DocRob

Done so far, phew. I have to continue to paint the figures and to clean up my bench, which I guess will take longer than the build itself . Cheers Rob

Final steps ahead, luckily. The huge airframe and the delicate details make working on the big bat more and more difficult. The issues fixed to parts torn loose ratio turns worse . I assembled the elevators and the rudder and added steering cables for the rudder. the fittings were made from split brass rod to add some more detail. Finally, I reassembled the guns, the worst part of the build and installed them into the gun mounts onto the gun rings. There will be a lot of final touch ups and then the big bat is finished. Cheers Rob

Yes wefalck, port is a Behrend prop, starbord is a Wolff prop, the latter rotating counter clockwise. Cheers Rob

Meanwhile, I finished the propellers, painting the hubs with gun metal, later pointing out the screws in silver and last adding black panel line wash for accentuation. When dried, I added the propeller brand logos and on they went. This was followed by two very frustrating hours, where all the guns fell apart, which were only temporarily fitted. The two in the gun rings while adjusting and worse ,the one in the fuselage fell out. After said two hours, I somehow managed to get the one in the fuselage back in place, using different tweezers and a torch, to reach into that now hard to access area. The other guns fixing is for tomorrow, but I used the chance and varnished their stock and grip with transparent orange. Cheers Rob

Congratulations, both, Indy and Sphinx look absolutely fantastic. Scrolling through your build, I more and more liked the idea of building a ship without masts and rigging. As I still struggle with my first rigging of the Duchess of Kingston, it´s definitely an option for my Sphinx kit or even Indy. Cheers Rob

Your Sea King looks excellent and the figures and base add to the realistic appearance, congratulations. Cheers Rob

Thank you Dan, your prop looks terrific with it´s beautiful layering. Cheers Rob

I can only guess, that these are acrylics, wefalck. The artist pens from F-C should also work fine for this kind of work. Where the AK weathering pencils really shine, is dampened. You can use them as a multicolored wash and weathering medium. I really love to work with them. Here are some examples of a Sci-Fi build, where weathering was done with the AK pencils dampened: Cheers Rob

Thank you Craig, I just wanted to try that technique, after I had seen it in described in a book. It´s a bit less time consuming and more flexible, than cutting tiny strips of mask and apply them onto the props, like I did before. Cheers Rob

I´m closing in on the finish line. Due to some back spasms, bench time is somewhat limited lately, but I started painting the figures and props. These were primed and sprayed with Tamiya Buff then. I wanted to try a new technique for the laminated wood and graining with pencils. My AEG has two different propellers, a good opportunity to finish the props a little different. Number one was ´laminated´ with AK weathering pencils Dark Chipping for Wood and Dark Rust by hand following the logical ´flow´ of the lamination. Number two was ´laminated´ with Sand and Sepia for a bit more contrast The props were varnished differently, Number one got Tamiya Clear Orange applied by brush, which removed a lot of the laminating effect. Not all propellers of the time had a verry apparent lamination effect, so I let it be. Number two was varnished with the airbrush using Tamiya Clear Red, which lead the wood layers show through much more. Cheers Rob

In this case, i used Tamiya grey rattle can primer, but as this is not available anymore, where I live, I use Mr. Surfacer primer as my all purpose primer for plastic metal and resin and shoot it with the airbrush. For the PE, every decent metal primer should work. Cheers Rob

Yes Frank, I think you could hand paint PE-ornaments. It´s best done, when they are still on the fret. Make sure, you degreased the photoetch and use a proper primer before painting. When it comes to golden ornaments, you can use Vallejo Liquid Gold, which is good to brush or spray, covers well and has a great shine. It´s thin enough to flow into all the tiny crevices. The Liquid Gold color was recommended by our Moderator James in the Vanguard manuals of my Duchess of Kingston and it proved to be the best gold color for the job, between all others, I tested on my model. That´s how it looked on my PE, albeit sprayed with the airbrush Placement was made free hand for the ornaments, but some of the frames had tiny holes, where I could use a pin for guiding and securing. For the other ornaments, I used tiny dots of CA glue on the backside, which I spread with a toothpick, that not glue can be squeezed sideways and spoil the surrounding surfaces. Of course, I test fitted every ornament before glu ing. I didn´t use transfer paper, as it possibly lifts color from the PE part, while removing it. I use tweezers to place the PE and with larger ornaments, I glue a starting section, to fix the ornament and then apply the rest step by step. Well that said, I did this just once with my only wooden ship build so far, but it worked very well and I have lots of experience using PE with plastic models. Cheers Rob .

The AEG got it´s teeth - hmmh, well - besides the painted on jaws I mean. The LMG 17/17 Parabellum are from Gaspatch, airbrushed satin black and then I rubbed on steel pigments with a cotton swab. Stock and grip are painted with oil colors and after seeing the pictures, I decided to put on some varnish for a more realistic look. The kit guns are not bad and I used one inside the fuselage, but detail of the Gaspatch ones is absolutely fantastic. Positioning of the guns is not final. I also made some touch ups and detail painting and added the artificial horizon. Gun mounts and other details got sprayed aluminum, then covered with hairspray with the dark sea blue on top and finally weathered with a toothpick. Cheers Rob

Thank you Gentlemen, the AEG has the widest wingspan I built until now. I am not so much interested in four engine planes so much, as I don´t enjoy repetitive work so much. I always had a soft spot for Lozenge camo, with the colorful fighters it adds a beautiful contrast. With the big bat not so much, but somehow it looks special. Photographing is another hobby of mine, but I still find it difficult to take proper modeling photos. My lightbox helps a lot and I normally use my 45 mm macro lens, which equals to 90 mm with a full format sensor camera. This allows distortion free pictures, which I take free hand, because I´m too lazy to use a tripod. Light metering and white balance is done before capturing and that´s it. I don´t like post processing and try to do as little as possible, mostly none. Sometimes, I make some experiments with different lighting or focus stacking, because I feel, I could do better. Cheers Rob

The big bat flexes it´s wings. Today, I finished rigging the wings and I´m happy to have that behind me. It was not overly difficult on the outer wings, but fiddly with lots of scissors and tweezers involved, always adjusting the light and try not to knock off or scratch parts. I loosely attached the rudder, but not the elevators. The tail will be last, as until now, it´s easy to set the plane onto some foam, bottom up. With about 60 cm of wingspan the bat starts to handle a bit awkward and it´s relatively heave, luckily quite robust. It´s hard to see on the pics, but the white rudder has spar markings visible. I used 1mm masking tape over the spars, when I sprayed the tinted varnished over the whole airframe. Cheers Rob

The lobster is coming together nicely, Dave. I like the vivid scheme and good to see, that the decals worked well. With persistent decals, you can use a hairdryer as well as the usual softening solutions. You asked about masking in an older post. It can be a real pain, specially with these WWI planes. I use whatever comes to mind, mostly Kabuki tape, but I like liquid mask for the strut connectors. You don´t want to have any color there. for the strut holes in the wings and fuselage, I use parts of toothpicks or styrene rod, glued in temporally with a tiny bit of diluted white glue. Damp kitchen paper is heavily underrated, as it can be pushed in tiny crevices and around complicated contours, like engines and it stays in place. Cheers Rob

De nada, Dave. The 0,5 mm drill bit does not only take care of the burr, it leaves a little bit conical opening of the tubes hole, which helps, fiddling the fishing line in. I try to prepare everything as good as possible for rigging, which relates to the hardware, like the right line, de burred tubes, good CA, ... and also the sequence to do the job as easy as possible. Rigging is complicated enough, get stuck somewhere due to poor preparation is a nightmare. Cheers Rob

The small copper sheets for coppering a hull don´t need to be bent into two dimensions, I guess. for one dimensional bending, I use the following tool, which is made for photo etch parts and can simply be self fabricated, at least the here important rubber side. Cheers Rob

One side done . I finished the rigging with pulling all lines taught and add a drop of CA to the anchor points to secure everything. This part of rigging was much easier, than the nacelles and inner rigging. I had to fabricate new turnbuckle tubes, which is not the most exciting work, but now, I have enough for side number two. Cheers Rob

Today, I pre rigged one wing in about four hours, not too bad. First, I fitted all the lines to the eyelets, like shown above for the entire lower wing. Then I added the struts, where the inner ones had eyelets in their connecting stubs, which were also pre fitted with fishing line. With a pulling test, I made sure, all connections were ok. This is a step, where you want to make proper preparations, as mounting on the second side, the upper wing is more difficult, due to space limitations. I also made sure, that all the struts fit completely into the wing holes. In the next step, I pushed the lower wing onto it´s connecting tab, but still without glue and carefully slid the upper wing onto it´s tab, without breaking the struts. When everything aligned correctly, I glued the wings and upper strut connections in place. Luckily the fit is very good. Then I turned the AEG onto it´s upper wing and made the same loop and tubes like before with the upper wing eyelets. This is, where I am now. The fishing line isn´t pulled taut and CA secured for now, as this will be done in one flush, to maintain taut lines in the correct positions throughout. Cheers Rob

Ok, there was a lot of talk about tubes, loops, eyelets, ... through the last steps of the build, so I thought, it might be helpful to explain my rigging process. I cut my ´turnbuckles´ from aluminum tube with the inner diameter of 0,3 mm, the outer 0,5 mm with a length of about 3mm. I roll a fresh blade over the tube until it splits. You don´t want to run into trouble with burr, later when you try to loop the fishing line through in the middle of a fragile spider web, so I use a 0,5 mm drill bit to remove the burr, holding the tube with a reverse action tweezer. I glued the eyelets into pre drilled holes into the wing, like here around one strut and for the ailerons with CA. I use Gaspatch eyelets for the structural rigging and Bob´s buckles eyelets, which are finer for steering lines. I orientate the eyelets for the easiest possible rigging. Maxima Chameleon fishing line is the weapon of choice, the brownish color looks ok to me and it´s monofilament. Now it gets serious, using one piece of tube onto the line and pass it through the eyelet. With tweezers, I pick up the end of the thread and bend it back to the tube and fiddle it through the tube for a second pass. Finally, I apply a drop of CA to near to the eyelet and push the tube onto it, holding the fishing line into it´s designated direction and cut the protruding rest with a scissor. Cheers Rob

Yes, it´s monofilament. With the braided line, it might be more difficult to pass it through the ´turnbuckle´ tubes, especially the second pass after looping through the eyelet. Cheers Rob

Got the center section rigging done. It was not easy to fiddle everything in place with different tweezers, using magnifiers, backlight and a lot of care not to break anything. Now I have to stretch my back and help myself to a nice stiff cocktail. After testing the stability of the center section, I decided, I could take a peek with the outer wings inserted. She´s a big bat. Somehow the wings disturb the view onto the more interesting middle section, but I will build her with complete wings anyway. Cut away outer wings is scheduled for my Felixstowe maintenance build. Cheers Rob

A little late, but nonetheless, happy birthday Craig, the cake looks fantastic, as does your Ferrari. The body finish seems to be very smooth and the seats are fitting, correct or not. Cheers Rob

That sounds interesting, especially the steel grey ones. The Maxima line is dark brown, which looks ok scale wise, but steel grey would be better. I´m not sure about the braided structure though. I have to do some research, how these threads look. Cheers Rob