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Friday night reflection

If I don’t forget about it next week, I’d like to use the Friday night for some reflection time about my modelling and the things surrounding it.

Primary build, the FW-190 A8/R11 (Revell 03926)

First things first. As I start to get towards the final stages of this build and I enter unknown terrain, the old fear of failure is creeping in again. I have had already had a bad experience with trying something new, but I actually feel that failure has taken the pressure off for a little while. I guess I for a few days felt it couldn’t get any worse.

I am reasonably happy with the job I did on the camouflage, even though the mottling isn’t perfect. Today I did a thin over-spray with light blue of the mottling.

wp-image-63265549 — My plan is to do a final layer of staubgrau tomorrow and accept the mottling as it is.

I also resprayed the underside and the engine cowlings where I took the staubgrau a bit too low initially.

I think it’s time to get back to my little list I made a few blogs back:

Retouch some parts of the mottling.
Mask off and spray the dark area behind the engine and above wings.

fwside — Unfortunately Revell doesn’t say what color this is. The same goes for the fuel rack area. A few steps back the manual says they should be in light blue as well, but I am not too sure. Both parts will need some more looking around on the internet.

Recover the cockpit where the primer got through.
Mask off the canopy I will use and spray staubgrau.
Clear coat.
Decals.
Clear coat again to seal in the decals.
Weathering?
Re-place the cannons in the landing gear bay.
Antenna’s, landing gear and other easily breakable stuff.
Re-place the broken off fuel rack back on the underside.
Re-place the broken off cannon on port side and paint it again.

On one hand I know this is just my second build and it takes practice to get to a higher level, but I hope to make the best of this thing of course!

Secondary build, the Boeing 747-8 in Cargolux livery (Revell 04949)

I am not very far with this build. I did the first main gear bays last week, and had some trouble getting the gears on straight. Because I had the feeling this had something to do with my less than thorough approach to this build I temporarily put it on hold until the Focke-Wulf is done and I will make this my primary build when I’ve reached that point. It might be better for me to just focus on one build at a time, but if I really get bored I still have this to pick up.

Looking forward to building this beauty.

I will probably give all my attention to this build when the FW is done, but I’d still like to preview the kit I am already planning on building next.

Preview, the Mitsubishi A6M5 ‘Zero’ (Revell 04755)

A few weeks ago my dad gifted me a couple of kits, and the idea of building the ‘Zero’ has grown in my mind.

wp-image-2140831002 — Funnily enough, when we placed all the boxes on the table this one initially found its way to the ‘nah’ pile.

The reason for that..

wp-image-30030646 — This is the entire construction phase of the build! 8 steps! It’s a level 3 model

At first I thought: this is too simple, this won’t give me the challenge I need. But while I was compiling the rest of the booty this thing stuck to the back of my mind.

wp-image-1564555119 — Even though the build might be simple, there is still plenty of challenge in getting the final finish to the quality level I desire. I can be happy if I could even achieve the quality level displayed on the box!

So in the end I decided to take this home with me. It wasn’t complete, but my brother has made the exact same kit and he had the missing part laying around from his own build of the kit:

wp-image-1325986354 — He did an O.K. job with painting the middle part of the canopy, but I will at least look into cleaning it and doing my own attempt at airbrushing it.

wp-image-1875782977 — I already purchased all the paint I need, although I still need to find Revell aqua 383.

There is more shopping to be done though:

wp-image-23818994 — The decals are pretty battered up by Father Time!

I will need to get some new decals, and I hope I can find an upgrade set somewhere while I am at it. Maybe I can also see if there is some other stuff to make this build more interesting? I’ve seen some of those custom seat buckles around, or maybe I can even make them myself? It would be a step up from what I am doing normally but scared as I am, I still like to always improve myself!

wp-image-1562749576 — The instrument panel with give me a nice opportunity to try some cockpit detailing.

That’s the little summary for this week! Maybe I’ll do something like this again next week but until that time I will surely continue updates on the FW-190.

Groetjes, and have a good weekend!

Daniël

New domain and more stuff

You shouldn’t even notice it but I’ve set dutchscalemodels.com as my primary domain. I find I really enjoy making blogs and I think this is a more future-proof address.. ofcourse there is no need to worry because I plan to be a noob for a while! It’s just the name changing, I promise I didn’t find a can of talent somewhere.

So, with this and my purchase of this morning I finally plan to stop spending money and keep going!

Actually these are not impulse purchases at all.. clamps, primer, a proper fine sanding paper and a heavy duty knife were on the wishlist.. my wishlists just don’t get a lot of time to expand, that’s all.

First post

An original title to start things off!
In this first entry I will simply lay out my reasons for starting a blog and what I plan to do with it.

A few weeks ago I was forced to rethink my hobbies, or in particular one hobby that took much of my time: computergaming. Since my work as an IT consultant (or software engineer to be more precise) sitting behind a screen all day it became clear to me that with increased stress and having passed the thirty mark did not combine too well with spending another 3 or 4 hours behind a screen making decisions.

So when I started my first steps of recovering from a burnout and was told to relax, I of course started with doing what I had liked for years: gaming. I didn’t enjoy it.. I didn’t enjoy very much anyway the first weeks. In fact around that time I opened up a modelkit which I still had laying around and at the first step in the instruction I already folded. Too difficult! However as the weeks went by and I started to become a bit more active I really noticed the difference in required energy between activities. Computergames kept feeling difficult and seemed to ask the most of my thinking abilities and most of the little concentration I was able to give it. At some point I reopened the modelkit again.. and decided I wanted to try this again, but on a larger scale and with World War 2 era planes.

So after buying my first kit (more on that kit in another blog) I went for it, and I completely fell in love with it! It appealed to my engineering side, but without the stress of my day job. I loved working in a structured way, seeing subcomponents become bigger and combining them with the other parts. I loved making decisions about which type I wanted to make, what livery, what rudder, which wingtips. I loved doing the research about what actually would be historically acurate.

And I felt challenged by the immense possibilities when it comes to techniques.

As a kid my dad introduced me and my brother to modeling. The models I made back then were made with the lack of patience and eye for detail of a child. Sloppy paintjobs, glue everywhere. I just wanted to have them finished so I could play with them! I remember a 1/144 scale silver Starfighter for instance: my dad had airbrushed it for me and told me to wait until it was dry.. when the paint did finally dry up it had the fingerprint of a small kid on it! I don’t know how old I was when I stopped but I know I barely reached a much higher level.

But I guess now I am ready again for the fantastic results that can be achieved in scale modeling! It will take some time to get there, but having grown into my big boy pants I do actually have an eye for detail (it is actually a big part of my professional life) and the patience.. well I find I still have to slow myself down sometimes, but at least I enjoy the experience of creating rather than the end result. I am also a perfectionist which will make those first few models a real pain. Having an eye for detail while not achieving the desired detail is a real buzz kill, but more on that in a blog about my first kit.

Best of all there now is an incredible amount of information out there and so many great people more than willing to share their knowledge!

So: what I would like to do with this blog. My idea is to just make regular posts with everything from new purchases, to changes to my workplace, to techniques I am trying out. After all I am a noob and all these things are still relevant to me! If there ever comes a time I have so much routine they become irrelevant to mention it might become time to change the name of the blog or even start a YouTube channel.