1:24 Airfix Hawker Typhoon Car Door Build

Good work so far!

She is looking very good even with some of the short comings but you have not mentioned seams on the tailplanes? Kevin

There are some seams on the tailplanes. And after the prime coat (today) I noticed them. But, I'm frankly, not going to do any more filling since it's such a pain in the butt to restore the rivet detail. The leading edges of the main wings did come out pretty good considering the work that I had to do on them.

The weather cooperated so I was able to rattle can spray the Tamiya Gray Surface Primer. I have to spray solvent-based paints outdoors. It was over 70 degrees F and breezy, but I was able to manage the breeze by spraying closer and moving faster. Didn't get any runs... amazingly.

After the base dried I sprayed the leading edges flat aluminum so I could use liquid mask for future paint peeling. I also sprayed the propellor blades on the sprue the same color for the same reason. Speaking of spraying… I had to buy an ultrasonic cleaner to clean un-cured resin on my resin 3D prints. I've found that it's an exceptional air brush cleaner. I run water through the gun, then some alcohol, and then I just plop the airbrush into the ultrasonic for 10 minutes. I comes out sparkling and a lot of the internals are clean. Every once in a while I pull the needle and clean it separately. It's especially convenient for cleaning the top-feed gun.

I had assembled the two-part gear door with some masking tape and taped them on top of the solid gear doors that are masking the wheel wells. I did this so they could be bottom painted at the same time and marked for the invasion strips to be aligned with the strips on the wings proper.



I added the Microscale liquid mask to strategically place the paint wear. When dry, I airbrushed the bottom color: A-K Air RAF Medium Oceean Gray from the RAF set I bought just for this model. I sprayed it unthinned, although, even though it's labeled AIR, it could have been a tad thinner. I have their special thinner. I applied the Microscale liquid mask as best as I could imagine the paint wear. I've never used the hairspray or salt chipping technique and probably should have done it here, but it's a big expensive model and I didn't want to experiment on it.

After the mask dried I airbrushed the RAF bottom color. Paint was still wet when I took this picture.



I assembled the propellor. It consisted of two parts for each of the three blades and a two part hydrodynamic hub. The hub was in two halves that captured the blades. I clamped it to make sure it was tighly glued.



I'm not painting the hub since it will be buried under the spinner and will never be seen. I applied liquid mask to the blades' leading edges and airbrushed the assembled unit Tamiya semi-gloss black.

When dry I masked the blades for the yellow tips. I airbrushed the tips white first since it provides the best base under yellow.



After de-masking and letting it dry a bit, I rubbed off the liquid mask exposing the bare aluminum underneath. I think I may have overdone this a bit. I was thinking about doing the same on the spinner and gave it a base coat of flat aluminum. After looking at a bunch of pictures of WW2 Typhoons, I couldn't see any apparent damage to the spinners and won't remove any top coat on them. I didn't see a lot of damage to leading edges either for that matter.



The rocket rails are in two parts and they too are bottom-color. I assembled them and mounted them in my lazy susan painting holder that was a raffle prize for the Military Modelers Club of Louisville, 3D printed by Ed Tackett. It worked perfectly for this application. I painted these off the plane and will add them near the end when all the camo is done and decals in place.



This paint seems to dry at the same rate as Vallejo, meaning it's dry to the touch in about an hour, but not really dry for at least 24 hours. It has a stickyness now and that's not a good surface for marking camo lines or additional masking. I'm also working on some 3D printing for an elaborate 1:48 Victorian house for my model railroad, so I have something else to do while waiting for the paint to dry.

Tomorrow I'll mask the bottom line and start marking out the camp scheme. I'm doing version D, which is the most complicated (of course). It has invasion strips on the wings top and bottom and wrapped around the fuselage. To complicate matters further, the rocket tips have a three-tone bullseye scheme: outer ring red, middle white and center yellow. It will require three concentric circular masks to pull off.



While sitting under "house arrest" with my wife and I not going out during this crisis, I'm very happy that as a model builder, my life actually hasn't changed a bit. Working alone in my shop all day long gives me lots of social distancing without even thinking about it. My wife is my main concern, since not being a hobbyist, she's not getting much psychic stimulation. We're going to have to work on that.

I am enjoying this build. Keep up the good work.

Lovely work so far!

So glad you're enjoying it!

First thing today was masking the bottom top demarcation line and then completely masking all of the bottom color areas. I had just gotten my new supply of Tamiya tape from my local hobby shop, Scale Reproductions Inc, which offered curbside service. I used blue tape for the large areas since it's much less expensive. I use Tamiya tape exclusively for all hard edges.



The flange around the gun shields is still supposed to show bottom color as are the entire shields themselves. I used my Tamiya Flexible Masking tape to tightly curve around the flange. If there's any leakage, I'll go back and touch up.



I then laid out where the Invasion Stripes were going to go and masked off the entire area. I didn't want to deal with the other colors showing through. The bottom color is pretty neutral and shouldn't be a problem. The painting plan sheet shows the distances in mm where the stripes go. I then painted the A-K Air RAF Dark Green straight from the bottle. I had to get used to how it flows and had some runs which I brushed out by hand, force dried the first coat with a heat gun and then shot a second coat which leveled out the previous troubles. I estimated where the Dark Ocean Grey will go and left it sort of blank. I'll mark out these areas more clearly in pencil after the paint dries a good 24 hours. I will decide whether to hard mask, soft mask or freehand as I go forward. I tend to lean to freehand. I did this with the Thud and it worked pretty well. The A-K paint dries to a semi-gloss and I may not have to gloss coat prior to decaling. That would be nice.



The last thing done was spray the rockets Tamiya olive drab. These shouldn't be weathered since they would only be used once.

Looks good so far!

Very glad that you and the others are following the thread. Thank you!

I painted the RAF Ocean Gray today, doing it all freehand. I had some minor errors in where I painted the RAF Deep Green, so I first used the detail airbrush and repainted the model to better conform to the camo pattern. Surprisingly it dried pretty quickly and I was able to start preparing for the ocean gray. I did the gray and then went back and forth a couple of times to ensure that the feathered edges were decent. I may be making an error here since the RAF camo may have had harder edges. Guidance here would be helpful. If I need to harden up the edges that can be done.

I had already laid out the masking lines for the invasion stripes on the topsides, so I peeled off the masking and remasked the edges of the white background using thin Tamiya tape.



I then went back and completely masked all the previously shot color areas.



Since the bottom was already completely masked, I had to remove the masking where the white invasion striping backgroud would go. I used the tape positions from the topside to show me where to remove the bottom side masks.



To ensure a good paint line, like on top, I used the thin tape to hold the line. I did the same for the fuselage masking area. To help ensure no paint leakage, I went over all the masked edges with some Tamiya clear. Hopefully, this will help seal the end and prevent any leaks. I airbrushed the entire area with Tamiya XF-2 Flat White. My Badger 150 was sputtering and needed a better cleanout, so I diassembled it and plopped the parts into the ultrasonic cleaner for 15 minutes. That solved the problem. I've noted this before, but it bears repeating. The ultrasonic was purchased specifically to clean un-cured resin on my 3D printed parts, but it's been wonderful for cleaning all sorts of other stuff. I use the paint bottles that conform to the Badger suction cap. I want to resue them and cleaning them out is a pain in the butt. Now, After washing them with solvent, I put them in the ultrasonic and they come out spotless.



When I had pulled the tape off that covered the invasion stripe area, I inadvertantly pulled off the liquid mask exposing the "base metal" underneath that was suppoded to be for leading edge paint chips. I've made an executive decision. The model represents when it was freshly painted with invasion striping (which was often done in the field) and therefore it, and only it, will cover the leading edge with no paint chipping. All the exiisting color areas will still show some wear and tear.

The first color to go on is RAF Sky in a band at the rear of the fuselage striping. It will extend for 19 mm. I have pre-cut some masking to 19 mm to space out the rest of the black stripes that will follow. Believe it or not, in 67 years of modeling, this is the first plane I've ever built with invasion stripes. The spinner also gets painted Sky on this particular Typhoon version. The leading edges past the cannon get painted yellow on this version also.

The art of airbrushing is really the art of masking. Airbrushing is easy. Masking isn't.

Invasion stripes will be done tomorrow. Then I will do decal placement. Following that will be some tasteful weathering and painting the rockets. Lastly will be masking and painting clear parts and building the remaining landing gear parts. The end is in sight.

I airbrushed the little region at the rear of the fuselage invasion strip area A-K RAF Sky. The instructions were ambiguous regarding the width of this feature. The dottle lines showed 19mm, but the lines were halfway in and halfway out of the sky-painted region and the illustration seemed to be smaller than the 19mm. I made it that size. After air brushing it and the spinner and backing plate (same color), I force-dried the paint and masked over it for the remainder of the invasion striping.

I laid out the distances with the digital caliper on both the fuselage and the top and bottom of the wings. Since the white was already applied, I had to mask off all the white areas to expose the part that was painted black. I used narrow Tamiya tape to work to the line and then filled the rest with blue masking tape. I did this first for the fuselage, then the wing tops and finally the wing bottoms. When I marked the 19mm, I did it in two places so it would help me getting the tape in parallel lines across the entire wing. I also re-checked based on the rivet pattern.



This was a finicky operation and took more than an hour to complete. On the bottom I was careful to mask both the wing and the gear doors which are only held there with tape underneath. I will remove them before painting the black and paint their stripes separately to ensure that the paint goes directly to the wheel well edge. I have the gear-up door fastened in place already to mask out the entire wheel well.



After masking I again went around and brush-painted Tamiya gloss clear to all the taped edges to pre-seal against any leakage. This worked perfectly on the sky portion of the aft fuselage. There was absolutely no leakage into the white area. I did not pull the tape for the aft portion so can't tell if that leaked or not. I'm assuming it did not. Regardless, touching up the camo areas is not as sensitive as touching up the white-painted areas.

This beast used a ton of masking tape. I'm going to use NATO black instead of flat black. I think NATO black appears as a normal slightly faded black that (to me) appears a bit more realistic. I will do the camo painting on Monday. I'm excited to see what it looks like.

My wife took a nice walk around the neighborhood this afternoon. The weather was wonderful and it's good to get out now and again. We are being very careful in our interactions. Hope all of you are doing the same.

Can't wait till the girl takes her cloths off should be a beauty. Kevin

Nice work so far!

I should play some strip-tease music for the great reveal. That will come on Tuesday.

So here's the stripper music… Chicka Boom, Chicka Boom, Chicka Boom Boom Boom... in honor of me pulling off a ton of masking tape unveiling the newly painted invasion stripes. There were only two leaks in all that masking. The clear coat worked perfectly. On leak was between the green and bottom at the tailwheel under the horizontal stab and that part wasn't treated with the clear coat. The other was a tiny spot on the wing. I was very pleased. I'm not using those gun bay doors. They're just masking the bays. The folding door exteriors is a question mark since they're insides are showing and the outsides will be mostly hidden. Should I paint the outsides to match the striping and exterior color? The engine and cockpit masking has to stay on a while longer while I do the gloss coating, decaling and flat coating.



The bottom was as good as the top, and the clay holding the solid wheel door in place worked very well also. I had to be careful removing it, but it left no residue. It's special clay to make resin casting molds. The open doors worked well too with their stripes perfectly in line with the wing stripes as it should be.



I had some painted peeled exposing alumimun. Most were planned with liquid mask, one I think was just delaminating paint. I'm leaving them alone for the time being. I did some very minor touchup around the gun shield flanges also.



This chipping was intentional. Not the tiny white notch in the black. That was not a leak. It was a taping error which I touched up after I took this picture.



Next up will be a gloss coat a decal application. I will also mask and paint the transparencies. I do have the Eduard mask set for the plane.

As I have been doing my B-25 "MMR" any chipping that happens by accident I let if ride looks more natural .The paint came out Niice! Kevin

Great work so far!