Dornier Do 18-D *Finished*

[The Spadgent]

Wonderful work Tony. Merry Christmas dear boy. 

 

see you you on the other side.

 

Johnny.

[Tomoshenko]

Hope you had a nice Christmas Tony. Stunning work as usual, love the detailing on the canopy with the addition of runners.

 

"Bloody Mary's and fishcakes for lunch" heh heh - now that's a man who knows how to do lunch!

[TheBaron]

Simon & Lady R., Jaime, Keith & Johnny: festive felicitations right back at ye - I hope you've had a satisfying few days? 

3 hours ago, Tomoshenko said:

Hope you had a nice Christmas Tony. Stunning work as usual, love the detailing on the canopy with the addition of runners.

 

"Bloody Mary's and fishcakes for lunch" heh heh - now that's a man who knows how to do lunch!

Thanks Tomo.

As to the lunch: hairs, chest, put, etc.

 

I can report that there has been some pigmentation started at this end. Even the fervent and faithful amongst you may have harboured doubts about that ever happening before the New Year.

 

All masked-up and ready to rock the booth:

Handles added to the doors:

...and added to all the other bits clustered together on the basis of shared colour:

Putting the bits in groups like this is also an excellent way of me realizing all the little bits that had been tucked away 'safe' over the last few months had to be retrieved from where I'd forgotten they were put....

 

All metal brass areas and the new framing around the canopy treated to some black Alclad Primer & Microfiller:

I forget just how truly excellent that stuff is at showing up flaws in your work (it showed-up for example a 'ghost' lip in the photo above where I'd added Milliput around the front of the canopy that Halford's grey was a bit 'vague' about revealing) as well as the seductively silky finish it gives. I must order more in and use it more regularly!

 

In one particularly useful overhead shot of one of these Dorniers hanging from a crane there is some excellent detail regarding wear and tear to the high traffic areas on the aircraft, so I've devided to recreate this using the hairspray method using a layer of Alclad Aluminium as a base for the process:

Wear on the sponsons would  have been from crew entering and exiting the aircraft through the gondola doors, as well as refuelling, fuel tank replacement @etc. On the upper wing these regions at the front match where the mechanics would have accessed the engine, whilst to the rear of the canopy is where the ground crew stood to rotate the front prop:

 

As well as this, the aircrew seemed to like sitting with their feet dangling over the sill of the cockpit roof in that kind of louche Bryan Ferry pose you expect from naval aviators....

 

Alclad Steel added as a base layer to the MG 15s and padding for the trolley:

The gunthingies got some too, for similar reasons:

Plus the trolley itself:

The guns and will have some thinned down black added when dry to give a gunmetallic effect, whilst the mounts get a slightly more opaque layer to approximate black lacquered metal. The trolley parts get a layer of dark grey and a thinner layer of black, to be hairpsrayed into a more scuffed condition that you might expect from have seaplanes plonked on them. I'm assuming that the very top horizontal on either side of the trolley was (creosoted?) wood, so will give that some appropriate effects also.

 

I began on the aircraft by sketching in the splinter demarcations freehand:

The RLM73 is my own mix (from Tamiya XF63/69/73), whilst the layout itself is taken partly from the kit instructions, backed-up by what I can see in the classic reference shots taken from HMS Somali and the contemporary camouflage diagrams reproduced in Herrick & Kiroff's Luftwaffe Camouflage & Marking 1933-45. All three of these seem to tally pretty closely.

 

I hadn't studied the methodology before but was fascinated to read about the manner in which the splinter patterning on bombers and maritime aircraft was produced from a series of superimposed grids - one of those things I'd always wondered about given the pattern-repetitions involved.

 

As an example of photographic differences:

The same colour as above seen in overcast daylight:

and under a daylight-rated LED:

Colour temperature identical in both.

 

Because the hairspray technique is being used here, the Tamiya mixture sprayed above was thinned 50/50 with water due to reading that using water makes it easier to scuff and scratch the worn areas away again. I hadn't realized you could thin Tamiya acrylic like that as I'd always used a homebrew thinner before. I also haven't been too fussy about the finish of the RLM73 above as I'm going to use the salt method to add mottling across the upperworks later and started the variegation at this level with the initial application of paint.

 

I'll mask that off now tonight in preparation for some RLM72 tomorrow.

 

One last thing I thought you might find of interest.

 

Last night there was an exceptionally rapid drop in temperature after sunset resulting in frost patterns appearing on the Velux windows within a few minutes. Seen from underneath against the moonlight they were incredibly beautiful and feathery - like there was an Archaeopteryx fossil hidden in the glass...

 

 

Night me dearios.

Tony

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Spookytooth]

All looking the part there Tony.

As for Alcad Primers I find the White one the weaker of the 3.

And it amazing how we can still find those small parts (Fnar) in a box after some time.

 

I like the window frosting.

 

Looking for ward to the "hairspray" technique in action, I am going to have a go on the Sunderland, just the floors though.

 

Simon.

[TheBaron]

6 minutes ago, Spookytooth said:

As for Alcad Primers I find the White one the weaker of the 3.

That's helpful information Simon - thank you!

What is it about the white that behaves less well than the others?

 

Good luck with the Silvikrin on the Sunderland btw - I must troll over for a look!

[Spookytooth]

11 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

What is it about the white that behaves less well than the others?

It is not as hard as the grey/black ones, Tony.

Although it gives good coverage, and handy for those lighter colour schemes.

Possible to give two coats with a rub down in-between without losing any detail.

 

As for the hairspray I hope to get that done by the weekend.

I will post pics, especially as Flickr is working sensiblyagain.

 

Simon. 

[giemme]

Painting has actually started!

 

Lovely job so far, Tony

Looking forward for more

 

Ciao

[hendie]

I still take a breath in awe when I see those gunthingies.  Superb they are.

 

Paint is looking good too - can't wait to see more of that

[keefr22]

Those ice patterns are stunning Tony! And the Dornier is looking none to shabby either...!!

 

On a different note, has anyone else stopped receiving e-mail notifications of updates to followed threads after yesterday's outages?

 

Keith

[CedB]

A belated happy Christmas to all at the Baronial residence Tony

Great work on the canopy and nice start on the painting - amazing stuff as usual. Especially the door handles. Tiny.

[perdu]

B..........

 

 

 

Brilliant work on the paint prep Tony, it is going to be stonkingly good mate

[The Spadgent]

Paint!!! She looks brilliant already. Good luck with the wear and tear on the old bird.  looks pretty chilly out there dear boy. Pop another psi of socks on eh. 

 

jont.

[pheonix]

Wonderful to see shades of pigment at last.... I will have to wait now unfortunately because I am off for the new year  so I will just have to be patient to see what the master modeller will reveal to me when I return.

Keep up the excellent modelling in the meantime - as I am sure that you will.

 

P

[pheonix]

22 hours ago, keefr22 said:

 

 

On a different note, has anyone else stopped receiving e-mail notifications of updates to followed threads after yesterday's outages?

 

Keith

Yes. I too am missing notifications by e-mail. Anyone know why?

 

P

[jrlx]

Hi Tony,

 

excellent start of the painting phase. Very interested in following your approach to weathering a seaplane. I've been considering how to do it myself to my Do 24. I'm pretty much set on using Alclad back primer as well. Regarding chipping, I'm not decided yet.

 

15 hours ago, keefr22 said:

On a different note, has anyone else stopped receiving e-mail notifications of updates to followed threads after yesterday's outages?

2 hours ago, pheonix said:

Yes. I too am missing notifications by e-mail. Anyone know why?

I'm afraid I've also stopped receiving these e-mail notifications. I've checked I'm still following the threads. Could it be related to the problems we had with BM on the 25th and 26th December?

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

 

[Spookytooth]

15 minutes ago, jrlx said:

Hi Tony,

 

excellent start of the painting phase. Very interested in following your approach to weathering a seaplane. I've been considering how to do it myself to my Do 24. I'm pretty much set on using Alclad back primer as well. Regarding chipping, I'm not decided yet.

 

I'm afraid I've also stopped receiving these e-mail notifications. I've checked I'm still following the threads. Could it be related to the problems we had with BM on the 25th and 26th December?

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

 

Jaime, I have had the same problem too, check your spam box to see if they are in there.

 

Simon.

[jrlx]

1 hour ago, Spookytooth said:

Jaime, I have had the same problem too, check your spam box to see if they are in there.

Hi Simon,

 

Thanks for the tip. I checked the spam folder an there was no BM message in there. Apparently, they stopped being sent. I should have received one yesterday, due to the latest entry to the gallery, and one today, due to the latest build entered to the GB.

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

 

[corsaircorp]

Hello Tony,

Wow and wow again, you did really great

Is there still some matchbox parts in your Dornier ??

Sincerely.

CC

[TheBaron]

On 12/27/2017 at 6:07 PM, Spookytooth said:

It is not as hard as the grey/black ones, Tony.

Although it gives good coverage, and handy for those lighter colour schemes.

Possible to give two coats with a rub down in-between without losing any detail.

 

Nice one Simon - thanks for the heads-up! 

On 12/27/2017 at 7:24 PM, giemme said:

Painting has actually started!

It's a nice feeling to get this part rolling Giorgio - the paint stage always gives me a certain level of anxiety, partly I suspect because of the rapidity/immediacy of the process.

On 12/27/2017 at 8:58 PM, hendie said:

I still take a breath in awe when I see those gunthingies.  Superb they are.

 

Paint is looking good too - can't wait to see more of that

More on the way hendie - thanks for that. 

One of my main concerns at present is making it through the painting stage without snapping anything off of the gun mountings...

On 12/27/2017 at 9:25 PM, keefr22 said:

Those ice patterns are stunning Tony! And the Dornier is looking none to shabby either...!!

 

On a different note, has anyone else stopped receiving e-mail notifications of updates to followed threads after yesterday's outages?

Thanks for that Keith. The forum has been rather temperamental of late hasn't it? I'm regularly finding it close to unusable on a tablet at times, whereas on a desktop it's nowhere near as bad.

23 hours ago, CedB said:

Especially the door handles. Tiny.

You'll excuse I hope the fact that I didn't do the hinges Ced- even for me there's a level of door furniture I will not countenance!

23 hours ago, perdu said:

 

Brilliant work on the paint prep Tony, it is going to be stonkingly good mate

Thanks for that Bill.

It was almost proceeding to good to be true.

In fact it was too good to be true! (see below)

Recoverable though....

12 hours ago, pheonix said:

Keep up the excellent modelling in the meantime - as I am sure that you will.

You have my word sir.

13 hours ago, The Spadgent said:

Pop another psi of socks on

You have inflatable socks?!

Them's posh in that Midlands.

9 hours ago, jrlx said:

Very interested in following your approach to weathering a seaplane.

Something very apposite about the intended use of sea salt in the process later.

9 hours ago, jrlx said:

Regarding chipping, I'm not decided yet.

It's a moot point isn't it Jaime. Certainly the '18s seem to have had a lot of people clambering over them as much as if they were ships with decks as much as being aircraft, but I haven't seen as many shots of crew swarming over 24s to the same extent.

5 hours ago, corsaircorp said:

Is there still some matchbox parts in your Dornier ??

There'd better be Cc or else I'll be drummed out of the GB for operating under a false flag!

 

Nothing went as anticipated today.

Not in a bad way, just one of those occasional days where you seem to be out of sync with the cosmos. Idling on the old palliasse with a rum-dark brew of oolong this morning I'd mentally worked out a painting plan for the day ahead before Mrs. B reminded me that we were heading out to meet some old and dear friends for lunch.

That was that plan gone then.

The lunch was great, the conversation good, and after a walk beneath the ghost-sun I promptly fell asleep for a few hours when we got home. Conked out completely.

I'm not a natural evening-worker but decided to salvage some of the day at least, as the beast had the masking finished the previous evening:

On with the homebrew RLM 72 (Tamiya XF 17 & 61):

Quite pleased with the closeness of the colour I'd managed to achieve, pulled of all the masking to reveal:

That looks...wrong.

Colour me nonplussed but without a Jeeves to lean over the shoulder and point out the source of wrongliness, my first thought was 

'Flipping drat* - I've got RLM72 & 73 round the wrong way in my masking layout.'

No.

Not the order. I'm guessing what happened was that despite using low-tack tape (the blue stuff you saw in the masked shot above), it seems to have 

lifted much of the RLM 73 I sprayed previously. If I pop up a shot of the paint when it was fresh on:

..and you compare it to how that looks tonight:

One of these things is not like the other one...

 

That grey isn't quite as light as it appears in the photos here, but it's still not green-dark enough.

 

RLM 73 & 73 are both a species of green quite similar to each other tonally, which makes them very difficult to distinguish between where in many contemporary black and white photographs. A b/w version of the above shot shows the problem in my work at the moment:

Far too much difference between the two in tonality.

 

Maybe I kinda shoulda only used paint thinned with water on the small hairsprayed regions, rather than all over.

Maybe.

Looks like I'll be getting more painting practice in tomorrow then. I do however like the 'shabby' effect I've been getting:

...and want to retain that variation.

Which leads me to wonder whether to repaint that pale grey with an opaque RLM 73 mixture?

Or to modulate it with a translucent dark green filter layer?

I'm veering to the latter, it's something I've not tried before to change a colour in that way and new territory is always appealing  - especially when it carries the extra frisson of failure as a possible outcome.

Better seal what's there first to stop lifting what's already painted-on or it'll get a bit:

Ourobouros-like.

 

Not going to rush any decisions tonight though.

I found a packet of Cornish fudge just now and am going to go eat the whole packet to make myself feel better.

 

More tomorrow.

Tony

 

 

 

 

 

*Not entirely verbatim

 

[The Spadgent]

Enjoy the fudge. I’ll comment properly tomorrow, when I’m less pooped. Looks like a good scheme kid. 

 

Johnny tired

[perdu]

The fudge I'm more interested in is in the repop of the paint colours

 

Is it beyond the wit of man to give us paint that simply paints a model?

 

(I kinda envisage a visit to our Jamie for something a little more robust in the paint line, have you considered that?)

 

Or use Tamiya acrylics which seem to have a spirit binder in them?

 

But and however, she LOOKS magnifique

 

 

Minor issues with coloration aside, what a marvellous example of the museum quality, model maker's work

 

Top job Tony

[The Spadgent]

Morning. You know me and paint. As @perdu says she’s beautiful to look at. The colours look to my eye either too dark or too light which either way you want to shift it. The latest set of pics seem to have lost any green pigment. It was there a few pics ago so it might be a trick of the light. I have searched RLM72 73 this morning and the ref seems all over the place so I feel your pain. On the humbrol swatches they look almost the same where as some other mixes look more close to what you have but much more of a green hue. 

Here’s a link I found about a similar colour problem and about half way down the page there is a wing that looks a lot like what you have. The final model looks a lot different however but you know model makers eh. 

 

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/airfixtributeforum/heinkel-he115b-1-t33498.html?sid=efbc237085ba2a2c55b9f52eaa5edae5

 

I like your your idea of modulation with a green ish over spray but I’d “mule” it first. I don’t want to see all that beautiful detail vanish under layers of paint.

I’m sorry for the extended post but after my “Black Cat” she of the many paint layers and techniques, I’d wished I’d have tested more extensively on a mule, even though I did, I still found myself testing to some extent on the actual kit and for better of for worse you can see every coat on my bird.

 

good luck Tony. I’m sure as always you’ll pull it out of the bag.

 

Im out again today for walks and lunches and friends. But I am looking forward to a nice fire later this evening and a catch up on what’s gone down.

 

No pressure.

 

Johnny green grey

Edited December 29, 2017 by The Spadgent

[CedB]

Fudge, yum. I too had a bag for Christmas and it sat next to me in the lounge... for a while. It's the exquisite discipline of letting it melt for a bit then crunching into the sugary goodness, then deciding if you can manage another piece without being sick. Bliss.

 

Strange outcome on the painting Tony. Is there paint on the back of the blue tape? It was definitely lighter before the tape went on - weird.

I know you'll sort it though... I have the same problem with Luft camo and paint so I feel your pain.

I think I'd mask up and go over it again, just to be sure to be sure

[jrlx]

Sorry to know about your painting problems, Tony. It seems that the masking really took the paint away with it. It's possible to see the masking imprints on the damaged areas. In my laptop screen everything looks like tones of grey but it isn't colour managed, so it can't be trusted. In an LCD desktop screen I can see a green hue in both areas but, as you say, there's a big brightness difference between the two colours.

 

I'll be using Tamiya's XF-26 and XF-27 for RLM 72 and 73, respectively. I saw this correspondence somewhere and the colours seem close enough and also distinct enough, with the correct brightness order. Let's see if they give good results. By the way, I never thin Tamiya or Gunze paints with water, only with X-20A.

 

I'm sure you'll find a good solution.

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

 

 

[TheBaron]

7 hours ago, perdu said:

The fudge I'm more interested in is in the repop of the paint colours

 

Is it beyond the wit of man to give us paint that simply paints a model?

 

(I kinda envisage a visit to our Jamie for something a little more robust in the paint line, have you considered that?)

 

Or use Tamiya acrylics which seem to have a spirit binder in them?

 

But and however, she LOOKS magnifique

 

 

Minor issues with coloration aside, what a marvellous example of the museum quality, model maker's work

 

Top job Tony

Paint always fills me with a certain trepidation Bill - I think I recall talking with Crisp and Steve about this factor at Telford - and being so new to the modelling game I just don't have the refined instincts about the varying qualities of various manufacturer's paint that so many others have. Hopefully that will change with time. At the moment I just have a pile of Tamiya acrylics and still finding my way with them - they seem quite forgiving so any problems thus far stem from a mixture of carelessness and naïveté on my part. If anything I've a tendency to over-dilute them at times that I need to curb.

 

That said, today went a lot better.

 

7 hours ago, The Spadgent said:

The colours look to my eye either too dark or too light which either way you want to shift it.

You hit the nub of the matter Johnny - irrespective of hue differences between 72 & 73, they are very similar tonally.

4 hours ago, CedB said:

Strange outcome on the painting Tony. Is there paint on the back of the blue tape? It was definitely lighter before the tape went on - weird.

There was some paint lifting Ced, but not enough on its own to account for the shift in colour. I think it's partly an interesting cognitive issue along the lines of those maddening dress images etc that people keep posting on the internet regarding relative colouration. With the darker RLM72 tone covered up again by masking today, the lighter RLM73 no longer looks as pale as it did yesterday when seen in isolation again:

Bonkers eh?

Bridget Riley eat yer heart out...

 

I took your advice over muling the problem Johnny:

Just playing around with largely raw greens using varying psi and distances. Nothing really floated my boat compared to the references from iModelkit I've been using:

So I decided to revert to a process I've come to enjoy on more and more - simply mixing the various colours on the aircraft itself by eye. Not to everyone's taste I'll admit but I like the freedom and level of variation that such a process allows.

3 hours ago, jrlx said:

In my laptop screen everything looks like tones of grey but it isn't colour managed, so it can't be trusted. In an LCD desktop screen I can see a green hue in both areas but, as you say, there's a big brightness difference between the two colours.

Which is the other issue of course Jaime - calibration of varying displays. The LCD screen of my camera for example shows far higher contrast than the laptop I'm typing on, both of which are different again from what I see with my eyes..

3 hours ago, jrlx said:

I'll be using Tamiya's XF-26 and XF-27 for RLM 72 and 73, respectively. I saw this correspondence somewhere and the colours seem close enough and also distinct enough, with the correct brightness order. Let's see if they give good results. By the way, I never thin Tamiya or Gunze paints with water, only with X-20A.

Looking forward to those results with interest!

 

The initially snortings today then were varying combinations  Tamiya 63/69/73 to start bringing some green back:

Contrary to some of the advice on mixing paints, I do this in quite small amounts in the cup of the airbrush - enough for only a few seconds' spraying - allowing for (hopefully subtle) variations around the airframe in the base colour.

 

Peeling back for a quick tonal comparison shows that there's still a way to go at this stage it terms of darkening the 73 pattern:

After a few more minutes using Tamiya 1 & 73 in the same fashion as above, the darker variations had kicked in enough that it was time to slow down and take stock:

I liked the way the streaking was starting to develop at this stage but it needed just a few more sweeps to avoid overstepping that rather instinctive boundary where streaks turn into stripes...

 

Much happier with the subsequent blending after a few minutes' more attention:

Time to halt now though before it goes over the score.

 

Prior to redoing the 73 areas I'd remembered to do the hairspray routine again around the same areas as before, and I finished off today by bringing those back into view (with wire wool and a cocktail stick):

Nice n' scuffed.

 

I'm far happier now this afternoon with the way the tonality of those two colours have been drawn closer together at last:

That can have the night to cure now.

One minor irritation was managing at the last knockings to brush-off a couple of hinges from the starboard aileron during de-masking:

It's ungrateful to complain -  it's a miracle I hadn't done that earlier. I'll knock up a couple of replacements tomorrow and add them before sealing all of today's work under a layer of Future. Then it's time to break out the Maketar Balkenkreuz and put together a decal sheet.

 

This baby is going to keep throwing up challenges right to the end!

 

Have a nice evening fellows!

Tony