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Without further ado, my followers, let us delve deep into the box and remove the kit, for today (Saturday 19th Feb) my friends, we build!
First things first, however. Before we can build, all the kit parts must be washed in warm soapy water. Why? you ask, well, due to the injection mould manufacturing process, the moulds must first sprayed with a very fine film of oil-based release agent to aid in removal of the finished kit parts. Washing the sprues and attached kit parts in the soapy water removes any residue film and prevents finger prints from sticking to the plastic during building.
So, we're all washed and ready to start. Below shows the three main cockpit sections subsequent to priming with an acrylic based Humbrol primer - this will pay dividends in the next few steps and results in a much smoother finish using less enamel paints.
...here we have the main component parts painted in Humbrol (Hu)79 - this was the closest match to the official Luftwaffe RLM 42 colour i could find. For the record, all colours used on this model will be cross-matched to the offiical WW2 Luftwaffe colour charts to find the best match. Revell say to use all sorts of colour shades, but hardly any actually match the real colour schemes of the bird when she graced the skies during WW2!
Following the base-coat of Humbrol 79, I added a slightly darker shade of grey, in the form of Humbrol 32, over small raised sections to add a sense of depth into the area. Once it had all dried to an 'overcoat' stage (a whole 6 hours later) it was time for the detailing work, but given that it was almost 2200hrs, my eyes were a bit twitchy and i decided to start again in the morning.
So, Sunday morning rolled around and, after a bowl of porridge, it was onto what, in hindsight will now be, the most detailed painting I have ever attempted! All manner of things stood out in the cockpit area, cables, dials, levers, knobs buttons - you name it, and everything had to be painted, colour washed and highlighted by 'dry-brush' painting - something i've not attempted before either, so i'll detail it very quickly here. First off, the brush (usually of about 1/8th inch flt tipped) is dipped into the highlighting paint, this has to be a light shade, silver, white or grey for example, and then the paint is brushed off onto a tissue to remove as much as possible from the bristles, almost to a dry-brush state (hence the name), the brush is then used to very softly brush over the raised detail in a single motion and highlight the raised edges resulting in a highlighted effect and....well, a whole day later, and here is the result...
close up:
and an overview - note the scale of the pieces and then have pity on my eyes!
next it was onto the actual cockpit dials for the pilot, and here i'd want to try yet another new method i'd been shown by a fellow modeller not so long ago...and it involved Pledge Floor Wax! So, here's the result, and i'll explain a little more after the picture:
Still attached to the sprue to aid painting, the dials were all over-coated in Hu79, then individually painted with matt black paint and a 5/0 brush (this has a tip size of around 1/64 inch - that's less than 0.5 millimetres!) . About 45 minutes, and due to the minute amount of paint it was ready for the next step - highlighting. Using the dry-brush technique noted previously, i use a very soft brush of about 1/4 inch and highlight with Hu56 (Metallic Aluminium) over the dials/instrument panel. After dry brushing, out came the floor wax for the experiment. Now, i have to admit that I was highly sceptical at first, but this actually works wonders. The floor wax is an acrylic based wax solution that is milky coloured in its liquid form, but dries crystal clear when hard. It was a snip at only £3.99 from my local supermarket and has so many possibilities in the modelling world - the first being its use for creating cockpit glass for the dials/instruments!
The method, well you simply take a pre-painted, dry section of the cockpit, a pointy-ended cocktail stick and a vessel with just a small amount of the Pledge Floor wax. Using the cocktail you just dip it into the floor wax, and touch the cocktail stick point onto the dial/instrument in question, forming a small bead on the instrument/dial. Then remove the cocktail stick and repeat on other dials/instruments as necessary and allow to dry flat for about 1hr, et voila, instant cockpit glass!
So, with all the respective cockpit components completed, it was onto the construction. First the right side and rear sections ofof the cockpit were fastened to the base, the rear seat installed and then the main cockpit section....
then the pilots seat, rudder pedals and joystick - here's a close up
and finally the divider, rear instruments section and right hand side panel.
right hand side, from rear - you can see most of the detail from here:
and close up of the rear instrument section...
so, with the cockpit completed, on came installation into the fuselage halves...and that brought more painting! So, off i trundled back out side with my primer aerosol and the two fuselage halves. Once dry, each section was painted with Hu79 and a small trim-wheel adjustment knob detail on the inside left was painted black and dry-brush highlighted for good measure.
So, gents, after three soild days of work, i present the first completed section of the build - The Cockpit.
There we have it folks, i hope you enjoyed this weeks instalment and hope you'll come back for more next time when i tackle the engine nacelles and proceed with the slightly unorthodox method Revell use on this model for the wing assembly - see you next time.
As always, your comments are most welcome (encouraged even!), and should you have a burning question on a particular area or method used above, post a comment or throw me a private message, i'll be more than happy to pass on my knowledge for the greater good of modelling kind!
First things first, however. Before we can build, all the kit parts must be washed in warm soapy water. Why? you ask, well, due to the injection mould manufacturing process, the moulds must first sprayed with a very fine film of oil-based release agent to aid in removal of the finished kit parts. Washing the sprues and attached kit parts in the soapy water removes any residue film and prevents finger prints from sticking to the plastic during building.
So, we're all washed and ready to start. Below shows the three main cockpit sections subsequent to priming with an acrylic based Humbrol primer - this will pay dividends in the next few steps and results in a much smoother finish using less enamel paints.
...here we have the main component parts painted in Humbrol (Hu)79 - this was the closest match to the official Luftwaffe RLM 42 colour i could find. For the record, all colours used on this model will be cross-matched to the offiical WW2 Luftwaffe colour charts to find the best match. Revell say to use all sorts of colour shades, but hardly any actually match the real colour schemes of the bird when she graced the skies during WW2!
Following the base-coat of Humbrol 79, I added a slightly darker shade of grey, in the form of Humbrol 32, over small raised sections to add a sense of depth into the area. Once it had all dried to an 'overcoat' stage (a whole 6 hours later) it was time for the detailing work, but given that it was almost 2200hrs, my eyes were a bit twitchy and i decided to start again in the morning.
So, Sunday morning rolled around and, after a bowl of porridge, it was onto what, in hindsight will now be, the most detailed painting I have ever attempted! All manner of things stood out in the cockpit area, cables, dials, levers, knobs buttons - you name it, and everything had to be painted, colour washed and highlighted by 'dry-brush' painting - something i've not attempted before either, so i'll detail it very quickly here. First off, the brush (usually of about 1/8th inch flt tipped) is dipped into the highlighting paint, this has to be a light shade, silver, white or grey for example, and then the paint is brushed off onto a tissue to remove as much as possible from the bristles, almost to a dry-brush state (hence the name), the brush is then used to very softly brush over the raised detail in a single motion and highlight the raised edges resulting in a highlighted effect and....well, a whole day later, and here is the result...
close up:
and an overview - note the scale of the pieces and then have pity on my eyes!
next it was onto the actual cockpit dials for the pilot, and here i'd want to try yet another new method i'd been shown by a fellow modeller not so long ago...and it involved Pledge Floor Wax! So, here's the result, and i'll explain a little more after the picture:
Still attached to the sprue to aid painting, the dials were all over-coated in Hu79, then individually painted with matt black paint and a 5/0 brush (this has a tip size of around 1/64 inch - that's less than 0.5 millimetres!) . About 45 minutes, and due to the minute amount of paint it was ready for the next step - highlighting. Using the dry-brush technique noted previously, i use a very soft brush of about 1/4 inch and highlight with Hu56 (Metallic Aluminium) over the dials/instrument panel. After dry brushing, out came the floor wax for the experiment. Now, i have to admit that I was highly sceptical at first, but this actually works wonders. The floor wax is an acrylic based wax solution that is milky coloured in its liquid form, but dries crystal clear when hard. It was a snip at only £3.99 from my local supermarket and has so many possibilities in the modelling world - the first being its use for creating cockpit glass for the dials/instruments!
The method, well you simply take a pre-painted, dry section of the cockpit, a pointy-ended cocktail stick and a vessel with just a small amount of the Pledge Floor wax. Using the cocktail you just dip it into the floor wax, and touch the cocktail stick point onto the dial/instrument in question, forming a small bead on the instrument/dial. Then remove the cocktail stick and repeat on other dials/instruments as necessary and allow to dry flat for about 1hr, et voila, instant cockpit glass!
So, with all the respective cockpit components completed, it was onto the construction. First the right side and rear sections ofof the cockpit were fastened to the base, the rear seat installed and then the main cockpit section....
then the pilots seat, rudder pedals and joystick - here's a close up
and finally the divider, rear instruments section and right hand side panel.
right hand side, from rear - you can see most of the detail from here:
and close up of the rear instrument section...
so, with the cockpit completed, on came installation into the fuselage halves...and that brought more painting! So, off i trundled back out side with my primer aerosol and the two fuselage halves. Once dry, each section was painted with Hu79 and a small trim-wheel adjustment knob detail on the inside left was painted black and dry-brush highlighted for good measure.
So, gents, after three soild days of work, i present the first completed section of the build - The Cockpit.
There we have it folks, i hope you enjoyed this weeks instalment and hope you'll come back for more next time when i tackle the engine nacelles and proceed with the slightly unorthodox method Revell use on this model for the wing assembly - see you next time.
As always, your comments are most welcome (encouraged even!), and should you have a burning question on a particular area or method used above, post a comment or throw me a private message, i'll be more than happy to pass on my knowledge for the greater good of modelling kind!
