Dornier Do 18-D *Finished*

[Martian]

2 hours ago, TheBaron said:

 

 

A ukelele aficionado of my acquaintance recently pointed out to me just how many of Mr. Formby's lyrics are obsessed with themes of voyeurism and sexual temptation...

'A widow nice and young and gay said, "Come to tea my dear,
I've something nice for a Lad from Lancashire.'''

 

Eeee turned out nice again!

 

Martian (When I'm cleaning spaceships)

[Nigel Heath]

4 hours ago, hendie said:

NIgel, I wouldn't use acetone on any plastic I wanted to keep. Acetone will dissolve styrene pretty quickly

 

I have used nail polish remover containing acetone on styrene many times and never had a problem with it dissolving the plastic.

[Tomoshenko]

Never had a problem using meths on plastic either.

[jrlx]

I really didn't see any magazines installed in a vertical position. The only picture with them in a vertical position is the one where they are held by blue tak for painting. Am I missing something? Should I increase my prescriptions?

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

 

 

[JWM]

Definitly acetone destroyes styren in a seconds! 

2 hours ago, Nigel Heath said:

I have used nail polish remover containing acetone on styrene many times and never had a problem with it dissolving the plastic.

Perhaps if there was acetone it was in very small amount added (diluted)

Cheers

J-W

[pheonix]

Just catching up again Tony. Sorry to read about your airbrush - one advantage of hairy sticks is they do not pack up in quite the same way.

 

Your attention to the tiniest detail inspires me! I think that it is difficult enough to scratch some Lewis drum holders for a WW1 type - what you have done with the mg round storage is truly incredible. The other internal details are also something that I have rarely seen before. Excellent work all round.

 

P

[hendie]

4 hours ago, Nigel Heath said:

 

I have used nail polish remover containing acetone on styrene many times and never had a problem with it dissolving the plastic.

 

I lost a wheel on my Dauphin (I think) build when I dipped it in acetone to clean up - it just dissolved.  I've been very wary of it since then for anything other than deep cleaning

 

2 hours ago, jrlx said:

Should I increase my prescriptions?

 

Yes!      

Take a look at post number 366 and in particular, the image of the magazines in the 1:1.    Then check out how Tony had them oriented compared to how they are in that photo.

 

 

[HomerJ_757]

Althea and Donna, 50’s 🎥 and Lieutenant Pigeon, the senses are in overload!  Instead of Georg Von Formby maybe Frau Gracie Feld und das großes Aspidistra im Welt - apologies to any actual German speakers for the strangliating of their fine tongue!

 

🐦🌿🌎

[jrlx]

8 minutes ago, hendie said:

Yes!      

Take a look at post number 366 and in particular, the image of the magazines in the 1:1.    Then check out how Tony had them oriented compared to how they are in that photo.

 

You're right, I see it now. I'll talk to the doctor, he should have me sorted out quickly

 

[TonyTiger66]

Gracie, George Formby..

 

 

Arthur Askey?

 

 

Or perhaps Arthur Atkinson?

 

 

Great stuff 

 

TT

Edited October 8, 2017 by TonyTiger66
The missing links

[Nigel Heath]

22 hours ago, JWM said:

Perhaps if there was acetone it was in very small amount added (diluted)

 

True, it wasn't pure acetone. I think in nail polish remover it's diluted with some water.

[The Spadgent]

Well now doesn't that all look rather splendid under a sheet of primer. I know what you mean about the beautiful simplistic look of grey paint on a kit. Even better when you have scratch build 99.9% of it. I can highly recommend the Iwata airbrush range. Quite cheap in comparison too. You're doing a tip top job sir.

 

Johnny boy. 

[Procopius]

On 10/2/2017 at 12:30 PM, Martian Hale said:

Yet more impressive work! All we really need now is a Kustenflieger equivalent to Maureen of Barracuda fame!

 

Martian 

There were at least a few women ferry pilots during the war, including Beate Uhse, who later opened the first sex shop in Germany and possibly the world.

[Martian]

On ‎10‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 12:45, Procopius said:

There were at least a few women ferry pilots during the war, including Beate Uhse, who later opened the first sex shop in Germany and possibly the world.

The things you learn on Britmodeller!

 

Martian

[bbudde]

5 hours ago, Martian Hale said:

The things you learn on Britmodeller!

 

Martian

She did a great job here for many people in kind of hygiene, sexual enlightenment (50-70th) and beeing creative to produce things, that pushed up the german population as well as others around the world till now . Nobody knows  her historical story here. Only some dildos here and there and now some closed Sex-shops here and there, also in cities with up to 500000!,  will remain (or not).

As time goes by.

Edited October 11, 2017 by bbudde

[TheBaron]

Ian, Martian, Nigel, Tomo, Jaime, Jerzy, Phoenix, Hendie, Ian, TT, Johnny, Benedikt and PC: my thanks to all of you for your mirthful and engaging comments, and keeping the flame alive in my absence of the last few days. Both home and work have been insanely busy since my last posting; I've managed to get a bit more done on the Dawneeay but have generally been too knackered after evensong to post anything coherent, well...as semi-coherent as usual anyways...

 

PC: I have to say that I'm not known to treasure particular historical facts, but this:

On 10/10/2017 at 12:45 PM, Procopius said:

There were at least a few women ferry pilots during the war, including Beate Uhse, who later opened the first sex shop in Germany and possibly the world.

is almost a candidate to be printed onto a T-shirt for Telford. A weird T-shirt, but an historically-accurate one nonetheless! 

 

In a brief catchup round the forum earlier I noticed the magnificent photo depicting a Cheshire-cat of a Ced in front of a Spitfire. If ever a smile can be described as beatific, then that was it. - it added a glow to my morning seeing somebody revelling in having 'slipped the surly bonds'. Like many of you I'm anxiously awaiting a Director's Cut of the Buftonian ascent being released now...

Let us kick-off so with a UFO sighting then:

Yes, that really is a porthole as supplied. A full 3mm thick, and complete with air bubbles:

I won't throw those out but will keep them for a ^{Flying Saucers Have Landed} diorama in future.

 

A task worthy of the great Jeeves then to produce something 'a little more refained'. Having steadily accumulated a pile of transparent packaging for future vacforming, I knocked out some replacement glazing with a hole punch from some of the crinklier smaller odd shaped bits:

Those new bits are 4mm across.

 

My initial solution was to mount those parts onto some slightly larger 5mm discs using Gator Grip:

...in order to give a slight 'surround' for gluing against the fuselage opening from the inside. Although optically it looked fine, it meant a lot of fiddly filing to get them to fit so applying Occam's Razor, I just elected to glue the single 4mm panes into place using (24hr) Araldite.First though, I masked them back and front:

...reasoning that the the inner masks would stop any epoxy getting onto the insides when sticking them into place:

These discs are  - as you can see above - only very _{slightly smaller} than the actual opening, so I took care to stop them popping out the other side by adding some tape crosses as a temporary buffer against a slipped disc:

To ensure as tight a bond as possible I was quite liberal with the epoxy around the edges of the discs, wiping off the excess after about about 3-4 hours and removing the existing inner masks to avoid any danger of the epoxy hardening these into place. It was then just a case of adding some replacement masks for later painting and leaving that all to harden.

 

It doesn't look like the new airbrush will be here until Monday at the earliest now but that hadn't stopped me trying out some paint experiments using an older Meteor cockpit as a mule:

Since returning to modelling a couple of years back I've been trying to adapt my painting style (ok, 'style' might be pushing it a bit, let's just settle on 'approach'...) with each successive build.

*******************************************************

Caveat: There's no implied criticism of anyone else's approach in this next bit - I thoroughly enjoy looking at all the different ways that  people get such incredible and diverse results in their work - this is purely about the level of dissatisfaction I have in my own abilities.

*******************************************************

Approaches like pre-shading I just don't get on with - when it comes to colour and tone I always feel I'm being too visually 'deliberate' compared to the more fractal transformations that matter and light can wreak - so I've been trying to develop an approach that combines both fluid and dry pigment simultaneously (as opposed to steps like painting and then adding pastels etc. later) as a way of trying to take myself out of the equation as much as possible...bear with me, this does make a kind of sense.

 

This was a first (and completely unsubtle) go at such a method:

All I'd done is brush some dry black powder paint onto the surfaces and them a quick spray of Halfordian grey. In that raw and untouched condition it initially resemble a slight rust effect once dried, but what is nice is that depending on how wet you then make it whilst working back over it, the pigments in this black powder paint can range from that pale sienna you see above, right down to pale violets and deep blacks.

 

Here's a bit more testing to show the possible variation of such effects, on a wing mule this time:

This is nothing more than primer sprayed directly onto powder at the moment, but hopefully you can see the results of letting the initially paint layer dry, and then rubbing with a moist cotton bud and varying levels of moisture across the surfaces. A bit closer:

This is little more than a few second's work adding varying amounts of moisture but gives a rough idea I hope of the potential of being able to work on a water-based powder paint that it is integrated into an extant paint layer.

 

Here's the powder-paint in question - just standard art-shop stuff:

But note that even though it is a black pigment, in granular form it possesses a range of hues in that raw state.

 

Ok. Fortune favouring the brave and all that, time to commit to the idea I guess?

Here, I am just giving an idea of the initial means of applying the powder lightly with a brush:

It really does not take a lot - as you can see above. One of those 'blusher' make-up brushes might be an investment.

For the kit!

The KIT!

A bit messy, but that's the interior pre-dusted now:

That will sit now until the airbrush arrives next week and I can finally get snirtling onto that powder with some RLM02 mixture...and then the fun should really start seeing if my hopes for this wet/dry approach are justified. 

 

Until then, insert 'trepidation' emoji <here>...

 

In other news.

There's still plenty of other tasks to keep me occupied at the weekend!

1.Doors to scratch up for the motor gondola.

2. Wings need filling for re-scribing as done previously on gondola. Some duff detailing on the wings that needs filing-off and replacing.

 

Nothing more tonight now however: I'm taking my darlings off to an early showing of  the new Blade Runner followed by a fish and chip supper on the way home...

'Time.

To fry.'

(apologies to Rutger Hauer)

 

I hope to catch up with all your own builds again over the next few days as well!

Tony

 

 

 

[Nigel Heath]

Interesting approach to the porthole glazing, the end result should be much better than the kit's flying saucers. I think the use of epoxy gives them the best chance of surviving subsequent build stages.

[keefr22]

I just hope the epoxy doesn't stick the masking tape to your nice new portholes Tony....

 

Interesting new weathering technique there, looking forward to seeing what the new airbrush makes of it!

 

Keith

[jrlx]

Very interesting your powder and paint approach to weathering. Seems to give good results on the mules. Curious to see it applied on the model.

 

I've seen Blade Runner 2049 last Saturday and think it's excellent, probably better than the original. Hope you like it.

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

 

 

[TheBaron]

18 hours ago, Nigel Heath said:

Interesting approach to the porthole glazing,

 

15 hours ago, keefr22 said:

I just hope the epoxy doesn't stick the masking tape to your nice new portholes

Nigel, Keith: well you could guess that on reading that I simply had to go go and whip some tape off to check how it had turned-out! What do you reckon? Did it stay in?

Oh yes! 

A little gentle cleaning needed around a couple of parts of the circumference but having subjected that glazing to some relatively heavy taps with the blunt end of the tweezers , there's no sign of that shifting any time soon. As to clarity, the shot below is focused on the background grid rather than the window itself to give an idea of how much can potentially be seen through it:

Pretty clear I think you'll agree?

 

I'll mask that back up ready for later painting but feel pretty happy now that this process is capable of producing decent results in situations where kit windows are a bit too thick for your needs.

 

15 hours ago, keefr22 said:

Interesting new weathering technique there, looking forward to seeing what the new airbrush makes of it!

 

13 hours ago, jrlx said:

Very interesting your powder and paint approach to weathering. Seems to give good results on the mules. Curious to see it applied on the model.

That makes three of us curious about how it will pan out now Jaime and Keith!

13 hours ago, jrlx said:

I've seen Blade Runner 2049 last Saturday and think it's excellent, probably better than the original. Hope you like it.

I have to say that both myself and Mrs. B liked it a lot Jaime - not more than the original, but differently, if you know what I mean? Clearly the improved technology of making images gave Denis Villeneuve and Roger Deakins the ability to create an even greater sense of scale and multitude than the original has been able to craft, though seeing the near future as such an ecologically-wrecked and enduringly-sexist dystopia is a deeply bleak and uncomfortable experience. It also felt like a very 'European' film in its sensitivities and shifts of meaning -I don't know did you sense anything similar?

 

I also liked the fact that both Twitter and Facebook had apparently ceased to exist after the 'blackout'....

 

Let's look at some doors then:

One on either side of the motor gondola, with some rather elegant asymmetric framing to build on their inner surfaces. Here's the blanks, just prior to puching-out some holes for the windows:

The easiest way to maintain an identical structure on each seemed to be to glue the blanks side-by-side with double-sided tape and then mark them up with a pencil prior to adding some of Slater's thinnest hair-like plastic rod:

These were oddly satisfying to build, reminding me somewhat of that irregular framing you get on stained glass windows:

à propos  of stained glass and aircraft btw, if you're ever up the Purbeck end of Dorset and have a spare hour or so, it's well worth seeking out a tiny hamlet inland from Lulworth called Moreton. Not only is T.E. Lawrence's grave there (here's the view looking Eastward from his resting place):

..but during 1940 the windows of St. Nicholas' church there got blown out by a stray bomb from a German aircraft, to be replaced many years later by some absolutely sublime engraved windows by Laurence Whistler. I guarantee that you have never seen the like of these as you look through the windows and see the glass engraving superimposed upon the surrounding landscape. One of them is a memorial to an RAF pilot shot down and killed during the Battle of France, hence the vapour trails and downed aircraft you can see here:

End of digression....

 

Here's the doors trimmed down now and primed:

Windows still to make and mask, plus some hinges and handles, probably from brass. More on that in due course.

 

As I can't do any painting at present, I've been prioritizing gluing-up some of the larger components,especially with a view to critiquing surface detail. Firstly  - the bootsstummel (wing stumps), those sponson-like 'water-wings' that flare out from the lower fuselage on some Dorniers:

More nipples than an Anne Boleyn lookalike contest and little to distinguish panel lines from raised detail. Such things have no place here!

The wings glued as well, complete with panel troughs in the wrong places:

These two most definitely require some remedial action also.

I just went a bit mad and glued everything that wasn't nailed down tbh:

Next stop: Fillertown. Population: me.

 

 

 

[The Spadgent]

16 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

 

These two most definitely require some remedial action also.

I just went a bit mad and glued everything that wasn't nailed down tbh:

Next stop: Fillertown. Population: me.

I've been there my friend. 

Lovely photography as well as a couple of smashing doors.  Nice paintiing ideas, I'll look forward to haw everything turns out.Good luck with the new brush.

Jont.

[Brandy]

Love those doors. My first reaction was "the windows aren't central, that'll hurt the framing" then you mentioned that the frames weren't symmetrical, so point moot. Time to buy some shares in filler methinks!

 

Ian

[hendie]

nice work again.  I've been following along on my phone while on my whirlwind tour away, so, forgive my non-commenting.  I hate using the phone at the best of times, and judging by the recent spate of injuries incurred by BMer's,  had I tried to inject a cellular response in the proceedings,  I'd probably have fallen off my phone, got gravel rash, trapped a nerve, and sprained a tentacle.  Sometimes it's best not to tempt fate, especially when you're hitting four states, three hotels, 6 am flights, and finishing up the week with a Friday 13th (thankfully, NOT the movie!).  As it was I survived the week almost intact, with the exception of discovery of a flat battery as I attempted to start the car and drive home from work at the end of the day/week/travel.  (Chrysler     )

Anyhoos

I am interested in seeing the results of your experimentation with powders and paints.  I've never been able to get any results with preshading (I'm much too clumsy and impatient).   Should be interesting.

However, the anticipatory mouth-waterer for me at the moment is to see what you do with your little stumps. They look ripe for sanding back and scratching all over. There's all sorts of carbuncles sprouting from those things by the looks of it.

 

 

1 hour ago, TheBaron said:

I also liked the fact that both Twitter and Facebook had apparently ceased to exist after the 'blackout'....

 

Proof that there is a heaven then

 

 

[TheBaron]

2 hours ago, The Spadgent said:

I've been there my friend. 

Lovely photography as well as a couple of smashing doors.  Nice paintiing ideas, I'll look forward to haw everything turns out.Good luck with the new brush.

Thanks for that Johnny!

I gotta tell you that I'm like a kid two days before Christmas waiting for that brush to arrive - if it don't come Monday I'll be fit for nothing!

You've probably mentioned it many times in your own thread but do you use an Iwata yourself?

 

33 minutes ago, limeypilot said:

Time to buy some shares in filler methinks!

Thanks Ian. Humbrol shareholders can look below and slaver at the anticipated dividend....

33 minutes ago, hendie said:

I hate using the phone at the best of times, and judging by the recent spate of injuries incurred by BMer's,  had I tried to inject a cellular response in the proceedings,  I'd probably have fallen off my phone, got gravel rash, trapped a nerve, and sprained a tentacle. 

This is the phone from the first flat that Mrs. B and I ever had together in Belfast back in 1990: we've moved six times since then and it continues to work impeccably:

During quiet moments I've been known to annoy our offspring by picking up the receiver, listening intently for a few seconds and then bellowing 'They've sighted Bismarck' in my best Kenneth More voice:

 

Commiserations on the car btw. Nothing more frustrating...

33 minutes ago, hendie said:

However, the anticipatory mouth-waterer for me at the moment is to see what you do with your little stumps. They look ripe for sanding back and scratching all over. There's all sorts of carbuncles sprouting from those things by the looks of it.

 

For your delectation hendie:

One bit of good news is that the bootsstummel in the kit match the aircraft plans extremely well shapewise - here they are slathered in Humbrol filler. In fact, whatever other flaws there may be with the kit in a few places, Matchbox seemed to do a damn fine job getting it to the correct dimensions and shape regarding the major components. The wings too received a good pasting:

All of the ugly filed away and sanded down smooth:

Same on the wings:

My nan and grandad had bath tiling just like this:

A few more dabs of filler needed here and there in a few places as you can see, but we'll leave it here for today:

One final thing before I go: having pretzeled my main bench lamp a week or so ago I'd ordered an LED replacement which arrived a couple of days back:

Being clip-on and with a flexible stalk (it also has a USB lead so you can either plug it into a mains adapter or a laptop) it is perfect for clipping to the bench to illuminate detailed work. You can also flip it between tungsten and daylight colour settings to match it with other lamps for taking photos:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B074SFJN1M/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

What I really like is the circular opening in the centre of it into which you can stick your camera lens to take photos, basically giving  a cheap version (£10) of a photographer's light loop (like one of these):

 

Have a nice evening all!

Tony

 

 

[CedB]

Wow, what an update! I go away for a day and all this happens...

 

On 13/10/2017 at 12:58, TheBaron said:

Cheshire-cat of a Ced in front of a Spitfire

Thanks Tony - still grinning!

 

Very clever solution to replacing the windows, stored for later use. They look really good.

Paint effects - like you I'm still trying to get 'an approach' that I'm able to cope with and that I like. Powder paint eh? Sounds interesting and looks good - I look forward to seeing how it turns out but the tests look promising, very promising. Good luck explaining the makeup brush though

The doors look really good and I'm glad to see there's a use for the hair-like Slater's.

St. Nicholas' church has been added to my Google Maps saved places - also not far from the tank museum so I'll certainly visit and check out those windows, they look stunning.

Great work with the filler and sanding - what an improvement!

New light - great, I've ordered one and look forward to the enlightenment it will give my desk after the man cave reorganisation - thanks Tony.

 

Done! My scrolling finger now has muscles twice as big as the others...