Airframes
Benevolens Magister
Good stuff Chad. it was actually a towing eye, and normally painted red. here's a couple of close-up shots of the real thing,
Airfix 1/48 P-51D
- Thread starter Luftace43
- Start date
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Crimea_River
Marshal
Good work Chad. Terry beat me to the towing eye correction, being the pedantic lot that we are.
- Thread starter
- #104
N4521U
Thanks!
SANCER
Glad you are enjoying this too. Just gotta make it to the finish line with this one, I keep finding little things to add that interrupts my planned progress.
Crimea_River
and
Airframes
Thanks for the pictures and input as always, much appreciated. Corrected my post with the proper terminology. Honestly I was lazy in my terminology research and just relied on my own experience as a helo crew chief. Any rings on the outside were usually tie downs for chains or blade ropes, so my mind defaulted to that. Doh!
- Thread starter
- #105
Made some headway last night. Here is what I have done so far.
I needed to relocate the spine antenna under the nose before painting commenced. The bottom of the kit part is flat so I dipped it in flat black and used it as a stamp to mark its location under the nose. This gave me a nice guide of how big to make the hole.
I drilled a hole at each end of the marked spot with a pin vise and carefully carved out the remaining material with my x-acto. This worked pretty well and dry fitting as I went along got me a pretty close fit, hopefully not needing any filler as I plan to place the antenna after l finish painting.
Everything prepped and ready for primer!
Everything now has a coat of Alclad black micro filler/primer. I had trouble getting a nice smooth finish with this stuff and only discovered afterwards what the biggest culprit could be.
While spraying I was getting air bubbles gurgling in my paint cup and and a sputtering sound as I sprayed, but no obvious splatters or interruption in paint flow. After painting, I disassembled my airbrush, an Iwata HP-CS, and cleaned everything yet again. Nothing was severely dirt or gunked up anywhere. I did some troubleshooting via YouTube and of course the fix was stupid simple. I had not been screwing the tip on tight enough ensuring a good seal and not seating the brass cone enough. Oh well, lesson learned.
The finish left something to be desired and I believe my error was allowing the primer to partially dry before it even hit the surface due to my air leak, no matter the distance or air pressure I used (10-12 psi btw). I had "soot" all over the airframe, so wiped the loose dust off with a paper towel and IPA. I then gave the whole airframe a light sanding with fine grit sand paper and wiped everything down again with a cotton rag and IPA. I now had a semi Matt finish, but at least it was blemish and lint/dust free. This was no big deal as I planned to apply MM gloss black enamel as a finish coat prior to the alclad aluminum anyways.
With my airbrush now tuned correctly I proceeded to fill the paint cup with the gloss black and added thinner to get the consistency I desired. I did a couple test sprays on some paper towel and noticed I was getting micro blobs of paint, not a fine mist. What? I then looked at my pipette that I had transferred the paint with sitting in its tub of water that I keep it in while painting to keep the paint from drying until I am finished painting and then clean up afterwards. It was surrounded by greasy black blobs floating around it as if the Exxon-Valdez had just crashed into my rinse container. Then it hit me. In my haste I had forgotten that I was using enamel (I almost exclusively use acrylics) and had used acrylic thinner for thinning and out of habit just placed my pipette in water. Long story short, I dumped the paint, flushed everything with lacquer thinner and started over, this time using tamiya lacquer thinner to thin the paint. It worked beautifully. Now I am waiting for it to finish curing so I can sand out a couple random dust specs and the air intake under the belly where I had accidentally set it down while the paint was still wet. I have to get some new sanding sticks today and the paint probably won't be cured enough to sand it until tomorrow.
Anyways, a few pictures and a misadventure short story. Hope that will be enough to entertain you guys until I can get back at it again. I don't want to rush this and spoil the finish, but I gotta tell ya, it's like watching paint dry.
Happy modelling
Chad
I needed to relocate the spine antenna under the nose before painting commenced. The bottom of the kit part is flat so I dipped it in flat black and used it as a stamp to mark its location under the nose. This gave me a nice guide of how big to make the hole.
I drilled a hole at each end of the marked spot with a pin vise and carefully carved out the remaining material with my x-acto. This worked pretty well and dry fitting as I went along got me a pretty close fit, hopefully not needing any filler as I plan to place the antenna after l finish painting.
Everything prepped and ready for primer!
Everything now has a coat of Alclad black micro filler/primer. I had trouble getting a nice smooth finish with this stuff and only discovered afterwards what the biggest culprit could be.
While spraying I was getting air bubbles gurgling in my paint cup and and a sputtering sound as I sprayed, but no obvious splatters or interruption in paint flow. After painting, I disassembled my airbrush, an Iwata HP-CS, and cleaned everything yet again. Nothing was severely dirt or gunked up anywhere. I did some troubleshooting via YouTube and of course the fix was stupid simple. I had not been screwing the tip on tight enough ensuring a good seal and not seating the brass cone enough. Oh well, lesson learned.
The finish left something to be desired and I believe my error was allowing the primer to partially dry before it even hit the surface due to my air leak, no matter the distance or air pressure I used (10-12 psi btw). I had "soot" all over the airframe, so wiped the loose dust off with a paper towel and IPA. I then gave the whole airframe a light sanding with fine grit sand paper and wiped everything down again with a cotton rag and IPA. I now had a semi Matt finish, but at least it was blemish and lint/dust free. This was no big deal as I planned to apply MM gloss black enamel as a finish coat prior to the alclad aluminum anyways.
With my airbrush now tuned correctly I proceeded to fill the paint cup with the gloss black and added thinner to get the consistency I desired. I did a couple test sprays on some paper towel and noticed I was getting micro blobs of paint, not a fine mist. What? I then looked at my pipette that I had transferred the paint with sitting in its tub of water that I keep it in while painting to keep the paint from drying until I am finished painting and then clean up afterwards. It was surrounded by greasy black blobs floating around it as if the Exxon-Valdez had just crashed into my rinse container. Then it hit me. In my haste I had forgotten that I was using enamel (I almost exclusively use acrylics) and had used acrylic thinner for thinning and out of habit just placed my pipette in water. Long story short, I dumped the paint, flushed everything with lacquer thinner and started over, this time using tamiya lacquer thinner to thin the paint. It worked beautifully. Now I am waiting for it to finish curing so I can sand out a couple random dust specs and the air intake under the belly where I had accidentally set it down while the paint was still wet. I have to get some new sanding sticks today and the paint probably won't be cured enough to sand it until tomorrow.
Anyways, a few pictures and a misadventure short story. Hope that will be enough to entertain you guys until I can get back at it again. I don't want to rush this and spoil the finish, but I gotta tell ya, it's like watching paint dry.
Happy modelling
Chad
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Nicely done so far!
turbo
Staff Sergeant
Ah, the old wrong thinner trick, done that a few times myself . Got there in the end! 
. Got there in the end! 
- Thread starter
- #110
Thanks guys! Yeah, it tricked me alright, lol. Luckily I caught it before I started spraying the model. Paint is still a little tacky, so it might be a couple more days before I do anything with it. While it cures I am starting my next project. No work started yet, just research for now, but I started another thread if interested. 1/72 ProModeller B-17G "2nd Patches"
SANCER
Senior Master Sergeant
I have also suffered from these misfortunes with "human errors" (when I was beginning to discover that some combinations of paints and thinners are not compatible 
) ... but everything is learned, although sometimes it hurts ...
Por aquí seguimos!!
) ... but everything is learned, although sometimes it hurts ...Por aquí seguimos!!
fubar57
General
Nice scratch work. One day I'll get brave enough to try enamels and enjoy this wrong thinner thang but not until I get comfortable with acrylics
Crimea_River
Marshal
Nice bounce back. Been there.
- Thread starter
- #114
fubar57
Yeah, your not missing missing anything.
I normally use acrylics too but this time wanted a finish to have some bite on the model for a nice NMF using the Alclad line. I will say that the enamel sprayed a little nicer than my acrylics do though.
Crimea_River
Thanks Andy! Was a little discouraging, but only made me want to try harder.
So, I finally sanded and polished things up a little, have to add another coat as the nose and under side of the wings aren't painted yet.
Also, I ordered some decals for the tail and fuselage numbers and they were in the mail yesterday.
I ordered them specifically for the tail serial. I thought I would just cut out masks for the larger fuselage numbers but it turns out the larger ones are the right size for that too. Awesome! Was not looking forward to the drawing cutting and masking of those anyways. Will still have to hand paint the nose art though. I think I've settled on an aircraft that the name on the nose is all black anyways. Shouldn't be too hard I hope.
Gonna try and get this painted this weekend. We shall see.
Chad
fubar57
General
For future reference, to make your own serial numbers and codes decals, Inkscape has USAAF Serial Stencil...
....and USAAF Stencil...
Trying to find your style of font for the nose name. No luck in Paint.net or Inkscape,
- Thread starter
- #118
fubar57
. Thanks, that is good to know. Unfortunately I don't have a computer or I definitely would have went that route. Here are some pictures of the plane I am leaning towards."Drip & Dick" flown by Capt. Charles Drinkwater, pictured here with his aircraft.
Aircraft 213 in the background is Capt. Drinkwater's.
Same aircraft being towed to safety from an engulfed B-29 on airfield #2 on Iwo Jima.
Should be easy enough to recreate the name. Also something that bothers me is I won't have decals for the aircraft data and serial stencils behind the engine.
- Thread starter
- #119
N4521U
Colonel
ooooooeee.
