Danstream

If it is your first with PE, a couple of suggestions, if I may (this is what I do): - Cut the parts from the fret with a sharp blade on top of a very thin cardboard which is on top of a hard surface (a glass tile), keep a finger on the part to be cut, because often they fly away entering in a spacetime wormhole you did not suspect you had in your room. - File the edge with a diamond file, do not try to cut away the residual fret attachment. - If the part get deformed, try to flatten it by rolling a round rod (the aluminium handle of a cutter knife) on top of a glass surface. - Sand slightly with a very fine sand paper the surfaces to be glued. - If you need to fold a part, do it on a glass surface, pressing a blade along the folding line and lifting the part to be folded with another blade. Doing this under a magnifier lens helps a lot. - A good sharp pointed tweezers will help a lot to handle and position the parts. - Do not rush, as soon you get tired or bored, stop the work and come back to it later! Good luck, Dan.

Awesome models, excellent workmanship and paintworks. With no reserve, your weathering technique looks very credible! Bravo. Best regards, Dan.

Thanks Mike for your words. At present, I do not know which kit I will choose as next build, but once started I will post it here. I am attracted now by aircraft of the cold war period, which I connect with my youth. However, I am not yet sure. Good luck with your builds and best regards, Dan

Dear all, thanks for the likes and for the very generous comments to @ccoyle, @mtaylor, @Old Collingwood, @Canute, @Egilman, @Edwardkenway, @lmagna which made me blush 🙂. I understood that some of you would not dislike if I will show again my WIP posts when I will start another model. I will be very pleased to do so, but I might have a question to our administrators. Before this build, I was used to publish my WIP posts on an another forum dedicated to aircraft modelling. Would it be acceptable if I have WIP posts on two sites (this and the aircraft one) at the same time on the same subject? Thanks for clarifying that. Now I have to progress on my Mayflower which is languishing on my workbench. Thanks again and best regards, Dan

Hawker Sea Fury FB 11 Koninklijke Marine - 1953 Airfix 1:48 Dear all, this is the final istalment of my Sea Fury build. I enjoyed very much this model from Airfix which reproduces quite well the lines of this powerful and handsome aircraft. The fit of the parts is very good and well engineered. Decals are also of very good quality. On the downside, the surface details are a bit heavy and few details are missing, but these negative point are dwarfed, in my opinion, by the positive ones. On a scale of 1 to 5, overall, I would rate between 4 and 4.5. For my model, I chose one of the versions offered in the kit, namely an aircraft with the livery of the Koninklijke Marine (Royal Netherlands Navy) which in 1953 was part of an aerobatic team called AeroBats. A big thanks to all who followed my build and provided suggestions and support. Best regards, Dan.

Dear all, this is probably my second last instalment before the end. All the decals are now placed, with the exception of few stencils which I omitted because I was too bored to deal with them. These Airfix decals are of a very good quality, with a minimum carrier film, saturated colors and very well printed. Although a tad thick, they went on beautifully and reacted well to Micro Scale softners. The decals have a gloss finish, hence I will spray a last coat of clear to make their shine uniform with the rest of the airframe. I will use the usual Tamiya X-22 with a small percentage (c.a. 5-6%) of flat agent and a drop of matt white. Meanwhile, after the decals on the propeller blades, I sprayed the blades with a coat of matt clear. Propellel and engine are now ready to be glued on: After the clear coat, I removed the cockpit masking. Now the shine is quite unform with a slightly satin finish. The windscreen came out fine, but the headrest and the cockpit sills need some touching up: The walkways on the wing roots were provided as decals, but I did not like their gloss finish. Therefore, I contourned them and sprayed them with a very dark matt grey. Once dried, I put them on as normal decals: Lastly, a shot with the canopy just dry mounted to see the overall effect: Now, what remains to be done is attaching the engine, mounting the canopy, the pitot and the underwing tanks together with few touching ups. After that, the final pictures with a proper camera for the final instalment will follow. Thanks for having followed and supported me so far, best regards, Dan.

Dear all, a small update with other small pieces that went into place. I rebuilt the oleo jacks of the wheel bay doors using a small 1 mm dia. brass tube and a metal wire: With the doors glued on and some black streaks added to the closed flaps: Finally, the gun muzzles were inserted, here you see in the picture how I slided them in with my big clumsy fingers and the help of a thin copper wire: Ready for firing (but still needing some dark color): Now is the turn of the arrestor hook: and, last but not least, some colorful decals which went on beautifully: I added some pastel powder to depict some scorching of the steel plates close to the exhausts. I am getting into the home stretch now with the decal positioning. That is all for now, best regards, Dan.

Hi all, thanks to few days off work and to the covid restrictions, I went on with my build and sprayed a light coat of Tamiya X-22 gloss clear on the entire model. Finally I reopened the wheel bays after long time. You can also see few oil streaks that I have added to add some 'real life' effects. At the same time, I also finished the landing gear with its wheels: The landing gear was then glued into its place. I must say that Airfix did a nice job in reproducing these items and the overall impression is quite convincing. Finally, on its legs. One of the big milestones of a model build. (As a side note, you see that my cutting mat is discolored on its right hand side. This was the result of tipping over my glue bottle puoring the glue dangerously close to my model. Until when I find another suitable backdrop, we have to bear with a marred mat). The tyres of the wheels were treated with white powder obtained by grinding a pastel pencil. The model is now getting all the small bits and decals will follow. I have used almost all the kit parts and the box is almost empty now. That means that the end is close and I need to pay a lot of attention now because for me it is quite easy to spoil a build at this stage (see the glue story above). Best regards, Dan.

Hey, Chris, you made me smile with the "convey the idea" mission!! 😄 Thanks for your nice line. Cheers, DAn.

Dear all, profiting of few days off for Easter break, I went on with the small bits, i.e. landing gear, wheels, doors, etc. The Sea Fury was equipped with seemingly complicated landing grear legs, probably dictated by the heavy loads they experienced in the naval usage. At this relatively small scale, not all the details can be added and again, like I did for the other parts of this build, I tried to replicate something that conveyed the idea of this complicated gear, rather than attempting an exact replica. Once liberated from some moulding marks (not many to be honest) you have a fair replica of the basic shape. I tried to enhance it by adding the main oleo struts, tubing and springs obtaining this: Tubing and springs were made of lead wires. Then some colors, a coat of floor polish and some touches of Tamiya black liner to accent few details. Now they are ready to be installed: That's all for now, waiting for the airframe being ready. Best regards, Dan.

Dear all, today I finished the camouflage. The paint that I used, Gunze Mr. Color 333, was great in rendering the Extra Dark Sea Grey. Not knowing how transparent the decals would be, to be on the safe side, I left two white circles on the spots where the roundels will be placed. I also glued in place the surfaces of the empennages slightly posed: Now, everything is ready for a coat of clear. Best regards, Dan.

Dear all, I went on with gluing the windscreen piece in place and painting the metallic exhausts shrouds, but I did not take pictures of these steps. Then I started to mask the fuselage to prepare it for the application of the Extra Dark Sea Grey color. For the EDSG I chosed the Gunze 333 which is specific for this color without the need of concocting any mixture. This is the first time I use these Gunze paints and I was positively impressed by their quality. After removing the masking tape I got this: To easy the masking, I sprayed the fuselage alone first. This is a dry check to show how the assembly of the exhaust stacks will look like: Finally, some pictures with the cowling just dry fitted to check the chromatic contrast: That's all for now, next upper wings and horizontal surfaces will be painted. Best regards, Dan.

Hi all, a small update on my Sea Fury build. After several additional coats of color, I stop here and declare it finished. The photos of the actual plane show a quite uniform finish, but I would like to leave some variation be visible to justify all the work done with the pre-shading. The theory of the complementary colors worked partially, but next time I will get back to traditional dark gray preshading. This is how the underside looks now: I completed also the orange color on the cowling together with the propeller: The clear parts have been prepared and masked waiting for being painted, black first followed by camouflage color: A final view of the fuselage with the cowling posed on it: That is all for now, I hope you like it, comments or critiques are welcome. Best regards, Dan.

Thanks for posting your videos! It happens that I am exactly at the same stage with my build of the Mayflower (I am gluing the first wales) so your last video is extremely useful to me. Let me also prise your skills and great workmanship which make your post a pleasure to follow. Kind regards, Dan.

Hi all, just some intermediate results on my build. I apologise for my extremely slow pace, many things keep me away from the workbench. At any rate, I started to lay down some layers of Sky paint made of a mix of Tamiya XF-21 (4/5) with white XF-2 (1/5). First steps: Clearly, the look is too worn out and I continued with the above mix: Being this plane a display plane, I would like to proceed further to smooth out the preshading work and in a sense vanifying it, but at least I have shown how I like to give in general depth and variations to what could be otherwise a flat finish. I sprayed also the engine cowling and the other orange parts with the Tamiya orange X-6: The orange was applied in thin layers and at least one other coat seems to be needed. That is all for now, if you have comments and suggestions, please let me know them. Best regards, Dan.

I am not much in car modelling, but your build turned out so nice and realistic! Well done, Regards, Dan

What I see is that you are putting all the strakes so far perfectly parallel and with no tapering. I think you should have started to taper from the second one. There are good tutorials on this site showing that (see the first pinned post by @Chuck). Good luck, Dan.

Dear all, I am back at the workbench with my Hawker Seafury. In the last post, I finished applying the primer to the model. In preparation of the Navy livery, I wanted to give some pre-shadow texture to the surfaces that will be painted with Sky color. At the same time, having selected a display airplane, the effect should be rather subtile. I decided to go with a red brown which has a value lower than black and, being kind of complementary to the greenish Sky color, should result in a shadowy effect, in theory. Let's see what it will be in practice. After the pre-shadowing, I added also some white random mottling. After that, I wet sadanded everything getting an extremely smooth surface and some additional variation of the colors. I ended with applying the Tamiya panel line along the panel junctions. The engine cowling and the spinner got instead a layer of yellow and they were also wet sanded in preparation for the orange. This is how the sides of the fuselage look now; The portions on the side that are covered by tape are the areas of the steel shrouds in the vicinity of the exhausts. The model is now ready to receive the Sky paint on its undersurfaces and on the sides. Mind that, being the subject airplane supposedly well maintained, most of the texture should almost disappear. I am curious to see the final result. That is all for now, Best regards, Dan.

I like the work you are doing on this Mossie. Waiting to see more, Dan.

That looks impressive. About your question about panel lines, I think that for a covering made of soft wood, pencil or ink drafted lines are the most realistic option. Anyway, she is impressive. Best regards, Dan.

Thank you guys, actually it is not me who climbs on the roof, but I called a company to do that. Fortunately, we are now blessed with a very nice weather that in few days has melted the snow making it possible to work outside. I will have to refurbish the inner side of the rooms which have been marred by the leaks. Actually, it is thanks to my wife who was the first one to realise the problem while I was at work and moved away models and materials form the area were the water was dripping. And thanks for your messages of sympathy anyway 🙂 👍. Cheers, Dan.

Hi, I am going slowly on this, I work in the rooms under the roof of my house where I found several leaks after the snow that we had over here. Hence, no big progress to show. Nevertheless, this is what I have done so far. I sprayed the entire model with Mr Surfacer 1000 as a primer. Usually, I do not use primers, but, in this case, I used it for muting a bit the prominents surface details. With its levelling thinner, the primer provided a nice and smooth surface, but probably it did not fill much the panel lines. In a normal application, this is a very good thing for a primer. I also sprayed a primer on the engine cowling and spinner. This time, being the cowling to be painted with an orange color, I used a white primer which provides a good backround color for the orange. I used the white Tamiya primer in a spray can which also provided a very nice smooth finish. Afterwords, I used the brown Tamiya accent liner to highlight the junctions of the panels. I had to stop for now, I will show more as soon as I have finished with the repair of the roof. Best regards, Dan.

I have completed the windows framing and planking: I removed the small wales along the hull because they were not fully symmetric on the two sides and with the windows frames finished, this was too evident. I am learning through my mistakes, but it is ok. Now, I would like to join that wales with an horizontal element placed just below the windows. Best regards, Dan.

Welcome Robin, wish you good luck with your projects! Dan.

In the past days, I tried few methods for making the glazing of the windows on the transom. I picked some transparent styrene sheets 0.5 mm thick from my plastic assortment. With my trusty old drawing tools (some pieces date back more than 35 years), I traced some grids until I found the right size that looked good in the small scale of the model and was at the same time reasonably doable. Once found the good size, I taped the transparent sheet over the grid and scribed the lines on it with the Trumpeter tool in the picture. Once done, I tried few methods to accent the lines, but eventually I found that the scribed grooves alone looked good enough for me in this scale. Now I have to complete the planking and see how to frame the windows. I was happy that at the end the making of the glazing was not that difficult. That's all for now, kind regards, Dan.