Month: October 2019

Pins and needles WO WO WO

Coming week I’ll be doing some work on all the smaller parts, since I broke my airbrush needle today.. I have managed to get the underside sprayed in light gray which I didn’t take a picture of since it is barely visible even with the naked eye.

I also did the upside in a gray  all-over, so I could apply the green camo.


However when I started doing that today, it was clear that the ‘progressive action’ 0.35mm needle is not fine enough for the camo job. Besides that, I noticed the airbrush needed a cleaning too because the flow wasn’t great, and while cleaning it fell on the floor.. right on the tip, which obviously is bent now!

I ordered new stuff from Ultimate Modeling Products. Obviously a new 0.35mm needle, along with a 0.2mm needle and conversion kit for the finer details. Since I will be spending much on shipping I also purchased a metal airbrush cap, some more airbrush cleaner (I really love the stuff!) and a ‘photo-etch placer’. The last item could be a bit of trash, but for not even 3 quid who cares?

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So it looks like I won’t be able to continue work on the camo the coming week, but there is plenty of small stuff that needs to be prepped for primer. Depending on the amount of damage on the current needle I might even be able to apply primer.

Groetjes,
Dan

Winter is coming

And winter is the best time for building! I’ve been thinking about it for a few days and today was a nice rainy day for it!

Since my last blog, I’ve been on vacation and started a new job which took some time and especially energy. Because of that, it’s been a while since I used liquid mask on the canopy..

IMG_20191019_142231.jpgI’ve applied this more than a month ago, and I am not sure if that will have an effect on the clear parts.. thankfully while looking for my rotating painting stand I came across a box full of left-overs from my first attempt at this kit, and so I have some spare clear parts should that be required! The bad news would be the masking set would have been a waste, so obviously I hope the original part will be fine when I remove the masking tape.

Since it has been a few weeks when I last used it, I decided to first give my airbrush some love and once again turn some things around on my desk.

IMG_20191019_114737.jpgAt the end of the day (literally) I can say I haven’t even used it today, but hopefully I’ll have energy the coming days.

I have to admit masking off the underside was a bit challenging.. I’ve been messing around with masking tape the last weeks, but wasn’t happy with the result and ripped it all off. I finally settled with using the gear bay door to mask the bay off, which is sort of its job anyway..

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Time will tell how good a job this has done. Presumably not a perfect job, but I’ll look at the damage when the time comes.

For primer, I decided to take the quick and dirty option and use Tamiya Surface Primer straight from the can.. I’ll be completely honest here: I just can’t be bothered right now to de-can it.

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I actually have some bad experience with applying it straight from the can, but I hope that experience will keep me from making the same mistakes.

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I applied it in two light layers, seperatly on the above and underside.
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A bit of a weird result after applying the first layer: a lot of dust particals seemed to have appeared from nowhere and have been only applied on the right wing. I used a dishcloth and some UMP airbrush cleaner to clean up before applying the last layer. The UMP airbrush cleaner is not too aggresive, and it did a nice job.

I applied the last layer about an hour ago, and the can is now empty.. which is the end of applying primer straight from the can. I have enough alternatives from UMP: black, gloss black and white. Probably more than I can go through the next years!

Next steps

This build is progressing nicely although very slowly obviously. The next steps presumably are:

-Sand the body and get the imperfections out.
-Airbrush the body in the livery I want. I’ve decided on the standard No. 416 Royal Canadian Air Force which is included in the kit.
-Prime and paint all the remaining parts.
-Decide if I want to fit bombs.

Plenty of work still to be done!

See you,
Dan