**** DONE: GB-45 1/48 Gloster Gladiator - BoB/Foreign Service

[Wayne Little]

This should be good.....

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks Wayne. It SHOULD be. I hope it WILL be!

 

[Crimea_River]

Norwegian insignia masked and sprayed. This was very tricky to get the widths right. I was told the ratios were 6-1-2-1-6 but the photos don't look like the blue band is much wider than the white ones. What's more, the one photo of the port side shows the red bands to be different widths whereas the starboard view has then the same. So, even the Norwegians struggled with the masking apparently! In any event. I scaled and ratioed from two photos and proceeded accordingly:

These next two shots were taken immediately after the masks were pulled and things turned out better than expected.

There are a few minor touch ups needed and I'm looking at that blue stripe. I may need to straighten it and add a smidge to the width.

Thanks for looking.

 

[fubar57]

Looks great though

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks Geo. Tough going down to my hell hole when the weather's so nice.

 

[Airframes]

That turned out very well indeed. Personally, I think I'd leave the width of the blue strip - any irregularities probably won't be noticed under 'normal' viewing conditions, especially once clear coated, and any comments can be answered by "That's the way they did it at the time, in the field, so b*gger off !"
Just a suggestion - at the appropriate time, the fabric areas may benefit from a semi gloss / semi matt clear coat, to contrast with any bare metal (assuming the metal was painted in 'Aluminium' finish) as the 'silver' dope did have a bit of a sheen to it. Bu no doubt you have this in hand.

 

[Crimea_River]

Good point Terry and thanks. Most of the silver on the uppers will disappear after the camo is done anyway so I don't think there will be any point in trying to show the subtle difference.

 

[Wurger]

 

[rochie]

Really stands out, looks great !

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks all.

 

[Gnomey]

Looks great so far Andy!

 

[Crimea_River]

After a bit of a discussion with my friend Nils at BM, I decided to redo the blue stripe. This time, I made it closer to the 2:1 ratio with the white strip and I used a very brittle decal that was also a darker blue which is more correct. Far from perfect but at this point it works for me. I also gave it a gloss coat to seal the decal.

 

[fubar57]

 

[Wurger]

 

[Wayne Little]

Turned out pretty good Andy.

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks guys. Next will be masking off the bands and resuming the camo.

 

[nsmekanik]

Gotta like it

 

[Crimea_River]

Light blue snakes completed over entire model. Next step will be to add more of the same in Giallo Mimetico 3.

 

[rochie]

Nice one Andy

 

[Crimea_River]

Cheers Karl.