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

[matrixone]

Thanks Gondor!

Looking forward to seeing more in-progress pics of your 190's.

Matrixone

[NARSES2]

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.

Certainly does

[Gondor]

Thanks Gondor!

Looking forward to seeing more in-progress pics of your 190's.

Matrixone

Matrixone,

Don't hold your breath, I will do the best I can to progress my builds but I think I will end up making a production line for cockpit painting then engine making before moving onto wheel well detailing.

Gondor

[matrixone]

Gondor,
You can't rush quality, its better to take your time and build to the standards you prefer. I attempted to build a bunch of Fw 190's the past two years in a production line fashion and it failed quite badly, and in fact it proved very costly because I lost some parts along the way and the parts that were lost took me hours to locate. For example, the canopy for my 1/32 scale Macchi C.202 is lost and I can't find it, I spent over two hours the other night looking in every possible place and still can't find it so I just might have to throw the model away which is a shame because the model is nearly ready for paint.
Now I will only build two models at a time.

On to the current build...

I spent some time today adding some oil washes to a few parts of the model, notice in the two pics below that I only used the oil paints around the access panels, wing roots, and control surfaces. All other panel lines on the fuselage and the wings outside the wing walk areas were left untouched with any oil washes, most airplanes don't have very much of the panel lines showing up that much so I left those areas blank and the pre-shading I did is enough weathering there.
Also I used some sandpaper to scuff up the paint a little bit on the wing root areas and inside the wing walk area to distress the paint slightly....what better way to weather the paint than real weathering!



Here is the undersurfaces, I did a more even oil wash here over much of the airframe but used wash colors that were so light that they barely can be seen in this pic, the photographs of the full size machine showed some light weathering on the paint work so I wanted to have the same look for the model. I used light gray and brown oil paints for the oil wash. Also notice the simple black crosses on the wings...most Fieseler built Dora's used these simple underwing style markings.


Next up for the model is adding some exhaust stains with the airbrush and adding the exhaust stubs. After that I start final assembly of some of the smaller parts.


Matrixone

[pyro-manic]

the canopy for my 1/32 scale Macchi C.202 is lost and I can't find it, I spent over two hours the other night looking in every possible place and still can't find it so I just might have to throw the model away which is a shame because the model is nearly ready for paint.

Surely not? I'm positive someone will have a spare, or contact the manufacturer and get a replacement from them. Such a waste to throw the whole thing out!

Superlative work as always, by the way.

[matrixone]

Thanks pyro-maniac,
The Macchi is the 21st Century kit and the company went out of business a while back so no hope of getting a replacement canopy from them.
I am pretty mad at myself for losing the canopy in the first place, the other night I opened the kit box and found everything in there except the canopy and I had to try and remember what else I was working on at the time I stopped work on the Macchi and opened up any boxes that might have had the canopy put into it but so far no luck. I am afraid it might have been thrown out by mistake one of the times I cleaned off my work table.
From now on I will only work on two models at a time, the days of working on seven models at the same time are over, it was actually taking me more time to finish a model because much of my time was being spent searching for lost parts.

Matrixone

[matrixone]

One down, one more to go!

I finished W.Nr. 600150 the other day and I am waiting for good weather to get outside and take pics of it, I tried to get some pics today but it was too dark and damp to get any of very good quality. What I plan on doing is to copy the photograph's of this aircraft as it is seen in Volume One of Jerry Crandall's Dora book, most of those photographs were taken in sunlight conditions and I need to have the same conditions when taking pics of the model.
Below are two pics from today.



And here is what ''blue 12'' looks like at this stage after painting the fuselage, notice the three colors on the uppersurface and the light green undersurface color, the light green was a custom mixed color. What is interesting about painting this model is the right side of the fuselage has some mottling on it but yet the left side has none and is in the standard Mimetall factory paint scheme. I still need to mask off the rudder and paint it RLM 76 and add a little 74 and 75 mottling to it.



Below is the undersurface of the fuselage, the wings undersurfaces will be BMF and only the ailerons and lower leading edge of the wing will get paint.


Matrixone

[Gondor]

They are looking great Matrixone

Gondor

[matrixone]

Thanks Alastair!

The sun came out today and I was able to get some good pictures of W.Nr. 600150, I now have to decide which ones to keep and which ones to delete.

Much of this morning was spent repainting the fuselage of ''blue 12'', I did not like how it looked and decided to repaint it after looking at my reference photos with fresh eyes.
Painting a model of ''blue 12'' is very difficult to do, this aircraft must have seen a very active service life because it shows many signs of being repaired and the repairs of it have been touched up in the field which makes trying to copy those effects in model form very difficult to do...maybe this aircraft was a poor choice to try and do in 1/32 scale!
And to make things worse the wings are painted in non standard colors and even Jerry Crandall is not certain as to what those colors are.

I want to get this one finished ASAP so I can get to work on my Ta 283 for the 46 GB, at least with the Ta 283 there is no concerns as to what the colors were.

Matrixone

[matrixone]

Some update pics of ''blue 12'', most of the camo painting is done now.
To get to this stage of the painting has been a lot of work, the actual painting with the airbrush was actually easy, getting the colors just right and trying to determine what colors go where has NOT been easy because my reference photographs of the full size machine were taken in different lighting conditions which made certain parts of the airframe hard to see.

Here is the tail...there is actually a little more mottling on the rudder than it looks like, its a trick of light that makes the mottling look so sparse.


The undersurfaces


An overall pic of the uppersurfaces...notice all the colors on this one, RLM colors 71/ 74/75/76/81/82/83, light green, mid gray, and the wings undersurfaces BMF painted with Alclad II. My last Dora only had three camo colors, 74/75/76.


Before I can do anymore painting I will need to add the markings first.


Matrixone

[Gondor]

I do not envy you what you are doing with that paint scheme Matrixone and I am glad that it is you painting it and not me as I am not that good.

Gondor

[matrixone]

Thanks Gondor,
This has been a tough model to paint because I am trying to get it to look like how the plane really looked in the reference photos in Jerry Crandall's book, so far I am only partly successful in doing this, its too early to say how well this one might turn out but I expected it to look better at this stage.
On other modeling sites I have seen others try and do ''blue 12'' before and always thought I could do better but thinking about it and doing it are two very different things!

Matrixone

[NARSES2]

Whoa some painting project ! It's amazing how many schemes (if thats the right word for such a mish-mash) there were

[matrixone]

NARSES2,
Yes ''blue 12'' is quite a collection of paint colors on one airframe!

Part of the reason this aircraft has so many colors on it is the use of many smaller subcontractors in the last months of the war, the wings on quite a few Doras were painted with the older gray colors because that was all that was available to the subcontractor. In some cases the contractor ran out of one of the two paints to be used for upper surface colors and a primer color had to be used in its place and ''blue 12'' is one such aircraft that had this feature.
The same is true with the rudder on ''blue 12'', it was finished in RLM 76 with a mottle of gray colors yet the fuselage it was attached to was the light green under surface color. Also of interest on this aircraft is the areas where repairs have been made and the paint has been touched up by the ground crew...I will try and add those on my model too.

Friday I will start putting decals on after the gloss clear is dry.

Matrixone

[matrixone]

Decals are on, as well as the red oxide primer patches that covered the repairs from battle damage.
By far the hardest bit of painting was painting the aircraft numbers blue. The EagleCals sheet gives you two sets of the number 12, one in black the other in black-blue and there is so little contrast between the two that they both look black so I had to carefully hand paint a lighter blue over the aircraft numbers after the decals were put on the model, it was pretty tense but it turned out better than I expected it to.
Also done but can't quite be seen in this first pic is the over painting of the 0 at the end of the W.Nr.500570, on the full sized plane this was done by the ground crew after repairs from battle damage were completed.



This will be the last time you will see this model so clean, now that the decals are on the weathering will begin and this model will get a lot of dirt and mud put on it.

Matrixone