W.I.P. pics of Ta 152C and Fw 190D-13

[matrixone]

Pablo1965,
No I have not used any of the Vallejo products for weatherings washes, I prefer the oil paints because they give me a long time to work with them before they dry and even if they do dry they can easily be removed with oderless thinner, but thanks for the suggestion!

The problem I have is not the tools I use for weathering its my judgement on how much weathering to do on these models.
I have given the models a thin flat coat to seal in the work I did yesterday with the oil paints and will add more oil paints today, the flat coat I put on will help to spread out the oil paint I will add today. Yesterday I worked only on panel lines and access hatches and today I will be adding some streaks and smears on the paint itself.

Sometime later today I need to take the models outside and get some test pics so I can check my weathering and will post an in-progress pic or two.

Matrixone

[matrixone]

Some in-progress pics...

I am almost finished with the oil paints on the uppersurfaces, I like how they look now and think I had better quit while I am ahead, I don't want my models to look like some of the hideously overweathered models I see on other modeling sites.
The area inside the wing walk markings and a few places on the fuselages were faded slightly and later on the wing roots will be given some light paint chipping with some chrome colored paint and silver artists pencil before I spray on the exhaust stains.

Close-up of the Fw 190D-13 tail...


Ta 152C...



Undersurfaces of the Ta 152C, I am not quite done with this area yet and will add a little more dirt and grunge.


Matrixone

[Gondor]

Matrixone

On the underside of the Ta 152C have you painted the centre section of each wings underside in a metallic finish as it is difficult to tell from the pictures? and are both 1/48 scale?

Love the progress by the way

Gondor

[matrixone]

Gondor,
Both models are 1/48 scale Dragon kits and both have the front half of the wings with camouflage paint and the rear half bare metal.
A great many Focke-Wulf Fw 190D's were built with the rear half of the wings undersurfaces without paint, the idea was to save weight and production time. All the production Ta 152's were planned to be produced with bare metal on the rear half of the wings. Only the fabric covered ailerons (and wooden flaps if so equipped) were to have paint on them.

There were plans for all German planes to have been produced without any undersurface paints at all except for any parts made of wood, steel, or were fabric covered and there are some photograph's I have seen of very late war Bf 109's and Me 262's that had only parts of their undersurfaces painted while the uppersurfaces had camouflage paint on them.

Matrixone

[Gondor]

Gondor,
Both models are 1/48 scale Dragon kits and both have the front half of the wings with camouflage paint and the rear half bare metal.
A great many Focke-Wulf Fw 190D's were built with the rear half of the wings undersurfaces without paint, the idea was to save weight and production time. All the production Ta 152's were planned to be produced with bare metal on the rear half of the wings. Only the fabric covered ailerons (and wooden flaps if so equipped) were to have paint on them.

There were plans for all German planes to have been produced without any undersurface paints at all except for any parts made of wood, steel, or were fabric covered and there are some photograph's I have seen of very late war Bf 109's and Me 262's that had only parts of their undersurfaces painted while the uppersurfaces had camouflage paint on them.

Matrixone

Thanks Matrixone, that helps me a lot with some of the whifs I am planning on building.

Gondor

[Pablo1965]

Great work, the landing gear pit, if you said so? , are superb. good weathering

[matrixone]

Gondor,
Glad I could help.

Pablo1965,
Thanks for the comment on the weathering on the models.

Today I used the airbrush for adding more weathering on the airframes and some of the smaller parts. I will be adding the tailwheels and landing gear legs soon. On the Dragon Fw 190D kit there is a small problem, the retraction struts in the kit are made too short and they will effect the correct angle of the landing gear legs if they are not modified. I cut each retraction strut in two and glued some scrap plastic in between the parts and glued them back together, I can only hope they are long enough now. I don't know if the Ta 152C kit has the same problem because the parts are very different from those of the Dora, I will find out later if they are correct ot not.

Matrixone

[matrixone]

Adding the landing gear legs on these models went pretty smooth, on Dragon Fw 190 kits getting the landing gear on just right can be a headache.

Here are some in-progress pics, the propellers are not glued in yet nor are they flat coated, after I add all the small parts these models will get their flat clear coat.






This might be the final set of in-progress pics I post of these models, they are close to being finished.

Matrixone

[Pablo1965]

 I see, metal chipping, engine soot, good weathering.

[sotoolslinger]

I see, metal chipping, engine soot, good weathering.

Yeah , he's pretty average huh

[dumaniac]

Love the dirt or mud in the running gear - really nice work

Bernie

[matrixone]

Thanks for the comments Pablo1965, sotoolslinger, and Bernie!

There is some paint chipping at the wing roots but not as much as it looks like in these pics, some of what looks like paint chipping is actually some of the exhuast soot scraped off the surface. On a number of photographs of very late war Dora's you can see the exhuast stains were partly worn off by the ground crews when they re-arm or refuel the aircraft, I was trying to copy that effect on these models. I hope that after the models are given their flat coats that you can see the difference from the paint chipping and exhuast soot being rubbed off...some of the weathering I do on my models is so subtle it can't be seen very well in my pics but its there.


Matrixone

[Eddie M.]

No matter how many of your builds I follow, each one is an exercise in attention to detail. Your ability to achieve such fine results is masterful. Looking forward to the roll out.....

[matrixone]

Thank you Eddie!

These models are warm ups for the two large scale Fw 190D-9's I will be building at the start of the year, the weathering I am learning to do now will be put to good use later on. The two 1/32 scale Dora's I want to build are real world aircraft and are well known, one of them is the Dora of JG 4 (W.Nr. 600150) that is on the cover of Jerry Crandall's first Dora book, the other D-9 I want to do is the JG 6 Dora (blue 12 W.Nr. 500570) that is well known from its famous color photograph seen in many books. The second Dora is of greatest interest to me because of how much weathering it has on it and it will be fun trying to copy that in model form, thats why the models that are being built right now are such important learning tools so I can get the bigger models done correctly.
Well, thats my plan anyway!

One last 1/48 scale Fw 190 is going to be built this year, it will be a Fw 190F-8 and my goal is to have it done by Dec. 31st.

Matrixone

[matrixone]

These two models are now done!!

The weather here has not been very nice lately (we even had a tornado touch down and destroy a few buildings) so getting good pictures of the models might take a while to do since I prefer to take all my pics outside. It did not rain today but it was overcast and dark enough to prevent me from getting the type of pics I wanted to take of these models but here are two of the better pics of the Fw 190D-13. I had to lighten these two images a bit but you can it least see the model.



I have already started work on my last model of the year, a Tamiya Fw 190F-8. Painting on it starts Friday.

Matrixone