AnonymousAA74

Bloody gorgeous! More please

Just a few more shots for you.

The Dora is almost complete and 3 months at are near to a close, thank God! I still have to figure out how to do the resin hardstand base I have and the figures. The engine is mounted, and that took the most time. I found an issue with the bearers which mean that when they were mounted to the engine, and then to the bulkhead, the engine pointed downwards. I swear I had done everything to make sure this was correct, even comparison with the Bentley drawings. I had to pack the lower strust point on each bearer up by about 1mm to get the engine to the correct elevation. I still have to add the smaller detail stuff such as the fuel filler service ports, aerials, foot step etc, as well as a little extra airbrushing to enhance the exhause stains. Here is the job so far, and please excuse the crap photography:

Run some extra thin cement and pull gently apart...

I'd rather have it 1/48 please Revell, or 1/32

I find that even with the Alclad grey primer, it's better to give a light coat of Klear before Alclad as I've found it is slightly proous otherwise...even after Micromesh polishing.

The engine is about 80% complete. At the moment, it's had a base of Magnesium Alclad, with a misting of Dark Aluminium Alclad, and shading is with heavily thinned Tamiya black XF2. The supercharger was sprayed XF2 and then misted with Dark Aluminium Alclad also, with other work done in White Aluminum Alclad. I still need to do some work on the ancilliary kit on the engine as well as weather the exhausts and manifolds and then do a final oil wash. Here she is so far:

Hi Peter, Those indicator rods will indeed be added and finished in the candy stripes. These are part of the Eduard set , but they are flat, so will be replaced with stretched sprue or wire as you mention.

That's really nice for a small model. I like that a lot. Well done

The G-Factor undercarriage was bought from Hannants. It's expensive but worth the cost IMHO. So much nicer than the kit part. For the aerial wire, I'm going to use invisible mending thread with PVA glue beads and copper wire where appropriate for the detail to it. I was lucky with the MG-131's from Master Model s I got them as review samples. They cost around £7 or £8 for a set normally. The MG-151's are from MDC, who are wonderful to deal with. MDC LINK You going to pop some pics in here for us? Go on, you know you wanna

With any luck, the engine work will be posted tomorrow. I've had some trials and tribulations with trying to make it look presentable, and it's been an Alcad fest here for the last day. The magnesium Alclad I originally used was a little too severe, so I used Alclad Dull Aluminium dusted over the Magnesium to get it to look more engine like. I've done some serious shading with heavily thinned Tamiya Black also. The engine bearers were a trial themselves with the supercharger protruding way too far for comfort. Has anyone here ever used the Aires engine set who could explain the engine mount orientation? I've done this as per plan but it still seams wrong when the bearers are added. I'll get more done tomorrow and post some pics up

1. If you are weathering a model which has a LOT of wear and tear, like Japanese fighters etc, then the model could be painted silver and you could buy some masking solution (quite cheap) and lightly dab this onto the model with a ponge before painting the model in camo. You then rub the mask rubber off and you have nice randomised chips. You can be selective where you apply the mask solution by refering to pictures of the subject on the internet. If it's just selected areas of heavy wear, you could just paint those silver and do the same as above. 2. Engine smoke trails. You don't say if you have access to an airbrush which would be the better way of creating them, so if you can get a pot of suitably coloured pigment from a model shop, you can apply a little to a brush, remove most of it and streak the remainder selectively on the model in the correct place and build it up until you have the right appearance. If you do have an airbrush, add a 10% paint to thinner and lightly apply it. 3. I don't tend to paint on sprues as invariably you need to handle the part later and I wouldn't want it to have greasy prints on them. I know loads of people DO paint on the sprue. I paint off the sprue and sticking parts to cocktail sticks with a little superglue or tape. 4. A cheap way to mask canopies is to buy a roll of good masking tape such as Tamiya and cut narrow strips to line the edges of the masked areas, along canopy lines. You can then infill with larger pieces or use your masking solution to fill the gaps. I wouldn't use mask fluid if you first dip your canopy in Klear. Jim

Cheers Mike. The u/c from G-Factor are great. I've never seen anything like them before and they are dead robust. H really should do more Luftwaffe stuff in 1/32 too The paint chips are done by sponge dabbing Abteilung masking fluid over Alclad airframe aluminium and spraying Gunze acrylic over the top. I've seen this done loads of times and when the rubber is removed it looks pretty natural. Pass on my regards to Ernie Gee!!

I got a nice MDC resin tailwheel and an G-factor brass cast one if you want one. I also got a pair of MDC MG-151's too if you intend to open the gun blisters.

If there's anything I aint explained properly, just shout. If I can do this, ANYONE can do it

The tail was the next candidate for my hatchet and for this I removed ALL control surfaces so I could replace them with the Blackdog resin. I also wanted to remove the tail access door and detail the interior. The resin kit is superb but lacked that familiar dimpled plate at the rear, so this was made with thin plasticard, drilled and covered with a thin covering of tin metal foil, pushed into the drilled holes. I decided to add the small oxygen tanks to the tail extension section, so drilled out the access port and thinned the plastic at that point. I then got some beads of the correct diameter and strung them along a strip of plastic rod and painted them in the correct blue before adding them in. This shot shows the work prior to the posts etc being cleaned up The just scribed port was also missing from the kit. This was referenced from Bentleys superb drawings. All is now cleaned up and presentable. After trials and tribulations; more thinning of the plastic and millions of test fits, the fuselage was married to the wing and the tailplane added, all with superglue gel. Any areas to be filled were done so with Mr Dissolved Putty and rubbed down with some wonderful sanding sticks from modelsforsale.co.uk. The model was primed with Halfords white acrylic primer. This is the first time I departed from using Alclad2 grey primer, and for large areas, I think I'll stick to this stuff. It's wonderful. All pre-shading is done with Tamiya acrylic. This is it so far. I promise I'll keep you updated more regularly Have fun, Jim So as not to be a slacker Tamiya flat white has been sprayed on the underside to fade out the pre shading and a whole van load of Tamiya tape was used to mask off thewhite bars. Gunze RLM23 was then sprayed on in very thin coats so it self sealed the tape. Enough paint was sprayed to allow proper coverage, and what you can't see in these pictures is the proper colour of the paint, and also the pre-shading which still shows beautifully. I just seem to be harrassed with bright light and crap photos. Still, I'm pleased so far, and NO paint bleeding. Tomorrow I'll paint the fuselage sides in light blue Jim Ok guys, Here is my first attempt at mottling and I did it straight on the model with no practise as I'm too impatient for that It's by no means perfect but this is the one bit of the model I'd been dreading since I bought this kit. I no longer 'feel the fear'! I'm always open to suggestions on how I could have bettered it. I know there are a few 'harder' blasts from the airbrush where I was perhaps a little too thin too start with. I have used the Galland Circus JV44 set of EagleCal decals for this and Mr Mark Setter to get them to seat. I had no use for the Mark Softer as the decals are very thin as they are. I just need to get to work on the rudder, elevators and landing flaps now as well as a few odds 'n sods before I look at the engine. The model is currently in Klear. I need to add another coat yet, as well as weathering and washes before I matte the finish down. Jim I've done the majority of post shading now, and added a wash. Wash was done with Promodeller black wash instead of the oil I usually use. It seemed to do a good job but I had to add a touch of washing-up liquid to it to break it's surface tension as it was pooling on the model surface. I still need to do a little panel post shading yet and some staining, but so far so good. Panel line accents were touched up with Tamiya acrylic thinned 90%. I've now started on the cowl panels and engine components. The rudder and elevators, landing flaps etc are now painted and ready for installation. Jim

About time for an update perhaps? Sorry about the lack recently, so here we go. I've been doing a LOT of work mainly on the wing, which required so much thinning for the Aires parts to fit that I must have worn it to less than the thickness of a sheet of paper in places. I actually used a pernament marker to highlight the areas where I had gone dangerously thin and the ink bled right through the plastic to the face side! Not a problem though with a little Devcon epoxy All paint is either Gunze or Vallejo. ALL surfaces have also been riveted using Radu's Rivet-R tool and the Bentley drawings as reference. I also used the MDC flush rivet tool for some detail. The wingroot gun blisters are moulded in a closed position and some careful measurement has to be done to mark the open positions, then removal of the remainder of the blister. Here's how it went: The Aires wheel well was dead easy to fit in after being carved and profiled. No thinning of lower wing required, but the upper wings did need a considerable amount of plastic to be scraped out. Colour is Gunze RLM02 with post shading in faded brown and given an oil wash. Electrical wiring is done by brush with Tamiya yellow as its runny enough not to build up between the delicate wiring detail, but solid enough to look good. The resin gun ports were then painted and test fitted to make sure they actually went in. So much test fitting of this was required and constant wing thinning. The wheel well was then added with superglue gel and filleted with epoxy for rigidity. I decided to go the whole hog with this build and I bought the very nice G-Factor brass oleos. I hope these guys expand their range as I want MORE for future models. They come on the casting sprue, so just a few strokes with a jnr. hacksaw removed them. They needed no cleaning up at all. I primed them with Alclad2 primer and sprayed them with Gunze RLM02. Again, I post shaded with a faded brown and oil washed them. After being sprayed in Klear, I added the EagleCal decals and recoated with Klear. I painted the compression strut in Vallejo black then brushed a little Klear onto them. Alclad Chrome was then airbrused onto this section. After masking off the Chrome, I flatted out the rest of the strut and added the brake line to the side of each leg. These will have MDC flexible hoses attached between the legs and wheels. The inter-strut was torn apart and had sections replaced with Aires resin. I then added a compression spring from lead wire and the cabling with 0.2mm lead wire and tin metal clips. At this point they are sprayed RLM02, but no wire detail paint is added The Eduard PE landing flaps were also installed at this stage.

Aye up all! I thought it about time I contributed here with a build. I've spent so much time leeching ideas off you lot, now I have a chance to show how inept I can be. The model of choice is the new mould Hasegawa Fw 190D-9. To go with this, I'm going to add the following: Aires Fw190D full detail resin set #2031 Black Dog Focke Wulf Fw 190 D-9 resin Tail wheel with mechanism access door #A32002 Black Dog Focke-Wulf FW 190 A,D resin detail set (flaps, rudder and fuel fillers etc) #A32001 Eduard Fw190D Landing flaps #32101 MDC Fw 190D9 Wheel Set #CV32028 MDC MG-151 set with brass barrels Master Model MG-131 brass barrels Radu Brinzan Late Luftwaffe seatbelts #RB-P32006 PK Tinyland German service panel set MDC German Duralumin Manufacturers Stamps #D32009 Mike Grant Decals Instruments & Placards set HobbyDecal Fw-190 Stencils ver 1 #st32003v1 Montex Super Mask Set Fw-190D9 (Galland Circus) #K 32048 EagleCals Fw190 decal set G-Factor brass Fw190A/D undercarriage I'm using a mish mash of technique I've picked up and some techniques from the new FAQ book by JM Villaba....basically whatever fits the task. Also using Gunze paint for the first time too. I warn you that I've never attempted anything like this before, but I'm confident with using resin and etch etc. which I've used in smaller projects. The finished model will be posed with all access ports open (well, most of them anyway), and engine cowls posed open. All weapon bays will be displayed open, as will the canopy. Here's a few pics of some of the stuff I will be using: I'm in for a long haul, right? Jim Here's the work so far. The first thing that had to come off was the nose, so I chain drilled this and cleaned it up with a surgical kinfe. Edges were then sanded flat. For the most serious part of the kit destruction, it seemed to go pretty well. For posterity, I took some pics first. The fuselage needed quite a lot of remedial work to make the resin and etch parts sit, but firstly, the kit is totally devoid of rivets, so this needed to be remedied. I fixed this with the help of Radus Rivet-R tool and some drawings depicting the rivet patterns. Seemed to work pretty well, and I rolled the riveter against the edge of Tamiya tape. It took a little getting used to...it's not perfect, but I'm happy with it at this stage. I removed the service ports and hatches/doors where I wanted to depict them open and also thinned down the fuselage skin at this point to make it a little more realistic. As far as the main service hatch goes, this work looks quite brutal from inside, but with the installation of the etch metal fuselage formers and stringer, the remainder of the gouges are filled in with superglue gel. The rear fuselage resin section is superbly cast, but misses as least 2 obvious items which I scratch built with the help of plasticard and rod, plus thin tine foil. These are the elevated bulkhead onto which is clipped the engine starter crank, and also the elevator control rods. With these added and the other resin parts cleaned up, I primed and airbrushed this section in Alclad2 Airframe Aluminium. From there, a quick thin coat of Klear was added and then the MDC duralumin decals were added. A coat of MicroSet was added to the whole lot before another coat of Klear. With this dry, a highly thinned mist of Tamiya Earth acrylic was sprayed along the stringer and ribbing as well as the riveted panels. Tamiya Flat Aluminium was then added to highlight the fuselage formers. All other interior stuff was sprayed with Gunze acrylics, with minor detail being painted with Vallejo acrylics. In the meantime, the forward fuselage area was thinned to accept the bulkheads for the weapon bay. The instrument visor was also removed to eventually be replaced with a more accurate resin part with higher detail. That's all for now folks.....I'll get more work done and post an update when there's something to show Jim Hi all, I've spent literally days, accumulatively to get to this stage. The cockpit is now almost totally complete and I've added some extra plumbing to the rear fuselage internals...namely for the control linkages I'd missed (but so did Aires!) and for the reserve fuel tank piping. Both loose ends of these pipes for the tank will terminate at the fuel filler cap, now fitted to the fuselage (from the excellent Black Dog resin detail set). Interior of the cockpit is painted in Gunze RLM66, and detail colours are picked out with a combination of Vallejo, White Ensign and Humbrol paints. Pigments are added to the cockpit interior, but not too much. I just had to add the set of seatbelts I bought from Radu, and they are great! Many thanks to his work in designing these. They took 3 hours as I have fingers like fag ends (Brit saying!), but I don't think I could use anything else now. I hope to get everything fit into this fuselage section within the next week or so. Everything dry fits beautifully since I modded loads of parts. I still say this Aires resin set was done for a different tooling of this kit. Sorry for the bad pic of the panel. It looks great to the eye, but awful on a blown up digital pic. The rest I'm happy with Jim

I use both, but if large areas, I seal with Klear first. I have done smaller areas where even Alclad hasn't reacted to Tamiya/Gunze acrylic or WEM enamels.

I really hate people who can do that. It makes my dreams look impotent

I never built the Airfix one but I remember the Matchbox one well, and seem to remember it was a good build, but with the usual Matchbox faults, such as furrow width panel lines, unless my alzheimers is kicking in.

I use THIS. It looks and smells like it has a PVA base, but there is deffo something different in there too.

I buy mine from MDC www.modeldesignconstruction.com

No hassle with painting. Covers as well as the plastic IMHO.

Which filter is that? I have the Sparmax pot and it looks the same one. How did you fit it?