Airfix 1/76 Cromwell Mk.IV - finished and in the Gallery

[PlaStix]

Looking good.

Mine kinda got lost. I got up to the painting stage, then had to vacate my modelling room. It got packed up with some other Stuff, and I haven't seen it since.

That's a shame Matt because it is really nice little kit. Hopefully it will turn up when you least expect it to!

Brilliant work stix looking forward to paint now

Thank you Darren. I'm still hoping to get some paint on at lunchtime today.

Kind regards,

Stix

[stevej60]

Good progress Stix I really did have a kit in my hand yesterday (Spitfire Mk1) but bottled out at the last minute and went for a Merlin

for the Helo GB,I couldn't bring myself to use that brush and no gloss for decalling,You,ve made the right choice with armour I think

you will do a cracking paint job with the limited use of stuff.

[PlaStix]

No I quite understand Steve. The paint is one of the reasons I went for the Cromwell but, having said that, I have started doing some painting on mine today but the paint is quite strange. It doesn't seem to go on like thinned normal Humbrol paints - it may not be helped by the brush. The bristles on my brush are split oddly and I had to trim some individual hairs off before starting. I didn't get chance to take any photos but I will tomorrow. The paint seems to remain thicker in places despite thinning with water......oh well. It's still fun so far!!

Kind regards,

Stix

[dazdot]

Good progress Stix I really did have a kit in my hand yesterday (Spitfire Mk1) but bottled out at the last minute and went for a Merlin

for the Helo GB,I couldn't bring myself to use that brush and no gloss for decalling,You,ve made the right choice with armour I think

you will do a cracking paint job with the limited use of stuff.

Shame on you Steve I think given what people have they are going a pretty damn fine job lol go for the spit Steve seriously it'll make you smile.

[PlaStix]

Bit more done today -

Final bits added to the turret:

....and machine gun fitted in the front of the hull:

I managed to bend this down within about 5 minutes of gluing it in place - I knew it was a good idea not to fit it too early!

First coat of paint on the wheels:

.....and lower hull:

Not a great look!

Probably partly due to the brush looking like this:

I'm going to have to cut bits off it before I can use it for any detail painting.

This is the result of it's use on the upper hull:

.....again - not great!

After a couple of very thinned coats more it's all looking a little better:

.....but this is what the brush looks like after that!!!:

On Monday I'll probably get another coat on this lot before moving onto the tracks and then paint the tire rims.

Hope everyone has a great weekend.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

Kind regards,

Stix

Edited April 1, 2016 by PlaStix

[dazdot]

I like that stix it looks good with green on that paint does need building up in coats Doesn't it?

[Plastic Bonsai]

This is a lovely little kit - especially the tracks which were the worst thing about the old models.

You might get the brush in a better shape if you rub Fairy Liquid into it and shape it whilst wet and leave to dry.

Is there anything that can be added to the paint to make it cover better?

[dazdot]

With brushes I was talking to plasmahal at Peterborough and he said to me about conditioning brushes. I'd never heard of it but once on line I found some good ideas. Now once I've washed a brush through, I put a small amount of hand soap on the brush, rub it in and thos softens the bristles and allows you to pull the brush into shape. Then you wet the bus in water again and wipe off the excess soap residue. But the brush stays in shape nicely.

[PlaStix]

I like that stix it looks good with green on that paint does need building up in coats Doesn't it?

Cheers Darren. The paint is quite odd - even when I've mixed it thoroughly it still seems thicker in some areas than others and thinning with water doesn't seem to help. Not to worry it is building up okay, albeit slowly.

This is a lovely little kit - especially the tracks which were the worst thing about the old models.

You might get the brush in a better shape if you rub Fairy Liquid into it and shape it whilst wet and leave to dry.

Is there anything that can be added to the paint to make it cover better?

I agree - it's a lovely kit - I have made one before and because I enjoyed it so much I decided at the time I would make another and this GB seemed like an excellent reason to!

Thank you for the tip about the brush I shall give that a try. I do add water to all my paints to thin them - anything else, for this GB, would go against the spirit of it. I'm not too worried - I am just enjoying the process.

With brushes I was talking to plasmahal at Peterborough and he said to me about conditioning brushes. I'd never heard of it but once on line I found some good ideas. Now once I've washed a brush through, I put a small amount of hand soap on the brush, rub it in and thos softens the bristles and allows you to pull the brush into shape. Then you wet the bus in water again and wipe off the excess soap residue. But the brush stays in shape nicely.

Hi again Darren. Thank you for the tip - it sounds similar to PB's above - I will have a bit of an experiment on Monday.

Kind regards,

Stix

Edited April 2, 2016 by PlaStix

[PlaStix]

More progress. First off I got the tracks painted with the matt black (Humbrol 33). This is a big change for me from my usual model building. I usually use Revell's Anthracite to represent black on all builds as I find it less harsh. The black applied reasonably well once it had been thinned. After it had dried well I did some dry-brushing with the Gunmetal - I'm not doing the poor old brush any favours here! Anyway it ended up looking quite reasonable. I may use the Humbrol Dark Earth, that came with this kit, for a wash over these:

Now my usual process with armour builds is to paint the base colour and then apply a darkish grey wash to tone the colour down. Next I'd apply a targeted Anthracite wash into and around any raised/lowered details to accent them and then dry-brush everything with a lighted (with white) version of the base colour to highlight raised detail. Well the starter kit doesn't come with darkish grey, Anthracite or white! I've been thinking how to get around this. My solution was to give everything a very thinned wash of the black. This made the green look very much darker. Then I dry-brushed everything with the base green colour. It's not quite the same effect as my usual method but as close as I'm going to get with the starter set paints.

So here are some photos of progress so far - from looking at the photos I can see there are some areas I still need to do more dry-brushing with the base colour:

Comments and suggestions welcome.

Kind regards,

Stix

[stevej60]

Finish looks spot on Stix

[PLC1966]

Coming together nicely.

It is a well engineered kit and I built one myself a while back. The track solution is very imaginative and works well. I remember the old days of heating a Mecanno screwdriver over a candle stub and welding godawfull rubber band tracks together.

I seem to remember it was copius amount of glue to each end, then weld, then lose about a CM of track through over enthusiastic welding, then glue the track to the wheels and rollers with the gap at the top !!

[dazdot]

That looks good stix and good solutions to difficult issues and we'll within the spirit of the build well done

[PlaStix]

Finish looks spot on Stix

Hi Steve and thank you. It's better than I was first expecting it to be - after several thinned coats of paint, the wash and some dry-brushing it came out okay.

I seem to remember it was copius amount of glue to each end, then weld, then lose about a CM of track through over enthusiastic welding, then glue the track to the wheels and rollers with the gap at the top !!

Sounds about right!

That looks good stix and good solutions to difficult issues and we'll within the spirit of the build well done

Thank you Darren. It did take some thinking about - at one point I was considering mixing the green with some of the dark earth to see what happened.............sludge colour methinks!!

Only a brief update today - tire rims painted while still on the sprues:

....this was pretty tricky to do with the supplied/battered brush but with a bit of sideways painting it worked ok.

Then wheels cut off, filed smooth and touched up where the sprue gates had been:

Next update won't be until next week now - I'm still reasonably hopeful I'll get this finished.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

Kind regards,

Stix

Edited April 6, 2016 by PlaStix

[Wolwe82]

looking smooth and nice Stix cheers

[PlaStix]

Thanks Wolwe. I have to say that, although the brush is now split and spread out quite a bit, it is made from quite a nice 'what ever it is' and allows paint to flow quite well even if I was having to paint with it kind of sideways on!!

[dazdot]

Well stix if you did that with a split brush you did well dream work

[PlaStix]

Hi Darren. Thank you. Next I'm going to have to 'trim' the brush so I can paint the details - some look really small compared to the brush!!!! I'll post a photo before trimming the brush and after.

I've got some assembly done today -

Wheels and tracks on:

Then I glued the upper hull to the lower hull:

Hull and turret ready for assembly:

....and then I couldn't resist a test fit - several photos follow!!:

So I still need to paint the machine guns and tools before finally adding the decals.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

Kind regards,

Stix

Edited April 11, 2016 by PlaStix

[dazdot]

Looking good stix nice work

[PlaStix]

Thank you Darren.

Right - after all the painting/dry-brushing done so far the brush ended up looking like this:

Problem is I now need to paint the machine guns and tools - which are quite small.

So first off I used my craft knife to cut away some of the bristles:

Then I followed Plastic Bonsai's and Darren's advice and used some soap to help shape the bristles and ended up with this:

Result!!

Now it's not perfect - I fould it still kept spliting a bit but with some careful painting I managed to achieve this:

....and this:

You can perhaps also see I did some dry-brushing with the Gunmetal over some of the raised deatil.

So just the decals left to do!

Comments and suggestions welcome.

Kind regards,

Stix

[dazdot]

Nice work stix I like the soap method seems to work for me

[PlaStix]

Nice work stix I like the soap method seems to work for me

Thank you Darren.

And all of a sudden it's finished! - decals applied and paint touched up where I managed to scrape some off! The decals were really easy to apply - the star took a bit of work with some very hot water, but it went on over the raised detail much better than expected. There are a couple of creases in it but for the most part it's not bad for saying. The only thing is that most of the decals with clear sections are silvered due to being applied to a matt surface - but hey - these are pretty small decals anyway.

A couple of photos here:

.....and the gallery photos can be found here.

....and a few more photos: here

I really enjoyed this GB - it was great fun. Big THANK YOU to dazdot - you have been an excellent host and thank you to anyone who took the time to comment or offer advice.

It is a great little kit - the only real issue being some of the attachment points to the sprues which are a little on the large side. I can say that it makes up and paints well with the just the stuff in/on the box - I even found the glue reasonably good to work with!! Thoroughly recommended!

Right - let's do this again sometime.

Kind regards,

Stix

Edited April 13, 2016 by PlaStix

[dazdot]

Yep and next time stix you can host lol.

Great work that and I have to say that group builds with the people that have taken part in this are a pleasure

That is one awesome result and like the others on here really show what can be achieved with the kits

[PlaStix]

Thank you Darren and yes I'd be up for hosting the next one!

[wimbledon99]

Er, WOW!!

Can't believe the finish with just the basic hardware!

Brilliant!!