Kitchen Modeller

Great job on a great model - love the painted on chequered band - looks really good (must have been difficult?) Brilliant detail especially for the scale - weathering is spot on and the chipping on the nose is very good. Panel lines are very dark but it totally works here in my opinion. This makes me want to do a P-47. Is the revell kit any good? - I was planning on doing the Tamiya P-47 but might look at Revell's as this looks so great.

Absolutely brilliant - great colour scheme, weathering is spot on, just brings out the detail on the model beautifully. Well done.

Very nice - great paint job - great interior work too. I like your base also - did the ground crew forget their ladder?

They are very good - my go to beer at the moment. Mmm - I think I have those colours backwards. Deck colour can be easily fixed - not sure about the intake.... will have a look see. Thanks for the tip

So threw on some primer this evening. Just a light coat to see if the horrible seam lines were going to behave. Port side looked like this: Not perfect but okay... Starboard was a different story: Not cool. No. Can’t live with that so more filling required. So instead of more Tamiya white putty I’m going to follow some advice from @Christer A. Was at the model shop today and picked up some of this. I plan to mask off the surrounding area and put this stuff on and smooth out the join with a wet cotton bud. Another new technique which will hopefully work well. But that will have to wait for a new day. Only thing I’m planning on finishing tonight is this: Night night.

This is turning out really well - well done

Great work on the exhaust - I have yet to settle on the best way to do these - I really like what you've done here - only thing is I don't use Humbrol enamels - I'm sure there's a tamiya acrylic equivalent so will have a look out for that. Thanks for posting the info on the pilot - I'm from Ireland originally but live in NZ now - New Zealand has a great aviation history doesn't it... lots of rich subjects for modelling...

@Smithy Have just downloaded Stapme's autobiography to the ipad - great timing as I needed a new book Full review to follow - It can be bought here if anyone's interested.

Sorry about that! Lol it’s compulsive viewing...

Thanks for that - bloody mast snapped when I was removing it from the sprue. I’ve since replaced it with a sharpened down toothpick. Looks okay I’ll post a photo soon. When I showed this model down at my local model club meeting this was the biggest criticism I received - however it’s a very subjective thing - some don’t like it because it’s not an accurate representation which is fair enough. However many do like it because it really brings out the details on the model and basically just looks cool. It just depends on what you’re trying to achieve. I think you should do whatever you think personally- at the end of the day, you’re just model making for yourself- so you only need to please yourself!

I'll definitely check that out - thanks for the heads up. I don't know if you saw this video on youtube - this really inspired me to do this build. Thanks for that - this is the plan - and using the decals as the main reference for widths. I totally agree with you re. the painted on - I'm not a fan of large decals - either putting them on or how they end up looking. Now that I'm armed with an airbrush, I plan to do as much painted on markings as I can. Wife and kids vacated the house this morning so I was able to put in a little more work... Masked the canopy: And did some more sanding and inscribing - and gave the model a clean - ready for priming... I'm going to fix the canopy in place using PVA glue in order to mask off the cockpit - this is another first for me as I usually just mask off the cockpit with tape and then paint the canopy separably - but because I'm using a PE cockpit seat, I'm afraid the masking tape or the sponge method will bend or wreak this - ie the headrest - so I'm going with this option instead - I should be able to remove the canopy easily enough later for touch ups.

I’ll be doing the same one with painted invasion stripes. I love the red and yellow nose cone and the color tone of the scheme. First time attempting to paint on invasion stripes too - I’m really pushing my abilities on this one. Also you’ll need to build a house extension to display it:) Its the main reason I build in 1/72

Maybe should get myself one of those!

Nice work - good call on painting on the white band on the fuselage - it’s an awful decal to try and put on properly. The end result looks so much better too.

Thanks for that - all excellent advise. Masking the area before putty would have really helped in this case. Will know for next time! I already put the rivets into the upper side of the wing earlier so that’s all good. I spent about 2 hours sanding down the seam lines tonight. Far longer than I have so far in my short time back in the hobby. I must say I really hate sanding. I find it very tedious and it’s easily my least favorite part of the build. (Not fond of applying decals either) However, I saw an interesting YouTube video the other day about simple ways to improve your skills and one of them was to take a task that you dislike doing and take the time to do it really well - therefore instantly becoming a slightly better modeler. In this spirit, I tried to do the best I could with these seam lines - they’ll still probably come out terrible but maybe less than after my usual efforts. We’ll see after priming. I also added a small part of photo etch for the canopy slide. Right - off to bed.

On with the build - some filling so I can let it dry and do some sanding later tonight... This bit (filling and sanding) is not my favorite part of the build - hopefully it doesn't go pear shaped...

Not exactly problem free - maybe our mistake was following the instructions... I've actually looked at Dymo tape but its crazy expensive here in New Zealand - so need to source something cheaper Wow - that looks perfect - obviously the best way to do this. If only you had posted this last night!

I know what you mean - I'm pretty new to a lot of the techniques being used - I took a few disasters before I realised that lacquers and acrylics don't always mix very well - the clear coats are another minefield - I recently put a lacquer based clear gloss over an oil weathered model and it totally destroyed the finish - this is it here: It might look kind of okay but it looked so much better before the gloss coat - well as long as I learn from these mistakes I don't beat myself up too much. Like you, I'm also now just using acrylics for the main paintwork and enamels and oils for the weathering and effects - what I'm learning now is when to step back from a model and realise that it actually doesn't need any further work...

Some more progress... I realised that if I was going to rivet the underside of the wing, I would need to do it at this point as it would be too hard once the wings were on... so continued with my flawed ruler method - first draw some lines with a pencil: There is a good bit flexibility in this piece so it lent itself better to the riveting process. However, I still made loads of mistakes - I'm going to wait until the primer stage and see how bad the damage is - hopefully I'll be able to fill the really bad issues. None the less, most of the rivets went in okay... I then had to make the decision to go with rockets on the underside of the wing or bombs as you need to drill the holes at this point... I like the idea of the bombs as it would give a cleaner look - but after looking through my reference photos and seeing some models with different configurations - the rockets won out - they just give the aircraft a really mean look. Once this was done, I could move onto attaching the wings... So I was a little apprehensive about this - mainly due to hearing some of the horror stories that some have experienced here with this kit. I thought a multi stage approach would work best - where I clue everything in sections, allowing tweaking as I go - which is probably the way I should always do it in fairness. After a dry fit, everything seemed to work okay - the biggest issue I could see was that it was impossible not to have pretty large seam lines where the wing meets the fuselage on the upper side. So I would try to minimise these as much as possible and then fix it with filler and sanding. I left this bit unglued while I clued the rest of the wing - this might have given me some more leeway with the rest of the components. First stage complete - wings, guns clued and clamped with some masking tape support - I left this to cure for a few hours... Notice the large seam line - yes it's horrible. Next was to try clue the rest of the wings while trying to reduce the horrible seam lines. I used the masking tape sling method for this - not sure what brand of tape this is but it's quite strong and did a good job... This was left to cure overnight. Next morning I have this: Still pretty bad but way better than earlier- I'm hoping some filler and sanding will do it's thing. This was not without problems but thankfully not the nightmare I was half expecting. I'd like to thank the commentators here for their advice as I think there would have been a much greater chance for mess ups if I wasn't so careful. Very glad I made the decision to post the build here. I can totally understand why so many have trouble with this part of the build - there are quite a few components to line up - and you can't really tell if things are correct until you get to the final stages. If I was doing this again, I think I would clue the wing bits together as a separate piece first - and then squeeze them onto the fuselage as a second stage which I've done on other Airfix models. Next up - I'll need to finish the tail section and then onto filling and sanding. Thanks for the feedback. John

Very nice FW190 - love these planes and this one came out great with spot on mottling and painted stripes. The underside is so cool with that crazy scheme. This kit is in my stash so I'm be using this for inspiration. The last Tamiya FW190 I did, I had terrible trouble with the decals - yours seem to have gone down okay...?

Wow - that is a very nice Corsair - love the extra weathered and faded look. Beautiful detailing - Very well done.

These are great - nice work and well executed. I used to play Dark Future - it was a great game and I remember converting a load of old matchbox cars into road warriors...

Coming along nicely - seam lines are looking good. This is great kit - hoping to do my own fairly soon - brush painting I assume? Camo looks good so far.

Very nice - great model, great paintwork - great photos - well done. I like a more weathered look but that's a personal thing. What you've done is probably a lot more realistic / accurate. It is a great kit - I'm tempted to do another one with a different scheme.

Invasion stripes came out perfect - well done - looking great thus far...