My Canberra BI8

[crookedmouth]

I had intended to do an Airfix Catalina, but, halfway thru I spotted the Canberra in a shop, bought it and lost interest in the Cat.

Too late for the group build, but that's no bad thing as I don't think my efforts would stand up to much scrutiny next to the other efforts on this site...

Stage 1: Cockpit with a scrap pilot - not authentic (USAF helmet) but looks better than the Airfix supplied Biggles

Stage 2: Fuselage. I had intended to dry assemble the two halves and the cockpit cutout with the cockpit assembly loose inside, maneuvre the cockpit till it fitted nicely and then glue everything together in situ. This can be a bit fiddly but it's an appraoch that has worked well enough before. However, I didn't find anyone who thought that the kit's recommended approach was a problem so I followed the instructions and glued the cockpit assembly into the cutout and then snapped this into one fuselage half and then mated it to the other half.

This was a bit of a stinker because first try, I sat the cockpit assembly a fraction too far back and it fouled with the nose gear well. Having prised the cocpit away from the cutout and reseated it, everything went to gether great but it turned out that the cockpit distorted the cutout slightly leaving me with some unexpected filling to do around the seams.

I've decided to go for a silver underside rather than the black or boring grey. On the advice of these forums I bought some Halfords spray silver and tried it on a gash model a few minutes ago. I admit that I didn't give it very long to dry, but I found that the paint peeled off under slight finger pressure. Does it need longer to dry or will a coat or varnish harden it properly? Any ideas? I don't have an airbrush.

Edited November 8, 2009 by crookedmouth

[atdb27]

Hi

Sound's possible you have an oily/greasy type film on hte model?

Best solution.

Remove the current coat of paint with a soft cloth lightly with some thinners.

Completley wash model in a light solution of washing up liquid - rinse off - and dry throughly or better pop it in the airing cupboard for a day or so

Respray once you have shaken the can well to the point your arm want's to drop off.

HTH

Adrian

[crookedmouth]

Well, it was an old model and painted too, so it's not unlikely. For a Halford's paint job would I be best off spraying onto raw (cleaned) plastic, or should I prime first?

Would I even be better going for a modeller's spray paint or - the horror! - simply use brush on Humbrol silver?

[crookedmouth]

Nah! No worries - just checked the test piece again and I was being impatient (as usual) - dried nice & hard now.

[bexwh773]

Good start so Crookedmouth Rumour round these parts is I like Canberras Not sure where they got that idea from Anyways, just to help you along a bit, Ive dug out our Canberra Reference thread, which is located HERE

Post 2 has a list of linkys, and one them is all about B(i) Mk8 Corrections, and theres also a whole load of info about these wonderful English Electric Creations.

Anything I can help with, give me a shout.

Bexy

[crookedmouth]

Hi Bex

I had spent some time loking thru the Canberra threads here and noticed you once or twice - I wondered whether you'd do me the honour of butting in.

I've taken on some of the suggestions in the the reference thread & I'm having a go at some of the easier ones - filling in the rudder scribing for instance or leaving off the antennae. However, the one that I shall definitely be passing on is the fin profile - I can imagine the disaster I'd make of sawing a bit off it

[bexwh773]

Hi Bex

I had spent some time loking thru the Canberra threads here and noticed you once or twice - I wondered whether you'd do me the honour of butting in.

I've taken on some of the suggestions in the the reference thread & I'm having a go at some of the easier ones - filling in the rudder scribing for instance or leaving off the antennae. However, the one that I shall definitely be passing on is the fin profile - I can imagine the disaster I'd make of sawing a bit off it

Youre most welcome and Im happy to help, if I get a bit geeky about Canberras just tell me to shut up Ive done the fin on my B2, its not perfect, but I have to agree, its not flipping easy either I just used a file & sanding stick and it looks about right........ ish

ATB

Bexy

[crookedmouth]

Stage 3 The wings

The wings themselves went together nicely enough. By golly but those mouldings are sharp enough to shave on! The engine intake and exhaust components needed some massaging to get them into their appointed places. No amount of care seemed sufficient to get rid of the steps at the joints, though. I sanded them back a bit but I'll wait till I've primed the model before I consider gettng the milliput out. The wings mated very nicely to the fus with only a hairline seam. Again, I will prolly wait till I've primed it before I do anything more radical.

Bex - always happy for advice & stuff.The more I browse these forums, the more I realise how much I have to learn.

[crookedmouth]

Stage 4 Final assembly and prime

Had very little trouble with the remaining assembly. Everything fits nicely and the tailplane is thoughtfully designed so as to make it easy to get the right dihedral. A bit worried that I may have overcooked the rudder and aileron deflection , but what the heck - there aren't any aviators in my house so no-one'll know!

Despite the enormous furrows ploughed into the rudder, the elevators and horizontal tailplane are strangely devoid of any detail. I didn't trust myself to correct this, but a leading edge fairing line and some trim tabs would have been nice.

With all the boring stuff out of the way, priming the model is the first point at which it stops looking like a hastily assembled bunch of plastic parts and starts to look like an aeroplane.

The primer helps to accentuate the (unintentional) imperfections, lumps and bumps, so the next step is to rub it back where it needs it. You can probably see just how carp my cockpit fit was and how much filling I needed to do. Hopefully it'll look better now.

I also took the opportunity to play with the panel lines, drawing them in on the starboard wing with my trusty Pentel propelling pencil. It looks a little heavy to me, but rather better than my previous attempts at washing them in. Once again, perhaps it'll look better on the camouflage paint job than it does on medium grey.

[crookedmouth]

Applied the silver underside and the model now sports a rather nice Halfords metallic silver tummy. I'll admit that the silver coat is maybe a little too grainy for comfort, but it looks generally OK to me. The paint sprayed on nicely in a couple of coats and the finish is pretty good by my standards.

I then brush painted the topside in satin dark grey and I now see the full advantages of an airbrush. Quite apart from the slow dry and patchy finish of the grey coat, the general effect is much less even and satisfying than the rattle can silver. The issue is exacerbated by the enormous area that needs to be covered - I'd guess you could play a game of 5-aside footy on the top of a real Cranberry.

I think I'm committed though and will push on regardless as there's not much I can do. I think that for the next big model, or even monochrome small ones, I'll have think carefully about using spray cans for the main colours. Can't justify an airbrush for the time being.

Pix to follow.

Edited November 16, 2009 by crookedmouth

[crookedmouth]

And here we have her, with main paint scheme now added.

On the underside, a layer of Halfords finest "Mini Pure Silver" metallic which, as I said, came out a tad grainy but otherwise smooth as silk. Unfortunately, having tried it on a test piece, it doesn't seem to take a varnish too well and I was hoping to gloss it to give it a nice shiny finish. Will have to xperiment a bit.

And atop, the satin dark grey and satin dark green warpaint. The first "all over" layer of grey didn't take too well: took ages to dry, patchy satin finish and the primer showed through in places. I kept my nerve, rubbed it back very lightly and added the green camo pattern which took beautifully and dried a treat. I then filled in the gaps with a second layer of grey which worked far better as you can (hopefully) see.

Nest job is to add some contrast - slightly lightened base colours on the control surfaces and leading edges as per various tips tricks and reccs from Those Who Have Gone Before. I've never done that b4 so I'm a wee bit apprehensive about the effect and maybe cocking it up.

After that I guess it's a matter of a bit of paint detail here & there. The instructions show three panels (one on top and two below) in Humbrol 29 Dark Earth. What are these panels and are they authentic?

I'm scared carpless about taking off the masking - it's been on there quite a while & I'm half expecting most of the paintwork to coem away with it. Or for there to be huge paint ridges at the margins. Or for the cockpit glass to be glue hazed up. Or for the primer to have seeped in thru the cracks in the canopy so that my lovely cockpit and pilot is now a nasty grey colour. Aaaaagh! :shithappens: maybe I'll just leave it on forever...

Planning to hang her from the ceiling of the study with bomb-bay doors open and ready to drop lots of Megatonnes onto the computer desk, just to annoy the Long Haired General.

Edited November 18, 2009 by crookedmouth

[hazza]

Awesome, the way you brush paint is superb

fingers crossed for you masking as well eh ?!

Hazza

[crookedmouth]

I had meant to paint it in straight lines but the DT's got the better of me;

Awesome, the way you brush paint is superb

fingers crossed for you masking as well eh ?!

Hazza

[crookedmouth]

Well, I did a Very Bad Thing, yesterday - I stripped off all of the masking tape - I just couldn't help myself. I was, however, quite pleasantly surprised to find that the canopy is pristine and there are no masking disasters anywhere. At least I can sleep well.

To be honest, I needed to take most of it off anyhoo coz it's time to start the decals. Using the airfix ones from the kit and there're hundreds of the wee buggers. I must say, I'm not that impressed with them though. There's acres of carrier film and the blue roundels are not particularly good - out of register and a little too light blue for my taste. There're a lot of them to get thru, so this'll take a while.

Piccies when done, so in the meantime, a competition. A Mars bar for the eagle eyed reader who can spot the mistake in the earlier picture of the underside (reproduced below)...

[crookedmouth]

Oh well - I ate the Mars bar anyway. The answer is that I forgot to cut the slot for the starboard pylon. It would have been fine, but I didn't notice till I'd added the big registration number decal so if I want to fit the pylon, then I'll have to cut through the decal. Considering that I'm finding them VERY brittle, I may not risk it. The cigar band flash decal with the fuselage roundels was a pig to fit and it broke up in about three places, so discretion may be the better part of valour here. The slot already cut is quite well hidden under the other registration number flash, so it won't be too much of a problem.

What's more, Im beginning to worry about the panel line detailing to come. There are so many decals that a lot of them cross panel lines and I seriously doubt that they'll respond well to the pencil method, even after liberal applications of Microsol and a layer of varnish.

Apart from all that, it's starting to look quite good, but it's definitely a case of slowly & surely, a few decals at a time, so it'll be a while before it's fit for another photo.

Edited November 22, 2009 by crookedmouth

[crookedmouth]

Still working on those @@~&$&%^& decals...

(Edited on Weds morning) ... and STILL going - I'm beginning to lose interest! Fair enough - I can only do a few at a time so as not to end up with partly dried decs stuck to my fingers (also domestic commitments!) - but it's a bit of a fag. Worse is that a lot of the decals seem to be silvering and no amount of Microsol/set seems to rectify the matter. Hopefully I can finish by the end of the week and get a layer of varnish on on Saturday.

Edited November 25, 2009 by crookedmouth

[crookedmouth]

All decals done now and what a stinker of a job that was. They're very brittle and I tore a few. Quite a few of them silvered and some of them wrinkled up and stayed that way. It spoilt the whole process, but I'm hoping that the final effect will be good enough. I can see why people buy the professional decal kits instead of using the OOB ones.

Here are a few photies. Next job is to chuck on a layer of varnish and tnen dirty her up a bit

[crookedmouth]

The varnish didn't go too well and there's some crackling around the wing roots. Not quite sure why that happened.

Started doing the panel lines in pencil and will do a last varnis coat afterwards. I don't think I have the guts to try weathering it at all now. Will need to think about that...