**** DONE: 1/48 Bf 109E-4 Von Werra - Defense of Britain/Atlantic.

Good stuff John.

Excellent...tamiya Extra Thin is great stuff....

Thanks guys! The tuna party turned out well but didn't give away as much as I wanted to so I the refrigerator and freezer are still plugged.

Although I am using Tamiya Extra Thin whenever I can, I still like to have a tube of the OG Testors tube glue on hand for certain situations. One of the great uses for Tamiya Extra Thin is the cleaning up of hard to reach rough surfaces such as after hollowing out exhausts and gun barrels. A little dab of the stuff will usually dissolve those pesky shavings... just don't poke at it more than once.

Onward ho! I've masked off the exhausts using thin strips of Tamiya tape.


The Eduard kit comes packaged with their trademark canopy masks. As usual, they are a perfect fit. The canopy frames are painted in the interior color, RLM 02, prior to attachment to the fuselage. This allows me to see the canopy frames a little better than if they are clear, which should aid me in getting the three-piece canopy into a good fit.



The rear cockpit bulkhead is painted and weathered before the clear pieces are attached.


Jumping back to the tail, the rudder is glued into place.


Before the horizontal tailplanes are attached, the delicate control linkages in PE are glued into place.



The wings, minus the control surfaces, are glued into place. The fit is very good, comparable to the Spitfire IXc that I just built.


I guess it was bound to happen. The little Revi gunsight was finally knocked loose. It fell on the carpet close to my feet, which made it easy to find. I bent down and saw that the reflector glass was still attached. Using tweezers, I gently picked up the gunsight. By the time my hand reached the level of the desktop, the gunsight was gone. I didn't hear a "ping" or see anything. It just disappeared. Probably pinched it like a tiddlywink and launched it who knows where. I spent about two hours looking for it but gave up and dove into my parts bin for a suitable replacement. I found a little piece from my Tamiya P-47 model that looked like it could play the part... C6, which is used to attach the flap in the up position.


I trimmed and shaped it as best as I could, painted it and added a piece of clear acetate to represent the reflector glass.


Working from front to rear, the three canopy pieces are secured into place using Tamiya Extra Thin.


Only minor putty work was required for the major joints. I also lost the flap at the rear of the oil cooler and had to fashion a new one out of sheet styrene.



The flaps and ailerons are glued to the wings. The leading edge slats are just pressed into place for now. They won't be glued until after painting.



I added little braces to the openings of the wing radiators. They are given as PE parts but I elected to use pieces of stretched sprue.


Wet tissue paper is used to plug up the wheel wells. I used a piece of foil to wrap up the painted tail wheel.


After an inspection and final touch-ups, painting will be next!

Looks great John and some nice mods. It looks like today is a day for losing things.




Geo

Very nice John, shame about the pinging with the gunsight, all part of modelling I guess. Watch your tail well, busted mine off almost at the last minute and had to drill holes and peg it back on, luckily I'd not got the aerial bits and wire on at the time.

Thanks guys! The gunsight came out better than expected and it will be difficult to discern under the windshield so I consider that a win. It's time to start the painting in which I will tackle with my usual approach but without the complications of hairspray paint chipping. Since the fit is so good, I am forgoing the primer again and hitting the bare plastic with the preshading of the panel lines. It's important to spray the clear parts with black to avoid the dreaded "transparent canopy frame" effect... you want the frames to be completely opaque. This is the perfect time to do that.




After the panel lines, I scribble very fine black lines all over the model to provide an irregular base for the camo paint. It gives a model some depth, which I feel is important at this scale. Although it looks a little crazy at first glance, it's an easily controllable effect that I try to keep on the subtle side.




After the preshading is done, I've decided to paint the white areas on the wing tips and rudder. I am still debating whether or not to show a white cowling but it will be easier to mask off later than now so I can defer that decision for awhile.

I was surprised to find my bottle of Tamiya XF-23 Light Blue dry. But looking through my collection of paints, I stumbled across an old bottle of Gunze-Sangyo RLM 65... perfect! This was thinned with iso alcohol in a 4:1 thinner to paint ratio and sprayed gradually over the preshading.


This takes much more time than more conventional mixes but I've grown to like this method of highly diluted paints and gradually building up the opacity.


I masked off the nose and painted it white. I'm not sure I like it this way. The more I look at the archive pictures and read the RAF crash report, the more I am thinking that the nose was not white and probably a cleaner RLM 65. I may change this but I'll think about it overnight.

Looks a treat John.

Looks fantastic John

Beautiful as always. Have you ever had issues with the Tamiya glue fogging your clear parts?

Nice work.

Crimea_River said:

Beautiful as always. Have you ever had issues with the Tamiya glue fogging your clear parts?

Click to expand...

Yikes! I haven't yet but now I'm scared to pull off the canopy masks!

I've decided to tackle the RLM 02/71 splinter scheme in sub areas instead of trying to mask off the entire plane. The fuselage spine is masked off first using a combination of flexible white Tamiya Tape and regular 3M masking tape.


Using the Eduard color profiles as a guide, I spray the RLM 02 areas freehand.


The RLM 71 areas are masked off and sprayed


The upper wings and tail planes are similarly painted.


After the RLM 71 is applied on the upper wings and tail, the masks are removed and the paint job is given some touch-ups.



The camo isn't quite completed yet as I still have to replicate the mismatched coloring on the gun breech cowling as evidenced in the crash photos.

Nice work John.

Any guesses as to what the mottling on the saddle cowling might be? I was planning on extending the RLM 65 further up past the hard upper camo demarcation and then apply some mottling in RLM 02.

I've never been convinced that it actually is mottling.
There was a tendency to 'tone down' the RLM 65 'winter' camouflage with a light over-spray of RLM 02, a practice that seems to have been particularly common in JG2, for example. I believe the slightly darker tones on the lower sides of the 'saddle' cowling, and extending back to the rear of the cockpit, are this light over-spray, with heavy exhust stainig too, and the top of the 'saddle' is probably 'solid' RLM 02, but with the stains of the sandy soil of the hop field showing as lighter areas on an already light, and mis-matched panel, soil deposits are clearly visible over the upper wing surface.

That is really nice John

I'm not convinced that there is any mottling. No over spray is mentioned in the original CEAR or later notes on this aircraft. I think what we see is general muck and gunge associated with both the typical leaks and staining and a forced landing.
This is supported by one contemporary photograph where the British have cleaned the emblem and surrounding area (on the panel immediately behind that cowling).
.
It's also worth noting the wear to the front (that's the faces nearest the pilot, think of a fan rather than an air screw!) of the propeller blades.
Cheers
Steve