Revell Messerschmitt Bf 109 G10 1/72 - Defence of Berlin (picture heavy)

[jrlx]

Dear Fellow Modellers,

I've started this model back in November 2014 and I'm nearly finishing it. However, since it is still a WIP, I thought I could post the main building steps here.

The kit is the Revell Bf 109 G10 in 1/72. This is the box and contents - just two gray sprues, one clear sprue and decals for two aircraft. 37 parts in total:

IMAG1105

 

My main objective when I bought this kit was to try to properly paint a mottled camouflage. As you'll see later on, I tried a few other techniques, namely some scratch buiiding, in order to correct some lack of detail / errors.

I chose the option of the IV. Gruppe/JG 27, early 1945, Berlin aircraft, with yellow underside wing tips. I didn't find any information on the individual aircraft portrayed by Revell, but found several sources about Bf 109 G10 aircraft (109 lair, barracuda decals Part I and Part II), which I used to correct the painting instructions and other details.

I was also inspired by the excellent build of this kit made by Rato Marczak, though for a different individual aircraft.

This virtual view of a Bf 109 G10 cockpit was also useful.

My first step was to cut out the main parts (fuselage, wings, cockpit components) and make a dry-fit test, to check potential fit and seam problems:

IMAG1109

 

There was nothing specially problematic.

Next I cut out the canopy, gave it a bath of Alclad Aqua Gloss, which I found to be a superb product to bring out the transparency of clear parts, and let it dry overnight:

IMAG1222

 

When dry, I masked it with Tamiya masking tape. Here are a few steps of the masking process:

IMAG1223

 

IMAG1224

 

IMAG1225

 

Then, I proceeded to the cockpit. Luftwaffe aircraft of this period had their cockpits painted RLM 66 Schwarzgrau (Black Gray).

The instrument panel was given some color according to pictures of the real thing. The backs of the dials were painted black and the rims of some of them were dry-brushed with yellow and red. A dry-brush with silver was applied to provide a worn off look. A flat coat of varnish (Micro Flat) was then applied and, in the end, the dials were covered with a drop of Alclad Aqua Gloss, applied with a toothpick, to simulate the dials' glass covers:

IMAG1290

 

The cockpit base, seat and control column were also painted RLM 66, dry brushed with silver, and washed with a Vallejo brown acrylic wash. Finish is Micro Flat.

IMAG1292

 

The cockpit sides were subjected to the same treatment:

IMAG1293

 

IMAG1294

 

At this point in the build I intended to display the aircraft with a closed canopy, so I considered the existing cockpit detail to be good enough.

Here is the cockpit base, seat and instrument panel already glued together:

IMAG1419

 

IMAG1421

 

And now glued to the fuselage:

IMAG1425

 

IMAG1426

 

IMAG1427

 

Well, I guess this is enough for the first post of this WIP.

Hope you found it interesting. Thanks for looking.

Jaime

[VG 33]

This is very nice. I've built three of these G10 and I remember the propeller had too small a diameter.

Patrick

[jrlx]

Patrick, Thanks for your post. I'm afraid I'm too nearly finished to replace the propeler with an AM substitute...

[kwaterous]

Nice work.

It's remarkable how similar this looks to the 1:48 version...

K

[VG 33]

Patrick, Thanks for your post. I'm afraid I'm too nearly finished to replace the propeler with an AM substitute...

If you can find an old Heller kit...

Patrick

[jrlx]

If you can find an old Heller kit...

Patrick

Funnilly I did one when I was a kid. I believe it was an E-3 or E-4, but I lost track of it long ago.

[VG 33]

I was speaking about this one, which should be available for less than a resin propeller.

[jrlx]

Patrick,

Thanks for the tip. I'm afraid my local hobby shop has neither the resin propeller nor the heller kit in stock. They would have to be ordered from the sellers and that would take at least 3 weeks. As I'm just finishing the model and have already applied the spiral decal to the propeller cone (I'd have to source a new decal sheet or try to mask the resin cone and paint it), this is not an option right now.

However, I'll take note of your tips for a future build. Curiously, the resin propeller with cone, from Quickboost, would cost about 4 € and the kit at least 12 €.

By the way, the Heller kit has a great box art! Is the kit any good? Or is there a better 109 K?

Thanks again

Jaime

[Graham Boak]

The Heller kit is rather nice if a little dated now, with raised panel lines. The best late-war Bf109Gs and Ks come from Fine Molds. However, don't buy the Heller K for the prop, for although it is the right size it goes round the wrong way. Quickboost do a replacement prop which will do for either kit.

As I recall the Revell G-10 also has the undercarriage legs a little too far out, but I suspect that's too late now.

[jrlx]

Graham,

Thanks for the advice. I'm afraid it is too late now for additional modifications in the model. Anyway, my initial objective was to built it OOB and try my first mottled camouflage. In the way I ended up making a few error corrections but just those that where more glaring.

I'll make a few additional posts to show them.

Thanks again.

Jaime

[jrlx]

This is the second WIP post on the Bf 109 G10 by Revell.

I did a few corrections to the more glaring errors, though this was not my main objective for the build.

I decided to follow Rato Marczak's technique for building more realistic navigation lights.

I cut two roundels of clear sprue and etched the wing tips on the navigation lights' positions:

IMAG1438

 

IMAG1439

 

The roundels where drilled with a 0.3 mm mini-drill:

IMAG1441

 

then I filled the holes with transparent red and transparent blue paint:

IMAG1443

 

While I was dealing with the wings, I followed Rato's directions in order to make proper cartridge ejection holes. I started by drilling the positions of the holes:

IMAG1444

 

The holes were squared with a nº 11 x-acto blade:

IMAG1445

 

Then, I cut small strips of Evergreen 0.5 mm thick plastic sheet in order to build the ejector walls:

IMAG1447

 

These where glued in place and the exterior facing sides were painted RLM 66 with a small paintbrush (just to make them dark). I also glued the painted clear roundels in the wing tips:

IMAG1451

 

The clear roundels were sanded to shape:

IMAG1461

 

IMAG1462

 

Here's the end result:

IMAG1463

 

Before gluing the two fuselage halves together, I cut the front piece (where the propeller should fit) so that I could install the exhausts after the main painting:

IMAG1418

 

I also used putty to make some rivets disappear. In fact the kit has a quarter circle of rivets over the engine covers, which is not to be found in any picture or technical diagram of this aircraft:

IMAG1416

 

After gluing the fuselage halves together, I installed the air intake, which was previously drilled to make it more realistic (the original piece has no air admission hole...):

IMAG1485

 

I also installed a piece of plastic, carved out from sprue, to represent the battery box, on the back of the cockpit:

IMAG1511

 

I'll continue tomorrow. Thanks for looking.

Jaime

[jrlx]

Hello again

This is the third post in the WIP.

When I test fitted the canopy found it was narrower than the fuselage:

IMAG1515

 

It also didn't fit properly in the front, due to the gun sight piece:

IMAG1516

 

Due to this, I couldn't build the kit properly with the canopy closed and decided to build it with an open canopy. However, this implied I should cut the canopy piece.

To do this, I filled the inside of the piece with Blu-Tack I placed it on a Blu-Tak base, in order to minimise stress to the part while cutting. Then applied masking tape along the joint of the fixed and movable parts of the canopy, to serve as a guide for cutting:

IMAG1519

 

Using a brand new nº 11 x-acto blade, I scribed and slightly cut the piece along the joint:

IMAG1520

 

Then I slowly progressed, cutting through the piece. This took me quite a while and a lot of patience, but in the end I managed to cut the piece without damage:

IMAG1521

 

Here is the end result:

IMAG1522

 

The masking was then repaired and a new coat of interior colour was applied.

Since the canopy would be open, I decided to improve the armoured glass piece that existed behind the seat (fixed to the top of the moving part of the canopy).

The kit is rather poor regarding the representation of this part. This picture from early in the build shows that the armoured glass is represented by two pieces of slightly bent solid plastic, in each of the fuselage halves. Right at the beginning, even considering that I would build a closed canopy, I decided to improve this piece slightly, so I cut the two halves:

IMAG1136

 

cut off the inner area of the plastic pieces:

IMAG1137

 

glued them together and applied a piece of acetate to simulate a better looking armoured glass:

IMAG1139

 

Not really perfect but passable (hopefully...) under the closed canopy.

However, with an open canopy I decided to scratch build a proper looking piece. The following picture shows the real thing:

I used pieces of Evergreen 0.5 mm thick plastic sheet, cut to shape (here, side by side with my first attempt, already painted):

IMAG1486

 

Glued them together and here's the end result. Much better now, I guess:

IMAG1489

 

To finish with the improvements, I replaced the original gun sight (a solid piece of plastic) by a piece of acetate, previously bathed in Aqua Gloss to improve its transparency:

IMAG1543

 

Should be enough for a single post...

Thanks for your patience.

Jaime

[jrlx]

Hi, fourth post on work progress.

 

This one's about painting.

 

All the small parts were cut off the sprues, cleaned from flash and moulding marks and glue to the tips of toothpicks, for better handling and painting. I use just a small drop of super-glue on the toothpick's tip and press it against a locator pin or an area of the part that won't be visible after assembly. Here they are before priming:

IMAG1430

 

After priming (and painting some of them), the result was this:

IMAG1587

 

then I primed the aircraft with Tamiya XF-19 Sky Gray and pre-shaded the panel lines with flat black. Here's the top side:

IMAG1567

 

Here's the underside. Since the underside wing tips will be painted yellow, I primed these with flat white and masked them with tape, before priming the rest of the aircraft:

IMAG1569

 

After priming, I applied Mig's chipping fluid in areas that should show worned out paint and then applied silver over those areas. Next I painted the underside and fuselage sides with RLM 76 Lichtblau (light blue) and let it dry.

This is an aircraft with a mottled upper camouflage, in the transition from the upper colours to the underside colour. The upper colours are RLM 81 Braunviolett (violet brown) and RLM 82 Lichtgrün (Light Green). The mottling is done with RLM82.

I started by delimiting the upper and underside colours with blu-tack. The upper colours should be slightly blurred on the edges, so the airbrush should be used perpendicular to the blu-tack. Note the upper colour delimitations marked on the wings with pencil:

IMAG1616

 

IMAG1617

 

The lighter colour (RLM 82) was applied free hand within the pencil delimitations. I did some post-shading with lightened RLM 82 (with a drop of flat white):

IMAG1619

 

Next I used blu-tack to delimit the areas to be painted with the darker colour (RLM 81) and protected the already painted areas with a combination of masking tape and kitchen cling film:

IMAG1625

 

I try to avoid using masking tape directly over painted areas in order not to damage or peel off the paint.

After painting the darker colour and removing all the protections, this was the result:

IMAG1637

 

IMAG1638

 

IMAG1639

 

A detail of the soft transition from the upper to the lower colours:

IMAG1640

 

The next phase was painting the mottling. For this I diluted the paint in an approx. 75% thinner / 25% paint ratio, reduced the pressure to 10 psi and closed the airbrush paint volume as much as possible, in order to have as much control as possible over the paint application. Fortunately, Gunze paints are excellent and very rarely clog, even under these settings, which permits a good control of the mottle painting. The mottling was painted free hand, loosely following the kit's painting instructions.

 

Here is the result:

IMAG1646 / IMAG1647

 

A more detailed view:

 

IMAG1648 / IMAG1649

 

IMAG1650 / IMAG1651

 

I must admit I was rather pleased with the results, as this was my first mottling attempt.

 

Hope this has been interesting.

 

Cheers

 

Jaime

[jrlx]

Having finished the camouflage, I still had to paint the yellow underside wingtips to finish the main painting.

 

I had applied white primer to these, to ensure a brighter yellow, and kept them masked while painting the rest of the aircraft.

 

Now, I removed the masking from the wingtips and masked the rest of the wings' undersides, using kitchen cling film and masking tape:

IMAG1702

 

After painting the wingtips with RLM 04 - Gelb (yellow), this was the result:

IMAG1714

 

I had also painted the propeller blades, backplate and spinner cone. For this I used as reference Barracuda Decals' profiles in their 1/32 Bf 109 G10 decal sheets. It seems that most of these aircraft had the propeller backplate painted 1/3 white, 2/3 RLM 70 - Schwarzgrün (Black Green), even when they had a spiral on the spinner cone. The propeller blades where also RLM 70 and the cone was black. So, I decided to use these colours. The following picture shows the propeller and cone already painted (on the left we can see the armoured glass holding structure that will be installed inside the moving part of the canopy, painted RLM 66):

IMAG1704

 

I had to scratch build the flaps' trim tabs. Although the kit instructions direct us to paint these, the flap ones are missing. I made them from 0.5 mm thick plastic sheet:

IMAG1724

 

The trim tabs (wing flaps and elevators) were painted RLM 23 - Rot (Red):

IMAG1725

 

To finish with, in preparation for decaling, I applied a good gloss varnish coat, using Microscale's Micro Gloss.

 

Hope you found this interesting.

 

Cheers,

 

Jaime

[jrlx]

Some more progress on the Bf 109.

 

With the main painting behind me, I moved on to decaling. I used the kit decals. The swastikas came from an Xtradecal sheet.

My decaling method uses Micro Set and Micro Sol to ensure proper adhesion of decals to the surfaces. Here's the set-up, just before starting applying the decals:

IMAG1732

 

Though in total there were only approximately 30 decals, it took me two night sessions to apply them all.

 

The following pictures show the end results. These were taken before applying an additional coat of gloss varnish over the decals:

IMAG1747

 

IMAG1748

 

IMAG1749

 

IMAG1750

 

The fuel tank also had some decals:

IMAG1753

 

And the spinner spiral was a decal too:

IMAG1751

 

The decals were thin and reacted well to the setting solutions.

 

I did a couple of mistakes:

 

• I applied the swastikas in the end. The kit decaling instructions do not envisage enough space for the swastikas, therefore these are slightly overlapping the Werk Nummer on the tail fin. The Werk Nummer decals should be applied after the swastikas and slightly shifted to the rudder.
• The green tail band conformed beautifully to the fuselage but I wasn't careful enough and didn't make the visible end of the band to align with the underside longitudinal panel line.

 

That's it for now.

 

Thanks for looking

 

Jaime

[rob85]

Blimey that's a cracking build. Very good paint work there the colours look spot on to my poorly trained eye.

Brilliant

Rob

[CedB]

Bit late seeing this - sorry Jaime! A great build and some good tips here - thanks for sharing!

[jrlx]

Rob, CedB, thanks for your kind words. They're really much appreciated.

The paints used are Gunze Mr Hobby Colour acrylics. They're really very good and have the right tones for aircraft camouflages of different countries (RAF WWII and modern, RLM, FS, Japan WWII). They spray marvellously (it is very difficult to make them clog the airbrush - the same can't be said of Tamiya or Vallejo...) and the finish is superb.

Cheers

Jaime

[Dermo245]

Wow, great work on this one and like all the improvements you've made.

Dermot

[Doug Rogers]

Looking fantastic Jaime, I love the colours of these late Luftwaffe schemes, you're tempting me to get my Fujimi 1/48 G-10 off the shelf.

[Dan]

Looks really good.

[jrlx]

Again, thank you all for the kind words

Jaime

[jrlx]

Some more work on the Bf 109.

 

With decals applied, I moved on to some chipping. I had applied Mig's chipping fluid over silver paint in areas that should have worn painting. This was done before painting with the camouflage colours (both upper and underside).

 

Now, using the point of an x-acto blade, followed by 1000 grit sand paper, I chipped away the painting on:

 

• the wing roots (more on the port side than on the starboard side, since access to the cockipt was done on the port wing)
• edges of engine cover panels and hinges
• edges of cockpit and canopy
• along the edges of control surfaces that were metallic

 

I didn't chip too much. On the one hand I didn't want to overdo the effect, on the other I read these aircraft didn't get much use due to lack of fuel (end of the war), so they shouldn't be too weathered.

 

The following pictures show the results.

 

Port wing root:

IMAG1767

 

Starboard wing root:

IMAG1769

 

Engine cover panels and hinges:

IMAG1769

 

Control surfaces:

IMAG1770

 

Next, I applied a new gloss cover, to protect the decals, prior to further weathering.

The following weathering step was applying a dark wash, in order to achieve a dirty / worn look and to accentuate the panel lines. For this I used Vallejo's acrylic "Oiled Earth" wash. The following picture shows the set-up, just before applying the wash with a flat brush:

IMAG1782

 

I used a "sludge wash", where the paint is abundantly applied all over the aircraft, with strokes in the direction of the air flow. This process is not recommended for the faint of heart... A "pin wash", just along the panel lines, is a better option for those...

Here's the result, on the top surfaces:

IMAG1783

 

and on the under surfaces:

IMAG1784

 

After 10 minutes drying time (please, don't let it dry much more than this, otherwise the wash will stick...), I removed the excess with damp Q-tips, always with strokes in the direction of the airflow.

 

The resulting upper surfaces:

IMAG1785

 

and under surfaces:

IMAG1786

 

In detail:

IMAG1798

 

IMAG1794

 

Hopefully, the model now looks a bit more realistic.

 

I applied the same procedure to the fuel tank.

 

Wash applied:

IMAG1787

 

Excess removed:

IMAG1790

 

The small parts got the same treatment. Wash applied:

IMAG1788

 

Excess removed:

IMAG1789

 

That's all for now. Almost catching up with the present state of the works.

 

Hope you liked it.

 

Jaime

[Fatboydim]

Really good build Jaime, keep up the good work. Joe.

[jrlx]

Really good build Jaime, keep up the good work. Joe.

Joe, thanks a lot! Hopefully, I'll finish it over the weekend.

Jaime