Ted

Hah, thanks, needs an encyclopedia to sit on. Thanks! Oil paints are magic. I did the rigging today with black EZ line and it went really well. The wing rigging is mostly two long runs through the holes and pulleys. Here it is with the Battle Axe Fokker E.V, showing aviation development over the course of three years. Both monoplanes, both rotary engines. More photos in RFI

Just finished this old Battle Axe kit of a Fokker Eindecker. The plastic parts were decent but had all the foibles of short run kits. There was decent photoetch and a resin engine. Painted with Tamiya and Vallejo and oil paints for grime. The pilot is a resin figure from RJ Productions. The rigging is black EZ line.

Thanks Troy, That's the plan, to make the globe look old fashioned using oil paints and glazes. And I've downloaded a Middle Earth font for printing decals for the place names.

I'd join. Thanks.

I had to rush to get this done for Christmas and forgot to add a photo. I did end up using some matte varnish to take down the sheen after taking this photo.

Maybe that was just a conspiracy theory invented by disenfranchised Noldor 🤓

It should be indeed, I think I'll make the ocean around it cloudy or foggy, and maybe make the land mass a bit ghostly. Or should it be more neon? It will be fun to play with ideas.

Not really a diorama, but I couldn't think of another place to post this. It's a project I've wanted to do for a long time. My wife collects paper globes for her own creative projects and she generously gave me one of them. Just a cheap old globe like most of us had as kids, with the mountains textured on the surface and gaps between all the paper strips. I removed the cheap ugly stand and will eventually make something new out of wood and brass. I spent hours sanding, filling, priming, and sanding to smooth it all. Then sprayed some vague outlines of Middle Earth, Valinor, and the oceans with Vallejo mixes. Then I started brush painting the outlines of the continents. It was a bit hard to reproduce the 2D map on a globe, Mercator projection, amIright🙄 I'm using a few maps from various books, including the Tolkien scrapbook and the old MERP game for some of the places that weren't mapped out in the original books. I might do a ghost outline of Beleriand but not sure yet.

The wings have a very tenuous connection to the fuselage 😬 It was hard to get enough gel superglue in there without making a mess. Now for the castor oil and grime. And then the rigging, which looks like it will actually be relatively easy. A few continuous runs through the holes in the wings and the various pulleys and turnbuckles. I felt pretty lucky when I found an extra windshield from a WNW Albatross kit in the spares bin. Check out how much bigger it is than a Nieuport 17.

The decals have been a bit of a struggle. They looked great when I applied them but have bubbled a lot, going on ten applications of solvent. I also put some oil paint wash on the wheels, I think I'll do some weathering to this model.

Here's the kit propeller with the photoetch flange. I started with a coat of Tamiya wooden deck tan, then brushed on a mix of ochre, sienna, and brown oil paint. It's more like a stain because there is very little paint left on the prop. The laminations are suggested with stripes of darker oil paint lightly blurred in. I'll wait for a week for it to dry. 🤓

I squiggled some Vallejo metal colour silver paint on the fairings and front part of the fuselage, but not on the engine cowling yet. It's subtle but shows the difference.

He's a bit low, I put him in before I added the cowling and then didn't notice until you mentioned it 🙄 but I looked up some pictures of Ernst Udet and he was a little guy, lucky that's the markings I'm using! The eindecker is also a surprisingly big airplane. I did some more painting, Tamiya flat aluminum with some smoke over it for the cowling in preparation for the turned/burnished texture. Also painted the engine with Vallejo metal colour silver and added washes of black and Payne's grey oil paints. It's a resin engine that came with the kit. Decent detail.

Got some paint on, I used the WNW recommendation of Tamiya RLM grey but tinted with white.

Beautiful collection, I really like the powder burns on the rifleman.

I wasn't going to post a build thread for this because I figured it would end in failure. It is the third 1/32 Battle Axe kit I've built; my Fokker EV worked out decently but the Fokker DVII was a bit of a disaster. At this point in the build it is looking promising though and probably will be ok. For those not familiar with Battle Axe, they released four 1/32 kits of WW1 airplanes, All short run injection moulded and fairly basic. I bought three of them for $10 each at a model show years ago, somebody unloading them after buying WNW kits. I have a few WNW kits, built a couple and love love love them. But I don't mind bashing away at a clunker like this as long as my expectations are realistic. I am using a downloaded copy of Wingnut Wings instructions to help with the assembly and added details. I also made it a bit easier on myself by using a resin pilot from RJ products to distract from the crude interior.

Those sanding blocks are a great idea.

Thanks very much folks, it was an enjoyable project. I'm going to keep an eye out for their 63 Thunderbird kit.

Here's a 1/32 kit by Gunze Sangyo, painted with Gunze red gold, Vallejo metal colour silver and various acrylic and oil paints. I really enjoyed the kit and hope to find more from this series someday. The dog is a 1/35 Tamiya critter with saddlebags sculpted on.

Done! The hard roof is better but still alligatored (or crazed?) a bit. I left it unglued and may fix it someday. Here it is with the soft top. More pictures in RFI, thanks everyone for the tips and encouragement.

Yeah, good oil paints are expensive but they can do some amazing things with not much effort. I really like the 1/32 car kits I've done so far, I can add figures or accessories from my spare 1/35 or 1/32 bits and the finished models fit in with my tanks and airplanes. Here are the kits I've finished over the years, Other than this Impala they are either Arii or Airfix.

That's great, the details, concept and feeling of it really work.

A comedy of errors happened to the roof, the alligator texture is gloss over paint over gloss. Ugh. I sanded it off and painted again. I'll try gloss tomorrow and see if four times is a charm. Mostly got it together now though. I rubbed some oil paint on the acrylic painted seats to help it look a bit more like leather. And for accuracy, I added saddlebags to the dog.

So after three attempts at painting the roof it looks like this. Luckily the kit includes a rag top option. And I painted the details on some of the interior. I still have to paint parts of the steering column and I'll use an oil paint wash on the seats to make them look more like leather.

What a great project. What's your plan for making the wheels?