Dornier Do 18-D *Finished*

[CedB]

Glad you're all fine Tony and, from the state if your middle finger in those photos, that you're having fun with the new airbrush

(Oh no, perhaps it's some old injury... or a Pangolin bite... have I put my foot in it again? )

[jrlx]

36 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

Big steel ruler for the long axes Jaime:

 

Small steel ruler flexed down for the cross-axis:

 

I'll no doubt be resorting to thin strips of Dymo for the contours of the gondola and later-on the fuselage.

Thanks for the pictures, Tony. I have one of those long steel rules but haven't used it much yet. I've used some Dymo tape but I still have to practice my scribing skills.

 

37 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

Pardon my manners for not asking about your own situation in Portugal Jaime - I do so hope that you and yours are safely away from any conflagrations.

 

Thanks for the concern, Tony. Fortunately we're all fine, since Lisbon and Porto, where me and my folks live, we're away from the fires. But many smaller towns and villages near the forests were heavily hit or endangered, as well as many major and minor roads that were cut off by fires (including the main motorway linking Lisbon and Porto). Unfortunately many people died. Last night it rained on the northern half of the country and all remaining fires were put out. I'm afraid we'll all have to face more frequent and dangerous tempests, hurricanes, heat waves and fires in the future, due to the climate changes.

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

 

[The Spadgent]

Great scribing work Tony. you should invest in one of the Tamiya scribes, they are worth every penny. (Only for straight lines mind) glad to hear you've not had too much disruption from the storm and excellent news about the arrival of the Iwata. I'm expecting great things. (No pressure.... well actually pressure but not that kind of pressure.) have fun. 

Johnny.

[bbudde]

7 hours ago, jrlx said:

8 hours ago, TheBaron said:

Pardon my manners for not asking about your own situation in Portugal Jaime - I do so hope that you and yours are safely away from any conflagrations.

 

Thanks for the concern, Tony. Fortunately we're all fine, since Lisbon and Porto, where me and my folks live, we're away from the fires. But many smaller towns and villages near the forests were heavily hit or endangered, as well as many major and minor roads that were cut off by fires (including the main motorway linking Lisbon and Porto). Unfortunately many people died. Last night it rained on the northern half of the country and all remaining fires were put out. I'm afraid we'll all have to face more frequent and dangerous tempests, hurricanes, heat waves and fires in the future, due to the climate changes.

Sorry to hear that. Today, here there was a strange milky and slightly terracotta sky more or less the whole day decreasing the temp. down to 18°C. Caused by the effects of the pushed in Sahara winds (very hot yesterday) here by the hurricane and the massive amounts of ashes from the forest fires in Portugal and Spain. The weather forecast promised us excellent sunsets here today, which are very seldom. Hmm, now  looks more like a foggy November one instead at sunset here. Glad to see on the weather radar, that a rainfront moves onto/into Portugal. So nobody should say, that weather is a national investigation. Only a fool or jester would do. Cheers

Edit: Corrected my english (Hopefully now, but unsure as usual)

Edited October 17, 2017 by bbudde

[jrlx]

1 minute ago, bbudde said:

nobody should say, that wheather is a national investigation. Only a fool or jester would do

Thanks, bbudde. Indeed we're all in the same planet and the weather system affects us all together. It's a shame that some prefer to ignore the obvious...

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

 

[Hewy]

Nice scribing tony, i ran out of dymo tape on one build and  around tight contours i used double sided tape and the side of an eduard etch fret, it  stuck like the proverbial to the blanket with no slippage in fact i had a game and a half getting the stuff off, any way i like what your doing here, impressive 

Glynn 

[Martian]

Glad to know that you are OK Tony.

 

Martian

[Fritag]

On 07/10/2017 at 8:04 PM, TheBaron said:

I sometimes feel quite reluctant to paint any further after added the primer Jaime. I like that monotone grey look sometimes

 

Could start a trend for grisaille models Tony  

 

Course - it might mean not fully exploiting the capabilities of your nice new airbrush.......

[keefr22]

12 hours ago, Fritag said:

Course - it might mean not fully exploiting the capabilities of your nice new airbrush.......

Oh I don't know Steve, if Tony were to take it to the extreme and do all the blending & shading you find in a good painting in the genre, then it could be the ultimate test of it! And what a fantastic model would result...!!

 

There's actually a very powerful (IMHO) WW1 diorama that I've seen in a few shows, of a patrol of British troops marching single file across a boardwalk in a typically devastated landscape. Done in greyscale I find it far more emotive than a normal full colour diorama of the same scene would be....

 

Keith

[TheBaron]

On 10/17/2017 at 4:06 PM, keefr22 said:

Enjoy the Iwata Tony! I had to give the HP-CH a complete strip down and clean last week, and the design and precision of the engineering is lovely!

Oh but I am  Keith. What a fantastic piece of kit. Likewise I need to go through and do a full strip-down of the thing tomorrow just to get the hang of cleaning it properly. 

Just out of curiosity - do you give your a full strip+ clean each time you've painted or just a flush through and then a thorough clean every now and again?

On 10/17/2017 at 4:24 PM, CedB said:

from the state if your middle finger in those photos,

Yers..ink just seems to have a life of it's own around me: I insist on writing with the a fountain pen still in this day and age but every re-filling of it ends up like this:

 

On 10/17/2017 at 4:46 PM, jrlx said:

I've used some Dymo tape but I still have to practice my scribing skills.

I'm still learning with each build Jaime.

On 10/17/2017 at 4:46 PM, jrlx said:

I'm afraid we'll all have to face more frequent and dangerous tempests, hurricanes, heat waves and fires in the future, due to the climate changes.

Different countries, same sky &etc....

On 10/17/2017 at 7:09 PM, Hewy said:

i used double sided tape and the side of an eduard etch fret

Double-sided stuff can be incredibly tenacious sometimes can't it? Thanks for the kind words Hewy!

On 10/17/2017 at 5:15 PM, The Spadgent said:

glad to hear you've not had too much disruption from the storm and excellent news about the arrival of the Iwata.

You know only too well I imagine the pleasures of the thing!

23 hours ago, Martian Hale said:

Glad to know that you are OK Tony.

Thanks Martian. There's another blow called Bryan coming by the weekend, just to make things fun. 'He's not the Messiah - he's a very naughty storm...'

21 hours ago, Fritag said:

Could start a trend for grisaille models Tony

Ooohh. Now there's an idea Steve!  I've always admired the way that artists like Mantegna used the technique with such subtlety:

https://theframeblog.com/2015/01/21/national-gallery-london-reframing-mantegna/

I wonder how that would transfer to modulating a physical object?

21 hours ago, Fritag said:

Course - it might mean not fully exploiting the capabilities of your nice new airbrush.......

8 hours ago, keefr22 said:

Oh I don't know Steve, if Tony were to take it to the extreme and do all the blending & shading you find in a good painting in the genre, then it could be the ultimate test of it! And what a fantastic model would result...!!

Oh stop it you two! You both know that I'm easily led! 

I'll make ye both a promise: I'll have a bash at grisailling an aircraft some time within the next twelve months. I want to get the Boxcar completed after this build but have a number of single-engine candidates that might make suitable subjects. How's that sound?

 

Now then. A bumper crop of some small fruits to draw to your attention tonight.

To begin with, the motor gondola.

To begin with, a particular region of the gondola:

This is the front engine access panel.

With all the odd-angled panel lines and seams around the gondola I figured that the  most accurate way to rescribe the necessaries was to have a single iconic panel shape to act as a datum on both sides. In this way we can avoid introducing any errors in the various angles of the lines by having them radiate outward from a clearly defined shape placed accurately on each side.

 

learnt the above trick btw from watching some guy doing Gundam panel lines on the Yewchoob. I just made my template out of some scrap transparent packaging and stuck it into place for scribing round with double-sided tape. This gave a secure mounting to then go round the  panel with a sewing machine needle:

Once that was done, the remaining lines could be scribed outwards around the shape.

From studying various close-up drawings it became clear that regions like the engine access panels that were lines, whereas some seams were simply lines of rivets. Port:

Starboard:

It was quite intense getting all that done so I didn't take too many photos of this stage as a consequence.

 

There's also the matter of the various sets of exhaust ports for each engine - the ones for the front engine run out along the leading edge to emerge from the upper wing surface, whereas those for the rear engine simply emerge either side of the gondola at the rear. Here's the various sets of holes for them drilled and birred to the required elongated shapes:

I'd intended some time back to define the exhaust nozzles using brass. Initially I tried some slices cut from 0.3mm sheet:

Even after annealing the slices though, I found them simply too thick to shape accurately to the required circumference of the orifices concerned. A simpler solution therfore was to cannibalize the leftover framing from some old PE sets. To form them to the required shape I squeezed a cocktail stick in some flat-head pliers until the matched the size and shape of the exhaust openings:

And then simply bent the scrap PE strips around the cocktail stick using tweezers and pliers:

These were then CA'd into place on each wing:

Part two follows in a few mins...

 

 

 

 

 

 

[TheBaron]

You may also recall a couple of posts back that I'd cut off the moulded radiators from under each wing as they were too clunky. To make some replacements I started off with some 1mm card:

Added crennelations with a Stanley blade:

and glued them to some thinner (I think it's about 0.2mm thick) stuff:

Once dry, these were then cut off and the sides folded and glued in order to produce the protective panel that covers them:

There were then cut down flush:

After some sanding to thin down the walls of the covers down to a scale thickness, these were then glued into place:

After taking that photo I immediately pulled them off again because I realized belatedly that if they remained stuck on at this stage ,then they will be in the way for filling and sanding the underside of the wing roots when they get attached to the gondola!

No harm done...

Tony

 

[Hewy]

Nice details, and thinking ahead too, 

Glynn

[keefr22]

18 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

Just out of curiosity - do you give your a full strip+ clean each time you've painted or just a flush through and then a thorough clean every now and again?

 

I don't strip it down fully every time Tony, it's just that due to the problem I have with the nozzle O ring breaking up at the moment after using cellulose thinners, I have a problem with it spraying enamels. It's still spraying acrylics fine, but I tried to put some enamel through it last week, & it just wouldn't spray, but I persisted in trying until I noticed I had paint running back into the trigger housing! So it all had to come apart.

 

I do possibly clean it more than many people as I pull the needle out & clean it & flush the rest of the brush through with thinners in between every colour change, and at the end of each spraying session dissasemble the nozzle/needle assembly, clean it through & then after re-assembly flush it through with a full cup of thinner before putting it away.

 

28 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

I'll make ye both a promise: I'll have a bash at grisailling an aircraft some time within the next twelve months. I want to get the Boxcar completed after this build but have a number of single-engine candidates that might make suitable subjects. How's that sound?

 

Spiffing ,frightfully spiffing, old bean!! 

 

I've thought about trying one in the past, but that's as far as I got! Look forward to seeing the result!  And after all, nobody will be able to argue about whether your 'colours' are accurate or not!

 

For the moment, I think the surface detailing you are putting on the Dornier is simply exquisite!

 

Keith

[The Spadgent]

On the brush front I run Tamiya thinners through after using and clean the cup with a cotton bud. I totally strip down after using anything other than paint. I also do a total strip down after using about five or six times. Seems to have been working for me this far. Great new bits 'n' bobs going on kid. Nice rivets too.

 

Johnny gizzard and the lizard wizard.

[Brandy]

I also have an Iwata and love it. My cleaning consists of flushing it through then removing the needle, and running thinner through from the rear end using a pipette, to remove any paint that may have been drawn back when the needle was removed. I use the mini brushes and remove the nozzle assembly every once in a while.

 

Beautiful scribing.......Norwegian Blue scheme I suppose....

 

Ian

[hendie]

Luvverly work.  Scribing, crenelations, metalwork and plastic forming all in one post.  I really like the work you have completed on the gondola - that's going to look real nice under a coat of paint.

 

 

[jrlx]

Excellent progress on the gondola scribing and the underwing radiators

 

 

Regarding airbrushes, I have a 3 year and 4 months old Harder & Steenbeck Evolution Silverline airbrush, which is excellent and still works perfectly. I follow this cleaning procedure:

• I disassemble the airbrush and clean it thoroughly after spraying primers (I use Alclad primers). In this case, I use cellulose thinners.
• When spraying acrylics (Tamiya or Gunze) or Alclad metallic paints I plan the spray sessions in order to paint from the lighter to the darker colour
• When changing colours I just do a quick clean without disassembling the airbrush:
  • First, I pour any remaining paint out of the cup
  • Then, I block the nozzle with the tip of a cotton bud, fill the cup with Isopropilic Alchool (IPA) for acrylics or cellulose thinner for Alcalds and push the triggers in order for the air to be deflected from the nozzle to the cup, cleaning the nozzle in the process
  • The previous step is done twice
  • Next, I fill the cup again and just empty it by spraying normally. At the end of the process, the airbrush if pretty clean
• At the end of the session I repeat the process used to clean the airbrush between colours and then disassemble it and clean it thoroughly (with IPA or cellulose thinner, depending on the paints used). For the thorough cleaning I use a cleaning set, with small brushes and a sharp pointed rod (for the nozzle).
• After a thorough clean I reassemble the airbrush and always do a final spray of a cup full of Tamiya airbrush cleaner

 

Hope this is of use.

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

[TheBaron]

16 hours ago, Hewy said:

Nice details, and thinking ahead too, 

Cheers Glynn.  A tad out of character for me to anticipate a problem prior to creating it! 

16 hours ago, keefr22 said:

I don't strip it down fully every time Tony,

 

14 hours ago, The Spadgent said:

On the brush front I

 

12 hours ago, jrlx said:

Regarding airbrushes,

 

14 hours ago, limeypilot said:

I also have an Iwata and love it.

Keith, Johnny, Jaime, Ian: my thanks for posting that information lads. I feel much better for knowing that now and am most grateful for the pointers. One thing about having served an apprenticeship on cheap clones is that the Iwata is by comparison an absolute sweetheart to break down for cleaning.

 

I genuinely doubt that I'd appreciate just what a quality tool it is without having struggled with lesser quality items prior to getting one of these.

16 hours ago, keefr22 said:

Look forward to seeing the result!  And after all, nobody will be able to argue about whether your 'colours' are accurate or not!

Don't forget it's Britmodeller Keith...they'll be arguing about the tones instead! 

 

'Well..I s'pose it's ok if you were trying to simulate a look photographed with black and white orthochromatic film in the 1940s but for a panchromatic look that's way off. 'Course, if you were after that horribly degraded appearrance of German Agfa stock seized by the Russians at Stalingrad and passed on to the British then I'd say you're spot on.'

13 hours ago, hendie said:

Luvverly work.  Scribing, crenelations, metalwork and plastic forming all in one post.  I really like the work you have completed on the gondola - that's going to look real nice under a coat of paint.

Thanks. The temptation to put an Art Nouveau pattern or a line of flames down side of the gondola is weirdly appealing...

 

Some stuff I'd forgotten to post previously. Checking out the sponsony-stummel 'water wings' to analyze the fit problems in greater detail:

The starboard side above looks a pretty straightforward piece of gluing and filling...but what's this I see below?

Something not right to port where the stummel joins the fuselage:

Looks like someone wasn't keeping the file at enough of an outward slope when erasing the mouldings and raised lines from the stummel on this side. I measured that and it was about 0.5mm shy of the height it should be towards the front. Not hard to fix but just irritating not to have paid attention during the removal process.

 

Out with some 0.55 sheet and laminate that back to the required thickness:

Gradually working along the edge with a file and sanding sticks and after about 30 mins of TLC we're back to the right height again:

Followed by shaping it to match the outer curve:

You can see above I've also added some plastic shim along the lower part of the stummel in order to straighten it up against the fuselage when glued later. That repair job has since had a squirt of primer and shows no evidence now of my over-zealousness.

 

Paint.

Yes.

I said:

Paint! Not primer but the actual stuff that goes over it!

 

Up early this morning to make the most of a day off and having spent a goodly part of last evening plotting my moves with both the Iwata and the 'experiment' of using dry powder paint mixed in with wet pigment. Hopefully this latest update will give you a clearer sense of my intentions behind trying this. Here's the raw starting point:

In the above initial state the (ugly) appearance results from the following sequence:

1. Primer on bare plastic
2. Powder paint rubbed and stroked into all required areas (mainly corners, edges, recessesetc.)
3. Homebrew RLM02 mixture (very thinned down to a ratio of about 70% thinner, 30% paint) lightly sprayed over all surfaces until powder pigment begins to dissolve. Stop immediately at this point and let dry.

A milder version of same onto gondola interior:

I didn't bother adding any powder paint to the fuselage walls as with the large areas devoid of detailed structure it seemed largely pointless:

Guess who forgot to re-mask the rear porthole above and will be getting out the IPA later!

 

Now comes the leap of faith part of the process -  flooding the various spaces with water from a pipette and just letting nature do it's things with dissolving pigments and capillary action:

At this point even I was beginning to question the wisdom of this.

 

You don't want to leave it like that indefinitely else all the powder pigment will dissolve and leech away. After about 5 mins I simply picked the piece up and gave it a gentle tilt to either side to let the water run off and dried it gently with a warm (not hot) hair dryer and proceeded back down the aircraft in a similar fashion:

Once dried-off, you can start to see the variety of pigmented tones left behind to form the basis of the next stage:

Like all such undertakings that are process-based (as opposed to a result produced from a single action), you have to keep reminding yourself that it doesn't matter if it looks toostrong or exaggerated at this point in time precisely because this is the basis for subsequent modulation, not the end result:

If I was hoping for anything at this point in the process it is largely what you see here -  lots of organic (i.e. the result of fluid colours interacting) tonal variation. The next step is to add another thin layer of RLM02 and begin scrubbing into the surface with a stiff cut down brush in order to get the staining to bring the structures into focus more coherently.

 

More as it happens...

Tony

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[bbudde]

That looks fantastic by now. Seems to be worth the effort and extra work Cheers and have a nice day.

[keefr22]

Well it certainly looks different Tony! Not sure I can visualise exactly what you're aiming for end result wise, so I'm looking forward to 'more as it happens'!

 

2 hours ago, TheBaron said:

'Well..I s'pose it's ok if you were trying to simulate a look photographed with black and white orthochromatic film in the 1940s but for a panchromatic look that's way off. 'Course, if you were after that horribly degraded appearrance of German Agfa stock seized by the Russians at Stalingrad and passed on to the British then I'd say you're spot on.

 

 

 

K

[TheBaron]

2 hours ago, bbudde said:

That looks fantastic by now. Seems to be worth the effort and extra work Cheers and have a nice day.

Thanks Benedikt. I'm not sure how busy the weekend is going to be with another storm inbound so I've just been getting as much done as possible today.

1 hour ago, keefr22 said:

I'm looking forward to 'more as it happens'!

Wait no longer m'lud. The case opens after the lunch recess....

 

Well, the fever's been well and truly on me today for painting so I've just ploughed on for as long as I felt able to keep the quality threshold going. Here's kind of where we left off before the lunch interval:

Some interesting colours and textures starting to come out that give a feeling of 'used' painted metals, but this is still far too 'dusty Afrika Korps interior' rather than Northern European maritime in these early stages:

These have had another thinly mixed coat of the RLM02 homebrew, again to the point where the dry pigments continue to dissolve into the fluid overlay:

It's painstaking work but nonetheless quite exciting to watch the interactions of physics and chemistry developing on those surfaces - being conscious that I've actually started using a major build simultaneously as a paint mule is still a chastening experience however. 

 

After gentle stroking with cotton buds to absorb some of the dissolved pigment and another shot of homebrew, hopefully you can start to see a more controlled yet variegated surface appearance starting to develop out of this:

It is both messy and time-consuming for sure (more so than just a preshade and paint routine) but I like the fact that I'm not so much painting in deliberate gestures as guiding the fluids and pigment around the surfaces to see what happens. It's a gamble of course. 

Getting better:

Closer to what I'd been hoping for in terms of natural variation:

Of course dust and stains in the real world all gather in remarkably varied ways - occasionally here I was re-orientating the structure randomly whilst various parts of it were drying, in order to avoid the overall effect being simply one of 'paint running down a wall'...

By this point in time it feels like we're getting close to the end in terms of generating paint variations, so it's important to take this last fews sprays and strokes easy in order to avoid overdoing it and wiping out the variation.

 

One word to sum up the nature of the effect I was striving for? 'Muted':

I'm not worried about the 'stained prison cell' bit in the centre as that will all be covered by the fuel tanks when they're added later on:

A cuppa at this point to gather oneself for the final push and then on with painting the seat leathers and various instruments:

I have no idea at all what colour that cushioning on the various seats should be, so went for a basic leather effect done with a layer of Tamiya NATO brown dry-brushed, followed by a quick glaze of orange oil paint and a rub with a stiff brush. Once dry this was rubbed with some waste wool to try and produce that slight  'shine' you get on the edges of leather seats that have been  used a lot:

The difference in quality that varying the specularity of a surface like that has only recently become apparent to me and tends to make such details 'pop' a little more than if they all had the same lustre:

 

Once the leather was taken care of I started on the equipment scattered around the interior, just a black oil wash rubbed back into with a finger whilst still wet in order to vary the optics of the surfaces:

The pipes for the fuel-dumping system came up a treat done in the same fashion and came out (more by accident than design) looking quite metallic without the use of any metallic paints:

From left to right respectively -  la toilette, le siège du voyeur, plus a Fruit Pastille for the gunner to stand on:

I did that in French 'cos I know you're a sensitive lot. 

 

Subtleties of tone are not always easy to reproduce in photographs (compared to what you can often see with the eye) but hopefully there's enough visible in the above to give some sense of the muted variations I was trying to achieve with this painting process. Despite the time consuming nature of the process it has me interested enough to carry on experimenting with it in future.

 

Blimey. That was a bit of a 'fit' today. Hope you like what you see and catch you over the weekend.

 

Have a nice evening all.

Tony

 

Edit: Yeah.I noticed that too - still need to fit some seatbelts. I bought a steel set from Eduard on the recommendation of dear Martian but jiggered if i can remember where I put them. Or the CMK shooters come to that. 

It might be time for a bit of a tidy...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[bbudde]

Get's better and better. Like it very much so far.  Cheers Benedikt (, back in the autuum mood after equivalent weather today here at 16°C and windy)

[keefr22]

I like that! Great effect at the end of it all Tony! Those seat cushions are good too, I use clear orange glaze on wood effects but have never thought of it on 'leather'....

 

Keith

[hendie]

1 hour ago, TheBaron said:

Blimey. That was a bit of a 'fit' today. Hope you like what you see and catch you over the weekend.

 

Astounding.  I'm a bit lost for words, and it's lunchtime here so I don't have time to sit and really take this all in as much as I'd like. 

 

It looks like you have developed a new technique... Baronesquing!  or is it Baronifying? 

 

Lovely results.  It's strange how it all looks a bit mundane in the earlier photo's- until you add the "real" colors - leather and such.  The relative (in comparison) vividness of those colors really enhance the overall contrasts in the rest of the airframe. 

 

Fantastic, really fantastic work.

 

 

p.s. shouldn't the swivel seat back be in leather too? Or are you going to drape some lace covers over that one?

 

p.p.s.  If this is what you can achieve in 1/72, just think what you could achieve in a manly scale!

Edited October 20, 2017 by hendie

[Brandy]

I like that effect a lot. It is subtle, but very effective. Top marks for coming up with that one!

 

Ian