P-38J Wicked Woman by DocRob - FINISHED - Tamiya - 1/48

[DocRob]

40 minutes ago, Canute said:

Did they have anti-glare panels on the engine sides facing the cockpit? I used to know, but haven't been in those books in eons.

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

[Egilman]

7 hours ago, Canute said:

Did they have anti-glare panels on the engine sides facing the cockpit?

Yes, every last one of them... Ft Black or the usual OD...

[Egilman]

6 hours ago, DocRob said:

it will be 'Wicked Woman' like the title said, which had matte black anti glare panels and some stripes in gloss black.

Sorry for the airhead moment brother... "Wicked Woman" indeed had black anti-glare....

Bottom profile n the pic below...

P-38J-15-LO 42-23587 Wicked Woman 8th FG 36th FS... Early '44 to the end of the war... ('46 to be exact)

[DocRob]

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

[Egilman]

Your on it brother, closest I've seen come to a true non-polished aluminum finish in a spray....

 

Every bit as good as RnB....

 

Any kind of a polished finish is incorrect for a warbird, it's the Bare Metal finish your looking for... And you've got it in spades.... that natural reflectance is perfect for a bird fresh out of the factory....

 

Over time that reflectiveness fades a bit as the aluminum oxidizes, but all it does is reduce the reflectiveness a bit....

 

The only way you will get closer to a real BMF is to actually have Bare Metal on the airframe... (imho, of course)

 

You need do nothing more brother... you've got it..

Edited August 31, 2023 by Egilman

[Egilman]

There is one suggestion I would make, take it out in the sunshine and get a few shots of it before you make a decision to do anything else...

 

Natural light shows what it really looks like....

 

She's looking damn fine.....

[DocRob]

16 hours ago, Egilman said:

Your on it brother, closest I've seen come to a true non-polished aluminum finish in a spray....

 

Every bit as good as RnB....

 

Any kind of a polished finish is incorrect for a warbird, it's the Bare Metal finish your looking for... And you've got it in spades.... that natural reflectance is perfect for a bird fresh out of the factory....

 

Over time that reflectiveness fades a bit as the aluminum oxidizes, but all it does is reduce the reflectiveness a bit....

 

The only way you will get closer to a real BMF is to actually have Bare Metal on the airframe... (imho, of course)

 

You need do nothing more brother... you've got it..

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
 

[DocRob]

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

[Canute]

Beautiful finish on this bird. 👍

[Egilman]

2 hours ago, DocRob said:

Interestingly, my Iphone was able to capture the shining Lightning better than my camera.

I think it's more your background than anything else my friend... and the soft white light....

 

Anyway it's beautiful, but your going to have to promise to give us a look representing the heavy SWPAC area in mid July.... {chuckle}

 

This is going to be one stunning bird in heavy sunshine... (a true "Morotai Maiden")

[DocRob]

15 hours ago, Canute said:

Beautiful finish on this bird. 👍

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

[DocRob]

15 hours ago, Egilman said:

I think it's more your background than anything else my friend... and the soft white light....

 

Anyway it's beautiful, but your going to have to promise to give us a look representing the heavy SWPAC area in mid July.... {chuckle}

 

This is going to be one stunning bird in heavy sunshine... (a true "Morotai Maiden")

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

[Landlubber Mike]

Just catching up with your log Rob - wow, you're really outdoing yourself again, and that is a high bar!  Looks spectacular!  The rivet decals make for a very nice touch.  

[CDW]

Just found your build log Rob. Fantastic start! Looking forward to further installments.

[DocRob]

On 9/4/2023 at 5:08 PM, Landlubber Mike said:

Just catching up with your log Rob - wow, you're really outdoing yourself again, and that is a high bar!  Looks spectacular!  The rivet decals make for a very nice touch.  

 

On 9/4/2023 at 6:30 PM, CDW said:

Just found your build log Rob. Fantastic start! Looking forward to further installments.

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

[DocRob]

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
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[yvesvidal]

Stunning model, very wicked!!!!

Yves

[CDW]

That's a very fine model with an excellent selection for markings. The aluminum finish is brilliant.

[king derelict]

Stunning, the finish is spectacular

Alan

[Old Collingwood]

Excellent finish.

 

OC.

[gsdpic]

Beautiful!  Looks like she just rolled off the assembly line.

[DocRob]

17 hours ago, yvesvidal said:

Stunning model, very wicked!!!!

 

17 hours ago, CDW said:

That's a very fine model with an excellent selection for markings. The aluminum finish is brilliant.

 

11 hours ago, king derelict said:

Stunning, the finish is spectacular

 

10 hours ago, Old Collingwood said:

Excellent finish.

 

8 hours ago, gsdpic said:

Beautiful!  Looks like she just rolled off the assembly line.

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

[Canute]

She's a beautiful beast, Rob. Your finish is spectacular. Superb!  👍

[NavyShooter]

That is indeed a beautiful finish!  Very well done!

I am amazed at how the rivet lines turned out in the end.  Absolutely amazing.

 

[DocRob]

1 hour ago, Canute said:

She's a beautiful beast, Rob. Your finish is spectacular. Superb!  👍

 

47 minutes ago, NavyShooter said:

That is indeed a beautiful finish!  Very well done!

I am amazed at how the rivet lines turned out in the end.  Absolutely amazing.

Thank you Ken and Brad, as with most of my builds, the intention was to learn something new. In this case riveting and high shine aluminum finish. Like always, there is room to improve, but overall my methods worked, helped by the good decals and the chosen scheme, which allowed to airbrush the model without masking onto the fragile polished aluminum. 
The riveting with Eduard decals worked well, the rivets were printed  to perfect fit and I think, covering whole areas of the plane with riveting decals works better than the HGW approach with wet transfers, where every single rivet sits on the model by itself, without protection from carrier film.
Unfortunately there are only a few rivet sets available from Eduard.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Some pics under bright sunlight with the now finished prop spinners. Unfortunately it is very windy, so no risky angles, the wicked woman would have gone airborne .

Cheers Rob
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Egilman]

She's a real beauty!!!

 

Freshly minted P-38!!! Nothing else comes close...

 

Well done Brother, very well done...

[Landlubber Mike]

Amazing job Rob!!  I've always been a sucker for redheads too 😉

[Old Collingwood]

She looks  Stunning in that  daylight   -  beautiful job.

 

OC.

[Doreltomin]

Excellent looking model, if it weren't for the support would say a real plane! Also it was much feared by the Germans during the war, which called P38 "The two-tailed Devil".