MaschinenKrieger Friedrich by DocRob - Wave - 1/20 - PLASTIC - Another one bites the dust

[DocRob]

...and now to something completely different. Over on LargeScaleModeler, we started a group build wich is themed Sandbox, meaning all sand related subjects are eligible.  I didn´t like the theme at first, as most of the desert related subjects have boring camo schemes. I browsed through my stash, before my Berlin trip and found only a few tempting subjects. A Do-17 in desert livery, yawn, some sand colored tank or LRDG Jeep, also yawn.
Then I had an idea, pulling the 1/20 Wave kit of a Ma.K Panzer Kampf Anzug Friedrich out of the shelf. This will be a little dio with the Friedrich´s operator literally having bitten the dust or sand to be more specific.



In Berlin, I bought some tiny but welcomed additions for the small scenery, including some squeezed water bottles and 3D printed skulls, which will add to the morbid scenery.



Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Well, some days later, it´s about time to actually do something with my planned Kampfanzug. 
I built up arms and legs and parts of the body, which is only fit loosely, to determine, how to line up the extremities for later positioning.
The fit of the kit is very good so far and the limbs are connected via vinyl elements to keep everything moveable. I got two different left hands to choose from, but found this one perfect, to hold the squeezed empty PE-bottle.



I have to plan the painting of the interior and figure - ahem - the remains of it, to be precise and started to mask the side windows, which unfortunately have to be mounted at a very early stage. That said, many parts are intersecting and depending on the right sequence to be build in.

The outer side of the windows is protruding, so I adhered a double layer of Tamiya kabuki tape onto it, sharpened the contour with a fingernail and cut around with a fresh blade. One layer was left on the outside, the other went onto the inside of the opposite pane and vice versa. Inside and outside masking done.

 

Cheers Rob

[Canute]

Not too familiar with these MaK designs. I'll follow tour build, Rob.

[DocRob]

Just now, Canute said:

Not too familiar with these MaK designs. I'll follow tour build, Rob.

Thank you Ken, I know some of the kits and own two or three, but never cared about the story behind. I like the designs from Kow Yokoyama and wanted to build some of these kits, since I saw the old Nitto boxes, when I was young, but couldn´t afford the hefty prices then.
I like the scale and the possibility to go freestyling with detailing and painting as there exist no real examples, naturally.
I use these kits as a canvas for my ideas. Once I built an AmmoKnight of the same scale, only to incorporate a, at least to me, new painting technique in dabbing on numerous layers of paint and liked it. 







Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

I didn´t had much time recently and made only small progress, but achieved some small steps.
The deceased pilot got built and painted up. I used a guitar string for the spine, but the head is not fixed into position yet.
I normally don´t like to show death and suffering in my builds, but this one should be a bit different, like black humor and so, I decided to give the figure a bit of a comic look through the paintjob, using heavily thinned acrylics and various shades of inks on top.


 

The Kampfanzug (battle suit) was primed black, then the insides were sprayed with Extreme Metals duraluminum. I wanted to go titanium, but liked the shade of the duraluminum better. After that, the insides received a heavy dose of hairspray.

 

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

After two days of bodyboarding in nice waves, three hours in the water each day, I´m broke, muscles ache, but hey, it was a lot of fun. Why am I telling this here, because it brought me to a decision for the interior color of my Kampfanzug. What looks so beautiful, when you start surfing a wave, looking down in the direction of the ground, right, bright turquoise and then it hit me, why not painting the interior like in a Russian jet with that strange shade of turquoise.



Cheers Rob

[Canute]

Yeah, it's kind of a soothing color. I like it, Rob.

[DocRob]

1 hour ago, Canute said:

Yeah, it's kind of a soothing color. I like it, Rob.

Thanks Ken, the good thing with these subjects is, nobody can blame you for not being historical correct .

Cheers Rob

[Egilman]

1 hour ago, DocRob said:

nobody can blame you for not being historical correct

That's one of the things I like about this forum, Lots of master builders in all genre's of modeling, and I suspect several centuries of experience as well...

 

Unlike most modeling fora out there which are nothing more than mutual admiration and back slapping societies...

[DocRob]

30 minutes ago, Egilman said:

That's one of the things I like about this forum, Lots of master builders in all genre's of modeling, and I suspect several centuries of experience as well...

 

Unlike most modeling fora out there which are nothing more than mutual admiration and back slapping societies...

Absolutely right Egilman, there is so much to learn from MSW with all the experienced members around, willing to share their knowledge. Same goes for LargeScaleModeller.com.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Meanwhile, I managed to close the body of the Kampfanzug. Which sounds like a simple task, but wasn´t. A huge amount of pegs have to intersect and they had really tight tolerances. I had to use pliers at some points, always hoping, the side windows don´t pop out. Most of the kit could be build without glue, that´s why there are so many pegs.

I masked the cockpit front window with kabuki tape and sawed off the huge mounting part, because it disturbed the view to the inside. 
The interior of the suit got water dampened to activate the hairspray and then chipped with various tools. This was followed be DAK sand effect, a kind of wash with pigments in it. I liked the effect a lot and applied it onto the poor pilot as well, before I buried him in his steel grave.
I will leave the weathering for now, but I´m pretty sure, I will add more later.





Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

After burying the fellow in his steel grave, I masked the front window and inserted it temporary with some diluted PVA glue. I added the missing bits and pieces to the Kampfanzug and sprayed it with Mr. Surfacer 1000 black as a solid base.



Next was a coat of AK Extreme Metallics steel as the base coat.



Cheers Rob

[Canute]

That steel looks excellent, Rob. I've been impressed with the AK product line ever since I saw a presentation on their uses in structures and diorama building. Keep up the good work.

[DocRob]

2 hours ago, Canute said:

That steel looks excellent, Rob. I've been impressed with the AK product line ever since I saw a presentation on their uses in structures and diorama building. Keep up the good work.

Thank you Ken, I really like the AK Extreme Metallics, they are nearly as good as Alclad finish wise, spray super fine and they are by far more durable than Alclad. Very important, if you plan to mask and weather on top. The only exception imho is titanium, which is fragile after applying and the black base is unusable, as it stays tacky forever. 

 

Cheers Rob

[Canute]

Aw, too bad about the titanium. The area under the tail (alligator skinning, we called it) of an F-4 is mostly titanium and the inner portion on the stabilator is also, I think. But the steel color would suit. Seeing your application makes me more of a believer in the AK line.

[DocRob]

3 minutes ago, Canute said:

Aw, too bad about the titanium.

Don´t get me wrong, Ken, AK titanium sprays well, but it´s not very robust, but if you don´t mask on top, it works fine.

Cheers Rob

This is an excerpt from my Zoukei Moura Kai Phantom build for the area you mentioned:
 

Some year end shiny glitter metal work was due today. The tail section of the Phantom got my preliminar interpretation of the real thing. I used different metal shades all from AK's Xtreme metal range.
The upper areas beside the tail wings were sprayed stainless steel, along with the tail wing protection, where the middle part was masked off and sprayed gun metal.
The protective sheets around the nozzles, where sprayed with titanium and accentuated with pale burnt metal. After all was dried, I did some soft panel picking with jet exhaust mixed with titanium, to create the illusion of not totally flat appearing sheets. All metal areas will be masked and later, after airbrushing the fuselage finally treated with some pigments and maybe panel liner, depending the overall look.

One word about the formidable Xtreme Metal colors. On many occasions, I used them, they were very good to spray, have very fine grain and dry fast. I even went so far, because on my other builds they were very durable, to mask onto them with Tesa and Tamiya Kabuki tape without de tacking and had not the slightest lift at all, great stuff

Happy New Year mi Amigos!

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

I spare you the smelly pics, the next two layers on the Kampfanzug were hairspray for my planned heavy sandblast chipping. I use the stuff directly from the can.

For those, who don´t know the technique. I made a steel base layer, then hairspray and on top I apply the two tone camo. When everything is dried, I dampen the surfaces with water, where I want to chip, which activates the hairspray and loosens the adhesion of the two tone camo layers. With different tools, I can now scratch the top layers away.

Next was the base layer of my planned camouflage, using Tamiya XF-64 red brown as the darker tone. It´s a bit bring to show all the layers here, but I did, to describe the process.



Cheers Rob

[Canute]

Nice explanation of the hairspray chipping technique.

 

And I love the job you did on the hot section of the F-4. I had an up close and personal look at one I had been flying during my weapons school training. We went thru jet wash and had the artificial feel system go out. A nice 3-4 G turn became an instantaneous 10.5 G fight to get the jet back under our control. Pilot did a great job getting us recovered back at our base. During our post flight walk around, we could rattle the the "alligator skinning" around the tailhook. We broke those bolts. You could use a little more burnt metal in those curved areas. 😉😁

[DocRob]

20 hours ago, Canute said:

Nice explanation of the hairspray chipping technique.

 

And I love the job you did on the hot section of the F-4. I had an up close and personal look at one I had been flying during my weapons school training. We went thru jet wash and had the artificial feel system go out. A nice 3-4 G turn became an instantaneous 10.5 G fight to get the jet back under our control. Pilot did a great job getting us recovered back at our base. During our post flight walk around, we could rattle the the "alligator skinning" around the tailhook. We broke those bolts. You could use a little more burnt metal in those curved areas. 😉😁

Must have been a scary experience, Ken. My F-4 was supposed to look newish without the abuse of over trying pilots .

That was my bird:



... and that is how your Rhino looked after your flight?  (I took the picture at Chino California some years ago)



Cheers Rob


 

[Canute]

Mine was a green one with the wrap around grey belly. Think they called a NATO or European scheme. No pale gray. And there were gaps between the unpianted titanium plates; enough to be able to shake the plates. 😲 

I have a partial disability with the VA medical system for what happened over time to my c-spine, thanks to the cumulative physical stresses inherent to high G operations. But I'm happy to have been able to have my flying career.🫡

[DocRob]

On to the camo. It´s the FU-52 disruptive desert scheme, I planned for the Kampfanzug. Not that such a thing exists, I made it up, because I wanted to achieve something different, but desert related. The idea is to build a camo from 3 mm wide Kabuki strips added with some 10 mm squares. The angles should be from about 75 to 90 percent, not less. I tried to get an even uneven pattern as a result. The masking took some hours obviously and I made sure to, there is no chance of color bleeding, rubbing all strips in and using a toothpick for the corners.

Funky isn´t it?





Now on with the paint, in this case Tamiya XF desert yellow. I sprayed it a bit less diluted than usual, to hinder bleeding under the masks. Masks were removed only minutes after application. I prefer to get rid of the masks fast, when the color isn´t completely cured, but dry to the touch.
The camo has a kind of razzle dazzle look to it, but this will fade with weathering and all the abuse, I will put onto it.







Cheers Rob

[Canute]

That thing is oddly cool, Rob.

[DocRob]

Painting and decaling the Kampfanzug is relatively time consuming, as every layer of paint or varnish has to dry properly. I sprayed some yellow areas on the weapon arm and weapons and brush painted many details.
A coat of Pledge went onto the camouflage as a gloss base for decaling. The supplied decals were good to work with, luckily. I had different experiences with Hasegawa´s MaK decals, which were rigid and won´t settle on curved surfaces.
On top, I put a matte coat, using the matte varnish from Winsor and Newton Galeria, for the first time. I need some more experience with the stuf, but like the result. 

I used Pledge and the water based matte varnish to hopefully be able to activate the hairspray under these numerous layers.
Next will be heavy weathering, the most important step of this project. I hope, I can achieve the desired look.







Cheers Rob

[Canute]

Waiting to see your chipping.

[DocRob]

1 hour ago, Canute said:

Waiting to see your chipping.

Me too, Ken . I hope, I can realize the look, I had envisioned in my head since the beginning.

Cheers Rob

[Canute]

I'd bet you will do great. I have faith. 😁

[DocRob]

19 hours ago, Canute said:

I'd bet you will do great. I have faith. 😁

Thank you for believing in my abilities , but first trails have proved not too promising, I couldn´t activate the hairspray through the layers, as it should have been. I will start the sandblast effect with sanding, scratching and whatever it take, followed by an unplanned sponge chipping, which will hopefully do the trick.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

It´s time for some heavy wear and tear for the Kampfanzug. Unfortunately, the hairspray wasn´t working like planned, possibly due to many layers of paint and varnish on top. Right, plan B, scratching, chiseling, grinding, sanding and rubbing was incorporated using a variety of tools, to achieve different looking wear, a messy affair.



I don´t like the effect right now, as it doesn´t look like my planned sandblast treatment, but it will have to do as a first stage for weathering. I will try to accomplish the sandblast effect with sponge chipping and stiff brush dabbing. 
You can clearly see, that one side is almost stripped of paint, while the other is relatively unharmed. I want to simulate a one sided sandblast, to add some dynamic into the weathering.







Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

Time for some pointillism.
I lied a bit about the looming panic, because the hairspray didn´t work like it should. I hate to alter my original plan, but this time, I didn´t bin the project and instead worked on a plan to add the sandblast effect with different kind of paints, dabbed dryly onto the surface with an old brush. It took a while to get the Extreme Metal Steel dotted, like intended, one side blasted, the other nearly unharmed.

 







Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

On went the second layer of dry paint dabbed on. This time it was a light bone color, called Moonray Flesh. I also applied the paint with a stiff old brush, but this time not only in the direction of the sandblast, but also a bit more from above to simulate some bleaching.
This is only the basic weathering and more will be added later with sand deposits and dust everywhere.

I have to decide, how to weather the clear parts. I´m open to any suggestions. The sandblast should have been blinded this canopy side, but the other and front window should be relatively clear.









Cheers Rob

Edited November 12 by DocRob