First of all, thank you all for your kind words, they truly motivate me to keep going (not that I am ready to quit yet, lol).
So, progress is a little slow as I push through getting the wheel wells finished. The majority of my time is being consumed with research and figuring out how to plumb this thing. My area of expertise so to speak is usually Japanese aircraft with Luftwaffe a close second. This will be my first 1/48 American aircraft I have built since I was a kid, which is probably pretty close to twenty years now. That being said, a lot of areas that are common knowledge to me now in my preferred subjects is fairly new to me and sadly my library on allied aircraft is minimal in comparison. So, this is a learning experience for sure. Now, maybe some you have seen this gentleman's work before or maybe not, but I found his website last night and his build of the P-51, in 1/5 scale no less, has been invaluable for figuring out the construction and plumbing of the wheel wells. Here is the link.
P-51 Diary | Spitfire in my workshop | David Glen: model maker, journalist
Since you have been patient and humored me through my rambling, here are some pictures.
So, one area I tackled was the coolant line couplings. I did not want to paint these as the area was very small and I figured I would end up making a mess of everything. The first thing I tried after some head scratching was to cut some HVAC aluminum tape into a strip of the appropriate width I wanted the couplings. For the hose clamps, I thought I would cut even thinner strips of tamiya tape and mask the two edges of the aluminum tape and then paint flat black between the masks. Well, fail. When the masks were lifted, it took most of the paint with them, leaving them looking worse than if I had tried painting it all by hand. Not acceptable. Plan B. I basically reversed the concept. I cut a piece of tamiya tape the width of the couplings to be and painted it black. I then was able to cut small strips and apply them to the coolant lines and trim off the excess with a sharp knife. I still needed the bare metal clamps on them though. I cut a tiny strip of the aluminum tape and stuck it down to my cutting mat. I then cut it in half lengthwise to give me the width I was after. Next, I cut pieces off, applied them to the already attached masking tape couplings and trimmed off the excess. Success! Everything stayed put and while not perfect, looks a lot better than painting. The bottom picture is one of the aluminum strips on the tip of my xacto. Did I mention these are tiny?
I also added some electrical wires from milliput. I am really liking this technique! Note also I have painted the forward structure chromate green.
After some research, I went back and repainted the inner well structure chromate green again, over painting my previous silver detailing. I had used tamiya flat aluminum to pick out details previously and was not happy with the way it looked. The metallic flakes in the paint are too large for detail painting. It just looks gritty and sloppy to me. This time, I painted all details flat black. I left a few hoses and such black as references indicated. For the other details that needed to be silver, I used silver rub and buff diluted slightly with lacquer thinner and a pointed brush. This allowed me to paint the larger details with the tip and the tip side in a sort of dry brush type stroke to catch the smallest detail. I also used this to touch up the bottom of the inner gear doors and their hinges. I was pleased that the pigment is fine enough and of a similar luster as to blend this with the previously applied alclad nicely. The hydraulic accumulator was painted Polly scale chromate yellow and securing clamps added with flat black. Still awaiting gloss, washes and maybe some dry brushing. The detail should really pop then, but not quite there yet.
So these are the final pictures of where everything is at right now. They also show off the milliput wiring and coolant line couplings a little better. I painted the skin under the coolant lines and the cut out just behind them chromate yellow. I had read that the two colors could be seen being used interchangeably on various structures, even on the same aircraft, so chose yellow instead of green to add interest. Again, since this assembly was started before I knew the correct colors of this area, and before I decided I was going to add extra detail after all, I found myself working very differently than I normally do things. To paint the chromate yellow without covering the other already painted details, I tried applying colors in washes instead of painting conventionally. I first did washes of flat black, and after several layers had a mostly opaque black in only the areas I wanted. Using acrylic paints, I first wet just the areas I wanted painted with clean water, then dipped the brush tip in black paint and touched it to the damp surface. Capillary action pulled the pigment into the corners. After doing this a couple times, the edges were fairly opaque, but the center areas were still pretty translucent. To remedy this, when the outer edges were almost dry, I applied thicker paint to the center area. Moistening the brush a little more with water, I pulled the thicker paint to the edges where there was still just a bit of wet paint in the recesses. This caused everything to spread out evenly via capillary action, leaving enough paint to cover the previously sparsely covered center areas. This was left to dry and then chromate yellow applied the in same manner as described for the black. The black base allowed for a bit of depth to be achieved when applying the yellow. This is not how I ideally would have liked to paint these small areas, but I am happy with the results, and hopefully the detailed explanation will help someone else who find themselves in a similar awkward predicament.
Notice on the wing spar either side of where the inner doors will be I have added some scratchbuilt elements on angled brackets. As seen in the last picture, the piece to the right is where some of the hydraulic lines will connect to and the one to the left is going to be the fuel selector valve where the fuel lines will connect to. The only other details of mention are brackets attached, one on each side behind the smaller cutout in the wing. These appear to hold pulleys that have a line running to each of the inner gear doors and presumably are part of the retraction system.
That's it for now, hope you enjoyed this update. See you next time!