**** DONE: 1/48 Spitfire IXc - Defense of Britain/Atlantic.

[JKim]

Here's last night's work. First is the test of the Tamiya mix of Ocean Grey and the Gunze Dark Green. I purposefully made the Ocean Grey a little darker to get a little more contrast from the Medium Sea Grey bottom.

I had to pre-shade half of the upper surfaces to cover up the Hataka Ocean Grey prior to putting on the custom mix.

How to demarcate the upper camo? Originally, I wanted to do a hard edged mask using frisket paper and masking tape. I've seen models done this way and I like how striking they look. But I looked at the photos of MH712 and concluded that the demarcation between the Dark Green and Ocean Grey was a fine spray. So I decided to use paper masks held closely off the painted surface using blobs of Blu-Tack. I scanned the painting instructions, scaled them to approximately 1/48 scale and used them as templates.

It's a bit of a pain to do it this way. And once committed, I had to finish as I did not want the Blu-Tack sitting on my model overnight and affecting the finish.

The unmasked areas were pre-shaded (again!) prior to the application of the green.

The green is sprayed on.

Here's what the camo looks like after the masks have been removed and the bits of Blu-Tack cleaned off. I started brushing off the Blu-Tack imprints with a cloth wetted with water but thought it might be better for the green paint to dry so that is how I left it over night. Notice the overspray on the upper cowling that needs to be corrected.

I cleaned off the Blu-Tack as best as I could but there is still some residue left. Based on my past experience with this stuff, the clear coating process should take care of the residual marks. The upper cowling was touched up.

I'm going to take a closer look a the camo and do any required clean up work and then apply the Sky fuselage band and yellow ID strips on the wings.

 

[Airframes]

It's coming to life ! Nice work so far John.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Wayne Little]

 

[Crimea_River]

Looks lovely John!

 

[JKim]

Thanks again for all of the comments! MH712 is progressing nicely and I'm getting lots done each time I'm in the workshop. With the camo finished, I spent some time with some painted details. The Sky fuselage band was masked, pre-shaded and painted using the Hataka paint. I thinned it with 70% iso alcohol and it behaved ok.

I almost forgot about the paint chipping step. The thin layer of hairspray is now sitting under multiple coats of black, Ocean Grey and Dark Green and I wasn't sure if I would be able to get the technique to work. Using a brush wetted with water, I brushed and brushed and brushed and brushed until spots of Alclad Aluminum started appearing. It was definitely hard work for such minimal effects... I'm gonna have to explore other chipping methods for the future.

Taking a break from the chipping chore, I masked and painted the yellow panels on the leading edge of the wings.

Back to more chipping. The difficulty was perhaps a blessing in disguise. It forced me to accept very subtle results, which is not a bad thing. Definitely more preferable to too strong of an effect. I stopped after this point, afraid that more aggressive rubbing with the wet brush would force a mistake.

The tips of the Hispano cannons were sprayed with Alclad Stainless Steel. Although not as nice as AM brass barrels, they look acceptable.

Careful inspection of the camo pattern revealed some little defects that were carefully corrected. When all was in good order, I sealed everything with a clear gloss coat. I used Alclad Aqua Gloss for this step.

To avoid messing with the long skinny decals, I decided to paint the thin black wing walk lines.

This is a good stopping point. The next step will be applying the stencil decals but that will have to wait. I have some fishing to do!

 

[Airframes]

Great stuff john, it's looking the biz!
And you've done exactly what I'll be doing, by painting the black 'walk way' lines !
Apart from not liking long, thin decals, my lines will need to 'go through' the wing reinforcing strakes, so the decals would be a b*gg*r to work with !

 

[Crimea_River]

Painting this strips is the way to go. At least the Brits didn't use dashed lines like the Germans.

 

[Wurger]

 

[JKim]

Thanks guys! Strakes! That will present some masking issues but it'd be a total bugger to do with decals. At least the lines on the Spitfire are straight, relatively simple and, like Andy says, aren't dashed like the Germans.

Any recommendations on a matt clear? I've using a mixture of Alclad Clear Gloss (not the Aqua Gloss) and Alclad Clear Matt. It behaves nicely out of the airbrush but I've some instances of the stuff remaining slightly tacky even after a few days.

To those that are going... enjoy Duxford!

 

[rochie]

Great job, John

 

[Gnomey]

Great work so far!

 

[chris brown]

Looking sharp John!

 

[parsifal]

Great to see you got past the paint issues. Looks very nice now to me

 

[Wayne Little]

great paint job John!

 

[JKim]

Thanks guys! Fishing trip was fun but now it's back to work!

 

[Wurger]

 

[Vic Balshaw]

That pre shading sure paid off John.

 

[JKim]

Thank you gents! I've been working on the decaling so I'll be able to post an update soon. Only one snafu with the decals... red/blue flag on the tail folded and then ripped on me so I'll have to repair that with paint.

 

[JKim]

Here's the decaling report. The Eduard Profipack comes with two sheets of decals... one for the IXc stenciling and one for the individual aircraft markings. I did the stenciling first and then the markings. The Eduard decals are not the thinnest but they reacted well to the Microset/Microsol system of decal softeners and settled very well into the intricate surface details of the Eduard kit. I purposely shot a few into the glare of the desk lamp to highlight the surface details. Even the prominent fairing behind the machine gun ammo ports were no problem for the bottom wing roundels.

I went the extra step and used a new X-acto blade to scribe the decals along the main panel lines but that probably wasn't necessary.

The knife work got me into a bit trouble on the starboard side of the tail. The tail flash folded as I was cutting and I couldn't get the fold tip unstuck, even when I dipped the decal into water. I will have to fill this in with paint but I'll do after the decals have been sealed with a clear coat to make sure that I don't lift the decal off with tape.

The top has been sprayed with a clear coat. After that dries, I will spray the bottom and then I can start weathering.