CheshireGap

Good work so far; and don't worry about that cowling, photos I have gathered in advance of starting my E-3 seem to show that on early 109's this was not a perfect fit, as seen here (posting a link so as to avoid treading on anyone's copyright). I believe that later models had a rubber seal around the cowling to close the gap.

The Dora is now on its feet, weathering is done, decals are down and (not shown here) all the small bits are added and matt varnish is down. All I am waiting for is a replacement set of seat belts as I really did not like the HGW versions I had in ready for this - too bright, I think too long, and virtually unposeable as they always spring back to their original straight form. Some Eduard steel ones just released for the Revell A-8 are on their way.

More progress, here we see the primer down and a layer of silver in key places ready for some salt chipping, which in the event I forgot to do, some preshading and RLM 76: To show how the pre-shading works, up next is the first past with RLM 84 and then the second pass which evens things out a bit whilst still keeping panel lines distinct - its hard not to go too far here and lose the effect, but hopefully there is no need for a high contrast wash here. The same process is followed on the wings for the Grau-Violet and DunkelGrun, the rivets look a bit prominent here but that may lessen after the varnishes have gone down With all the main colours down it's time to break out the montex masks and do the crosses and squadron markings; swastikas will come from the decal sheet Weathering has begun with pastel work, I won't be breaking out the tamiya smoke until all this is sealed with gloss varnish; rivet highlighting is all being done by pastel at this point to keep things low key

Thought I would quickly get something up here before I get to the painting stage of my latest, the Revell boxing of Hasagawa's handsome 190 D-9 in the large scale. I seem to have taken a long time with this one and made life difficult for myself by ever-so slightly misaligning the wing spar which then throws out other areas of the wing to fuselage joint. I managed to get it perfect on only one side, the other side and the under-fuselage insert requiring more work than I would like. As you can see the new technique beign tried out for the first time on this one is a full riveting job The underside with all that engine detail on view And a close-up of all those rivets (which took me forever), not perfect but hopefully will look OK under a couple of layers of paint

Truly excellent! I personally like the weathering and am in awe of your skills here; how about a nice photo-filled a post showing us some of your technique?

Excellent stuff, particularly like that oxidised metal effect on the what I assume is the fuel tank

Lovely suble work on the rivetting - is that using a beading tool rather than a wheel, or are they HGW's rivets?

I can only add to the praise...quite brilliant!

This is full size to really see the difference; for me its just a bit easier on tired eyes as, others I am sure will prefer bold, but perhaps all can agree that the larger font is easier and, as you can see, makes little difference to to the amount of content visible as that is determined by the box size. Edit: the picture is not showing for me, I will have to wait till I get home and can access my Flickr account and add it properly. FYI these are CSS settings so if you can edit those you have the power

Overall I do like the changes, but the bold post titles in a smaller font are a bit hard on my eyes; fiddling with Firebug, changing the font weight to normal and size to 1.5rem is a lot easier to read and makes little difference to the number of posts on show, subjective I know but I find too high contrast schemes somewhat wearing on the eyes, I would prefer bigger but less bright. Rather too much of this, would much prefer this.

damn fine finishing sir!

I use cheap displosable (recyclable rather) pipettes because I feel less bad about not cleaning them properly than I would syringes...

Now he looks good, the face particularly is excellent just the right amount of shadowing and expression for a realistic result. There is a lot of subtle colouring around the armour as well, properly impressed!

This was finished a while ago, but I have only got round to photographing it this week; the WiP is here. The big change here is the Aires cockpit set, an amount of work but worth it. I am fairly happy with the finish but the decals proved to be not as opaque as I would like, so some colour demarcations do show through in places. If you think the pitot looks a bit odd, the real one has subsequently been found and substituted!

Another OOB build, this time of the still good Hasegawa kit of this weird little twin (which oddly is almost exactly the same length and wingspan as the Whirlwind); very few changes, really just the angle of the seat - it should be bolt upright and cramping the pilot into the front of the cockpit - and an Eduard steel seat harness. Paints are a mix or brands, and again I had a problem with the Alclad Klear Cote refusing to dry, resulting in some dust getting irretrievably stuck in places I realised after I took these that I had omitted the undercarriage doors - they are on now!