A sacrifice to the Plastic Modelling Gods - Airfrog Beaufort- FINISHED

[AdrianMF]

12 hours ago, spaddad said:

Does anybody know why they are still doing it, even in the face of so much criticism from the modelling community?

I guess their choices are: (1) raised rivets (2) raised panel lines (3) no surface detail (4) finer lines or (5) the current panel lines. 1-3 are deemed unacceptable nowadays and 4 is subject to all sorts of issues like moulding machine technology, pressure, temperature, plastic composition, company experience and cost, so we are left with 5.

 

In general Airfix detail in the new softer plastic seems less sharp to me than that of the other major manufacturers. But their kits are certainly welcome and buildable, and let's hope they are selling enough to let them invest in a new tool Beaufort!

 

Regards,

Adrian

 

[spaddad]

1 hour ago, AdrianMF said:

 and let's hope they are selling enough to let them invest in a new tool Beaufort!

 

That's not going to happen until you finish yours so crack on!

Regarding overscale panel lines that's down to the design & manufacture of the tooling. I was an engineer in an injection moulding company for 14 years so I do have some idea what I'm talking about. If numerous other companies, big & small, can produce kits with extremely fine panel lines & surface detail whilst utilising different tool design & manufacturing companies & differing plastic types Airfix are, for whatever reason, designing in overscale panel lines. If you haven't already have a look at Hendies excellent post on injection moulding.

[keefr22]

12 minutes ago, spaddad said:

If numerous other companies, big & small, can produce kits with extremely fine panel lines & surface detail whilst utilising different tool design & manufacturing companies & differing plastic types Airfix are, for whatever reason, designing in overscale panel lines.

 

And Airfix themselves have proved they can do much finer (if not leading industry standard) panel lines on kits such as their new tool Harrier GR1.

 

What's even more vexing is the panel lines on the Phantom's wings are much better than those on the fuselage!

 

K

[keefr22]

2 hours ago, AdrianMF said:

let's hope they are selling enough to let them invest in a new tool Beaufort!

 

 

Seconded!

 

K

[CedB]

While at Brooklands I talked to the volunteer manning their Harrier and he'd been involved in the IPMS team advising Kinetic on their 1/48 kits. They'd explained to him that adding just simple lines can increase the costs of the tool by hundreds of pounds and this has to be weighed against the likely sales of the kit.

Maybe that's why the detail varies from model to model?

[AdrianMF]

Thanks for the interesting and well-informed discussion on panel lines - lots to think about if you are a kit manufacturer.

 

Anyhow, here are my panel lines painted up after the application of the filler and some paint:

For me, that’s enough of a panel line to be going on with.

 

Thanks for looking,

Adrian

[keefr22]

That does look a lot better than the untreated kit ones do Adrian, so a worthwhile bit of filling!

 

Keith

[bbudde]

Like it.

[AdrianMF]

Getting the cockpit frames on, one or two at a time:

The canopy is still eerily clear for me.

 

Thanks for looking,

Adrian

[Vesa Jussila]

Nice progress. 

[spaddad]

Really looking forward to the RFI for this one.

[Courageous]

Looking great Adrian.

4 hours ago, AdrianMF said:

The canopy is still eerily clear for me.

...there's still time. 

 

Stuart

[CedB]

8 hours ago, AdrianMF said:

Getting the cockpit frames on

Nice work Adrian - what are you using for the frames please?

[Brandy]

The canopies are coming along very nicely indeed. Are you using micro masking tape for the frames? Also nice to see them blended in. One of my pet hates is canopy frames that look like afterthoughts. Most aircraft have no obvious frame between the fuselage and glazing.

 

Ian

[AdrianMF]

15 hours ago, CedB said:

what are you using for the frames please?

I'm actually putting down a thin strip of Tamiya tape where I want the frame to be, then putting a thin strip either side of the tape and removing the middle one*. Then I'm brush painting with a coat of unthinned Hu78 acrylic interior green, followed by a top coat of unthinned acrylic top colour. By the time I've cleaned the brush and mixed the top colour, the interior green is dry enough to take it. By the time I've cleaned my brush after the top colour, it's time to whip the tape off and use a cocktail stick to remove any seeps and/or overpaints.

 

Where the frame is curving/sloping a lot, the tape puckers on the "downhill" side of the curve, so I only mask  the downhill side and keep the brush close to the that tape. You can see the back of the front frame doesn't have a ridge and is a little bit wobbly because that's what happened there.

 

It's less daunting to paint the frames one by one than to cut up loads of odd shapes to cover all the windows (which I only ever do if I'm spraying rattle can silver). And nobody makes mask sets for my vacforms!

 

* Or just leave a gap that looks right between the two tapes, but it's easier to judge placement with an initial "this is where the frame is" tape.

14 hours ago, limeypilot said:

Also nice to see them blended in

Well the pilot's canopy blended in very well by happenstance, but the navigator's was a right pain, even after I had widened the mould and made another couple. Luckily the Beaufort has quite a distinctive strip running round the front canopy, which I re-created with a strip of paper superglued on after I had finished with the filler. Covers a multitude of sins!

 

Regards,

Adrian

 

 

 

[keefr22]

14 hours ago, AdrianMF said:

I'm actually putting down a thin strip of Tamiya tape where I want the frame to be, then putting a thin strip either side of the tape and removing the middle one*. Then I'm brush painting with a coat of unthinned Hu78 acrylic interior green, followed by a top coat of unthinned acrylic top colour. By the time I've cleaned the brush and mixed the top colour, the interior green is dry enough to take it. By the time I've cleaned my brush after the top colour, it's time to whip the tape off and use a cocktail stick to remove any seeps and/or overpaints.

 

That's really very neat, I thought you must have used decal strips!

 

I agree about the clarity of the canopy, fantastically see through - hope @Courageous hasn't witched it now....!!!

 

Keith

[CedB]

Thanks Adrian. Sounds like you need lots of patience - I think I'll carry on with my Filmoplast tape  

[Courageous]

15 minutes ago, keefr22 said:

hope @Courageous hasn't witched it now....!!!

Adrian has a special technique to keep the evil dust away.

 

Stuart

[AdrianMF]

15 minutes ago, CedB said:

Thanks Adrian. Sounds like you need lots of patience - I think I'll carry on with my Filmoplast tape  

Ultimately it’s a case of horses for courses. When faced with a featureless vac canopy this method allows you to build the frames as you go, and each step is pretty foolproof (which may be why it works for me!)

 

Regards,

Adrian

[AdrianMF]

The painter at 217 Squadron had a variety of styles for his “MW”s, with the middle “v”s being either full length or half height, pointed or cropped. Needless to say, although my Xtradecals code sheet contains quite a few variants of “M” and “W”, none of them match the ones on my chosen subject!

 

So, out with the tape:

I have blocked out the code letters. The dividers help me to check that heights and widths are equal and the end of the ruler provides a handy right angle so I don’t get italics.

 

All the verticals:

 

Diagonals:

 

Get your “R”s in gear:

 

And done:

 

These are pretty close to the real thing, and closer than I could get using aftermarket decals, although the stroke width could have been a tad narrower in retrospect - less than a pencil line thickness so it’s beyond my modelling accuracy threshold!

 

I’ve given them a light sanding to remove the masking ridges and I’m resisting the urge to do more corrections until I have got the roundels and serials on so I can see what needs fixing in context.

 

Thanks for looking,

Adrian

[224 Peter]

Excellent work! 

It looks as though the painter of the original aircraft used the same stencil for the M and W, one an inversion of the other!

[AdrianMF]

Just now, 224 Peter said:

It looks as though the painter of the original aircraft used the same stencil for the M and W, one an inversion of the other!

Indeed! Some of them have slopey “W”s, some don’t.

 

Regards,

Adrian

[CedB]

Nice work Adrian - oh, I wish I had half a quarter of your patience! Great stuff.

[Martian]

3 hours ago, Courageous said:

Adrian has a special technique to keep the evil dust away.

 

Stuart

Perhaps he would like to share it with us.

 

Martian 👽

[AdrianMF]

41 minutes ago, Martian Hale said:

Perhaps he would like to share it with us.

Dust sticks to canopies generally because the static charge on the canopy attracts the dust. And the static charge is built up by all that canopy polishing that we do. So if you rub a synthetic fabric (I use my running togs) over the bottom of the fuselage and then tap the canopy, the dust gets attracted to the new, bigger, static charge. It worked for me during the F-111 GB here.

 

Regards,

Adrian