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SaminCam

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  1. SaminCam
    Gradual progress again but I'm calling DU-J and its little diorama done! ...and I actually mean it this time to the extent that I've started on the next project - WIP to follow soon. The finishing touches came from 2 very small, very cute 3D printed black labradors which balance the scene up nicely: Cheers! Sam
  2. SaminCam
    Awesome, I love a B-29! There's a run down on a recent Alclad painted spitfire here: Hope it's useful!
  3. SaminCam
    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
  4. SaminCam
    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!
  5. SaminCam
    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!
  6. SaminCam
    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!
  7. SaminCam
    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!
  8. SaminCam
    Love it - great work!
  9. SaminCam
    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
  10. SaminCam
    The best colour scheme! This looks fantastic!
  11. SaminCam
    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!
  12. SaminCam
    @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
  13. SaminCam
    Thanks Adrian, I'm not sure about the lights, you'd have thought they'd get switched off once they're on their way?
  14. SaminCam
    @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
  15. SaminCam
    Thanks @Johnson 🙏, the one true scale!
  16. SaminCam
    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!
  17. SaminCam
    Afternoon all, a little more progress to show on the two spitfires. The underside is painted on the second aircraft: Tamiya medium sea grey, white and rubber black sprayed over the preshading shown in the last post. I've also painted and glued the undercarriage in place so I can sit it up the right way around without damaging the dropped flaps. Next up will be to preshade the topsides and then get the camo pattern sprayed - she's getting there! Cheers, Sam
  18. SaminCam
    Good evening! After a few weeks I've got a bit of a progress update for you on the two Spitfires. The silver one has its main paint job finished: Lots of careful masking and never touching with bare hands has worked so far and I seem to have found a good recipe for NMF. This one's nearly ready for decals though I'm tempted to try spraying the roundels - need to get a good method for cutting small round masks though first... The other spitfire with the exposed engine is a bit behind now so going to crack on with painting. Here you can see my first preshade coat on the underside. I'm using my standard method of black base then highlight inside the panel lines- I'll do another pass with a slightly lighter shade of grey then finish off with the top coat of medium sea grey. Life is busy at the moment but hoping to get both of these over the line by Christmas! Cheers, Sam
  19. SaminCam
    Afternoon all! I finally have some good progress to report on the second, wheels-up Spitfire. Having tidied up the seams, wing tips and masked up the canopy and wheels, some paint got sprayed. I laid down a thin coat of tamiya rubber black to check the finish and gave this a polish with 6000 grit micromesh. This looked good so I then proceeded to lay down a few coats of Alclad black gloss. This didn't go quite so well - I'm not sure if it was the old (maybe 4 years?) bottle of paint, or if the gloss doesn't like getting sprayed over tamiya acrylic but it wasn't as smooth as I hoped. I considered stripping the whole thing and starting again but instead I've carefully wet polished the whole thing, starting with 3600grit and working up to 12000grit. Here's where I got to - a shiny, black spitfire, which I was about 80% happy with at this point: If I was doing this again I'd probably not using a matt primer like rubber black and also stick to a Tamiya black gloss, rather than using the Alclad base coat. Anyways, after a final polish with a lint free cloth I was ready to shoot some Alclad airframe aluminium this morning. It's a while since I've used my Alclad paints so I gave them a really good shake (with tungsten shot added to the bottle to help) and gave my airbrush a good clean. I sprayed with a 0.3mm nozzle in very light coats at quite high pressure - I'm really pleased with how this has turned out: It's satisfyingly shiny but not too chrome like and once it's had a clear coat I'll mask and pick out the gun cover panels, rudder and elevators with different shades of Alclad to break up the single tone. For the other spitfire (with the exposed engine and gun bays) I'm masking things off and getting ready to start painting the camo pattern. Hopefully I'll have some more progress to show on this soon! Thanks for dropping by, have a great weekend!
  20. SaminCam
    Evening all, afraid not a lot to report on the spits. I've been battling a few bits of the build, the main one being the wing tip fibre optics - in the end I've accepted defeat, the wing is just so thin at its end and routing and hiding the fibre, bending it to face forward and fixing it all in place has beaten me. This would probably work in 1/48 or maybe in 1/72 with thinner fibre optic strands - I'll try again on a larger aircraft in the future. This has left me with slightly mangled tips which I've been trying to rescue with sandpaper and filler, nearly there but won't ever look quite as good as it should... One bit of success! No instructions for wheels up with the eduard kit but I managed this without too much bother: Things fit together well without any mods and just need to add a bit of plasticard to cover the hole at the top of the undercarriage (I've already packed out the hole here in preparation). I couldn't see this on any other build threads so thought it might be of interest. Cheers, Sam
  21. SaminCam
    Thanks Charlie, he's very relaxed with both hands in his lap! Unfortunately grafting on new arms was beyond my level of skill...
  22. SaminCam
    Morning all, glacial progress on the spitfires I'm afraid as not getting much time for modeling. Main task at the moment is tidying up seams and getting small jobs done like painting wheel wells, etc, nothing very exciting to show. Over the weekend, to feel like I was getting somewhere, I painted up an old airfix pilot to go in the wheels up aircraft: He's brush painted, with the harness from the kit PE. It's about the best I can do in the one true scale atm, my favourite bit is the scarf/cravatte...! He sits pretty well in the cockpit and looks OK as long as you don't zoom in too close, ie with the mki eyeball he'll do!
  23. SaminCam
    Thanks everyone! Rosie riveter tool used here, I've tried others but get best results with Rosie. I based the pattern on pictures of Eduard 1/48 kit and for each panel draw on pencil lines to check I'm happy with spacing before running over with riveting tool. For a ruler I use "dymo" tape but with tamiya tape stuck to the back so you can re-use a few times before you lose the stick. Hope this helps!
  24. SaminCam
    Thanks Bill! Good news is that the fuselage closed up OK and everything fits, the fibre optics are routed to the right places and everything still lights up and spins. One silly slip I made was not checking which way the prop spins - the LEDs in series mean I can't just swap the power cables to change direction. After some deliberation I decided to snip the motor wires in the nose and resolder. This was a bit nerve wracking but worked OK and I managed not to melt any plastic in the process, you can see red to blue and blue to red in the photo below. Next I'm going to get the upper wings on and tidy up seam lines, etc. The fibre optics will need bending and gluing into place and then the lights are going to be finished off with a small blob of uv cure glue. After that I won't be too far off getting some paint down. Cheers, Sam
  25. SaminCam
    Afternoon all! Finally made some progress with the second Spitfire this afternoon. After lots of fiddling around and trying different ideas I decided to go for an arrangement powered by a 9V battery where the LEDS and motor are in series. @billn53, smaller LEDs did the trick and everything will be lined with Al tape. I also added a blank piece of plasticard, painted black, at the back of the cockpit so the cable and lights won't be visible through the canopy. This all seems to work well with good brightness from the LEDs and the motor spinning nicely with the prop installed and not getting hot. Everything in this photo is glued in place, including the wing so I can start to think about getting the fibre optics out to the tips. The white block in the middle is the plug and the LEDs are mounted on a bit of plasticard where their legs are soldered together. The motor wires run under the cockpit (a little bit of plastic scraped away to ensure a good fit) and connect in series to the last LED and the other terminal in the plug. You can also just make out the 3 fibre optic cables which pass forward from the red and green LEDs under the cockpit and out to the wing tips, and backwards from the white LED (which is quite hard to see against the Al tape) to the rudder light. From underneath everything looks neat and tidy with just a little bit of plastic removed to make space for the plug. The male half of the plug will be mounted in/on a stand and the 9V battery will be hidden in the base: Thanks for dropping by, hoping to get a bit more done this weekend so perhaps another update later. Cheers, Sam
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