Hasegawa 1/32 Fw190D-9

I still have some Polly Scale paints but can't airbrush them if my life depended on it.

Looks great so far John!

I hope everyone is a having a wonderful Christmas Day! Santa delivered a small present earlier this week...


I wanted to branch out and give oil staining a try. Instead oils in tubes, I found these pre-thinned oil mixtures by MIG that are specifically intended for scale modelers. I wanted to try it on the wheel hubs first. I applied one of the lighter colors in dabs around the center of the wheel. Using a brush dampened in mineral spirits, I started working the lighter color outward. Very stark at first.


I started removing more and more of the oil until I was left with just remnants of a light stain around the center hub of the wheel. Kinda underwhelmed with the effect. I tried mixing in other colors but they all seemed to blend into a single shade during my brushing efforts. Gonna revisit this but I got SOMEWHERE, which is good.


I gave the oils multiple days to dry out before I applied a clear coat over the props. This technique of imparting wood grain using oils leaves physical brush marks, which aren't going to look good when the prop is painted dark green. So I had to run through an iteration of gently polishing the props with Micromesh, reapplying some more clear coat and repeating the polishing process to remove the grain. At some point, the clear coat crackled on me and that led to more clear coats and polishing.


A strip of metal color was put onto the leading edge of each prop. The Micromesh, in some instances, went all the way down to the base paint. Since I'll be applying limited chipping effects on the props, I think this will be a non-issue.


As the wing seams are being cleaned up, there are some things I need to do before I attach the wings to the fuselage. The brass ammo chutes are sanded to the right height.


Dry-fitting revealed a slight step at the wing root between the forward fuselage and top of the wing. To address this, I inserted small shims of sheet plastic.


Here is the Dora with the wings taped on and the tail planes inserted into place. I'm going to leave off the tail planes until the end. The fit is pretty good and this will greatly simply the masking process when I get to the red/white striped bottoms.



The fit at the wing root looks very good after my shim adjustment!



The front cowling pieces are placed into position. I usually do a great number of test fits before committing any major pieces to glue. Better safe than sorry. Everything seems to fit well and I'm fast approaching the point where these major components are going to come together.

I added the brake lines to the legs. The brake lines will be painted before the legs are attached to the plane.


The wooden props were coated with MIG Scratches Effect and then painted RLM70 Black Green. The Scratches Effect liquid is water soluble. When water is applied to the Green, the underlying Scratches Effect turns to liquid and breaks up the Green in tiny fragments. Just brush some water on and the brushing action is enough to start dislodging paint and leaving a chipping effect. I've had mixed results with both MIG Scratches Effect and Heavy Chipping solutions. I think I'll go back to plain old hairspray, which seems to deliver a more consistent effect. The chipping was kept light and I think I'll have to dial back some of it.



I went back to the wheels and gave them another try with the Oilbrushers. Using a different color (Ochre) this time to contrast with the Grey I did before. Due to the small space that I am working in, the amount oil placed is simply too much. Using repetitive strokes, I slowly start to remove the oil. I clean the brush and dip it in mineral spirits to help the removal process.


Eventually, I get to a point where the effect is subtle and not overpowering.


Briefly mounted on the landing gear legs. The brake lines have been painted by this stage.


The gun cowling has been cemented into position using Tamiya Extra Thin. There were a few tiny gaps that were filled using Milliput White.



My second go at painting the landing gear covers.


I tried using hairspray chipping but the effect of two relatively thick layers of paint over the metal proved too tough for me to chip through. I've done a round of weathering on the doors including a dark wash and airbrush highlighting with highly thinned brown/black. Some additional chipping/staining will be done but I just wanted to verify the painting process which will be used on the bottom of Red 1.

Great work as usual John

Congratulations on these dates of celebration for you and your loved ones, John.
On the other hand, as usual, it is a first level job that you carry out in your projects.

Question: Do the labels that you include on the landing gear legs come in the kit or are they purchased separately?

Saludos

Beautiful work.

Skilful paint work as always.

Thanks for the comments guys!

SANCER said:

Congratulations on these dates of celebration for you and your loved ones, John.
On the other hand, as usual, it is a first level job that you carry out in your projects.

Question: Do the labels that you include on the landing gear legs come in the kit or are they purchased separately?

Saludos

Click to expand...

Thank you Luis! The data plate decals on the landing gear legs are from the EagleCal's decal sheet. I don't think the kit decals have the landing gear decals but I'll verify when I get home.

I finally got to the point where I could glue the wings onto the fuselage. Fit was good but not perfect and I'll have to do some work to clean up the joints. That upper wing root is always the hardest to get to when it comes to sanding but it has to be done.

There was a slight gap on the starboard side. Not good since it means that there is not a good glue joint. I don't like using filler in these situations since it does nothing to add adhesion between the two parts. I used a piece of stretch sprue and welded the piece into place using Tamiya Extra Thin. The sprue gets soft and pliable when the glue is applied so I used that opportunity to press the sprue into the gap as much as possible to create a better bond.


The port side had no gap. The wing root ammo cover is a monolithic piece that extends to that hinge on the lower fuselage. So I'm going to have to eradicate the joint completely.


Here is what Red 1 looks like with the wings attached. The shape of the Focke Wulf is starting to appear. With this build, I've paid particular attention to all of the major glue joints. Black 1 was damaged during shipping and upon inspection, I noticed that many of the failures occurred due to insufficient strength in the joints. So I've made sure to flow the Tamiya cement generously into each seam, multiple times if necessary.



Another view into the wheel wells. Soon, the piece to cover the center of the wheel wells will be put into place and that will restrict the view into this area.


The finished props. After the chipping, I gave each prop blade two layers of salt chipping to portray wear. The first was a lightened Black Green and the second was a highly thinned grey. The effects are very subtle... almost too subtle but the photos indicate that the props did not exhibit heavy wear so I'm inclined to leave the effect as is. We'll see.


After an initial application of Mr Dissolved Putty, the wing root seams are being finished with Mr Surfacer 1000.



The biggest seam was found on the bottom. Despite my use of a shim, the fit here wasn't very good and included gaps AND a step. I'm using my normal Mr Surfacer over Mr Dissolved Putty to fill the gap and level the area. Panel lines and rivets will need to be added after the seam is fixed.

Great work so far John!

The bottom seam has been smoothed out. A new panel line was scribed and the markings for the rivets layed out.


Here's the same area after the riveting and a shot of primer.


The wing roots have been cleaned up and given a check coat of primer. The port side looks good but there is a ghost of a seam that needs to be taken care of on the starboard root.



I don't know why but Hasegawa designed the radiator cowl assembly to be detachable via vinyl poly caps. The poly caps put a really tight hold on the two plastic pins on the front of fuselage. So much so that removal is nearly impossible without breaking the pins, as I've done on previous builds and this one as well. I drilled out the insides of the poly caps to make removal easier. Thinking it might be easier to paint the model with the radiator cowl separate, I am going to glue the three components of the cowl assembly (flaps, radiator face and radiator cowling) together but leave it unattached. First, I glue the prop shaft backing from the Henri Daehne propeller into place.


The three components are glued together in place but the assembly is not glued to the fuselage.




The small panel in the center of the wheel well has been attached. It's a tight fit but a little cleanup will be necessary at the seams.


A topside look with the masked clear parts in place.

Doing little things on the Dora to procrastinate from the start of painting. Like making a set of the landing gear indicators.


The Revi gun sight has been glued into place with a dab of white glue.



The windscreen is glued on but not the sliding canopy. I haven't decided if I'm going to paint the sliding canopy separately or not.


The prop blades have been done so I may as well paint the other components of the HD propeller.


I used the spiral mask from the Montex mask set to get this white spiral on the spinner. The mask worked very well.


Black was oversprayed on the lower portion of the spinner and then the yellow was masked off and painted. Photos of Red 1 indicate that the black and white spiral was peaking through the yellow and black.


The prop hub and backing plate and painted.



The hub gets hidden completely once the spinner is put into place. Too bad there is no way to make the spinner detachable. I'll do some cleanup on the spinner to get rid of some dust spots. It will also receive some light weathering.

Here is what the HD prop looks like mounted without the spinner.


I was able to repair the spinner to my satisfaction. I still need to think about weathering it a bit but not sure how to do it considering the two contrasting colors. I did put a dark wash to make the rivets stand out more.



I'm very close to painting. In preparation, I've masked off the wheel wells with foam and the flap opening with tape. Not sure which I want to do first... top or bottom? Thinking about doing the bottom first as I would rather deal with green overspray on the red than the red overspray on the green. Or would I? I'll think about it. A short trip up to LA to meet my niece's fiance! We'll get back to Red 1 in a couple of days.

Looks great so far John!

Great work.