A Flight of Fanciful Fairey Fireflies: FR.1 & TT.4

[Navy Bird]

OK mates, it's down to the wire. The FR.1 desperately needs a coat of paint. My chosen markings use the Temperate Sea Scheme of Extra Dark Sea Grey (EDSG) and Dark Slate Grey (DSG), over Sky. Now, I typically use Gunze Mr. Hobby aqueous colours, but for this model I'm thinking about using WEM Colourcoats ACRN02 EDSG and ACRN06 DSG over Tamiya XF-21 Sky.

 

So what do you guys think of Colourcoats paint? Have you used these colours before, and how authentic do you think they are? The TSS scheme seems to be a tough one, as there is a large variety of colours that I've seen used on models. The lids on the Colourcoats tinlets. which I'm told are painted with the actual hobby paint, look pretty good.

 

Your thoughts are appreciated. Thanks!

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Col.]

I have used Colourcoats in the past to paint roundels on a 602 Sqn. Spitfire and found them to look authentic but took a while to dry fully. Then again most enamels do I suppose. Once the current crop of projects are cleared off the bench there's at least three or four I can use a test batch of paints James provided me at the weekend so I'll be interested to hear how you get on with them Bill.

[Navy Bird]

On 10/29/2015 at 19:54, Col. said:

I have used Colourcoats in the past to paint roundels on a 602 Sqn. Spitfire and found them to look authentic but took a while to dry fully. Then again most enamels do I suppose. Once the current crop of projects are cleared off the bench there's at least three or four I can use a test batch of paints James provided me at the weekend so I'll be interested to hear how you get on with them Bill.

 

I sprayed a test swatch of Colourcoats EDSG and DSG, using Testors Enamel Thinner. They both dried pretty quick. The EDSG looks pretty good, similar to Gunze H333 EDSG but not so dark and with a little less blue. The DSG I'm not so sure about - to my eyes it has quite a bit of olive in it where I think it should be more neutral. DSG is a Munsell Green-Yellow, though, but it just seems like too much olive. I could be wrong (don't tell Memsahib!)

 

One of my tests is to thin a paint way down and see how tight of a feather edge I can spray, without any clogging of the needle/tip. Some paints, like Gunze, I find exceptional in this regard, others, like Testors Model Master, I have a heck of a time with. The Colourcoats EDSG didn't clog at all, and I had it really thin. That's a good start!

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Col.]

Sounds great Bill. I'll mention this to James as I'm sure he'll be interested to read your thoughts. Plus he'll then get to join in the fun as we watch you create two beautiful Fireflys

[Navy Bird]

Arghh! I forgot to finish the leading edge landing light! Got to do that before I can paint.

 

OK, so let's chop off a hunk of that plastic tableware and sand it so it will fit in the notch I made previously. The notch has been painted Interior Grey-Green previously. Next, I get out that PE fret of landing lights from Marabu Designs and remove one that is about the right size. Marabu will have you glue two PR pieces together, a rear reflector and a front lamp holder. Since I'm going to finish the landing light the same way I made the navigation lights, I won't have enough room for the complete PE assembly. Instead, I'll just use the lamp holder. Next, I "flooded" the notch with CA adhesive, added the PE, and dropped in the chunk of tableware. Something like this (it really is a chunk, too):

 

 

Then we let the CA dry (do not use accelerator as this can cause bubbles in the glue, and that won't sand or polish out nicely). Once the CA is fully cured, it's the old sanding stick routine again to make the shape correct, followed by the Micro Mesh routine to polish it out. Then it looks pretty good (see the lamp holder in there - it looks like a mounted specimen of some bug or other).

 

 

All right, now we can close up the front canopy and get some paint on this baby. And while the paint is drying I can get the landing gear assembled and added to the TT.4.

 

We're getting there...slowly. I've set a personal goal of getting both of these finished before the end of the year. But now the leaves are falling off the trees, and someone has to pick them up and...it never ends. There's always something interfering.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Martian]

Sod the leaves Bill! Remember, never do today what you can put off until tomorrow! Anyway, the models are far more interesting tan dead leaves.

Martin

[Procopius]

Sod the leaves Bill! Remember, never do today what you can put off until tomorrow! Anyway, the models are far more interesting tan dead leaves.

I tried this argument with Mrs. P once. She didn't say anything, just stared at me for what felt like an eon until I went out to rake.

[Navy Bird]

On 11/1/2015 at 22:50, Procopius said:

I tried this argument with Mrs. P once. She didn't say anything, just stared at me for what felt like an eon until I went out to rake.

 

Same here. And I have really good excuses, too, like having had nine back surgeries, currently undergoing cancer treatments, having an aortic aneurysm, etc. Nothing works.

 

But on a positive note, I've noticed that Barracuda now have resin wheels/tyres for the later mark Fireflies (four spokes). This is good news, since I have their set for the early Fireflies (five spokes) which I'm using on the FR.1 and they are noticeably larger than the resin tyres that come with the TT.4 kit. I've ordered the new set and I'm quite sure they'll be the dog's danglies for the target tug.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[John Laidlaw]

I use these arguments:

"It's getting dark"

"It's raining"

"It rained today"

"It's snowing"

"Hey, it's your home too!"

Surprisingly, the last one actually worked... so although I hate raking and bagging leaves (and mowing the pointless expanse of grass, just so everyone knows), at least we do the job together and it goes faster.

BTW, nice job on the landing light

[CedB]

"...dropped in the chunk of tableware..." - not the best silver I hope?

Nice lamp Bill, good job!

Leaves. We're 'driven' by the recycling collections so we both went out and cleared three bags worth yesterday. I would prefer to wait until the trees were bare as we'll have to do the whole thing again. And then mow the grass. Damn you nature.

[keefr22]

Why do you all pick leaves up? leave them rot, they're just free compost! There that's my expert 'Gardeners World' tip for the day!

Well Bill, I somehow missed this thread for a while but have had an enjoyable time catching up. More cracking work going on here & I now look forward to watching them through to completion!

Hope you are well

keith

[giemme]

I tried this argument with Mrs. P once. She didn't say anything, just stared at me for what felt like an eon until I went out to rake.

I kinda know what you mean ....

Bill, great work on the leading edge landing light, can't wait to see some paint job going on!

PS: must have been leaves collecting and lawn mowing day yesterday, 'cause I did just the same; only that I go by Keith method, leaving the remaining leaves down after I mowed the grass - free compost!

Ciao

[PlaStix]

Hi Bill. Hope you are keeping well. I've just been catching up with progress again and it's looking very good. The work you've done on the wings looks great so far. You really have an eye for detail. Now I've got my two BoB Spitfires out of the way I'm hoping to keep up better with stuff going on across Britmodeller - I'm only working on one Centurion in the Vietnam GB!

Kind regards,

Stix

[general melchett]

Ah, leaves...bane of my existence here at Melchett Towers. We experience strong south westerly winds this time of year which seems to gather up all ours and everyone elses leaves and deposit them in a whirling tornado just outside the porch making egress from the property a life threatening event !...when the winds eventually die down I have to send Lady M out to trudge around the front of the house armed with a rake and green bin bags to collect the carpet bombed piles of debris and drag them off for a decent burial.... ....anyway Bill...nice lights !

[Navy Bird]

Yes! I am a happy man - I bagged a pair of tickets to the King Crimson concert in Toronto in a couple of weeks. It'll be like being 20 all over again. Woo-hoo!

 

I'm so happy, I don't even mind spraying Tamiya Sky.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Martian]

Sex Pistols, Rezillos and the Damned are more to my taste but I get the gist and hope you enjoy the concert.

Martin

[John Laidlaw]

Mr. Fripp is the man. Enjoy .

Sex Pistols, Rezillos and the Damned are more to my taste but I get the gist and hope you enjoy the concert.

Martin

I'm having the hardest time reconciling that with your avatar piccie... .

[Procopius]

Sex Pistols, Rezillos and the Damned are more to my taste but I get the gist and hope you enjoy the concert.

Destination Venus more than darkness lies between us/Twenty million miles of bleakness - Human weakness!

[Ascoteer]

Ah King Crimson...

Fripp, Fripp, hooray!

Crimson are just about my favourite band, I am a huge 'Prog Rocker' which is odd really since I was a punkette in my teens.

[PlaStix]

Good news about the King Crimson concert tickets. A colleague at work went to see them recently and said they were brilliant. I've never seen King Crimson as a whole but I've seen numerous of the musicians with other groups over the years. Very talented bunch they are.

Hope you have a great time when you see them.

Kind regards,

Stix

[occa]

Bill and others, just so you know all know why I gave your posts a liking, it's cause of King Crimson.

Good to see we have some more late hippie proggressive rock buffs than only me here, didn't expect that, haha nice ...

[Whistlekiller]

Sex Pistols, Rezillos and the Damned are more to my taste but I get the gist and hope you enjoy the concert.

Martin

I saw Robert Fripp do a guest appearance with The Damned at the (then) Hammersmith Odeon on their 1982 "Strawberries" tour. If I recall correctly he played on three cover versions, "Citadel" by The Rolling Stones, "Hippy Hippy Shake" by Chan Romero and "Looking At You" by MC5. I only saw King Crimson a few times and always the Belew/Bruford/Fripp/Levin line up that did Discipline, Beat and Three Of A Perfect Pair. Very clever musicians King Crimson. The Damned were more agricultural but immense fun nonetheless!

[Navy Bird]

Let's have an update, shall we?

 

First, I'm glad to see all of the Crims fans here. This is the band that defined progressive rock for me, and I've been buying their music since 1969. I've seen them three times - the first was 1974, so the show was made up mostly of selections from Lark's Tongues in Aspic and Starless and Bible Black. The second time was in 1982, around the time of Beat. Tony Levin is a local celebrity in my hometown, having studied at the Eastman School of Music and playing cello for a while in the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra. The last time I saw Crims was in 1996, the lineup being the famous "double trio." Opening act was the California Guitar Trio - OMG. I also saw Fripp in 1980 masquerading as a punk rocker in the short-lived League of Gentlemen. A man of many talents, Mr. Fripp. I'm quite anxious to see the new lineup, especially since it include Mel Collins, whose contributions to the early Crims are immense.

 

OK, enough of that! (Fun, though, wasn't it?). Getting ready to paint the FR.1, I cut out the gunsight from the film provided and mounted it on top of the resin structure that represents the body of the sight. I painted the edge of the film black, hoping that it might actually be visible from outside the canopy.

 

 

The front and rear canopies were masked with the Montex set, and attached to the model with white glue. There were a couple of places where I needed to blend the clear canopy into the fuselage, so I used my usual wall-board spackle, which I smoothed out with a wet paintbrush.

It was then that I fully appreciated the photos in my Firefly reference books. Most likely, the gunsight glass was round, not square. Oops, too late now.

 

I sprayed Gunze H74 Sky on the undersides, even though I know it is a bit on the yellow side. Since Gunze Sky is what I started using so many years ago, I will continue with this error moving forward!

 

Now, believe it or not I've not yet made a model in Temperate Sea Scheme, and Gunze doesn't make Dark Slate Grey. This seems to be a difficult colour for many people to get right - sometimes too dark, too light, too grey, or too green. The two brands of Dark Slate Grey that I have (Testor's and Colourcoats) are very different from each other. What to do?

 

Disclaimer: I have a degree in optics, and have a rudimentary grasp of colour science. The following analysis is probably bogus, but I chose to do it this way since I do not have access to any proper colour measurement tools. You have been warned!

 

Nick Millman's excellent blog "US Aircraft For The RAF" has several posts that discuss Dark Slate Grey. Included in these posts are JPG renderings of the colour. I don't know how these renderings were made, but knowing Nick's expertise in this area, I suspect they are as accurate of a representation that can be made in the RGB space.

 

Sampling Nick's JPG chip for Dark Slate Grey we get:

 

R - 92

G - 91

B - 82

 

What I see in these numbers is that the colour is somewhat dark, and that it has a bit more red and green which gives it an olive (green-yellow) cast. Testor's Dark Slate Grey is much too light, and to my eye is grey-green, with little olive. Colourcoats, on the other hand, has a distinct olive flavor, is darker than Testor's, and looks like it will work. So let's paint the beastie already!

 

 

To begin with, this photo is somewhat lighter than the actual model. I should probably adjust the exposure, but I let the camera's "auto" features do that. I have the f/# fixed at the smallest aperture available (f/8) and the white balance fixed fixed on Daylight, since my photo lamps are daylight rated. Nonetheless, the photo is a reasonable depiction of the actual model. On my monitor, anyway - YMMV!

 

Sampling this photo, you can, of course, get RGB values that are all over the map due to highlights and shadows. So is it possible to make any kind of statement about the colour, considering my crude tools? Probably not, but that never stopped me in the past!

 

As I sample across the fuselage in the photo, I get R and G values that are very close to one another, but with the G value typically ever so slightly higher, and the B value typically 15-20 "units" below the others. One area on the side of the spine, in-between the front and rear canopies, measures R - 93, G - 98, and B - 78. What I think these numbers tell me is that the photo (notice that I didn't say the paint), has a bit more olive cast to it than Nick's chip, and is lighter. There are numerous factors which can affect how the colour appears in this photo, however.

 

Any opinions from you chaps? How does this colour look to you? I like it myself, but don't let that sway you. Extra Dark Sea Grey is next!

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

PS. Hopefully Nick will stop by and show me why my little analysis is just plain silly! And that would be a good thing - "because figuring things out is always better than making stuff up."

[CedB]

Looks very good to me Bill (but what do I know?)

[Ex-FAAWAFU]

Ah, the joys of Naval modelling, "EDSG, discuss..." and there you are many hours later, and still not sure. (See also RLM colours, RAF Sky, RN camouflage.... OK, pretty much all painting!).

Allowing for the usual variables of photography and monitor (an iPad, in my case), your DSG looks nice. Looking forward all the more to your EDSG now...