DocRob

Muchas gracias señhores, I had tons of fun with the aluminum finish over the rivets. It was eye testing, with black basing, matte and gloss black sections adding black rivets onto the black and finishing with blinding polished aluminum, but worth it. The kit itself is so good in every aspect, that you can fully concentrate on airbrushing and finishing. I would have liked to add some panels in other shades of aluminum, but shied away from masking them. I've done that some years ago on a P-47, but with less shine. She's indeed a wicked beast . Cheers Rob

After my vacations, finally an update. I tried to finish the P-38 and mainly did over the last days. The prop hubs with black and white parts gave me grieve and now I airbrushed them for the third time, very annoying. That's why they are not on the pics. I carefully applied the decals, which behaved very well and on the aluminum, you can barely see carrier film. The white pinstripes around the black nose panels, where a bit difficult to master, but thankfully the thin strips were robust enough not to tear. The stencils are not complete, but I don't know, if I apply the rest. There were quite a lot of differences, between the Tamiya decal plan for the stencils and the ones I used from Bombshell. I used only warm water with some drops of detergent, because I didn't want to spoil my surfaces with aggressive solvents. I painted the navigation and formation lights with clear colors, picked up some other details and then added the non weathered wheels only sprayed in one black shade, untypical for me. I used the kit wheels, flattened with a sanding stick, because my Ultracast wheels didn't look too good and the Eduard masks wouldn't have fitted. The barrels are made of brass by Master and got a treatment with a patinating liquid, which give a matte brown black look, which I find very convincing. Cheers Rob

Wow, nice progress Craig. It was only about a week of vacation and whoops, the SU-85 is near the finish line. I thought it must take longer to work with this huge amount of parts. The interior looks super bueno and I hope for good news about the fitting of the top panels, as I had the same idea like you, to leave them unglued. The frosting effect looks very convincing. Do you plan icicles and snow or ice in the tracks? Cheers Rob

Thank you Mike and Craig, NMF and riveting were the challenge of this build, clearly. Only building a perfect Tamiya kit, would have been boring and I always like to learn something new through a build. Now after my vacations, decaling is next. Cheers Rob

Nice project Gary, I will write only very brief, as I am on vacations and don‘t like to type a lot on the smartphone. I never used Alclad‘s black base, but had similar experiences like you with AK‘s black base for Extreme Metals. The stuff NEVER completely cured and was tacky even after weeks. Tamiya LP 1 gloss black is much bettet and sprays perfectly with about two thirds of leveling thinner added. A perfect combo. Shunko produces a decal sheet, if you want to upgrade from your ancient ones. Cheers Rob

Normally we have lots of sun and blue skies as well this time of the year, but the last days were an exception. That's why I'm going for holidays for a week now . I will capture some classic shiny metal, blue sky pics when the P-38 is finished. Btw, I took some pics with my big camera with the same lighting and black background, toying with white balance, exposure and other settings, but didn't show the pics, because they were worse than these taken with the Iphone and ProCam App. Cheers Rob

Thank you Ken, I hope I can get the decals on without accidents. The finish is very fragile. I toyed with the idea of using some oil color panel liner, but it was too risky. Now the P-38 has to wait being finished, as I am traveling for a week. Cheers Rob

I added a lot of bits and pieces, like landing gear, landing bay doors, counterweights, air intakes and the turbo chargers, which were sprayed with Alclad's exhaust manifold beforehand. Now there are only missing guns, props and wheels and foremost decaling of course, but this is for after my vacations. The canopy masks were removed and there is only one slight spot, where the paint fumes stained the clear part from the inside. I decided to close the canopy, because I don't like the looks of the open one, totally disturbing the slender shapes of the P-38 Interestingly, my Iphone was able to capture the shining Lightning better than my camera. Cheers Rob

Thank you Egilman, I tried some outside shots as well, but there was only overcast sky yesterday. I will try to use my phone instead of my camera, sometimes the 'I can do all but kissing' device is better with difficult light situations, than the big camera. Speaking of eye strain, this build is very demanding to the eye, first gloss black with all the reflections, added with, you guessed it, black rivets, followed by matte black anti glare panels and finally high shine polished aluminum, which reflects a lot and looks different under each used lamp. That caused me to miss a very prominent fingerprint, which I left on the base layer and the aluminum color shows it. I tried to rub un some chrome pigments, but I have to respray the area. Aluminum is a strange material, it oxidizes instantly, the oxide being a good protective coat for further oxidation and harder than the base material. Polishing only mellows the surface, but it's still oxidized. Weather influences change the appearance further, as you mentioned. I wanted to keep the surface as new looking as possible, I wanted to test, how far you can go with airbrush and colors. I think as well, the only possibility to achieve a better result, would be foiling or at least leaving away the rivet decals, which so very slightly disturb the perfect smooth surface with their carrier film. I have a metal engineering background and love to replicate materials in general in modeling, in their various states of wear and tear from new to wrecked. When I was younger, I produced 3D-Animations only for fun, in a time, where this was very difficult to do. I hade complete hard disks full of self sampled material surface pictures, metal, wood, cloth stone, whatever was needed to use them as realistic looking surfaces on 3D-objects. This sharpened my sense for materials in various conditions and led to my passion to replicate materials in modeling. Cheers Rob

It's getting serios now, with the gloss black base cured, it was time for the polished Aluminum, but not before I airbrushed the anti glare panels. I went the hard way of double masking, first the outside, to not spoil the gloss surface and after spraying Tamiya LP flat black, again the flat black areas in preparation for the polished aluminum. The mask for the front area was particular delicate and I used the bordering white decal as a master and marked the contour with a pen onto transparent foil. This was transferred onto a sheet of Kabuki and traced with a scalpel blade. Now I had a positive and negative mask for both sides. Masking of the matte black anti glare panels. Finished anti glare panels Everything was masked again (anti glare panels, wing stripes and tailwing stripes) and then sprayed the whole airframe with Alclad's polished aluminum, which I liked a little better than AK's after some testing. Similar to chrome finish, I carefully misted the polished aluminum on with a pressure of about 1 bar. There is a point, where the blackness of the base disappeared and after that the look will get worse. I had minimal amounts of overspray from the anti glare panels, also black, but barely visible (black on black ) , but the Alclad finishes a tiny bit different. I can'd o anything about it, but to remember, to have a absolute equal shiny base layer for future projects. The high shine polished aluminum is hard to capture, I tried it in the booth, on the bench and outside, but none of the pics comes close. I will try to capture better pics soon, but here is where I am. Cheers Rob

Yes Ken, there are anti glare panels on the inside of the engines, usually painted in olive drab, but with mine in matte black. Cheers Rob

Hehe, no Egilman, it will be 'Wicked Woman' like the title said, which had matte black anti glare panels and some stripes in gloss black. Cheers Rob

I hope so, Chris, but before this comes masking, which will be a bit tricky in this case. Then I will evaluate, if I use AK Extreme Metal polished aluminum or Alclad's. Luckily, there are two upper wings in the kit for whatever reason and I prepared the other to test the polished aluminums. Cheers Rob

I prepared the P-38 for polished aluminum with a coat of gloss black over the rivets. Tamiya's LP-1 worked again flawless, highly thinned sprayed with about one bar of pressure. Luckily the Eduard rivet decals seem to withstand the sprayed on chemicals. The plane has some gloss black stripes on tail and wings, which will be masked before spraying polished aluminum. Same goes for the matte black anti glare panels, which will be tedious to mask. Luckily those are in areas without rivet decals under them, so masking will be a bit less of a risk. In any case, polished aluminum should be the last layer, before decaling, I will not risk and harm the shiny surface. Before airbrushing black, the canopy received a coat of interior green and I hope, I will have no fogging issues due to lacquer fumes, always a risk. It's hard to capture the high gloss surface with rivets on photos. Cheers Rob

Thank you Alan, luckily the rivet decals wer printed very accurate for kit, but alignment, was not so easy sometimes with the black rivets onto gloss black base with all the reflections. In all. I'm positively surprised, how good the rivet decals worked. The main issue, is they fold very easy and are not so easy to unfold. Generally the are very forgiving, except of this. Cheers Rob

Thank you OC, lets hope the look materializes under the polished aluminum in the end. The term you used, is what I'd use too, it looks right, maybe the real rivets should be flush, but we as modelers have to get the look right, scale wise. Cheers Rob

I finished the riveting today and have to say, fitting of the rivet decals is near perfect. I ran into a bit of trouble on one of the tail booms, where two decals met on the upper and lower side. They overlapped a tiny bit, which made ugly wrinkles, which I couldn't sort out completely. I will see, what I can do about it after they are thoroughly dried. The good preparation payed off, the decals glided lightly onto the surfaces in general. Tomorrow, before spraying a new black base layer, I check for tiny bubbles, which I take out by stabbing into them with a needle. I added seat, radios and armor plate into the cockpit, before gluing the canopy in place. The Eduard masks fitted like a glove and before mounting the clear parts, there needed to be glued some parts to their inside, like the gunsight and structural bar. Last unobstructed view into the cockpit: Canopy glued in place: Cheers Rob

A nice little kit, you built there OC, I like it. Simplicity sometime sharpens the focus for other demanding projects. Airfix is releasing a new tool 1/48 kit of the Sea King soon and it looks, like my 1/72 will be left unbuild. Cheers Rob

De nada Egilman, when I write about a new technique, it's also a moment for me to reflect about it and find solutions to problems which arose. I know about the use of flat rivets for planes like the P-38. The decals only help to give the optical illusion of visible rivets and visible they are on the real thing, but more due to being not exactly the same metal, like the sheets they are holding in place. I have to see, how the rivets turn out under a coat of polished aluminum and will decide then, if it looks right to my eye. Cheers Rob

Thanks Kevin, there is some truth in what you say about the rivets . I think, it's more about looking right, than being right with the visual effect. My plan is indeed to lay another coat of gloss black onto the rivets, before I spray polished aluminum. I only hope the rivet decals withstand the Tamiya lacquer color with thinner. In any case, I will follow my old rule, first applying a very thin coat of color, dried quickly with the airbrush, to seal the decals, than a bit more to have the high shine black base. Cheers Rob

Rob the riveter has been starting to work . I followed the process, described in Info Eduard' May 2022 issue. You have to cut the decal precisely, as the carrier film is covering the whole sheet. Some parts needed to be cut out, where raised details or similar are onto the plastic part. Then the decal is pressed onto the sponge, soaked with water with some drops of detergent mixed in. A few seconds are sufficient and the decal slides off the backing sheet very easily. Placement on the model is critical, but the decals are generally forgiving, except for wrinkles, which are not so easy to remove. After placement, I used a dry sponge to press onto the decal without movement, followed by checking it and pressing more refined with a damp flat brush and rubber decal applicators. Workplace: Before (right wing underside) After (left wing underside) The photo was taken some minutes after application, recommended drying time is 24 hours. The decals with slightly raised rivets, which you can see and feel with the fingertip. In case of the Eduard rivet decals, there is no later lift off the carrier film, like I think is the case with HGW's rivets. Nearly the whole plane is covered with decal in the end and needs another base layer of very fine finishing primer, in my case again Tamiya LP gloss black. Cheers Rob

For adding the nose to the fuselage, Tamiya gives you different sets of guns (grey) which have to be glued from the inside and are in the way, while riveting and airbrushing the surface. Therefore, I used Master barrels and the Tamiya parts with cut barrels and pre drilled holes for accepting the brass barrels from the outside. Next was the base layer for the riveting. Eduard suggests using Mr. Surfacer with some gloss medium, but I went with my trusted Tamiya LP1 gloss black, thinned with about two thirds of Mr. leveling thinner. The finish is of a very high shine and should be a perfect base. Some black on black pics , I don't think, there is need for polishing. Cheers Rob

Thanks Dave and good to have you on board. Cheers Rob

The plane on the box cover is indeed the P-38 flown by Richard 'Ira' Bong and the nose art depicts his wife Marge. I was thinking about this livery for my build too, but I wanted high quality decals, to lay down perfectly onto high gloss aluminum surfaces, without the need to use any solvents other than water with a drop of detergent in it. Tamiya decals tend to be on the thick side and may have some visible parts of carrier film. The Bombshell decals are printed by Cartograph and they are complete with national markings and stencils. Cheers Rob

In a blink, nearly the whole fuselage, wing and tail boom construction were finished. If you ever asked yourself, why Tamiya brought out the extra thin cement, with this kit it shines, with perfect fitting panels and intersecting parts. The construction of the plane is a bit complicated naturally with the double tail boom construction and the numerous air intakes and large wheel bays, but following the instructions, it's an easy build, not the least due to ingenious engineering. My goal was to achieve the least spoilt surface, to have a good base for a gloss coat before applying the rivets. The wheel wells were sprayed with AK's Extreme Metal matte aluminum, followed by my own thin mix of black oil color, diluted with matte thinner. Cheers Rob