Hasegawa 1/48 Bf 109K-4

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A little progress was made on the Kurfurst this week. After dryfitting the windscreen, I figured out that I needed a longer mount for the Revi gunsight to clear the inside of the clear piece. So I fashioned one out of a piece of stretched sprue.



The windscreen was glued into place. It looks like there is a sprue attachment scar that will need to cleaned up but it's hard to tell on unpainted clear parts.


The canopy was glued into place and then the frame was primed with dark grey to match the interior color and to check the joints. The windscreen joint WILL need a little bit of cleanup work as suspected.


I had trouble getting the canopy to sit flush with the fuselage as it appeared it was a tad too narrow. After a couple of failed attempts to press down on the canopy firmly to help "spread" it wider, I realized that I had forgotten the armor plate behind the pilot's head. Good thing I remembered when the canopy was still loose. I'll add the armor and try to get the canopy to fit a little better.
 
Looking nice John. Can you kill 2 birds with 1 stone and shim the bottom of the armour plate with a small piece of plastic or some other scheme to help spread the canopy to fit? In other words use the armour plate as a spreader.
 
turbo said:
Looking nice John. Can you kill 2 birds with 1 stone and shim the bottom of the armour plate with a small piece of plastic or some other scheme to help spread the canopy to fit? In other words use the armour plate as a spreader.
Click to expand...

It kinda worked out that way. The canopy seemed to fit a little better once the armor plate was put into place. The canopy is on for now.

Spent the whole week trying to get the spinner spiral right. I have a couple of decals from the Eagle decal sheet but I was determined to paint it. I tried a few methods: old montex mask (didn't have enough "stick" in the adhesive to hold to the curves), montex mask stuck on frisket paper or yellow kabuki tape and spraying paint on it to get a new mask and frisket paper over a photocopy of the decal sheet. Cutting a smooth curve using knives or scissors is difficult at this scale and each imperfect mask led to an even more imperfect spiral. Finally got a good smooth mask cut from frisket paper after about the 5-6 attempt.
 
That looks great John. I've seen one of Andy's spiral masks and for the life of me I haven't figured out how to make one from scratch so look for machines without. Off to the Google machine................
 
fubar57 said:
That looks great John. I've seen one of Andy's spiral masks and for the life of me I haven't figured out how to make one from scratch so look for machines without. Off to the Google machine................
Click to expand...

Here is one of my unsuccessful attempts. This is an used Montex mask tacked onto a piece of clear frisket paper and then spray painted black. The old mask is pulled from the frisket paper leaving the outline of a new spiral mask.


That's the easy part. The difficulty is cutting it so that you have a smooth curve throughout. Using a swiveling knife, I tried to do a single, uninterrupted cut for each side of the spiral but my concentration would waver and the knife would track straight, botching the mask. I had to break up cuts into different segments and using both scissors and knife.

Crimea_River said:
That looks great John but I must say that I would have tried the decal first to potentially save a lot of time.
Click to expand...
Yup, probably would've saved time. But I went through the trouble of riveting the spinner and I wanted that detail to show up. I think the decal would've just covered it.
 
JKim said:
Yup, probably would've saved time. But I went through the trouble of riveting the spinner and I wanted that detail to show up. I think the decal would've just covered it.
Click to expand...

Nice work on the spiral John. I went through the same thought process about painting the spiral on a Gustav I did (and would have used the same method you did). In the end what I did was to use the kit decal but before applying MicroSol use a sharp Xacto blade to cut through the decal along the panel line and use a pin or sharp point of a scribing tool to poke through the decal into the rivet holes. Then apply MicroSol to let the decal settle into the contours and rivet holes and subsequently an oil wash during weathering. It's a bit out of focus in this picture but I think I managed to preserve the detail OK. I guess another option could be to use the rivet tool after decal application or would that make clean up too hard?

 
I was a bit obsessed with doing via homemade mask to be honest. The failed attempts were close so I knew it was do-able. I've had both good and bad experiences with spiral decals so I think I wanted to be confident that I could overcome a spiral decal that refuses to conform to the shape of the spinner. Not the easiest way but now I have a viable option. Started on the preshading on the K-4 so I'll be putting up an update soon.
 
It's probably very hard to see but I added some pigment to the spinner for wear. Enough of the spinner for now.


The exhaust pipes were painted. Gloss black base, an Alclad metal finish over that, Alclad Exhaust Manifold misted on, exhaust pipe ends highlighted with a mixture of Tamiya Red Brown and Red and then the exhaust pipe tips highlighted with thinned black.


Back to the main assembly where I've done my preshading per my usual routine. First the panel lines.



And then my mottled base. I've also added preshading for the exhaust path and undersides.



Highly thinned RLM 76 Lichtblau is applied over the preshading. Photography doesn't quite capture the preshading that I can see with my naked eye. There's a fine line between too much and too little effect-wise. Can't tell from the photos but I am trying to keep it just over the too-much side because the high contrast of the Luftwaffe markings will visually crush the effect afterwards. Acrylic is not the most durable finish and highly thinned acrylic is that much more delicate so it's a good idea to let this cure overnight before doing the upper camo colors.


 
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