To prevent the Sabre from being a tailsitter, some weight has to be added to the nose. A metal screw was cemented into the nose jet intake. The jet intake was then covered with the Foreign Object Damage cover included in the Fujimi kit. The handles on the FOD cover were cutoff and replaced with new ones made of stretched sprue. The cover was painted red before assembly to the fuselage.
	Of the two plastic kits Fujimi has the best canopy while Hobbycraft has the best canopy interior. So I combined the two items placing the Hobbycraft interior into the Fujimi canopy frame. I also added some extra detail such as a mirror and some wiring The canopy frame was placed into the open position and the ejection seat was then placed into the cockpit. Finally the canopy transparency was glued to the frame with Super Weld.
	A couple of AN-M65A1 1,000 lb general purpose bombs were made by modifying the nose and fins on the M-117 bombs from Hasegawa's Aircraft Weapons kit No.1. Although the M-1 17 bombs are slightly smaller (750 lb), these are very similar to the  AN-M65A1 bomb illustrated in Squadron/Signal's book F-86 Sabre in Colour.
	Finally the fuel drain pipe and the main undercarriage doors were cemented to the fuselage and-the -model was complete. This Sabre makes a nice little model, although I could have put a little more effort into the painting. Combining two or more kits into one model is an interesting way of modelling and the photo- etched metal parts gives it that little extra. The next step might be to use the fuselage of an Airfix F-86D together with the long span Fujimi wings and the slatted Hobbycraft wings and maybe some Eduard parts as welI to make a better model of the F-86K Sabre.
	Alterations to the wing.

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Original article published in Scale Aircraft Modelling, Vol.16 No.3, Jan '94, used with kind permission from the author.