Jump to content

DocRob

Members
  • Posts

    619
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Spanish Islands

Recent Profile Visitors

684 profile views
  1. I have these mask sets for my Tamiya P-51, makes life easier, hopefully. P-51D MUSTANG - SURFACE PANELS MASK - 1/32, Miryoku MIR/32008 (scalemates.com) P-51D MUSTANG - PAINT MASKS FOR WHEEL BAY - 1/32, Miryoku MIR/32009 (scalemates.com) Cheers Rob
  2. Good kit, bad kit, doesn´t matter, it looks like a Mustang and it´s going to be a nice one Craig. I like Pledge as a varnish like you, but prefer using it in the airbrush. What I don´t like about Pledge, it´s not the most durable finish and can be easily damaged with decal solutions. I once had frosty irritations around decals, using the relatively mild Micro Sol onto pledged decals. It´s good to see, the Pledge took away only a tiny bit of the shine, an effect, I always fear, when it comes to sealing NMF. Cheers Rob
  3. Thank you Ken, this part of the build, is right down my alley, playing mad scientist, with the whole bench cluttered with colors, pigments, metal waxes, tools to wear and tear, a bunch of different brushes and a picture in my had, how everything should look. I especially like the hairspray method for weathering, which was used for the cowlings and engine cages here. I prefer working into the layers for weathering instead of onto, like paint chipping with a brush. When you work ´into´ the layers and later add more weathering with oils and washes, you achieve a much deeper result. Cheers Rob
  4. This may not mean a lot to most of you, but I got the decaled fuselage sealed in. I feared bad reactions with `hot´ varnishes, but because of my planned weathering schedule, I wanted a durable sealing coat, a contradiction. First, I wiped down the whole airframe with a cotton towel and purified water, to get rid of decal solution residues. I took out god old Tamiya X-22 clear and mixed it with Tamiya acrylic thinner and sprayed it on some test parts, so far so good. When I sprayed on my decaled test elevator, the finish looked like marbled and scratched, bummer. With shaking hands, I mixed the ´hot´ Tamiya lacquer LP-32 flat clear with equally ´hot´ levelling thinner at a ratio of about 55% thinner, less than normal and cautiously sprayed the tail underside and immediately blew the varnish dry with the airbrush, to minimize reaction time. Hooray, it worked, no smelt decals and a nice and even near flat coat. Even the resprayed elevator was rescued, with over spraying and looks good now. Cheers Rob
  5. Phew, I got some work done over the last days. The engine nacelles were not the easiest part of the build. Many fragile parts were to paint weather and mount, and I´m really lucky, it is a WNW kit with great engineering and fit. Look alone for the filigrane tubing around the exposed engine, unbelievable. I applied Tamiya XF-17 onto the outside of the cowlings and struts onto the hairspray. When dried, I dampened the parts, activating the hairspray and abused the surfaces with toothpicks, fiber pencil and other scratching tools with an emphasize on the sheet borders and fasteners. Again, all the painted parts were glued together using CA, which I prefer to runny plastic cement with near ready parts. Unfortunately, I broke an engine strut, where it connects to the lug, which will be inserted into the wing later, damn, a very important connection. Out with the 0,5 mm drill bit, drilled both ends and inserted a brass rod along CA. Left nacelle Right nacelle Later, I will apply some brown Flory clay wash, but this has to wait, until I have the fuselage weathered, to achieve a similar finish. I mocked some picture, carefully mounting the nacelles to the beast. @Egilman, there is no need to worry about the Rexx exhausts, I removed them as carefully as I could from their packing, but felt the weight and was immediately relived. They are sturdy and don´t feel fragile at all. Cheers Rob
  6. After I figured out, which parts were needed for the nacelles and radiators, I started to paint them. The left engine will be displayed un-cowled, the right one with cowlings. All parts were sprayed with AK matte aluminum, which is not that matte, but covers great and has a nice metallic sheen. It will be only the base layer for weathering and was followed by two coats of horrible smelly hairspray for later chipping. Then the parts were sprayed with Tamiya XF-22 (RLM 22) for the engine bearers and XF-17 sea blue for the outside of the cowlings and radiators. The sea blue was highlighted then, with some drops of sand color added, highlighting the upper sides and the panel borders. The effect is hard to see on the pic, but it´s there. Later, the cowling outsides will be dampened to activate the hairspray and scratched with a variety of tools for chipping. Airbrushing slightly lighted sea blue onto the dark surfaces proved difficult, but I remembered that with my H&S Infinity Giraldez edition airbrush came three different nozzle guide horns (the mounted one is the longest), which were very helpful, placing the slightly lighter dots and will come handy with free hand squiggle camo, as you keep the same distance to the kit and it makes aiming easier. Cheers Rob
  7. Just stumbled into your log Greg. With a bit of time, I will read the entire thread about how your masterpiece was made. I´m sure, there´s a lot to learn in it. Your Dreadnought looks fantastic overall and I couldn´t imagine, how difficult the antenna rigging was. Cheers Rob
  8. That sounds like a great idea, wefalck. I guess, there were some interesting speedboats built with airplane engines and there are some great engine kits around in 1/32, 1/48 and 1/72. Lukgraph for example has some in their portfolio as has Copper State. I once built the ´predecessor´ of the SH4 (I know, it´s not the same amount of cylinders, ...) the SH3 twice for my 1/48 Siemens Schuckert D.III twin build. Left, the Eduard Brassin engine and right the kit part. There are the evil twins. Cheers Rob
  9. No worries Egilman, nothing against some detours once in a while, which widens the horizon. Nice kits by the way, love the Albatros. Cheers Rob
  10. I haven´t build any Lukgraph kits, but thought about buying one or two. The Friedrichshafen caught my eye, when it came out. You can buy them from Hanants in the UK, they are well stocked with Lukgraph kits. Their kits are a mix of resin cast for fuselage and wings, 3D print for engines, weapons, etc. and PE and they cover a great range of not often seen subjects. The only Lukgraph bit, I ever built was the Oberursel engine for my Fokker D.VIII. It was a 3D printed gem, relatively easy to build and fitted without modifications under the Aviattic cowling and would have fitted even into the MikroMir cowling. If you want to see, how they build up, Mike `Sandbagger´Norris is actually building a Lukgraph Halberstadt over on LargeScaleModeler. He is a very gifted WWI builder and you can learn a lot from his well documented builds, which he also offers as PDF download, when finished. 1:32nd scale Halberstadt D.II - LSM 1/35 and Larger Work In Progress - Large Scale Modeller Cheers Rob
  11. Thank you OC, building those WNW engines is a lot of fun. There are so many different materials involved, some under varying thermal conditions, it´s like a party for modeling material fetishists. With the AEG´s engine, there are no pushrods to substitute for a change. I thought long about getting the Taurus sets for the timing gear, but with the two engine design, it´s not that visible, hidden under the top wing. Engraving the coil springs with a needle and rubbing them with steel pigments was sufficient for these engines. I will add some staining in the end and maybe some more pigments. Cheers Rob
  12. I finished the engines today, which were fun to build, but a ton of work. I wired only the left engine, as the right one will be hidden under cowlings. After priming all the parts with Tamiya LP-5 semi gloss black, the aluminum parts were sprayed with AK´s Extreme metals matte aluminum, the ignition harness in copper and the tiny ´golden´ parts in brass, all from AK. I wanted a blotchy look for the lower aluminum parts and used the salt technique again, spraying dark aluminum on top. After that, I used AK´s true metal wax aluminum, dark aluminum and steel, dabbed on with a stiff old brush and then worked into the surface with a flat brush. The result looks more dotted to the real eye. The tubing received my usual treatment of steel pigment rubbed in only slightly for a tiny bit of sheen, followed by some dark brown pigments on the intake manifold and cylinders. The oil tanks were sprayed brass, salted and followed by pale brass, later waxes of brass and bronze for a worn, but shiny metal look. I applied a self mixed black oil wash, thinned with matte thinner, to enhance the details. Wiring was next, I but glued the ignition cables to the spark plugs with CA and cut the overlap with a fresh blade, easy with 0,2 mm lead wire. The ´bushes´ of 6 cables for each magneto were sorted out and glued into place. Finally, I dabbed some semi matte black onto CA residues. Per my usual practice, I used CA for mounting painted parts, which is more comfortable to me. I use a toothpick to add the CA, a less potential messy affair than using Extra thin, eating through the paint and running into unwanted places. Cheers Rob
  13. The creature got it´s tail, but without the rudder and elevator for now. The joints are fragile and therefore they will be added later. The intersecting tail parts are pure genius, they hold all three parts exactly in place with perfect fit, I only glued for security. As a break from decaling, I decided to start the engines. One will be covered with cowls and less detailed, the other will be without cowls and receive some updates, to enhance detail level. First, I scratched the top rocker springs for a more coiled look with a sharp scribing needle. Next, I drilled out the holes for the spark plugs with a 0,5 mm drill bit, to accept 1,5 mm long pieces of brass tube with an outer diameter of 0,5 mm and an inner diameter of 0,3 mm. Said tube pieces were cut with a sharp blade, only rolling them on a flat surface with only slight pressure. This way, you cut easily without leaving burr in the hole. These spark plugs will be CA-ed into the holes and will become 0,2 mm lead wire inserted for the ignition cables. Then I prepared the ignition harness, using the kit part and gluing a six pack of 0,2 mm lead wires to the end of the tubes, which will later be connected with the magnetos and glued a pair of lead wires for every cylinder to the plastic part, which will later be inserted into the spark plugs. Cheers Rob
  14. I don´t know about Moskit exhausts, but remember at least, that there was another company producing exhausts with a similar process. This is my first purchase of Rexx products, but they are hard to get and were even before the war in Ukraine. No, Ken, it´s not printed, but galvanic grown. The exhaust are made from metal (some kind of copper?), like @wefalck or @Egilman described the process in post #66 and #67. Thank you for the warning Egilman, the exhaust are indeed very delicate with their very thin material. I had only the AEG´s exhausts in my hands for the photo and they didn´t feel too fragile then. Adding them to the model will be another subject, but I hope for the best. I haven´t been reading a lot about the Rexx products in advance, but since I started my first WNW kit some years ago, they spooked around in my head. The sets are very hard to find and I was lucky, when I saw the three sets for sale, fitting for some of my WNW kits. I will of course keep the kit ones and to be honest, as good as the Rexx exhausts look, they are not a must buy. The plastic supplied by WNW isn´t too shabby and with a bit of talented painting and ageing, they will look good. The purchase was more about, what, there are three sets available for my projects, I couldn´t let pass. I will try to get a better feeling for how fragile the exhaust are, when I very soon (maybe today) start with the engines of the AEG. I may have liked some tiny deformations in the exhaust, but not unwanted . Thank you, for describing the process, wefalck. When I was young, I had an internship in a galvanic shop for two weeks and applied different kinds of metals onto primary coppered parts of different metal origin, but never knew about using it to create 3D objects. Cheers Rob
  15. Thank you James and you are very welcome to peek into my build. I´m also a newbie here on MSW and with wooden ship modelling, finishing my Duchess of Kingston sans rigging with a lot of input and help from fellow members here. Cheers Rob
×
×
  • Create New...