A pair of Airfix Hawks in 1/72. Finished.

[Navy Bird]

Steve, are you thinning the Alclad primer or shooting it straight out of the bottle? I know the latter is what Alclad recommends, but I have such a fetish for thinned paint that I ignore their instructions. I've found that I can remove most of that slightly grainy texture by thinning with cellulose (lacquer thinner). 

 

Beautiful work, by the way, but you don't need me to tell you that!    

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Fritag]

3 hours ago, giemme said:

 

When I asked about rivets I thought you were going with a "regular" riveter, now these rivet decals take it to a different level ...  

 

 

 

Well - we'll see how it goes Giorgio   BTW,  I meant to reply to you question about the rivets - but forgot 

 

5 hours ago, Cookenbacher said:

 

Nimrod54 (John) used HGW rivets on his P-47 in the STGB, if you're interested.

 

I am - I've looked - very helpful indeed.  Thanks for the link Cookie.

 

1 hour ago, Navy Bird said:

Steve, are you thinning the Alclad primer or shooting it straight out of the bottle? I know the latter is what Alclad recommends, but I have such a fetish for thinned paint that I ignore their instructions. I've found that I can remove most of that slightly grainy texture by thinning with cellulose (lacquer thinner). 

 

 

Been shooting it straight from the bottle Bill.  Thanks for the tip.  I'll practice thinning it a bit and seeing how it comes out on my Matchbox Hawk paint-mule.

 

Speaking of practice.....(how's that for a segue?) I've laid a few lines of HGW 1/72 rivets down on my paint mule (which, BTW is primed with Alclad grey primer and microfilmer) - and added a bit of microsol to check that it does no harm - and I'll leave that overnight before removing the film and seeing how they look:

 

 

Obviously couldn't do too  much tonight cos it's 'Strictly' night - and you can't really concentrate properly on anything else when 'Strictly' is on......

 

But I did have a bit of a play with the aileron actuator fairings.  You may remember that I removed the moulded-in Airfix offerings cos they were a bit crude.  I then cheated somewhat by making a silicon mould of the fairings on the Revell new-tool Hawk (which is likely to stay in the Loft stash for a long time seeing as I'll not be rushing to do any more Hawks for a while ) and I've since cast a few resin copies:

 

 

 

Well I've got as far as cleaning up one of the casts and dry fitting it for a look see on a Hawk wing:

 

 

That'll do the job I reckon.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[CedB]

Nice actuators. Good luck with the rivets Steve.  

[Ascoteer]

I feckin HATE 'Strictly'. Utter, utter Es Aitch One Tee Ee so it is!

[Fritag]

6 minutes ago, Ascoteer said:

I feckin HATE 'Strictly'. Utter, utter Es Aitch One Tee Ee so it is!

 

Debs!  I'm mortified. Hates 'Strictly'.  Does that stretch to hating Bake-Off too? 

[Ascoteer]

I  REFUSE to watch Bake Off, Strictly, whatever in the  Island get me out of here, dancing in the Kardashian the only way is Essex world.

 

 

 

[spaddad]

54 minutes ago, Ascoteer said:

I feckin REFUSE to watch Bake Off, Strictly, whatever in the feckin Island get me out of here, dancing in the Kardashian the only way is Essex world.

 

Feck arf wit yer ess aitch one tee ee!

 

I don't think you should hold back and stifle your feelings like this, you'd feel much better if you let yourself go.

[CedB]

Well, I think we know what Debs thinks now eh?

Me? NOTHING with 'Celebrity' in the title. Bake Off yes, Strictly only if Mrs B wants me to 'join in'... although I was surprisingly interested when Rachel Riley was on for some reason.

Countdown? 8 out of 10 cats does Countdown? (Like the former only naughtier).

[Fritag]

 

Hmm.  That didn't work too well....only two-thirds of one line of rivets stayed stuck.  Maybe the primed surface was a bit on the grainy/matt side?  Or maybe I didn't cut the carrier film close enough to the rivets?

 

 

Anyways - second practice.  Micromeshed the primer a bit.  Cut the carrier film closer.  Put some microset down before laying the river decal on it.

 

 

We'll see.....

[Brandy]

What a differance between your "mole" and the real deals....this one somewhat resembles a trench map!! If the decals don't work, I remember a thread of a Voisin build where the rivets were added by making tiny holes in masking tape and spraying (I think) Mr Surfacer. When the tape was removed it left tiny dimples.....

 

Ian

[Fritag]

So - HGW rivet second practice.   Gently peeled back the film and..........both of the single lines of rivets simply peeled off with the film and only the double line of rivets stayed on the model 

 

 

Ok.  So.  Before deciding whether to persist with the bloomin things I thought I'd give the rivets that had stuck around a squirt of paint to see if they could in fact be seen once painted.

 

I've got some Tamiya rubber black in a rattle can so I used that.  Can you see the rivets?

 

 

Maybe the faintest hint of a line in the centre of the piccie - but that's it.   I know that rattle can paint goes on a bit thicker than an airbrush - but this was just a single light pass!

 

I went over the area with some micromesh and the rivets did make an appearance - but that's not the look I was after 

 

 

Hey ho.

 

More out of a sort of dull bovine persistence than any real hope I'm no going for practice number 3.

 

The top surface of the paint mule's wing has a coat of Alclad white primer on it - and I've polished this up so it's as representative of the primer finish I've got on the Hawks as It can be.  And I've tried again with one line of single rivets and one line of double rivets:

 

 

Got to wait several hours for it to dry now......Don't think I'll hold my breath.....

 

Maybe 1/48 scale rivets would work and look better..... or maybe I should give up on the idea and just punch in the rivets in time honoured fashion.....

 

 

[giemme]

58 minutes ago, Fritag said:

or maybe I should give up on the idea and just punch in the rivets in time honoured fashion.

I'd go with that (but I'm lazy ...   )

 

Ciao

[Martian]

I don't think the decal rivets are really working in this instance. Are they necessary at all in this scale?

 

Sorry to sound a bit negative.

 

Martian

[Ascoteer]

Presumably the decals would stick better if you Kleared the surface first.

[Tomoshenko]

The like is for the perseverance Steve. May be worth giving limeypilot's suggestion a bash on the mule. Do you have a riveting tool? Run the tool across some masking tape, or use pin pricks. Be interesting to see this technique in comparison to the rivet decals.

[Leonl]

I've not used HGW rivets but I had similar issues with Archers rivets. I found that a very brief dip in water and applied with Micro Sol worked a treat. Once applied this way they withstood all manner of handling/masking etc...

[Engineer66]

Hi Steve,

 

Great progress so far, nice recovery on the NACA ducts on the nose.

 

I'm interested in how the HGW rivets work out as I have some put away for a couple of future builds.

 

Crisp seems to be having success with the HGW rivets on his Sea King build (not intended as any form of criticism/comparison to/of your work I hasten to add), it might be worth finding out how he goes about the process?

 

Cheers

 

Al

[hendie]

is it the microsol causing the issue ?  My (albeit very limited) understanding is that there is actually an adhesive under the rivets. Could it be that the microsol is diluting the adhesive?

 

[bigbadbadge]

What fantastic work, looks amazing, I hope you resolve your rivet conundrum. 

 

All the best
Chris

[perdu]

Looks like the girl has it right Steve

 

(runs away quickly holding dustbin lid overhead for the sake of prudence, I'll be at Telford see...)

 

But seriously they are blimmin decals, doesn't it say on the packet treat as decals?

 

I know when I practice with mine I'll be using clear (other shiny surface treatments are available) underneath them,applying over a primed, polished surface

 

Flappy doohdahs look the bizz, wish I'd been able to use an a/m article ('speshully, your castings) on that Red Sparrers Hawk I had to do for the charriddee build  a while back

 

Would have saved me mucho grief

[Fritag]

11 hours ago, Engineer66 said:

 

I'm interested in how the HGW rivets work out as I have some put away for a couple of future builds.

 

Crisp seems to be having success with the HGW rivets on his Sea King build (not intended as any form of criticism/comparison to/of your work I hasten to add), it might be worth finding out how he goes about the process?

 

 

 

Like your diplomatic caveat Al  But no need - if I ever start to imagine that my efforts are beyond criticism or I've got nowt to learn from fellow BM'ers - that'll be the day I've lost touch with reality.

 

I think one issue is that in 1/72 these rivets are just really really tiny - and so have only a minimal surface area to adhere to the painted surface - and I think another is that I just hadn't prepped the grey primed surface well enough.  I say this because my third go, on the more polished white primer, was successful:

 

 

 

14 hours ago, Ascoteer said:

Presumably the decals would stick better if you Kleared the surface first.

 

Yes I think you're right that a Kleared surface would be better Debs.  I gave it a quick go - just quickly brushing some Klear on and applying the rivets whilst it was still wet - and it seemed to work:

 

 

8 hours ago, perdu said:

 

But seriously they are blimmin decals, doesn't it say on the packet treat as decals?

 

I know when I practice with mine I'll be using clear (other shiny surface treatments are available) underneath them,applying over a primed, polished surface

 

 

They are - and I guess it's just exposed that I've managed to date with a very poor decalling technique........

 

11 hours ago, hendie said:

is it the microsol causing the issue ?  My (albeit very limited) understanding is that there is actually an adhesive under the rivets. Could it be that the microsol is diluting the adhesive?

 

 

Don't think so - the instructions suggest you use Mr Hobby Decal Softner which is similar ain't it?

 

13 hours ago, Tomoshenko said:

The like is for the perseverance Steve. May be worth giving limeypilot's suggestion a bash on the mule. Do you have a riveting tool? Run the tool across some masking tape, or use pin pricks. Be interesting to see this technique in comparison to the rivet decals.

 

I do have such an implement - and I ran it across some Tamiya tape and it's a clever idea.  It looks like a bit of finesse would be required to make sure the tiny holes didn't close up again when the tape was burnished onto the kit surface.  Least ways that was a bit of an issue when I had a quick go and brushed the Mr Surfacer on. Can see the merit in it tho'.

 

14 hours ago, Martian Hale said:

I don't think the decal rivets are really working in this instance. Are they necessary at all in this scale?

 

Sorry to sound a bit negative.

 

 

Actually - I think the 1/72 ones may be a bit too subtle for what I wanted.  The jury is out until I get a chance to airbrush some thinned acrylics over the most recent practice effort.  I might see how the 1/48 ones look in comparison.

 

Neccessary?  No.  Pleasing effect? Possibly - haven't decided yet.  I'm still persuaded at present that it's worth playing around a bit more........

Edited October 17, 2016 by Fritag

[perdu]

I reckon there's no greater fun in modelling than having a bash at an idea I've not tackled before

 

I have often considered and tried popping a hole in masking tape to fill with primer (or Tom and Si's hi build primer maybe) but I have never managed to get the hole 'solid' enough not to fill itself with its own self healing fibres

 

 A very tiny round hole punch of rivet diameter is needed, these mini saw tooth things are awfully awful

 

Are you listening Mr Wonderfulmodellingtools guy?

 

A rivet wheel (oh boy don't they disappoint) would need to punch out and extract the necessary holes to be much use

 

I seem to recall (I'm NOT looking it up at one in the morning) that the rivets are available in several flavours and sizes so as you want nice beefy ones for round the tail maybe a message to the Big Yellow H would suffice when you need to put on some bigger ones

 

I am impressed with the results of following the lady though

 

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

I think the state of the surface is important (as with any decal), but whatever you do before laying them down, don't miss out the Microsol afterwards - in my experience it makes the difference between success and failure.

 

My suspicion is that you are right in saying that the 1/72 rivets are just too small to get adequate grip (unless the surface is mirror smooth?).  I should also add that my alleged success should only be adjudged preliminary, in that mine have so far only been laid on a bed of Tamiya primer, and no paint added on top of them.  I had already decided that post-rivet paint will be airbrush only (def no rattle cans) and carefully thinned - your post-paint pictures only underline my decision.

 

Hang in there!

[CedB]

Those last tests look good Steve? I'd go for some paint on top of those and see what they're like - 'subtle' is the target effect?

[Fritag]

In other news I've been attaching my cast resin aileron fairings.  Took some careful cleaning up on some fine polishing sheets:

 

 

I've found the best way to attach little surface details like this is to mark everything out in pencil and drill little indents to act as reservoirs for some cyano.

 

The little reservoirs help me to accurately and neatly place drops of cyano with a tooth pick.

 

Takes a bit of time in the prep but it makes the tricky bit of actually glueing the darned thing that much easier.

 

 

Worked a treat this time:

 

 

Both Hawks done now.