Yeah no profanity on the board. No mention of the white stuff. I got up this morning and it was -13 F with lows of -23 to -19 F for tonight. My friends further north would laugh at this. Although, good weather for modeling.

@clipper, thank you, Carl. I might give the rotation and pencil approach a try next time, currently I'm pretty happy with the decal result.

@j-healy, thanks, John. Snow is always beautiful to look at, we had some a couple of days ago. Kids do love it indeed. Driving in these conditions however is not that enjoyable.

No snow yet here in Greece, it snows once every three years on average where I live. Kids expect it eagerly, parents not that much 🙂

Got up this morning and the temp out side is/ was -17 F or -27 C. According to the weather service, feels like -27 to -30 below. Many school closings and frost bite warnings.
Got the kit to the paint booth. This is a familiar echo, prep time is the most time consuming chore.

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Nice masking, Stephen @stephen-w-towle
Those temperatures are not comfortable anymore.

My 104 is basically done. As Stephen was saying, it has taken significantly longer to take care of the final small bits than to build the whole rest of the kit. I did manage to leave a tiny sliver of canopy uncovered when I masked, so I had a really nice silver streak through the canopy. I managed to remove it and repolish the canopy using sanding sticks without messing up the portions of the canopy that were supposed to be painted.

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Hi, Stephen (@stephen-w-towle): Tamiya Clear is pretty thick as it comes from the bottle, so I thin it using Tamiya Lacquer Thinner or Tamiya X20. I like to thin it 50-60%, and then I spray it using about 15 psi. Anything higher and you risk flooding the surface. I spray at least 2 thin layers, waiting about 30 minutes between the applications. Natural metal finish is really good for showing surface problems, so I treat it like I am working on a canopy. I use 4 increasingly fine grits, and then I polish the surface with a soft cloth, like a t-shirt. I have only done 3 or 4 NMFs, so you probably don't want to take my word for any of this. I do a lot of reading and that's where I get most of my ideas. By the way, I found a sanding stick that really works well for this. It has 4 grits on one stick, from medium to very fine. I get these at Sally's Beauty Supply for just a couple of bucks each. They are my go-to place for a lot of hobby stuff, like sanding sticks, spray bottles, and several other handy things for model-building. My other hobby is model railroads, and one of the sites I use has several videos covering the stuff you can get at Sally's that can be used in hobbies. We have all finished the 104 and we plan to post them together, probably early next week. I plan to take a week off from models to finish cleaning and arranging my hobby room. Thanks for following along on the build.

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Thanks, Spiros (@fiveten). Old decals go hand-in-hand with old kits. I have used liquid decal film, but the thing I do most often is simply spray some Tamiya Clear over the sheet. It does make the decals a little thicker, but it holds them together just like decal film.