Kitchen Modeller

Thanks mate - I didn’t have any disasters with the decals this time round - more lamenting the quality - they’re just so thick and are difficult to get to confirm to the surface 100% - on this model, you might be able to see actual bumps On the upperside roundels from the walkway lines. The fuselage decals also didn’t confirm as well as I would have liked. They are useable and I know plenty of people think they’re fine but I just think any other make of decal is preferable. I’m happy you didn’t notice any problems but I know they’re there! Only bad(minor) issue with this kit and if you’re okay working with their decals you can discount everything I just said

Thanks guys Thanks mate - I used Tamiya Acrylics for the base colours: Dark Earth: XF52+XF64+XF2 in equal parts Mid Stone: XF59+XF60+XF2 in equal parts Azure Blue: XF8(1 part)+XF2(3 parts) Thanks to @DaveCromie for posting this a few years ago Used oils for the weathering plus some AK enamel washes.

Thanks mate... I used Tamiya sky 4:1 with Tamiya flat white.

Hey all - this is one I finished just after Christmas - I bought this as a present to myself at the NZ IPMS Nationals - and a very nice present it was too Built 100% out of the box - it's a beautiful kit - as good as you've heard - though I would go for after market decals if I was doing it again - As always I really struggled with the Tamiya Decals - so after this I've promised myself that I'll never use Tamiya's kit decals again... lesson is well and truly learned. Thanks for looking Cheers John

Hi all - so just finished this up at the weekend - The newish Airfix Hurri Trop in 1/48 - The kit was okay - good in places and quite tricky everywhere else - but for the cost, it's not half bad. It did need alot of filling and sanding but managed to wrangle everything into place in the end. I added an Eduard "Big Ed" PE set which included interior detail for the cockpit, landing flaps and painting masks. I riveted the wings upper side and bottom and used after market decals (DK Decals) as I wasn't confident I could pull off the kit scheme! But I like this one better - it depicts V7544, F/O J. Storrar, No. 73 Sqn RAF, North Africa 1941. I went for a very weathered airframe - so it might look over the top and won't be to everyone's taste - but it was another experiment where I tried a bunch of new techniques, some of which came out okay - All I know is that the vast majority of reference photos I looked at show some very battered examples so I tried my best to replicate it. I had trouble with the forward air scoop which I wasn't able to figure out how to fix but apart from that I'm happy enough. Comments and criticism is welcomed - thanks for looking Cheers John

@SaminCam @Gazontipede Thanks guys - as far as completing the kit - this was the Last job before primer so the build was just about there - I have a pretty good idea of where I went wrong with the cockpit construction - which was my downfall on this build -so I’m actually quite eager to do a better job on the next one - it is a nice kit which is why I want another go at it - as I know it will result in a lovely model. This one will probably become a paint mule - something I can use to test techniques with - I really want to improve my chipping technique so this will be v useful for that. The other main factor in my decision to stop was my ever higher standards - Me, the modeler from a year ago probably would have accepted the flaw and soldiered on - but I’ve built enough models now to know that certain flaws will always bug me. And that will spoil my enjoyment of the model evermore. And at the end of the day, I’m building these things for my own enjoyment- and if I can’t enjoy looking at them, then what’s the point spending time on it - I spent about 20 hours attempting to fix it before deciding that it was never going to work - so I feel i gave it my best shot. As I stated earlier, I’ve been looking forward to doing this one for a long time - so I really want to do it justice- I fell short this time but as long as I’ve learned something it was not a wasted effort. Ive ordered the kit from Hannants so it will be here in 2-3 weeks - I’m planning to start it as soon as it gets here. It’s not the end gentlemen- not even the beginning of the end!!!

Hi folks As you may pick up from the image above, I've got some bad news... I've decided to shelf of doom this kit... After making decent progress with this kit, I made some critical errors which despite my best efforts, I'm unable to repair... The issue: Turns out this gap in front of the cockpit came back to haunt me - basically it opened up again - probably forced open by the ill fitting cockpit - no big deal I thought - lots of things I can do to fix it... I filled it with CA glue, sanded it back - then applied some putty - this seemed to fix the problem: The above pic is after a paint test and then the area was re-scribed and polished up. However, the problem came when I went to install the canopy - as you can see, because of all of my sanding, I had completely flattened out the whole area - this area has a definite curve - and as a result the canopy didn't fit properly - correction, it fit fine but didn't look at all right - So I attempted to reinstate the curve by applying more putty and sanding it into shape - I was unable to do this - I just couldn't get the shape right - I then tried using milliput: And tried to sand this into the correct shape: This worked better but still along way from perfect... to try and get the shape 100% correct is just very difficult - If I got it even 80% there, I'd be happy but this is at best 40%. I would have been prepared to over look some issues, maybe somewhere else of the airframe, - but to me, this area is a focal point for the model - and a problem of this magnitude is enough to ruin it for me. I'm very upset about this - this will be the first time I've abandoned a kit since I returned to the hobby - but to fix this issue is just beyond my capabilities at the moment. It's not a problem with the kit - this was entirely my own fault - I'll never go hard on sanding in this area again so at least I learned something. However, I refuse to let this be the end. I've ordered another kit so although this is the end of this kit, it's not the end of this thread! I still want my Johnny Red Hurricane, so I'll just start this again when the new kit arrives. It might be a few weeks but I'll get this bugger done I know where the pit falls of this kit are so having another crack will mean I can avoid them next time round. We'll pick this up again in 2-3 weeks - In the meantime, I've started a another hurricane - the Airfix 1/48 trop so look out for a WIP on that soon Cheers John

Yeah, the tail section is actually quite nice and the join where it attaches to the end of the tail is a really nice fit - but the vertical fin attachment is very tight - so tight that I couldn't get it 100% into the join so I little filler was required. Yes, the trim surface is a single piece and it's actually nice that you get to place it in a down position - no little to complain about here As nice as this kit is, it is definitely testing my "basic modeling skills' - I wouldn't recommend it to a novice - it's probably at a similar level in terms of details and engineering to an eduard kit but maybe not quite as nice to put together - some of it is very good, other parts not so much - but biggest issue IMHO is the vagueness in certain parts of the instructions - Eduard has very good instructions for the most part in comparison. So in all, it definitely warrants the "expert" label on the box.

Nice work on the office - these eduard 1/72 kits are very nice. There some really nice schemes with this kit - my favorite is the Hermann Graf one from the box art - but that rose petal nose art might be tricky with the decals...

I loved that story Ruskin - "The Flying Gun" - it's available to buy as a graphic novel these days... I'd recommend their metalics for sure - I'm not 100% but I think they are lacquers or lacquer based acrylics so I'm not sure how well they would go for brush painting large areas. I use the silver 8 for brush painting highlights and as a base for hairspray chipping - it's v nice stuff. Agreed - I love that Ennis and Burns went into that level of detail - of course Ennis has done alot of WW2 comics - many of them aviation based - so I'd recommend any of his "War Stories" graphic novels - re. the machine guns - since this story is set around the start of the conflict in Russia, I'd imagine that particular upgrade wasn't yet available to the Soviets - though I do remember they fitted those big cannons at some point? Construction is continuing and is coming along - I'd like to say seamlessly but that's wishful thinking Finally managed to get the fuselage closed up - I had to compromise and seal it with some visible gaps in front and behind the cockpit - these were filled with CA glue which also will hopefully hold everything in place as well as filling and reinforcing the joins. Even after some pretty heavy adjustments to the cockpit I couldn't get to fit perfectly - I didn't want to knock the shape out of the back wall any further for fear of causing more difficult to remedy gaps. But once everything dried, it looks okay. So I went ahead and put the airframe together - after gluing, I used my very expensive clamp to hold it in place overnight. So the wings went on without too much trouble - however there were some small gaps and some some steps on the wing join. I filled these with Tamiya White Putty and left it to cure over night - I find this stuff to be very good as long as you leave it to dry for a few hours. After sanding the putty back: Not perfect but we'll see how it looks with some primer on it. Some other areas were sanded down to remove visible seams such as the areas in front of the canopy and behind the cockpit. I attached the tail section - here the fit was good but once again, very very tight - and I was left with a small gap which was filled with Perfect plastic putty. This seemed to work well here - the kit gives you the option of having the trim in the down position, which I did, just to add a little interest - and with this aircraft going to be in a parked position, this made sense. So after the filling and sanding I'm left with something resembling a Hurricane... Still more to do on this front but this is where I'm at - I'll install the radiator and oil cooler intakes next - then mask the canopy which will hopefully put me on the train to primer. Here's more cover art goodness - this time from Ian Kennedy: Till next time chums John

Nice work Roger - what metal paint are you using?

It’s a lovely kit and you did a lovely job - very nice finish - well done

Love it - very nice work - I’ve got this kit and will hopefully be doing it later this year... how did you find the kit?

Nice! I have the same kit so let me know when you have the wip going

Awesome! Thanks Mike - though all you've done is add another build I wanna do lol I scratched it back to the silver underneath Sam - I used a lacquer for the silver so it's pretty hard wearing and the green is acrylic, so wetting it and then gently scratching it seems safe enough - if you do scratch away to the plastic, you can just touch it up afterwards. FW190? What kit?

That build order looks pretty sweet to me Richard - all I would say is hold off from buying any new kits as the package I'm sending you will probably dictate that a little:) And certainly the decal sheet will allow you to build up quite a squadron Tamiya Lacquer silver is fine but I think I prefer the Mr Color Silver 8 truth be told - it's more hard wearing and has a slightly better sheen and colour tone - however the tamiya is still a good paint which I'd recommend if it's readily available. Re the ordnance - It's going to be Johnny's dog fighting fit out so no bombs etc on this one - I'll probably do his typhoon at some point, so that will bear the brunt of ground attack duties Blood red mossie? I remember the one where he painted his hurricane red but don't remember the mossie - the strip ran for 7 years so I doubt I've read it all of course! So much Johnny goodness out there! I have a little progress to show - and have hit a few problems - namely trying to close the fuselage - more on that below. I weathering up the seat and added the seat belts - this was painted with Tamiya Cockpit green, then highlighted by adding some white to the mix - Some of the paint was scratched off with toothpick to create chipping effects - I painted the seat belts with Vallejo model colours with a mix of sand brown and ivory white. The buckles were painted with Mithril silver from Citadel. These were painted while still on the PE fret - then removed and installed with some CA glue. Then the whole thing then got a wash of Tamiya Panal line wash - dark brown - and used a cotton bud to mop up the excess while it was still wet. The cockpit sides got similar treatment - I painted the details with Vallejo German grey - then highlighted with a lighter colour, I attached the lower cockpit piece to the wing section - this just got a wash, again with tamiya panel line wash - I painted the control column handle with german grey. At this point it was time to close up the fuselage - I don't have any photos of this as it turned into a bit of a mission - one of the major flaws with this kit are the instructions - I found them to be very vague and at this stage in the build, this was a problem. It's not at all clear how the seat section fits into the fuselage - even if they showed you how it's supposed to look after installation, it would really help - so there's alot of guesswork involved. Also the fit is very very tight so I had to do a lot of adjustments - I did finally get it to close but there are gaps - not huge ones but far from perfect. I'll have some photos in the next update. If I was doing this again... I wouldn't bother with the PE on the cockpit walls - they will hardly be seen and I suspect they put out the fit of the seat section. I would also install the rear section (where the seat goes) on one of the cockpit sides before painting - as having the coat of paint on there further puts things out. Hindsight is a wonderful thing So that's it for now - I'm hoping the rest of the build won't be quite as painful as this - but I'm looking at that air intake very suspiciously :) I'll leave you with some more beautiful Johnny art from the extremely talented Keith Burns:

Nice work Roger - I like the clean but subtle weathering you achieved here. Well done

Beautiful work Sam - you turned an ugly ducking into a swan Finishing work was first rate.

Thanks Col - hope you enjoy Thanks Timski - my only references will be purely fictional so that does take some restraints away! I was a commando fan too Ruskin - nothing like pure boys adventure stories Sorry to hear that Richard - on the other hand I’m very happy that this build perked things up for you a bit- I’m going to try and get that stuff in the post to you v soon - I want to include a couple of more goodies hence the delay... hopefully it will inspire you get a falcon build going yourself !!!

Thanks @billn53 and @Pete in Lincs for following along Here is some progress so far... My last couple of builds were in 1/48 so it was a bit of a shocker coming back to the smaller scale - everything is so much... smaller!!! - however 1/72 does have its charms - especially when it’s as nice a kit is this... Construction starts with the wheel bay where you need to glue the bay walls together- first bit to glue doesn’t actually fit. So you need to shave off the location pins before gluing - not the best start. But after that, it goes together pretty well. Some pe is included in the kit, including the nicely detailed interior section which was glued in with superglue. The kit instructions would have you glue in the wheel struts at this point - I deferred on this as I know this will cause me problems later - so these will get installed near the end of the build. A quick dry fit of the wing sections: A very nice fit - they fit snugly in place with very little gapage. This makes me happy. Some more pe added to the cockpit this time - I elected to use the pe document holder which was tricky to fold Into shape but managed to get it into place. You need to shave off more plastic if you want to use these pieces - but nothing that can’t be handled with a hobby knife. These then got some paint - I used a base coat of Tamiya semi gloss black followed by the Tamiya lacquer paint - silver. First time using this paint, and I quite like it. I was planning on using mr color silver 8 for this job but have managed to misplace the pot - but this colour worked just as well I think. The other parts for the cockpit were cut from the sprue, cleaned up and were given the same treatment. The instrument panel uses the pe again - I needed to shave off the existing plastic details... the resulting flat surface was painted with semigloss black - then the gauges decal was applied - this was nervously put in place as I wasn’t sure if it was bang on without any references (having scraped them off) however, once I was able to put the pe on top, it all lined up nicely. There’s another decal that’s supposed to go on top of this - that has some labeling and the switches detail - however I think I’ll hand paint these in. I think it already looks pretty good without the risk of plastering another decal on top. The wheel bay and other sections got the same paint treatment too... Do that’s where I’m up to so far... a few more nights to get the cockpit sorted out. There is quite a lot of detail included with all of the pe - so it’s going to be fun dealing with that. Especially since arguably most of it won’t be seen. But still fun to do. I’ll hopefully have some more progress soon- in the meantime, please enjoy this beautiful painting from one of the comic book covers of the Johnny Red reboot... I really like the chipping and weathering visible on the aircraft here - something that I’ll try to reproduce on the model. See you soon chums!

Lovely work as per usual Andres - I was wondering what your plan for that snow speeder was:) Beautiful paint job on the AT AT - it looks absolutely stunning - I agree with you re. Bandai Kits - they are overly priced but I guess you pay for what you get - to me you're paying for a model that will look fantastic without much effort - leaving you to enjoy the painting process. It would be nice if they offered "weekend editions" - say just the sprues and nothing else at a reduced price... but probably little profit to be had in that... Have you got any more Star Wars Bandai kits in the stash..?

Very nicely done - Looks like a bang on movie version - I really like the base too - I don't see much wrong with it! Great work

Greetings all - As you may or may not be aware, I'm a huge comics fan - and that love started many years ago (70's and 80's) with the old British war comics such as Victor, Warlord and best of all - Battle! Each issue featured serialised stories from different characters in different theaters of war - and in Battle there were 2 of note - Charlie's War and of course... Johnny Red I'm not going to go too deep into the Johnny Red story - suffice to say, this isn't the first Johnny Red build on Britmodeler - however, mine will be a little different in terms of the source material. A few years ago, a very well known comic book writer, Garth Ennis (creator of 'Preacher' and 'The Boys' - both of which have been turned into successful TV shows) did a "reboot" of Johnny Red - aimed at a much older audience - here's a wee snippet: If you haven't picked up on the basic story - A British Pilot from a cam ship ends up in Russia with his Hurricane fighting the Germans with his adopted Squadron, the Falcons - and of course he's so amazing, they make him their leader - high adventure follows. If you were a Johnny Red fan, I couldn't recommend this book any higher - the story is great - a little more brutal than the original (but even the original was quite brutal) Most of the main characters are there - and the art by Keith Burns is just... gorgeous. The version of Johnny's Hurricane I'll be doing will be something like this: As you can see, it's a mk 1 painted with basic RAF brown green scheme - Garth Ennis posted about his book here on this site where he states: "(most casual readers won't worry too much about a Hurricat ending up re-engined as a Hurricane II, or a DSG/EDSG paint job becoming DE/DG, but we did)." So that's what I'm doing This is a project I've been gearing towards since my return to the hobby so I'm very excited to be actually getting started. The kit: Arma Hobby - Hurricane Mk1 - lovely little kit and maybe the best out there at this scale. I designed up some decals and got a fella in the US to print them - these are wet transfer - so the transfer film is removable once they have dried onto the model: As you can see - I have enough here for a full squadron - I did a bunch of different sizes so I can use them of different aircraft and at different scales - shout out to Johnny Red mega fan @Gazontipede for helping me out on the design for these - the decal sheet includes the serial numbers for Johnny's plane - plus falcon insignia for the old Battle comic version too - which looks quite different. I can email the PDF of this sheet to anyone who wants it - it will be up to you to get it printed - happy to pass on my printer guys details too if you don't want to print them yourself. PM me if with your email address and I'll fire it over to you. Gazontipede - I have your decal sheet here - I just need to pop it into the post for you! I started this build earlier this week but I'll leave it there for the moment - next up - starting the build If anyone wondered where I got my avatar from - look no further See you soon Chums! John

Brilliant work - it's nothing less than a triumph - as close to perfect as you can get. Very well done sir.

She looks magnificent Squibby - well worth the wait Looking forward to seeing some more photos... It was a great WIP and certainly inspired me on my P-51 build so thanks for that. I've also started a 1/72 after a few 1/48's - It's amazing how you forget how small everything is All good fun though.