W.I.P. pics of new projects....

[matrixone]

surprise!!! More Focke-Wulf's.

The two models I am building now are 1/32 scale Revell Fw 190D-9's and will be making them as W.Nr. 500570 ''blue 12'' of JG 6 and W.Nr. 600150 of JG 4 (the aircraft on the cover of Volume 1 of Jerry Crandall's Dora book).

In this pic you can see the gun cowls and a couple of the mainwheels I am now painting. The kit comes with an odd mix of the early five piece gun cowl with the bulge of a Mimetall built Dora so I had to fill in some of the panel lines with putty and sand them down. W.Nr. 500570 was a Mimetall built Dora and had the late three piece gun cowl and had the bulges on the sides so all I need to do is fill in the unwanted panel lines. The other gun cowl is for W.Nr. 600150 which was a Fieseler built Dora and had the late war three piece gun cowl with no bulges on the sides so I had to carve off the bulges and sand them down.


Here is the fuselages with the gun cowls sitting on them, notice the Mimetall Dora has matching bulges on the top part of the engine cowling while the Fieseler built Dora fuselage is smooth without the bulges.


The spinners are painted gloss black, the one on the left has some green roughly painted on the base of it, that spinner will be used for W.Nr. 500570 which had some green overspray from the engine cowling being resprayed in the field.
Also in this pic you can see I painted the radiators, the one on the left is done and the one on the right still needs a little more work on it. I tried something new when I painted the radiators, first they were sprayed gloss black and then some chrome silver paint was lightly sprayed on only on the raised areas. After the paint was dry I dry brushed some chrome silver paint on it...I really like the results and the radiator looks like it is made out of metal. This method is better than just doing the dry brushing alone. Too bad little of the radiator will be seen on the finished model.


This last pic shows the rear of the engines with some of the plumbing showing. I painted these assemblies the same way I painted the radiators except for airbrushing the oil tank completly silver with the airbrush. I did a little detail painting and you can see this on the left hand side, the one on the right is still in gloss black with silver highlights. I did not want to spend very much time detail painting these areas because after the weathering is added any fine detail will be partly covered up anyway.
BTW, these parts are just being test fit in the fuselages...I need to finish the cockpits before I can glue the fuselages together.


Matrixone

[Gondor]

Wonderful as usual Matrixone, defiantly going to be following this pair of builds.

Gondor

[matrixone]

Thank you Gondor,
I just finished sanding off the red putty on the gun covers and it looks good, to play it safe I coated them with Mr.Surfacer and will sand that off later. Next to be worked on is the cockpits, after they are painted I can get the fuselage halves glued together.
I expect the models will go together quickly since I am already working on some of the smaller bits like the canopy armor, prop blades, and wheels and won't have to do them later.
W.Nr. 500570 will take a while to paint, there are at least five different colors used for the uppersurfaces and this aircraft also was repaired a number of times in the field and has some repainting done over the repairs.

Matrixone

[Ian the Kiwi Herder]

Awaiting the next installment of: "How to build and paint late war Luftwaffe stuff' by MX1..... One of my favoourite on-line magazines 

Two 1:32 190's..... Les, you reallly do love this era, don't you.

Ian

[Gondor]

Awaiting the next installment of: "How to build and paint late war Luftwaffe stuff' by MX1..... One of my favoourite on-line magazines 

Where do I sign up ?

Gondor

[matrixone]

Thanks Ian, and thanks again Gondor!

Ian, yes I do like the aircraft of that era. Just in the last year of the war alone there was such a wide variety of camouflage patterns and markings that it would be impossible for one person to build them all...and thats just Fw 190's.

These two 1/32 scale models are real world but after they are finished I will switch back to what-ifs starting with a Huma Ta 283. Another project I might be doing is a Bf 109 with a collapsed landing gear leg, markings will be for a fictional training unit.

Matrixone

[matrixone]

I got the fuselage halves joined and gun cowls glued on, very easy work but most of my time lately has been spent on getting all the smaller parts removed from the sprues and getting them ready to paint or have already started painting them.

These first two pics are of some book covers that show the aircraft I will be attempting to build.

The cover of the JaPo Fw 190D-9 Part II...this cover shows W.Nr. 500570 ''blue 12''.


And here is the cover of Jerry Crandall's book showing a color photograph of W.Nr. 600150.


Here is what the models look like right now, I sprayed some RLM 02 on the seams to double check if they were correct, all looked good so I will assemble the wings and attach them to the fuselages, if all goes well I might have the models ready for painting by Friday. Much depends on if the wing roots need very much work, this is something of an issue on most models of the 190.


Matrixone

[matrixone]

No pics in this update.

Both airframes are built and W.Nr. 600150(see the above pic of Jerry Crandall's book cover) has most of its camouflage colors on now, I had planned to have it all painted and some in-progress pics taken of it by now but I am trying to paint the fuselage mottling exactly like the photograph's show of the real thing and its a lot more difficult to do than I thought it would...spray one mottle and look at the photographs, spray another mottle and look again at the photographs, etc, etc. Not easy to do and I still did not get it as close as I wanted to after all the effort put into it but it will have to do, I think adding the markings will make it look closer to the real aircraft.

Plus it does not help using some older paint that made the airbrush act funny and stop working a couple of times, the old bottle of paint was thrown out and fresh paint cured the airbrush trouble.
I made a couple of mistakes during painting and I will have to fix them later, it don't pay to try and do precise airbrushing when you are angry and in a hurry.

I will try and get pics posted Thursday after the rest of the painting is finished.


Matrixone

[matrixone]

I finished painting the mottle on the fuselage of W.Nr. 600150 and it looks a little better now than it did last night. This paint job took a long time to do and was a lot of work getting the mottling to match what was on the full size machine and came close, but it was not just trying to get the mottling right that ate up so much time but also doing some fading of the paint on the uppersurfaces. I used three different shades of each color to do the fading effect, some of it you can't see in these pics but its there and I feel its worth the extra effort to do it and will help with the weathering steps to come.




And below is W.Nr. 600150 and W.Nr. 500570, W.Nr. 500570 is unpainted because it will need different colors than W.Nr. 600150 has, I usually paint two models at a time to save time from cleaning the airbrush so often.

Not pictured but also painted and weathered is the canopy, landing gear doors, and flaps.

Next up for W.Nr. 600150 is painting a white band on the fuselage for the RVD marking.

I have already started work on one of my other models I have planned for later this year, a Bf 109 that was damaged after a landing mishap. Markings will be for a fictional fighter training school.

Matrixone

[matrixone]

Here are a couple of pics of W.Nr. 600150, all decals are on it now. The decal sheet from EagleCals comes with only the black parts of the RVD band and are in four pieces, some of the decals did not want to fit correctly so I ended up painting part of the black of the RVD band...this decal needed to be cut into smaller parts to work, sadly I found that out AFTER I destroyed part of it trying to get it fit on the model.

I like the pinstriping on the RVD band, its surprising that much effort was put into painting that pinstriping on the aircraft considering the short lifespan of German fighters at that stage of the war!



Next up for this model is some fine detail painting by paint brush and then the weathering can start. This model will not get very much weathering done to it because the full size aircraft was still in good condition at the time it was captured and photographed.

I might have more in-progress pics next week.

Matrixone

[NARSES2]

Love the difference between the mottling on the cowl and the fuselage 

[matrixone]

Thank you NARSES2,
The mottling and the pinstriping on the RVD band are part of the reason I decided to do this aircraft, I think it looks cool.
The fuselage mottling is standard Fieseler factory style but the large mottling spots on the engine cowling are unusual, most Dora's came with the engine cowling pre-painted by the Junkers factory in the prescribed camouflage colors and in this case it was 74 over 76, it is thought the mottling on the cowl of W.Nr. 600150 was done on a unit level instead of at the Junkers factory. There is one other JG 4 Dora built by Fieseler (black 11) that also had the additional mottling spots on the engine cowl.

The test pics of this model did not match the photograph's of the full size aircraft as much as I had hoped it would, it might look better in sunlight. But if this model fails I gave it my best effort, like the famous American scientist Dr. Rick Marshall said ''If you don't make it, its your own damn vault''

Matrixone

[ChernayaAkula]

So nice! It's just a joy to look at your Focke-Wulfs. Even in a half-ready state, they're absolutely gorgeous! 

How about a whif with one completely painted in the non-standard cowling camo?

[matrixone]

Thanks Moritz!

I have eight more of these large scale Dora's in my stash half will be real world the other half whiffed, a great way to keep the JMN types guessing!!!
Don't worry, I will still be building whiffs other than Fw 190's....starting with a Ta 283 as soon as these two RW Dora's are finished.

Matrixone

[Gondor]

Loving the work Matrixone, my builds have come to a bit of a halt at the moment though I should get more work done starting this weekend when I should get the final parts for my fleet.

Gondor