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My first airbrush

For my first kit I used mainly paint brushes and small roller for the bigger parts. The thought of buying my own airbrush had ofcourse crossed my mind. I guess I was scared though! Airbrushing as a kid was something my dad had to do for me and my brother and he ofcourse didn’t want to do this 3 times a week. Having to wait and plan your airbrush jobs made it a bigger deal I guess!

IMG_20170625_093136 — The finished cockpit for my first Spitfire Mk. IXc kit.

After the wingtip disaster on my first kit I order the FW190 A8/N11 I am currently working on. I went to Hobbycar the next day to pick it up and since there was another customer in the shop I went around to look at some of the airbrushes. When the storeowner had showed me the kit and all the stuff I had ordered along with it I asked him if he could tell me what a good starter kit would be.

He showed me a couple of sets, both with compressor and with airbrush propellant. I had absolutely no idea what was what, but when he showed me a 55,- euro kit which basically had everything I needed with a compressor I decided to just go for it.

Ofcourse my first experiences weren’t too great. There were a lot of splatters as the mixture was way too thin.. besides that I had already used the small roller to apply the aluminium paint on the body. The parts that didn’t look good after that I removed with Paint Remover, but since the roller and the paint brush left quite a different thickness things didn’t look good. This model already felt more and more like a write off but I atleast wanted to try the camo on the top of the hood.

IMG_20170713_132523 — Where to start.. sloppy masking, inconsistent coverage and probably the big thing I want to differently for my next camo is to ambitiously try to do it without masking the other camo parts!

I live near the militairy base of Gilze-Rijen, and ofcourse I can often see the helicopters and trucks up close. The camo on the trucks for instance isn’t neatly lined out like I did in this model and seems to be applied from freehand as well. Ofcourse when painting models there is a camo you are trying to recreate but still it doesn’t make sense to use masking tape.. I guess that’s something you can have a discussion about.

With the FW190 I have been able to build up some confidence with my airbrushing techniques. A bit of reading up and watching a couple of YT channels showed me the error of my ways.. too thin a mixture but applied too thickly leaving a nice layer of splattered water. So my mixture is a bit thicker, and I apply in a couple of layers. I like some of the results I got so far..

I am still having some problems with the longer airbrushing sessions, but that’s for another blog.

My first wash

This is probably my favorite area of this kit: the engine!

IMG_20170727_182327 — A picture doesn’t tell the tale of how gruesome task applying the small details was for me..

IMG_20170727_182229 — My mixture for the aluminium colour was probably way too thin, so the coverage on some parts isn’t too good. I focused on the cylinders so those are allright.

IMG_20170727_182332 — Even though I use pretty small size marterhair brushes, these details are a little too small for my shaky hands.. I’ll have to see how visible these will be in the end and if the sloppy areas will be too much of an eyesore.. ofcourse this picure is zoomed in quite a lot so hopefully it won’t be too bad..

IMG_20170728_121654 — Yesterday evening I pushed the whole thing together and this morning I finished it off by placing the exhausts. Nice and fiddly little job but the complete component looks pretty good to me!

IMG_20170728_121702 — Looks ready for applying my first varnish on..

IMG_20170728_145453 — The result isn’t too flashy and it shouldn’t be. To my surprise some areas did seem to react to the varnish! especially the top part let off some of the gray paint, and the alumium on there was way too thin anyway and disappeared. I reapplied it after the varnish had dried a bit. The black caps were just too tiny for me so that is probably the reason they don’t look too swell.

It is surprising to me that this happens, but maybe I am overlooking something. I did do a test on the Spit-Wreck, and it looked fine. That paint had been dry for more than 2 weeks though, and was well applied. Either that is the difference, or Revell Acrylics and Humbrol Clear – Gloss Varnish just don’t like each other. I’ll have to another proper test on the Spit-Wreck before doing more stuff with the varnish.

After waiting for some time I applied my first wash! After 20 minutes I dried it off..

IMG_20170728_170525 — I have to say.. I am quite happy with how this turned out!

IMG_20170728_170529 — I hope I didn’t overdo it but hey, this is an engine after all!

IMG_20170728_170541 — I think there are some more parts where the paint has come off a bit so I’ll have to retouch those and stay off the Humbrol Varnish until I’ve properly tested it.

So all in all I am pretty happy with this result! I am glad I had the oppertunity to do my first varnish and wash on a subcomponent so I can easily fix any problems by just redoing some small areas with paint.

If you could give me constructive feedback that would be great!

Moving on.. FW190 #3

I probably need to get myself an even finer sandingstick.. Really contemplating on going to get some stuff this afternoon although since my girlfriend took my car and I am already quite tired I might have to wait. The Revell sanding sticks I got this week are 120/150 apperantly, and surely an even finer stick would get the scratches out right?

IMG_20170726_133427 — Reasonably happy with the filled part although I did got some more on it this morning. Ofcourse I also need to get rid of those small scratches and just outside this pic is some detail I sanded away so I need a tool to get that back properly.

IMG_20170726_133445 — I kept bullying the inside wing cannons using clamps and during sanding.. finally one broke off and I was able to pull the other one loose. At this point I am confident I can get them both back like they should. Both the clamps and the (proper) sanding are new to be, so next time I am sure I am more careful. Also I might decide to just store them until I see a good moment to fit them..

Somehow I had forgotten to drill a required hole in the upper wing half.. well I am not going to remove the thing for the third time, so I winged it (hah!) and drilled the hole from the outside..

IMG_20170726_140408 — Much to my own surprise, I got the location of the hole just right!

IMG_20170726_140450 — Compaired to the Spitfire Mk.XIc kit, another nice touch is that this kit actually has 2 seperate flapsets for up and down position. The Spit only had one set, and I couldn’t get those to fit that wel.. anyway, these are going to break off if I glue them on right now so..

IMG_20170726_140523 — ..I place them into The Box of Parts Yet to Come.

IMG_20170726_140933 — I considered airbrushing the rudder because it is in a seperate colour compaired to most of the rest of the outside, but since I am going to try using primer I decided it’s probably best to place it on anyway to not get a different look compaired to the rest of the kit. I could be talking rubbish here, I just don’t know and it’s not too big a deal if I have to mask some parts later on.

IMG_20170726_211321 — Who knows if that tape will help anything..

IMG_20170726_204657 — I started work on the engine, so I might as well focus on that today and save myself a trip.

My plan is to leave some of the covers open if I can do a nice job on the engine! That means I will really have to look into how to get some nice weathering done on that. Right now I am thinking I should get a varnish on. Time to search the interwebs again!

FW190 build update / Being a perfectionist

I had already saved a draft to write about perfectionism, and yesterday it finally struck..

I am a perfectionist, and a relative noob at model building. I am also pretty ambitious when it comes to this hobby, although I don’t take trying a new thing lightely. Unfortunatly being a noob means you will also trying new things is inevitable, and so is not executing them flawlessly no matter how much YouTuber vids you check out.

To be absolutely clear: I am not even sure I did something irreparable. But that’s not all that perfectionism is about really.. it’s about the insecurity when trying something new: will this make things better or will I destroy the end result?

Let me go through my progress of yesterday and today:

IMG_20170725_081428 — I redid the placement of the landing gear bay. Less light is showing through. Although there is a lot of glue residue I don’t mind too much as most of it is out of sight. I do have to repaint some areas inside the landing gear bay though.

IMG_20170725_104755 — I probably should have let this dry a little longer before fitting the fuselage on the wing but there was what felt like an emergency..

IMG_20170725_113828 — I was very happy with how the glueing of the upper wing turned out.. there were no seams, and I did the glueing the way Spencer Pollard has shown in his latest video on YouTube. The result was nice and neat! And then, looking for more details I might have missed, it struck me that I was doing things in the wrong order!!! The fuselage needs to go on first.

IMG_20170725_121840 — So after carefully removing the upper wing I just glued on, I fitted the fuselage and I felt in a hurry to do so.. as I’ve said, it felt like an emergency. Even so I did take very good care in fitting the fuselage, a lesson learned from the Spit where I left some big gaps. The motormount was a bit fiddly to get into place, and in the end I glued it on the places on which it was connected to the fuselage and then reattached the bars behind it that came loose during the struggle.. it looks good.

Really there was no reason the be in a hurry here.. but making an unforced error like that makes you feel like you need to restore something quickly I guess.

IMG_20170725_205355 — So at the end of the day it was time to re-attach those upper wings. The portside upper wing is not a perfect fit, but hopefully I can get that done with sanding.

IMG_20170725_213503 — Hopefully visible because of the somewhat poor lighting, but the gap on the rightside between wingpart and fuselage is still quite big even after sanding. I’ll have to fill that. The seams on the side I sanded where appropriate, and possibly too much..

IMG_20170726_095419 — This morning I sanded the wings.. and I hope I didn’t go too far here as well.

IMG_20170726_095431 — And did my first proper thing with Plasto.. I really hope this comes out well after sanding it down. This was the stuff I ruined the Spit with! Don’t use it on stuff that is detailed unless you have the skills and tools to fix it again was the lesson for me..

I guess what is really gnawing at me at this point is the sanding.. It’s so easy to ruin details with it, and I sometimes find it so hard to know if you’re still on track or if you’re going to far with it. The wings are perhaps a bit flat on the front and I will have to do some very light sanding to hopefully restore that. What also has me worried (You might be able to see that in the last picture) is the scratches the sanding makes.

But from what I understand this is the reason people use primer! Another thing I haven’t done yet, and I keep thinking my shopping spree will be at an end at some point. What I likely will need at this point:

Primer (what colour? White? Gray? Silver? Can I use acryilic primer when using acrylic paint?)
A little tool to get some of the line detail back since I surfaced some of it off

I did get something else in the mail though that I will first try on the Spit-wreck:

IMG_20170726_115320 — I can’t wait to try this out!

I didn’t sleep too good the last 2 days, and ofcourse this does not help. I make more mistakes and moving on after a mistake becomes much harder.

But I am still having a lot of fun with all this.. for every perfectionist there comes a time that feeling of a perfect streak will come to an end and the insecurity will drip in about the end result.. But I have to let that go and have fun like I was doing. This model will not be perfect, and neither will the next one be.

And is there ever such thing as perfect anyway?

The FW190-A8/R11 build

This morning I was watching CharleyGnarley’s YouTube channel. I was especially interested his experience with the Focke Wulf FW190 F8, since I recently started building the A8 version of that kit.

After the Revell Plasta debacle of my first kit I started looking for my next one. I considered buying the exact same kit, but since at this point I was still aiming to create a very ugly and scratched version of the clipped wings Spitfire I wanted to buy something else. I had already seen IBM do the F8 and really liked that it has an engine subcomponent unlike the Spit.

I was happy to find out that in the short period I was working on the Spitfire Revell released the A8 version. To be clear I don’t have a real preference between the F or the A type, but I know this is basically the same as the F8 and is thus a pretty solid kit for the price. What tips me over to the A8 is the shiny new manual which is in colour which make it slightly easier to follow (in most places) and shows the sprue that the part can be found on.

I decide to go for the R11 version that is displayed on the box, mainly because I like the extra antenna’s sticking out. When I picked up this box at hobbycar I made a sort of semi-impulse purchase of a cheap airbrush on which I will definitly make a seperate blog because I love it! I decided to bring forward the purchase because of the camo on the FW190 which seems (for me) impossible to create with a brush.

Once I had finished spraying the cockpit I checked out some videos on preshading the cockpit.. well, I am not sure if I would have wanted to try it on this kit anyway since I have no experience with it yet. Not shown in above picture is that I did highlight some of the details on the sidepanels. Mainly because the alternative..

Really lacks in detail even for my noob level. Besides that I couldn’t figure out how they should be applied on the sidepanels.. it’s like they didn’t look at an actual FW190 cockpit when they created these. I was really happy to see that Brett had come to the same conclusion when he was at that stage of the build.

The other cockpit decals were fine though, even if I had to cut some of them to get them properly aligned.. the above section I had already cut in half because of the little glass part sticking out. The lower I didn’t get right, although the picture is not the end result which was marginally better.. I do need to look closer at how the decal should be placed and if I need to make smaller parts of it to make it easier to place them correctly. Anyway, it’s a very small detail and I am not too bothered about it since it’s my second kit. Better luck next time!

Something I picked up from my last build: I’m a klutz and everytime I move the model I hear that awful scraping sound.. I don’t know if this gives much protection but I feel better about it!

A thing at this point was that the upper winghalf didn’t fit too well on the portside. I think I know why..

The landing gear bay is not properly placed and much more light showed through on this side compaired to the starboard side.. So I carefully ‘unhinged’ this part and scraped the glue of the area as best as I could..

And did another attempt at first properly glueing the part that the landing gear bay goes onto. Hopefully I can get the room I need to properly get it in place once this has dried up.

A big thing I could take away from Brett’s build is how much more I need to take care of the seams I leave, and how to actually get better at glueing.. at this point it has become slightly better, but there still is room for improvement.

Especially here..

I already applied some thin cement to the area to the left of the tape, and hopefully I can get this right with sanding if it’s not too late.

I am happier with the upper half, if only just.

Since I had to be in the city anyway this afternoon, I did some more shopping for some essentials.. especially the clamps might be a big improvement when it comes to properly drying glued-together parts.. not want to give Brett too much credit here but yeah you’re absolutely right: he prefers clamps over large amounts of tape and well..

I admit, I am not sure what I was trying to achieve with the tape on the gun parts.

Well, that’s all for now! Special thanks to Brett for some inspiration on where the big improvements probably lie for me. I see Spencer Pollard has a new beginners video about glueing which also comes at the perfect time!