

Any thoughts to doing Count Rossi's road going 917 to bookend the race car?

Thank you Carl, it looks a bit worse than it is, because of the LED lighting, which is always a killer with high gloss finishes. BTW: I had to look up Count Rossi, crazy, but it would have rectified my glossy silver paintjob . In all, I´m more familiar with Count Negroni, whom I thank a lot for developing the Americano into the, what else, Negroni 🍸, of course with red Martini in it, albeit, I would never use Martini myself, as there are far better options.

Cheers Rob