1/48 Dora Wings Messerschmitt Bf-109B

[fubar57]

Improvements look great, Stay safe down there. Canada looks to be heading for a second wave as well. I don't know about the rest of the provinces but B.C.s new wave of infected seem to be the the supposedly "I'm invincible" young who are now gathering en masse in bars, beaches and large parties.

 

[Gnomey]

Good work so far!

 

[rochie]

Great work

 

[Grant Barr]

Improvements look great, Stay safe down there. Canada looks to be heading for a second wave as well. I don't know about the rest of the provinces but B.C.s new wave of infected seem to be the the supposedly "I'm invincible" young who are now gathering en masse in bars, beaches and large parties.

Thanks Geo. We've had quite a bit of the same, although we also seem to have more than our fair share of "muppets" of all ages who seem to think that the rules don't apply to them. The annoying thing is that I don't care if they get infected, but I do care if they infect other more vulnerable people (aged, infirm etc.)!

Planning on getting another post up tonight for the undercarriage.

Thanks everyone!

 

[Crimea_River]

Nice work there Grant.

 

[Grant Barr]

As promised, a shot of the undercarriage work. The PE pieces have been added and I have inserted brass pins into the ends of the oleo's to help hold them in place once mounted. The resin wheels supplied with the kit are really well detailed, however two issues have really let them down. The first was the molding for both wheels is best described as patchy - one wheel in particular had some horrible bubbling growths in the wheel outside wheel hubs. I spent quite some time cleaning this up and it still isn't great if you look closely. The second issue is that the holes in the centres for mounting on the u/c legs are about 0.4mm too big in diameter. I ended up gluing in some styrene plugs and then drilling them out with at the correct size for a snug fit. At least now I stand a chance of getting the angles for the wheels close to correct.

That's all for this weekend, hoping to get little bits and pieces done through the week. The weather forecast is for rain so no fence work to be done after work each day!

Thanks again for looking in.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Gnomey]

Nicely done so far!

 

[Grant Barr]

Thanks again for the feedback and encouragement gents! I had a bit of a stall in the past week or so. I had to get the bird ready for paint, and to be totally honest cleaning up the surfaces and getting the panel lines all nice and clean is not one of my favourite tasks. Anyhoo - it was out with the sanding sticks and scriber and I finally got it to the point I was happy with it.

For the very first time (90% of the techniques used on this kit are for the first time!!!) I used some Mr Surfacer - sprayed on through the airbrush to fill in all those small scratches and imperfections. WOW - I wish I had that stuff years ago. I used the 1000 grade and applied two very thin coats, sanding back in between. I was really happy with the way it turned out - all the little scratches and glue irregularities just disappeared. I got so excited I forgot to take some photos - not to worry...

Having prepped for paint (and still a bit excited) I promptly forgot that I was going to try to do a pre-shade for the panel lines. There are so many different approaches people take on this, but having read some guides on pre-shading I really wanted to give it a try. So I laid down the first coat of RLM65 on the underside - then remembered what I was supposed to do. Doh!

Then - I set myself up to do some panel line pre-shading. The photos below are the results.

As you can see above - the underside is light blu-ish. That'll be the RLM65. So over the top went the black panel lines. As you can see, I made a lot of rookie mistakes with brushing this on. I dialled back the pressure to about 15psi, but this seemed to be still too much so I dropped back to around 12psi and that's were the compressor started to play up... Seems my el-cheapo Chinese set up has developed a dodgy pressure sensor and is now kicking in and out irregularly. I am pretty sure that it doesn't affect the output pressure (at least it shouldn't) but it's a bit distracting to have the damn thing randomly buzz in and out for a couple of seconds at a time.

The other thing I learned is not to have the acrylic paint too thin. I watered it down to about 60:40 (water : paint) with the results you see above. It was a bit too thin and with the pressure issues I got spiders and blobs galore. I also noted is that it is very easy to fail mixing the paint and thinner enough - I seemed to get periods where the paint flowed very well and then all of a sudden it would go really thin - resulting in the left hand side above. My only rational explanation is I just didn't mix it enough.

So then I got the shakes -

Persevering - the top side was marginally better as you can see below. I took the opportunity to do the panel around the exhaust stubs and tried to darken the various panel vents just aft of the engine cowl. Not sure how this will look once paint is on - but I won't know until I try it.

The final new thing I tried was some directional shadowing. In the shot below, if you look closely, you will see a darker edge at the bottom of the rudder stitching and the lighter edge at the top. As the rudder will be white - I'm really hoping this will be noticeable once done. You also get a close up to see where I had the paint too thin!

I think that's all for this evening. Time to fix dinner - seems it's my turn tonight.

Thanks again for looking in on my ramblings.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Crimea_River]

Looking good Grant. It could be that your acrylics are drying on your airbrush tip as you spray and thereby giving you inconsistent patterns. Use of a retarder in your paint mix helps to keep the paint flowing longer. I like the directional shadowing, Very effective.

 

[Gnomey]

Good work so far!

 

[Grant Barr]

Thanks Andy - I have some flow improver that I will try next up. Hopefully that will work - just need to check it is compatible with acrylic paint.

 

[fubar57]

I've used Vallejo's with Tamiya and their own paint

 

[Grant Barr]

Thanks Geo - will have to get out to the garage later and check which one I have. I hope I was smart enough when I bought all my paint products to match it all properly.

 

[Grant Barr]

Jackpot! Have to give it a whirl next time around.

 

[Grant Barr]

I have not been able to update much on progress for this model in the past month, my excuse is that I had to put up a "decorative privacy fence" between us and our drug-addicted next door neighbours. Of course the job involved a lot more than just putting up a set of screens, two weeping gum trees and one very large bottlebrush needed to be removed as well - nothing is ever simple.

Started with something like this (gum trees already removed by this stage, and a start made on the bottlebrush on the right)...

Ended up with something like this (it has been cleaned up a lot since this shot)...

Really happy with how straight and level it turned out - even ended up being plumb with the garage and house walls at either end (just luck??).

Sooooo, after a somewhat longer break than expected from this kit I have made some significant progress since last Sunday. What I have not done is take photos along the way. To be brutally honest, I am kind of over this kit. It's been a lot of fun, but it's taken me so long to get toward the finish that I am losing interest.

None the less - photos of where we are as of tonight.

In looking at these photos I can see that taking them under white LED's has made the RLM62 green look much "greener" than it is IRL. Same goes for the RLM65 blue so I'll try to get some better shots later in daylight.

Those of you with sharp eyes will note that I have a number of areas which need a touch up where the masking tape has pulled off the acrylic. I hope to do this later in the week or on Saturday.

I've noticed that the pre-shading I did has largely disappeared. Clearly I am a bit too heavy handed with the top coat application - I find I am still learning how to paint with acrylics. They are great in that they don't smell and clean up easily, but they do come off quite readily if you bump the model. Nothing that can't be fixed with a mineral based clear coat - just been too lazy to put one on between colour coats.

One trick that I learned with Vallejo acrylics is they work so much better through the airbrush if you use their thinner (and flow improver). I was originally using distilled water to thin them, but found I was getting a lot of spattering. I tried the flow improver with the distilled water - to no avail. Finally I bit the bullet and just used Vallejo thinners, the flow improver and voila - the brush worked beautifully. Smooth even paint with hardly any spatter even after setting the brush aside for a minute or two!

The other thing that I noticed is the white still looks REALLY white. I added some black and yellow to the white to tone it down, but even then it still looks quite stark. Another thing I must do is see if the "directional" shadowing I did on the rudder worked. Can't really tell from these photos, so I will check when I can look in full sunlight.

With respect to the pattern for the camouflage I went off the instruction manual and references to any period photos I could find tell me that it is wrong, but given it's my first go back in over 30 years I think I can live with it. Historical accuracy can come later - need to learn a lot of new techniques first.

So next stage is touch ups, closely followed by a good hard clear coat. I plan on using mineral based clear for this as it should form a more robust barrier against the knocks and bumps that are lifting the acrylic. If anyone has a better method I would love to hear about it. Still lots of the fiddly bits to do, such as U/C and prop. Will likely do those concurrent with getting some decals on the plane.

Again thanks to everyone for encouragement and advice. Time to get this one done as I have a Corsair up next!

Cheers

 

[fubar57]

A shame about the neighbours but the model is looking good Grant. I agree about Vallejo and thinners. They are finicky but once you get used to them they work great. I give the paint 24 hours or more to cure before masking and de-tack the tape a bit more. I've had no more drama than if I were using other acrylics

 

[Crimea_River]

A nice looking fence and equally nice model Grant. No sense picking on colour and pattern accuracy since you see it already anyway. The key is that you are getting the techniques down and the finish looking clean. I know the feeling of getting tired of one's builds. I have two of them like that now that I'm struggling to finish and a third that deserves more attention.

 

[Wurger]