<-- **** DONE: 1/48 Beaufighter TF X - Twin Engined Aircraft of WWII

[turbo]

Looks good Andy. The fading looks a bit stark now but I think will come together well with a bit of weathering. In particular, I think this cries out for a filter as the first step to start bringing it together without losing the preshading. I'm not quite sure what colour to suggest, but light grey would probably be a good start?

PS. Like your spiders, a new preshading technique?

 

[Wayne Little]

Think your doing pretty good there Andy, plenty of thought and care to keep that subtle pattern...

 

[Robert Porter]

Very good work! I am drawing no small amount of inspiration from watching your work. Thanks very much for such detailed updates! It truly does help us.

 

[JKim]

It looks a touch too contrasty at this stage but it's hard to say since it is not complete. Will you be putting a 2nd camo color on? If so, a 2nd color can tonally "crush" the preshading effects on the 1st color significantly. Weathering will also reduce the contrast of the preshading effects. Paint finish looks super clean!

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks everyone.

.....PS. Like your spiders, a new preshading technique?

Exactly, Kirby. I mixed the paint to the exact ratio and painted each individual leg in the location and exact length that I wanted............ As I did say, I was really struggling with the brush when I was doing that and I was OK with the crappy job only so long as it was a preshade coat.

Well, I'm happy to report that things went much better today as I spent a very productive morning finishing off the faded EDSG upper camo, I prepared a thin mix of Tamiya Medium Sea Grey and began going lighlty over the surfaces to take away the starkness

Here's a pic when I was part way through, with the left side showing the new treatment and the right remaining untouched so far.

Below shows the more or less finished overall result.

Many close-up pictures of 404 Beaus show very distinct and tiny spots of darker colours over the weather beaten surfaces that I wanted to also replicate. Here's an example:

I achieved this effect by loading very thin Tamiya XF-24 in my brush, removing the diffuser cap and spraying the model at about 30psi pressure from a distance of 2 to 3 inches. I'm quite happy how this turned out:

After a few more final touches which included successive passes of dark and light post-shading, I stopped with these effects before I over-did it and set the model aside to cure. The next step will be to mask the exhaust collector rings and paint those before I give the entire upper surface a coat of Future in preparation for the decals.

Thanks for your kind support guys.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Gnomey]

Great work so far Andy!

 

[rochie]

Very effective Andy, any idea what caused those darker spots ?

 

[turbo]

Looking great Andy! Love the spattering effect - are they fuel or oil stains?

 

[fubar57]

Great job. Went back and forth a few times to make sure what was model and what was image

 

[rochie]

These just appeared on my FB page.

 

[Wurger]

The coloured ones I would say...

 

[Airframes]

Great job on the paint work Andy.
The dark spots would mainly be staining from 'oil throw', often seen on the lower cowlings and landing gear.

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks for the kind comments everyone. I rather like how this turned out and hope that the successive clear coats don't diminish the effect.

Terry answered the spotting source. The Hercules engine was a notorious oil spitter. There were other liquid sources that resulted in dark staining on the uppers, which was actually less bleaching of the EDSG. Glcol was sprayed onto the windscreen and tended to sweep back from the canopy, which was also covered with a protective tarp at times. There's also a glycol filler cap on the upper fuselage just to the right of the spine and a hydraulic oil fill point just to the left of the spine. Spills from these resulted in diagonal sweeps of darker grey from these points down to the wing root.

Tomorrow will be a busy day for me with Hurricane stuff as I need to deliver a spare Merlin to the restoration shop. I'll check in when I get some more to show.

 

[JKim]

Wow... you are really upping your weathering game with this one Andy! The camo looks more cohesive and those oil spots are really convincing! Great stuff!

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks John.

Karl, I forgot to thank-you for posting those pics. I too think they are colourized as the B&W's appear in a number of places but they do look pretty nice.

 

[Wayne Little]

Damn good work Andy.

 

[vikingBerserker]

Fantastic work!

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks friends.

The exhaust collector rings were finished off today. Someone who was cleaning out a friend's apartment gave me two old sailing ship models last year and in one of the boxes was an unopened bottle of Humbrol Copper. That was my base coat on the collector rings. After that dried overnight, I sprayed on a thin coat of Tamiya XF64 Red Brown to dull the copper. Once that cured for a while, I did the hairspray thing, finally topping all with Tamiya X-1 Gloss Black and then chipping away the black to reveal some of the copper undercoats.

The model has now received a coat of Future on the topsides so won't be touched for a while. I may revisit the cupola which did not turn out as nice as I wanted. More soon.

 

[JKim]

Great wear effect on the cowling! I always have inconsistent results with the hairspray. It either comes off in too big of chunks or I'm scrubbing like crazy just to get a tiny scratch going.