1/32 Hasegawa Fw 190D-9 "Black One"

Nice work John.

Looking good.

Looks great so far John!

The Black 1 build is on the downhill now and I see the finish line in sight on my longest build. I hope you enjoyed the journey as much as I've had in sharing it.

When I last posted, I was waffling between doing an oil filter or not. I don't think it needed it from a tonal variation standpoint but went and did it anyway. Mostly to try and tone down some of the "white frost" appearance from my flat coat applications.


It was a messy affair and I really don't have any confidence that I'm doing it correctly so I'm not going to document the process step-by-step. So let's fast forward to Black 1 after the oil filter treatment and then another flat coat to even it all out.


The treatment did tone down that frost a bit and it didn't do anything crazy to the paint job. There is a little bit of color variation but it is very subtle. You'll note some after-the-fact post shading of the panel lines near the wing root that I need to tone down.




Ok... so the paint stage on Black is essentially done. All that remains is to add all of the external bits and pieces. The exhaust stacks are the first to glued into place.




The landing gear legs are glued onto the landing gear doors before attachment to the aircraft. The wheels will be glued on last to ensure that the flat spots in the tires are in the correct orientation.


The legs are then glued into the wheel wells.


There is a small wire that goes from the retracting arm towards the base of the starboard landing gear leg. Hardly noticeable but it is the tail wheel retraction wire.



Finally, the wheels are attached to the landing gear legs. I use a gel CA glue here to give me time to fix the flat spots on the ground. Black 1 sits on her own legs for the first time!

Nice work John.

Great work so far john!

Very nice.

It is a seminar of techniques and your explanation very clear. You really invite us to practice and keep improving our skills and even the way to overcome mistakes or accidents in the different processes are equally important and interesting to know. It seems that we are reaching the end of the course; I'm ready!

Saludos profesor

Doing a few things on the Dora as this build winds down. I've removed some of the masking to check the fit and finish of the canopy. Looks a-ok open or closed.




I'm checking the look of the underside add-ons but have not yet glued them into place.


The wing lights are clear pieces supplied as part of the kit. They have been painted in clear red and clear blue and are ready to be glued into the end of the wings using Elmer's White Glue.



Note the rough patch on the tip of the wing just forward of the red light. That... is a fingerprint. One of the many tiny flaws that I have to catch and correct before I'm done. I think I can just buff this out with some Micromesh.


Over at LSP, I was informed by someone that the ETC504 rack was usually RLM66 Dark Grey not RLM76 Light Blue. Crandall's Dora books nor the EagleCal decal instructions mention anything about this, that I recall. So I leafed through my Dora books and lo and behold, I did find a few examples where the rack is clearly a darker color than the underside color. So I'm going to make that change.


I wiped off the paint using a paper towel moistened with iso alcohol. Interestingly, I was able to wash off all of the RLM76, black pres-shade, hairspray but retained the original Alclad metal color. This makes it that much easier to change. I'll spray some more hairspray on this and then put on a RLM66 coat.


Some more views of the bottom with the landing gear firmly attached. A note about photography... I find it very important to take good quality photos during the build. Not only for purpose of sharing the build with others but for self-review. At first, it is pretty sobering to see high resolution photos of your work close-up. But it will definitely push you to improve. At least it does that for me. I know that if it looks good through the magnifier or through these unforgiving digital photos, it's going to look good in person.




Time to attach the flaps. The flap attachment is via three hinges. The joint, while not the strongest, is good enough to friction hold the flaps in place without glue. I want to pose the flaps at the maximum 60 degree angle and I'm afraid that CA glue will set up too fast for me. So I used 2-part epoxy for this attachment.



Pull back status check # 153... getting there!

Really nice John

With all !!

Looks great so far John!

Looking good John. I think the oil filter has helped - the camo has nice integrated fading now - like it!

Thanks guys!

turbo said:

Looking good John. I think the oil filter has helped - the camo has nice integrated fading now - like it!

Click to expand...

I think so too Kirby! It's really hard to appreciate the effects of these weathering techniques WITHOUT stepping away and re-examining them. I wasn't too happy after the salt fading, which pushed me to do a little bit of oil filter work but now that I look at it again, I'm happy with how they've both contributed to the overall look.

Back to the build... here is the drop tank with the repainted ETC rack in RLM 66.



The rack is mounted to the fuselage first. The drop tank sits on the rack without glue so I'll leave it that way for now.






The other small antennae on the bottom and the boarding ladder are glued into place.




After all of these months, the windscreen and canopy masks are removed. The windscreen was masked with Montex black vinyl masks and the canopy was manually masked using Tamiya tape. Both seem to be in excellent condition, thankfully.




The canopy in the closed position has a very good fit... if I want to go this route. I still am holding out for the canopy open but I need to work on something first.

Here is the canopy issue. The Dora canopy is made of plexiglass. As it slides back in the open position, the whole canopy pinches in to follow the fuselage lines. The Hasegawa canopy is made to be posed in the closed position. If you mount it in the open position, you'll see that it is too wide. It's not very noticeable and I don't think it detracts too much from the completed model.


But I've latched on to the idea of adding tabs to the canopy so that it will be pinched in accurately. I've verified that this works but the tabs that I've made won't stay on. The force from the pinch-in keeps breaking the bonds of the CA glue.


Instead of giving up on the idea, I thought I'd add more surface area to the tabs so that the bond is stronger. I've scouted my spare PE bin to find some suitable candidates.


Version 2 tabs were canted out at the same angle as the slope of the canopy sides. This created too much of a pinch. So I attempted to put a bend in the brass tab so that they pointed straight down from the canopy bottom edge. Well, the weakness caused by the bend was too much and those tabs were done... victims of material fatigue. Give up? Was this close.




Took a deep breath and decided to give it one more shot. I busted out the heavy metal this time. Well, heavier metal anyway. I had a steel PE fret from my Dragon Ju88G build that I dissected to provide two more tab candidates.


Much tougher beasts to cut and trim these frets! I used a PE bending tool to create a slight angle in the tab so that it does not stick out an angle but sits straight down, more or less.


Another batch of 2-part epoxy to set these in place. Hopefully, three times the charm.