Shagbat! Mr Mitchell's other design classic...

[Massimo]

1 hour ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

OK, if you chaps thought the Shagbat looked pretty in black, then feast your eyes on this:

One Walrus complete with a coat of Alclad ALC-102 Duraluminium.

Yum yum.

That's cool!!!

[perdu]

 

 

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

In the past few days someone put up a link on here to a YouTube tutorial by Metodi Metoviev, about producing home-made adhesive masks for camouflage, using ordinary masking tape, double-sided tape, and some calculations to get the right size from your scanner / printer.  

 

Whoever it was, thanks; perfect timing, because I am ready to start painting the camouflage on parts of this beastie.  And thanks to Metodi, too, of course; it worked exactly as advertised.

 

First up, the wings - which I will be painting and weathering before construction (and particularly before rigging), because otherwise I can't see how I'd achieve it.  I have already primed in Tamiya rattle-can white, so first up today were the Montex masks for the roundels:

 

Then the home-baked camouflage masks - an added complication being that the scheme I scanned & blew up for the masks is one of the Airfix kit schemes, which has quite a few variations from the AA5R scheme as depicted on the Xtradecal sheet - such as the roundel being in a slightly different place:

 

...and voila; the completed wing [G = EDSG and S = DSG, by the way]:

 

The proof will be in the painting, of course, but thus far I am pleased with how this is going.  I am off to Yeovilton tomorrow afternoon for the annual opening of Cobham Hall and the reserve collection - so more later in the week.

 

Crisp

 

Edited December 6, 2017 by Ex-FAAWAFU

[SallysDad]

Just discovered this great build.

[heloman1]

Neat work with the masks Crisp, I hope they work. How was Yeovilton and the visit?

Colin

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Yeovilton was, as ever, fab!  See Bill's gannet thread for some of the photos.

 

And initial tests with the home-made camouflage masks appear promising; this is one of the lower wings, and I am painting a shadow compensating scheme so these are Dark Slate Grey and Dark Sea Grey, rather than their Extra cousins which will cover most of the aircraft.  Both taken from Vallejo's Model Air FAA Colors 1939-45 set.

 

More soon

 

Crisp

[keefr22]

14 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

a shadow compensating scheme so these are Dark Slate Grey and Dark Sea Grey, rather than their Extra cousins

 

Is that Light Slate Grey Crisp? Never heard of Extra Dark Slate Grey, so that would be a new one on me....?

 

What do you find these paints like to work with? I watched a Flory video on them on Youtube this week & he was rating them highly, but in the next one I watched he'd gone to MRP as his 'paint of choice' & had got rid of all his Vallejos!

 

Keith

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Sorry, @keefr22 - that’s what comes of trying to use shorthand.  Yes, it’s Light SG as opposed to DSG; there is no EDSG.

 

Having had a bad experience with Vallejo on my Seafire 46, they are in the Last Chance Saloon... but this time I have to say they’ve behaved impeccably up to now.  A couple of drops of flow enhancer, but no thinners.  I like the colours, certainly - especially since this is going to be quite weathered and battered, so these are basically just base coats on which to build.  Once all done, it will be varnished to protect everything, and then out come the oils.  

 

I have always been a Tamiya paint fan, though my Sea King only really started to work properly once I switched to Mr Color.  The only brand I really haven’t got to work at all is Hataka, but I know others who swear by them.  

 

My wife gave me two sets of this Vallejo FAA for my birthday, so I want to give them every chance - it’s a hard sell to chuck away a birthday present with crues of “this stuff is useless”.  Besides, others get great results with Vallejo, so any errors are undoubtedly my rubbish technique!

[keefr22]

Thanks Crisp, I'm glad there's no EDSlate, thought I was going to have to buy one of those sets just to get a bottle!

 

Thanks also for your thoughts on the paints, I feel much the same about the standard range Vallejos. I've airbrushed one of their primers and Model Air Barley Grey this morning & they both sprayed brilliantly out of the bottle with nothing added at all, just a bit higher pressure than I'd normally use, more so for the primer. But I bet if I try them again tomorrow I'll have all sorts of hassles with them!

 

Keith

[perdu]

Try em again now Keith, the enquiring mind demands it surely...

 

I am like most of us, I kinda like Vallejo

 

Just not sure I trust it

[TheBaron]

10 minutes ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

The only brand I really haven’t got to work at all is Hataka, but I know others who swear by them.  

They do seem to divide opinion in a pretty binary fashion between those who swear by them and those that swear because of them...

 

Consummate and purposeful work as always Crisp.

It's been great being able to take such vicarious pleasure in your experience of building this fine-looking kit; as a consequence the Valom offering has shuffled into a position of greater prominence in the stash - it just needs a suitable subject to present itself for the kit now...

 

Watching your masking progress with interest. Good luck with this stage!

Tony

 

 

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

The masking is fine - there is a lot of it, but what do you expect with odd-shaped bi-plane amphibians...?  Fairey Delta 2 it ain’t!

 

However, from here onwards the build is going to take a lot of planning.  I’ve already said I want this model to look realist9cally shabby - like wot a Second Line veteran airframe probably could plausibly look after almost 5 years of war when she’d flown constantly.  Then you have to factor in the rigging; she’s definitely going to be rigged (f’narr)... so you come to an issue of the order in which you do things.

 

If build, clean up, prime, paint, weather (my normal M.O.), then you either have to paint & weather around the copious amounts of rigging (which would be really hard to do if you bear in mind that my weathering method of choice involves oil paint)... OR you have to rig it after you have finished the lot (which means glue [probably CA] on top of paint and a real challenge rigging some parts - notably the engine nacelle).  Neither of those is a great option in my eyes.

 

At the moment, therefore, I am experimenting.  I plan to paint and at least partially weather the whole aircraft now - i.e. with fuselage complete, but wings still unbuilt.  I have been really impressed by the excellent fit of this kit, so I’m rather relying on this remaining true with the wings.  

 

My current plan:

 

- paint all wing parts

- do at least some weathering

- seal the finish with varnish

- thread rigging through (already drilled) holes in upper wing

- glue upper wings

- using a combination of Airfix’s clever engineering of the struts and the bi-plane jig already shown in this build, build AND RIG all of wing assemblies, but 1) leaving the underside of lower wings off until rigging done, and 2) building wings separate from fuselage.  

 

I think this should work because of the peculiar lay-out of the Walrus; you can effectively build it in a modular way (much be;oved by ship modellers, which even now remains my first love).  Module 1 fuselage with rigged engine nacelle and centre section of top wing; Modules 2 & 3 the wings.

 

IF this works, the only realiy hard bit will be rigging the wing floats.  But we’ll see!  If the wing fit is rubbish and we need filler or sanding, then this won’t work.  I foresee much dry fitting in my future!

Edited December 12, 2017 by Ex-FAAWAFU

[Brandy]

 Building and rigging the wings separately from the centre section should be possible, (I did it with my Short 184) but you will need to be very careful about getting it all lined up and straight. It's certainly not the easiest way. Most biplane builders who thread the rigging will either paint everything except the top of the upper wing before rigging, or paint it all anyway, then touch up/paint the upper surfaces after it's all rigged and the ends have been tidied up and smoothed out.

 

Ian

Edited December 12, 2017 by limeypilot

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

I hadn’t thought of it before; you might just have given me a better plan, Ian.  I could do it the other way up from Plan A - build & rug from the bottom up, leaving the upper surface til last.  That would solve the float rigging issue, too.

 

Worth thinking about more!  Thanks 

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

On the whole, these home-made masks are working pretty well.  I haven't quite yet got the knack of completely avoiding tiny primer gaps between camouflage colours, but that's just practice.  Vallejo continue their rehabilitation, though I have had one masking disaster when it removed a large section of paint.  Despite that, as I use them more I like them more - and the colours look really good to my eyes.

 

Here is the engine nacelle.  The Sky is Tamiya XF-21 lightened with some light grey and a dash of white.  The top sides are Vallejo 71.110 US Dark Gray (acting as EDSG) and 71.309 Dark Slate Grey.

 

C few minor bits of bleed to touch up (this is not the easiest shape in the world on which to mask straight lines!), but by and large i'm pretty pleased with how this looks.  IN some lights it can be hard to distinguish between the DSG and the EDSG, which is exactly how it looks in real life.

 

More later

 

Crisp

 

 

[CJP]

I had to dig around to find how this build was going - seems like you and Harves73 are approaching the same point with the rigging which will be of interest to see how they pan out - watching with interest

CJP

[Harvs73]

When I did the SMER Swordfish a few years ago I left of the upper half of the top wing and the lower half of the bottom wing to rig it, that worked well. As the Swordfish was a relatively simply paint scheme it was easy to fix the paint after joining the wings together.

 

I thought about trying it on the Walrus but as I (stupidly) chose to fold the wings I didn't think it would work due to the design of the wings. It may be different for the extended wings.

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Only one of my wings is extended, and the appatent lack of progress here has at least partly been because of experiments with the order in whoch I do building & rigging.  The current plan is complete painting wings, then build from top down, but rigging as I go on a jig.

 

 

[woody37]

Wow, just caught up with this, love the interior detailing. Those open windows really add to the look

 

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

I have not consigned this to any shelves, of Doom or otherwise.  Progress has, however, slowed down - at least as far as having something to show you is concerned!  This is partly because (as I said above) I have been doing various trial runs with rigging, but mostly because of paint issues.  To get the finish I want it seems to me I am going to have to most of the painting of the wings BEFORE I assemble and rig the wings.  So a few weeks ago I started painting the wings - look a few posts back and you will see efforts with home-baked masks.

 

The masks worked perfectly and will doubtless make further appearances - but the paint did not behave.  Because I really likes the colours, and because SWMBO had given me some FAA paint for my birthday, I tried using Vallejo.  Those of you who followed my Seafire 46 build already know why i did so with much trepidation, and alas my fears were born out.  I know lots of people get really good results with Vallejo, but I just cannot get on with it; any kind of masking, however careful and gentle, and ANY post-paint sanding and the stuff seems to come off in great strips.  I have tried different primers, tried giving it lots of time to cure fully, and lots of other things people have suggested - and some tests have been better than others.  But none of them have proved robust enough for the way I model; I think i must be unusually cack-handed.

 

So the paint on the wings - which was looking pretty nice, right up to moment you tried to do anything with it - is coming off.  The fuselage is fine - still sitting here in a rather fetching aluminium finish for now.  But the wings are being taken back to primer ready for me to start again.  This time with paint I trust - Tamiya (anyone know a good recipe for FAA Dark Slate Grey using Tamiya?)

 

Since this is messy and exceedingly un-photogenic, there is nothing to see.  But the faithful Shagbat will be back in the next few days.

 

More soon

 

Crisp

[Harvs73]

I have slowed right down on the rigging for my Walrus as well.

[keefr22]

2 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

I think i must be unusually cack-handed.

 

That's two of us then, because I find it to be the same. Sprays beautifully (usually!), lovely finish (usually!), but try to do any work on it - rubbish (always!) So I feel your pain! 

 

2 hours ago, Ex-FAAWAFU said:

(anyone know a good recipe for FAA Dark Slate Grey using Tamiya?)

 

May be worth giving Tony @TheBaron a shout and asking him what his magic ipad app comes up with, he's been cooking up Tamy mixes for his most excellent Dornier using it, I believe....

 

Keith

[Brandy]

Sorry to hear of the paint woes.

 My personal recommendation re rigging would be to paint all the wing surfaces, assemble, rig, tidy up, touch up. Partially drilling the lower wing (insert all the rigging wires in the partial holes before adding struts/top wing) instead of drilling right through helps reduce touch up there, and you could leave the top wing upper surface unpainted until it's all done if you're really comfortable about being able to mask it all properly. That is assuming that you are going to drill and thread the rigging of course!

 

Ian

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Ian, that is roughly the plan, yes.  [The drilling is already done!]

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Right, we are finally back to bare plastic on the wings, nacelle etc (i.e. everything bar the fuselage):

 

Next step is to re-prime, and then get on with some proper paint!