Salty_45

Finished the cockpit and panel today.

HGW stuff came in today. I had not realized that the seatbelts came with replacement pedals as well, but I've already glued on the plastic parts (oops). They also come with the straps for the pedals which is nice, I was planning on just using some masking tape. Decals are nice, they are the peel-able kind, which I am terrified of.

Alright, so I've done the cockpit, no seatbelts yet. For the instrument panel I'll probably just use the kit parts and cut each dial decal before applying.

Yeah I agree the engine stuff is kinda jank. I wanted to do a removable closed cowling, but I should've read the whole manual first because apparently you can't do that. Now I'm just doing some surgery then I'll glue it together. I'm not sure what TET is, can you explain?

No offense taken. I have the Mr Hobby decal solutions, but haven't used them that much, as I still have 2 bottles of mark fit strong and that's what I use usually. Thanks for the hot water tip tho, I still have some Tamiya kits in the stash so it's definitely good to know. I have to do some tests on my failed kits.

Alright, the Panzer IV is done, time for a bf 109. I've built the 1/72 airfix kit earlier this year, and while it was kind of a fitting disaster, I still enjoyed the build. I found some really nice schemes while researching, so I was inspired to do another 109 but this time in 1/48. The eduard kit was my first pick since I've read good things about it online, but no shops near me stock eduard stuff , so Tamiya it is. Fantastic kit just looking at the sprues, but the decals are bottom. I've only built their cars, and the decals that came with those are fine, not to the quality of other car kit manufactures but still usable. These ones however are at least 0.5 mm THICK! I don't know if they'll magically vacuum seal themselves onto the plastic when I apply them, but I'm not taking any chances. So looked on scalemates for replacements. I picked up HGWs decals and their seatbelts sets. Hopefully they arrive when I finish the interior. This is the scheme I planning on doing for this build. It was flown by Heinrich Klopper in the Netherlands, November 1943. I couldn't figure out if the camo is hard or soft edged as I couldn't find any real world photos of the plane. I'll just go with hard edge unless someone can show me otherwise. That's it for today, got to get started on kit, wish me luck.

Beautiful work man!

Final day of my arbitrary challenge, and I can confidently say the model is done. Very happy with the final result Busted out the old light box to take some pics.

Alright, lower hull is finished. Now time to hide it all away with the side skirts.

Possibly my most realistic weathering job yet. 2 years worth of oversprayed paint and abuse. I just recently got a spray booth set up in the basement, I used to just do everything at my workstation.

Alright time for weathering. I really like this vid and used it as a template for weathering. I don't really like texture paste as it ends up obscuring too much detail and look out of scale in my eyes. Plus I'm still new-ish to the hobby and I like that enamels are super forgiving. Here's one side done. Super happy about the result weathering is usually the part I struggle with the most. Even then I still think I overdid the wheels a bit, I'll clean that up later. I'll do the other side, front, and back tomorrow.

Panel line wash is finished. Tomorrow I cake the lower hull with mud.

Trying out something new, by polishing the running gear with metal pigments. However the one I got is a bright teal color. I'll see if I can darken it down with some washes later

Ok, got busy with work yesterday so I didn't get to work on the model. Today though... ...It's finished (almost). All that's left is oil washes and pigment weathering... which will be in a few days, my arms are dead 😭 Thank you I appreciate the compliment.

Oops forgot to put up photos. Here my best Here's what I'm working on