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Banff Beaufighter - Airfix 1/72 new tool - Done, moved to Ready for Inspection


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Hope it's not considered cheating to chuck up pics of the painting stage of a build and state it's a work in progress!

I started this ages ago when the kit was first released but as with many of my builds something else bigger and shinier came along and it's been sat on the bench for a few months now. Cue a couple of days off, all my chores done, and kids at school, it seemed a good opportunity to roll out the airbrush and see if I could push this on a bit. I think it may have been the thought of masking those invasion stripes that stalled this, no decals for this!

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I work solely with Tamiya paints for airbrushing these days as they spray absolutely beautifully in conjunction with there own thinners. Matt White, no problem, covers superbly.

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I couldn't help myself from unpeeling the middle sections of masking to see how it looked, there would be tears and tantrums if after completing all the painting the lines were not quite straight!

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After recovering the stripes it was on to the lower surfaces, I used a mix of Tamiya XF21 Sky, XF20 Medium grey, and XF80 Royal light grey in a ratio of 4:11:2. I stumbled across a great phone app called iModelKit which has a superb set of paint charts and a paint matching calculator and its indispensable. A couple of hours to mask up the lower surfaces and a mix of XF24 Dark grey and XF2 White (16:2) and on with the upper surfaces.

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I misjudged how much paint to mix for the uppers but always try and paint in symmetrical sections, and blocks of panels just in case I do run short, this helped as any slight variations in mix aren't as obvious. I lightened the base coat slightly and went back over random panels to break up a potentially bland finish. Here's how it looks just now.

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Coats of Klear next and decals!

Comments and criticism all gratefully accepted,

Rgds,

Eng

Edited by eng
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Coming along very nicely. I too shudder at the thought of masking invasion stripes. Banff Beau's don't look right without them though, somehow. The application of white looks great btw.

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That's looking very nice. The kit looks like it is nicely detailed (even if those panel lines look a bit heavy to my eyes) and your paintwork looks superb.

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Quick update, no huge steps forward other than she's now had 2 coats of Klear and is ready for decals. I had a bit of time today but chose to push on some of the fiddly nightly bits like removing the wheel seams and re-spraying these. One thing that was bugging me after painting her last week was that the black part of the invasion stripes was going to show through the white on the fuselage roundels, it is only a thin band of white but it would be impossible to correct after decaling. I made up a couple of Tamiya tape masks and painted a white semi-circle into the black stripe to avoid this problem....I hope.

Also got the props finished off, was just the yellow tips really but thank goodness for Tamiya yellow! I fitted the cowl lips tonight and have to say they make a huge difference to the look of this beast. I'd kept them off to give a nice sharp demarcation between the colours and they just clipped neatly in to place and look superb.

Attached the torpedo mounts and painted and weathered the upper machine gun.

I was kicking myself last week for not having fitted the upper fuselage gunners glazing before painting the extra dark sea grey, I've now masked and sprayed this ready to be fitted once the final Matt coat has been completed.

Quick pic of current state -

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Might get a couple of the decals on tomorrow, as wont get anything done next week.

All comments welcome,

Rgds,

Eng

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  • 4 weeks later...

Well, it took a bit longer than planned to get to decaling this beauty but here's a few pics of progress made this week -

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This afternoon I had the opportunity to get a Matt coat onto her after last nights panel wash with Flory models Dark grey. I tend to use Humbrol rattle cans for the Matt coat purely for speed, but always use a fresh can, and the stuff dries almost instantly. Once dry the gear was fitted without to much trouble. I found my secret weapon for this - a sewing needle set into a small piece of dowel with the top of the eye cut off to leave a very fine fork that holds and applies the tiniest spot of superglue very accurately. I have now started further weathering using pastels and the pics below show it at the moment. I stepped away from pastel weathering until tomorrow when I'll have another look at it to see if it needs more or whether enough is enough, this will be sealed in with another light dusting of Matt varnish before the final bits n pieces are added.

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I've used a silver pencil with the tip sharpened to a fine point to add some paint chipping to panel edges and some fasteners on service panels and cowls. My biggest fear now is that I might have been better fitting the wing tip nav lights before now! I just hope they are a reasonable fit. Quite looking forward to removing the canopy masking too, keep having to think through the remaining steps to make sure I'm not too hasty in doing this!

All comments and suggestions welcome,

Rgds,

Eng

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Final bits n bobs done today and pics now over in RFI here - http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235001789-banff-beaufighter-airfix-172-new-tool/

Good fun this one, enjoyed every minute of this build.....mind you it's another Airfix new tool....no wonder I keep falling for these nice shiny red boxes.

Thanks for all the kind comments,

Rgds,

Eng

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