SaminCam

Awesome, I love a B-29! There's a run down on a recent Alclad painted spitfire here: Hope it's useful!

I'm calling this one done! Though feel there is something missing, perhaps a 1/72 doggo to have running across the grass? Once the flying, NMF spitfire has its base finished off, I'll get the RFI together. Cheers, Sam

Can't wait to see this! Thanks @Johnson and @Far North! Sorry for the complete lack of updates - real life limiting modelling time pretty spectacularly at the moment and "mojo" has been lacking a bit and I don't want to botch the last bits on these two spitfires. In the last week or two I've been fiddling around with a base for DU-J and have something I'm happy with now: I haven't done one of these since about 1999 doing bases for 40k models but thought it was worth it given all the effort that's gone into the spitfire! It's made from a wooden base, the concrete is sandpaper, and the grass started off with a thick base coat with some grit added, followed by a spray coat of brown, pva-glued flock, and a final coat of RAF dark green to get a more realistic shade. I also had a good tidy up this afternoon (a good mojo boosting exercise!) and hope to get the final weathering done on the underside of the spitfire in the next week or so. Thanks for dropping by!

Thanks @Johnson and @bigbadbadge! I originally wanted to make a MkIX with engine, and gun bays open, when the 1/24 Airfix Spitfire came out, but of course in the one true scale!

Afternoon all, top side weathering pretty much finished so just the underside to do and she's done: Windsor and Newton matt varnish provided a good base for the weathering which used a mixed of oil paints for the edge highlights and shading and ground up pastels for the exhaust and gun stains. There's a few bits where I've overdone it (e.g. port wing tip) and I'm hoping I can knock back with some thinner and/or another coat of matt varnish. The wood base is eventually going to be dressed up as a piece of airfield and I've got a handful of 1/72 figures to paint - I started with the pilot who you can see here looking very smart! Thanks for dropping in and for your patience with my glacial progress - have a great weekend!

This is absolutely awesome Neil. I'm a huge fan of the B-24 (Airfix, still my beating heart!) and this build, paint job and weathering are top notch. There's going to be loads of B-24s coming along on BM and they're all going to use this as THE reference (like all your other 4 engine bombers)! Can I ask what varnish is under the oils? I've just tried and failed to weather a nmf spitfire and just couldn't get the oils to look right on the shiny metal. I've used Windsor and Newton matt on camo paint jobs, which works quite well with oils but doesn't much like white spirit and peels if you thin too much. Thanks!

Love it - great work!

Hello all, Happy New Year! Sorry for the radio silence over the last few weeks. I was feeling a bit frazzled at the end of the year and have been trying to avoid spending extra time in front of a laptop. I've not been super motivated for modelling either but have got bit of progress to report. Main thing is that UF-Q is basically finished. To be honest I was really struggling to weather on the shiny metal finish so have left it really clean except for some airbrushed exhaust stains. I've just spotted that the cockpit mirror needs to be added but I think that is all that is left. The eduard decals were a bit of a nightmare and I'm not super happy with them - sometimes the carrier film peels off well, leaving a nice flat finish that looks painted on, but other times you lose some of the decal itself so it looks a mess. They could be worse, but also could be better... The most interesting thing I've done is make the base for the in-flight display: I draw this up in CAD and printed on a low-res Ultimaker 3D printer at work - I might redo this on a better resin 3D printer now I can see it will work. A 9V battery fits in the bottom, the electrics to the airplane goes up the 5mm metal tube and I just need to solder the on-off button into a simple circuit which connects everything together. And here's the result complete with blurry, spinning prop! From behind you can also see the LED lit fibre optic tail light, shame the wing tip lights didn't work out... This is basically it for UF-Q, I'll finalise the base and next you'll see of her will be in RFI. DU-J is also almost complete, just a little bit of weathering needed to finish it and I'll try and get a final post up in the next week or two. Thanks for following along and for your patience! Sam

The best colour scheme! This looks fantastic!

Evening all, I've been learning some interesting things about eduard decals and thought people might be interested to see what's going on... The decal sheet for my second spit is eduard own brand, dated 2022, and frankly looks a bit weird with slightly ragged, very obvious carrier film. Somewhere on BM I'd read about these and after a bit of googling decided I'd have a go at removing the film. I've done this on the tail and worked out pretty well so I'm going to show the process on the roundel. First snap, taken a few minutes ago shows the roundel in place using microsol setting solution to help lay down and position and a generous coat of microsol softener brushed on top and left to dry overnight. At the moment it looks pretty bad, visible film and no panel lines or rivets showing through. Hopefully the softener will do its job overnight 👍 More to come tomorrow!

@Watto @bigbadbadge @cpoud117 @mick thanks gents! This week i got most of the decals on DU-J, here you can see it with a gloss coat sealing everything in: Forgive the wobbly prop, it's just placed on atm. In the end I used decals for the wing roundels. They went on whole over the gun ports and then I cut holes out very very carefully with a brand new scalpel, seems to have worked OK! So it's nearly done - I'll add a bit of weathering and a flatter varnish coat then it'll be there. I'm going to move back over to the silver one now and catch it up with the decals. Thanks for dropping by! Sam

Thanks Adrian, I'm not sure about the lights, you'd have thought they'd get switched off once they're on their way?

@bigbadbadge @marvinneko thanks gents! Finer fibre optic wire and 1/48 is the solution for the wing lights, the wing is just so thin in 1/72 out at the tip, it's a difficult trick to pull off. Still going to look cool with the spinning prop! Gloss coat on and decals going down next on both kits, looking forward to this part! Spitfires do look great don't they?!? Cheers, Sam

Thanks @Johnson 🙏, the one true scale!

Good evening! I've been steadily plugging away and this evening, after spraying the green coat, I was delighted to unmask and see a spitfire emerge from under a pile of tamiya tape. Having not seen the engine for a few months I was really pleased to see it remained unscathed after lots of handling and still looks really cool. Next steps are to touch up a few bits of existing paintwork and add the yellow leading edges to the wings. Then it's a gloss coat and finally some decals on both aircraft, I'm looking forward to getting these over the line!