TonyW

Peter Van Lunes book is the definitive work on Penguin kits. A highly recommended book if the subject interests you. It covers just about everything, from the formation of the company, the characters, the models, marketing, restoration and repair, it's all in there. Peters collection was one of the best in the world at the time of printing: The Battle was covered, both camouflaged and earlier silver version. Both models were released as kits and built up versions, as were most of the range.

Thanks Cliff, that's just the sort of response I hoped the thread would generate. Those models look very attractive indeed, especially the Whittley. I can see me getting involved with the type in the future.

Work has started on the Battle. First job was to see if the paintjob is savable. Sometimes old paint goes very brittle and doesn't like being worked on in any way. This paint however seems to be OK. I don't think this model is a factory built one as the way the green has been applied is a bit too slapdash, with some ragged edges here and there. It's very old paint though, so I want to keep it. Careful work with a few new curved scalpel blades got the lines of the camouflage flowing a fair bit smoother. Gentle scraping away of the ragged areas to leave a better curve got me to here... I've left as much paint as I can, only removing enough to make the curves more pleasing to the eye. Once that was done it was time to sort out the banana curve that spoils the flow of the fuselage. The fuselage was split into two parts using new scalpel blades. It came apart easily enough. The halves were then clamped to a block of steel to use as a heat sink and the whole lot got left on a radiator for a few hours. Then off, then back on. The idea is to try to remove the plastics memory and get it to reset straight. A few cycles of radiator/off radiator were repeated last night with the final few hours of the hot treatment being transferred to the domestic freezer for a more severe temperature shock. I brought the frosty lump out the freezer this afternoon and it's all now back on the radiator. If I'm lucky, things will be nice and straight later. Then I get to repeat it all, straightening out the wonky wing!

It's a case of the harder you work, the luckier you get! Constant searching and following leads eventually pays off. Ebay comes up trumps occasionally and so does buying complete kit collections. An auction now and then will have the stuff I'm interested in turn up, and so on. There's also a small band of fellow collectors who support each other when the inevitable incomplete model turns up. Two way traffic between us has seen quite a few restorations happen over the years. Penguins seem to turn up in lots more than singletons and that can make things expensive sometimes. Three decent lots on the trot could wipe me out, but that's never happened yet. The problem is, these things come up so infrequently and some of them are staggeringly rare, you obtain them when they show rather than when you can afford them. What does slow things right down is deciding on whether to wait for missing parts to turn up, or substituting other parts instead. There's nothing hard and fast here but it has a bearing on builds. The Battle is almost complete other than a tailwheel so it seemed a logical build to take on for the GB. It may well prompt a few more restorations along the way, and that's no bad thing. To my mind, I'm not making a model of a Fairey Battle here, I'm restoring a FROG Penguin kit. There's a big difference. Changing codes and repainting is a method of last resort. If the original finish can be saved to an acceptable degree, that's the route I take. If changes have to happen, they are done in a style sympathetic to the period. I restored a Penguin Spitfire during the last FROG GB and that one ended up with new paint and transfers as there was not much left of the original finish. I still aimed for a period look rather than scale fidelity though. The choice of camouflage colours caused much gnashing of teeth before a decision was made. In the end, I followed a Wills Whiffs Cigarette' card picture as my reference. Wrong, but period correct.

Thanks James, it looks about right and will be staying.

I'll offer it up against the Aircraft of the Fighting Powers plan and see if that was the FROG source. The warpage is unfortunate but not exactly unusual on these things.

That's the stuff. It's very good for gun barrels, engine cylinders and such like but, as you say, a bit dark. I'll T Cut it away before using the bright stuff.

FROG Penguins were the first plastic kits to appear. I'll be using the rebuild as a way in to the modelling fashions of the time. The war got in the way of kit evolution but it threw up all kinds of interesting things along the way. ID models were one of them. Both in the UK and the USA there was quite an industry making models for identification purposes. Culver made models for service use and pretty much all the wooden kit manufacturers of the time promoted building for the armed forces. Penguin kits were a bit on the expensive side to be used as ID models however but I don't doubt that some were. An area that I know nothing whatsoever about is the German take on things at the time. An insight there would be very interesting.

Here we go with another blast from the past. The very distant past in this case with the subject being the FROG Penguin Fairey Battle 11P/34PM, Camouflaged version from 1938. FROG Penguins were two years old at the time of the kits release and the plane was seen as a cutting edge RAF wonder plane. Not for long though. The model is in need of restoration after all these years and here's as good a place as any for that to happen. I have an original box, a small parts supply and the bones of a fairly decent build to sort out. It looks nearly done in the pictures but the pictures deceive. The fuselage has a twist to it that is fairly easy to deal with. More on that later. I want to save the paint job. It's been there since before WW2 and it won't be me that removes it if I can help it. The codes and markings are pretty good being in decent nick and reasonably straight. That's quite unusual with these things. The canopy is present but is going to be a challenge to sort... Penguins were prone to distort, right from the off. I've seen it blamed on the factory workers, removing the parts from the molds before they had set, to up their piece work rates. I don't buy that one though. The plastic was unstable and that was that. The company acknowledged so after the war when the new models had internal strengthening added. It didn't help much. The Mosquito below shows a usual degree of warp to it. The fuselage halves are later modified ones. They are bent as well. The Wellington behind shows typical warp along the fuselage, side to side as well as up and down. The wings have drooped over the years as well. Most of this can be fixed, to various degrees of success. The Battle is a prime example of a restorable model. Best I make a start on it. More tomorrow, Tony.

Thanks Dave, I'll get things rolling in a minute or two. Tony.

A quick question, my DH Comet builds are back underway after a bit of a gap, with the Cortina build due to get a look in tomorrow. They are all at the point of needing a lot of drying time for glues and paints, so I figure another build is a brilliant idea as a filler! My question is, does this FROG Penguin Battle fit the GB? It's a camouflaged version from 1938 and of the restorable Penguin kits I have, this one is closest to completion. By that I mean just about all the parts are there, either original to the model or spares found along the way. It needs the usual straightening out but it's not too bad, I've seen much worse. Every bit of it needs work and that work has to be done without loosing the origins of the model. If the thread gets a go ahead I'll treat it as a guide to basic FROG Penguin restoration and repair. The canopy is there, but is a tad distorted. This bit will probably be the hardest part of the build to recover.

Annnnd, after a far too long gap, it's all systems go again. The first job was to blow all the gathered dust off the models! The Mk1/2/3 hybrid is going to have to wait a bit longer, the redwing BEA plane will get priority as it's by far the easier of the two to finish. With that in mind, work restarted today. There's not much to look at there, but a couple of hours went into what you see. Endless sanding down and polishing of the glue damaged wing roots and fuselage is finally paying off. Things are looking smooth. The dark areas are where I've hit the wings with polishing powder to see how much progress I'm making. I'm slowly running out of my S 'n J supply so the checking is done using the only stuff I can find on the internet. It polishes very well, but dark. Once things are as good as I can get, I'll revert to the bright S 'n J stuff. The fuselage has had more sanding along the top seam and sides and the tail parts have been refixed with a ton of glue. It's quite ironic that I've spent ages sanding down the glue marks on the wings, only to slobber another lot on the tail! Needs must though. There's a lot of sanding and filling needed in that area and I want things as strong as I can get them. I'm also going to have to let things thoroughly dry there before any more work takes place in that area. More later, Tony.

It's getting closer to completion now, The exhaust staining I did yesterday didn't cut the mustard this morning, ending up looking quite dark. I'm after that lean mix light stain with rich startup darker marks outside of that. I'm getting there but I might have gone too far the other way this time. Another go tomorrow if that's the case. The canopy parts fell apart as soon as I touched them this morning so the main part got fixed to the fuselage and I started framing work. All hand brushed with a fair bit of help from a cocktail stick or two. There is plenty of re-touching to do but it's getting there. The props were added and the green trim knocked back quite a bit with a thin coat of NATO green, to take the edge off the bright green I initially used. The tailwheel is fitted, one main wheel ditto. The other is waiting on glue drying on a repair before being added. The undercarriage legs are extremely fragile and snap given half a chance. A nod to cockpit detail took place with a few tape seat belts and some paintwork. Not a lot can be seen through the canopy framing so more work seemed a bit pointless to me. I may yet regret that. The Fritz X bombs got a bit of made up detailing as I thought they looked a bit stark as they were. An Airfix Sea King decal sheet provided a few sort of OK bits and bobs to busy things up. If things start to jar, it's a moments work to paint over it all. I'm going for one loaded, one standing by in the background. I'll be needing some sort of trolley for it to sit on. That's pretty much it for the day. More as it happens, Tony.

Salad Fingers has a thing about rust. Once seen, never forgotten. Nothing to see on the modelling front, but for lovers of the distinctly weird, this is right up in the top ten.

More chipping away over the last day or two. Paintwork in the main, although prep work is happening as well. The canopy parts are glued together using Glue 'n Glaze. They are sitting on the aircraft while the glue sets and will get a bit of framing soon. Fuselage decals are on now and the demarcation line added. The rather alarming silvering on the starboard wing cross will be dealt with ASAP. The port wing was the same but I brushed green over the affected areas. Looks like I forgot the other wing! Initially I painted on a wavy line as shown on the instruction sheet. It looked a bit poor though. Something about the two dull greens and black lower half just looked wrong to me. It looked messy. Trying again with a straight demarcation looked a lot better, so I went for that version. The Revell green has been darkened down a bit by scrubbing in Vallejo dark green using a wide, nearly dry brush. It's getting there. Exhaust stains have been started, using oils. They looked OK when I left the model earlier but these things have a habit of looking different the following day. I'll take another peek tomorrow and take it from there. I'm hoping to get the thing on its undercarriage, and maybe underwing stores fitted, by tomorrow.

Bench time for personal modelling has been at a premium for a while but things have calmed down enough to break out the modelling spanners again. I had masked the splinter pattern a week or two ago and had started to fill in the pattern with tape, prior to spraying the second green. Resuming the infill this afternoon saw me soon get fed up of little bits of tape and endless trimming. My intention to airbrush the second colour fell by the wayside and I brushed on Revell dunklegrun instead. I needed to see some progress after such a long break. Removing the tape showed nice crisp demarcation and although I'm no Luftwaffe colour expert, I'm happy with the menacing look. As soon as the paint was dry enough I added the wing crosses and tail numbers. That's brought the model to life at last and I'm keen to get back onto it tomorrow. The Fritz X bombs have been painted in an RLM pale grey, I'll check the number later.

A first class day out. Well done organizers, the new layout worked very well indeed. Tony.

What a beautiful little build. The yellow scheme suits it perfectly and really shows off the detailing. Those back seats look amazing. I have what I think is a Lincoln version sat here, and the two are as different as night and day when compared to your build.

A very impressive model indeed. First Class work.

It's fascinating to follow the build as it progresses. The extra detailing you are adding is further icing on the cake for me. That Anglia van in the B+W picture above sits perfectly next to the aircraft. The two of them just scream 1960's to me.

That's made my day! What a fantastic model. I'll be adding one of those to my wish list.

It's been a while since the Dornier saw any action. I'm back in the saddle now though and the build is underway again. The upper surfaces were airbrushed with a base coat of RLM 72 and will dry off overnight before a bit of masking takes place in readiness for the second colour. The plane is starting to look a bit sinister in that dull green and it seems to be coming to life somehow. The Fritz X bombs also got a coat of paint and they will get a bit of detailing once dry.

And to follow Steves car door, here's my earlier issue, from 1959. A bit of paint trouble was overcome. The code transfers cracked a bit on application and could do with a touch up at some point. I'm done for now though. Build thread here...

I had a bit of a disaster with the build. A coat of clear, intended to even out the finish of the plane instead reacted on the port wing in a rather alarming fashion. A good flat off and repaint saved the day. It was a close run thing though. I nearly gave up on it as this one was only ever intended to be a bit of light relief while my other builds progressed. Once sorted, I had a bit of a shove to get it finished. It's done now. Not the best build in the world, but it's one Typhoon more than I had yesterday. I'm happy with that. Here's the FROG model sat alongside the Airfix competition, also released in '59. There's not a lot in it really but the Airfix kit kicks the FROG one into touch on price and availability.

In a bit of a turn up for the books, yet another Battle class destroyer arrives down on the farm. This time it's a very nicely built one. I bought a job lot of built Airfix ships in early boxes, I checked a couple and put them away, intending to come back to them at some point. I looked a bit further into the boxes yesterday and inside a Victorious box was a Battle class instead. All safely tucked up in a bed of wood shavings, I've added a stand to it as there wasn't one in the box and I'm now more than happy with the result.