Avro 504K, 1/32, Scratchbuild

[Bandsaw Steve]

Not sure I understand that last post, that’s a bit of a puzzle to me. 🤔
 

Still, I suppose if I think long and hard, I should be able to Solvite. 😁

[matti64]

On 10/31/2019 at 11:10 PM, Bandsaw Steve said:

Not sure I understand that last post, that’s a bit of a puzzle to me. 🤔
 

Still, I suppose if I think long and hard, I should be able to Solvite. 😁

If you lived through the 1970's you  might remember the Solvite ads...

[Bandsaw Steve]

Wow! Have just googled those adverts and... Wow! 😱😱😱

 

No I’ve never seen any of them before and that’s probably just as well; I was fairly young in the 70’s and I reckon most of those would have given me nightmares! 😳

[Marklo]

I remember the solivite adds, usually involved some poor sod being pasted on to something and dangled over ravenous sharks or the like. And yes I was also quite young during the 70s

[matti64]

2 hours ago, Marklo said:

I remember the solivite adds, usually involved some poor sod being pasted on to something and dangled over ravenous sharks or the like. And yes I was also quite young during the 70s

Yep that's the one! I couldn't find a  picture relating to that advert specifically on the web and had to settle for one of the ones where  the fake SE-5 was covered in "wallpaper".

[bar side]

Those ads pre dated health & safety

 

 

Mind you for real you-couldn’t-do-that-now just try Blue Peter cleaning Nelsons Column.  Still makes me feel queezy

Edited November 4, 2019 by bar side

[Bandsaw Steve]

Don't Scroll While the Photographs are Loading

 

Once again I am having to write this in editing mode because the photos have been posted prematurely.

 

This time I happen to be a little more conscious of what I was doing when the accidental posting happened and am confident that I know what's caused the issue.  It definitely seems that scrolling while the photographs are loading into the software is what's causing this trouble.  So immediately after copying the address sit still and let the software settle down a bit. Once each individual picture has loaded you should be able to scroll down and load the next one.

 

Anyhow - onto business.

 

This is how we left our Avro 504 at the end of the last substantive post - before we got sidetracked by eyelets and turnbuckles and Solvite - all of which is fine by the way - sidetracks are good! Anyhow, the aeroplane is grey and it's time for some paint; so let's have a crack at it.

 

First select a colour scheme. Long ago I spotted this one (the bottom one of the two shown here) and it seemed to fit the bill. Not the usual 'PC10 all over' scheme and an aircraft that was according to the refence book in service in 1918, and hence - I'm recklessly assuming - on the day of the formation of the RAF.

 

Here I've photocopied the image and enlarged it up to 1/32 scale. This gives me a chance to cut out the (stork? heron? bittern?) emblem that will embellish the side of the fuselage.

 

Here he goes - all cut out and ready to go.

 

Trace around the outside of the template onto some of this superb Tamiya masking sheet.

 

Spray a bit of Tamiya flat white onto the relevant part of the airframe and let it dry.

 

Stick the bird onto the relevant part of the fuselage. 

 

And spray white over the top of the masking so that any bleed under will be white on white. 

 

That's part one of the painting job done - and there's plenty more to follow.

 

I'm going to finish there for now though because it's a right PITA writing this stuff retrospectively in editing mode. I'm actually a bit fussy about this writing business and prefer to get my prose into some sort of order before posting...

 

Will aim to post again soon and next time will try hard to not scoll while loading pictures.

 

Bandsaw Steve.

[Marklo]

I shall type rather than convey me question through the medium of mime.
 

Very nice, no text, what’s the yellow sheet?

Edited November 5, 2019 by Marklo

[Bandsaw Steve]

Have another look now that there is some '%#**!#@ING' text.

 

Sorry about the premature posting - I hate it when that happens, pictures speak a thousand words but pictures and words together are by the far the best. 🙂 (and emoji's help too).

 

The gridded paper is Tamiya masking sheet.  Not commonly available and I can't say I can recall where I got this from but it's very good stuff. 👍

 

Steve

[kev67]

16 minutes ago, Marklo said:

I shall type rather than convey me question through the medium of mime.
 

Very nice, no text, what’s the yellow sheet?

Tamiya A5 washi tape I believe, I use the same stuff in my Cameo Silloutte cutter

[kev67]

One tip I have used, if you run a small amount of Johnson Klear around the edge of the cutout image with a paint brush, it will stop paint blead

[Bandsaw Steve]

That’s a great idea! 👍

[hendie]

nice dodo

 

 

[kev67]

40 minutes ago, Bandsaw Steve said:

That’s a great idea! 👍

What you done will work, but you will find it will create a step in the paint as the aersol spray is quite thick compared to using an airbrush

[Marklo]

I might add it may be grey but it looks wonderful so far. I have a 1/48 504k in the post I’m thinking I’ll finish it as a home defence night fighter, I think I have a fetching all black scheme in an old Airfix magazine.

 

Found the Tamiya masking sheet on eBay. Will be interesting to see if my little neje laser engraver will cut it....

[Bandsaw Steve]

Paint - At Last

 

Well the heading pretty much says it all. No time for flowery nonsense - let's get some paint on this thing.

 

First we need to find some fabric / dope coloured paint.  From the various images I can find in various formats the colour of doped aircraft fabric varies widely from a yellowish, brownish, straw colour to shades that are close to off-white.  I strongly suspect - but do not know for sure - that dope may have discoloured over time, so that the older the covering got the darker it became. Just speculation on my part; I'm interested if anyone knows more.

 

Anyhow, I thought my Avro would get a nice clean well-maintained appearance given that it was a second-line aircraft and that it is to represent the RAF on it's birthday.  So I'm leaning toward a pale linen shade. In this case I'm using Vallejo Silver-Grey darkened with a few drops of Tamiya Dark Yellow.  Cross-mixing paints like this is probably against someone's religion somewhere but I do it quite a bit and I have found that, as a general rule, it's normally not that big a deal. Test compatibility before mixing up gallons of the stuff and check that the resulting mix thins OK with whatever thinner you choose to use. In this case I think I got away with it.

 

So here is a nice pale linen or raw calico colour. It could probably do with being a bit darker - but I'm OK with it.

 

While working on the painting I gave these bits a quick blast with a rattle can of matt aluminium - the same stuff that I used for most of the MIG-15.

 

Now for the dreaded PC10 finish.  Few - if any - colours in the world of modelling are more analysed than this.  Fortunately I was not alive during WW1 so I have no claim to any first-hand knowledge of what the colour 'should' look like.  I do genuinely respect the findings of those people who delve into such matters and do appreciate their diligence, but on this occasion I'm going to go with what looks about right to me. Here I've tried Tamiya Japanese Ground Self Defense Force Olive Drab.  

 

Here's the result under a fairly orangish light.  At first I thought it looked OK but I let it sit for 24 hours and decided - Nahhhhhh….  Too dark and too green.     Try again.

 

So now I resorted to a home-made mix of Khaki Drab, Yellow-Green and a dash of Mid Green to yield...

 

This colour! Which I am much happier with. If you look at the wing in the foreground you can see the revised colour on the trailing edge and the old green shade in the middle of the wing.  I much prefer the revised shade.  

 

Here's what she looks like with just one more light coat to go on.

 

And now it's that most exciting and fraught time in any modeller's life - time to remove the masking. I let Baby Bandsaw do some of this just so she could experience the thrill first hand!  Now she can't wait to mask up and spray her Hogwart's Express. So that's a bonus.

 

Here she is stripping the masking away from the cockpit openings.  The demarcation isn't too bad and the two major colours are harmonising quite nicely - they are both 'earth shades' and I think my new home-made PC10 goes better with the cream than the darker green would have.

 

Here's what the model looks like now. I'm happy with this! 🙂

 

In her monoplane configuration she looks suitably racy.

 

And the cockpit is looking encouraging as well I think.

 

So - there we go. Not perfect by any means, but a major step in the right direction, all completed without any real disasters.  

The only problem now is that my two main paint colours are home-made mixes, so if I ever have to do a touch-up - and I will have to - I will have to make a matching mix, and that's not always an easy thing to do.

 

Thanks for dropping by,

Bandsaw Steve

 

 

[Marklo]

Liking the PC10. The Germans nicknamed the RFC/RAF the sparrows and judging from my bird table none of them are olive drab, so I think the tone probably should be more towards brown/khaki. I always think pond slime ( which is why despite building 4 RAF biplanes this year only one is in PC10, and why my O/400 is pink  )

 

CDL is also  troubling I think you need to decide what your modelling and work from there. I.e. if it’s a machine just out of the factory it’s going to be close to white with whatever additional hue from the dope, if it’s been in service it’s probably going to darken and discolour which is going to depend on the exposure to light and the chemicals in the dye and the dope. And if it’s a museum machine it will have aged so as to probably be unrecognisable from the first case. Which in a roundabout way leads me to the point that ‘accurate’ colour is something of a myth. I shoot for realistic/pleasing (if you’re interested  try figuring out what colour a Mk IV heavy tank should be or google 4BO  , as exercises in frustration)

 

As for the mixes the real thing in service would probably have undergone many patches and touch ups (it is a trainer after all) and I bet no two would be the same.

 

Now I’m being niggly here ( so out of character I know) but seeing as how the upper decking was ply ( possibly covered in linen?) shouldn’t  it be a slightly different colour from the fabric covered bits? If the former would it be painted to match? Of even if the latter it would be a bit darker owing to the ply being opaque. Just a thought.  Probably same for the turtledeck.

Edited November 5, 2019 by Marklo

[pheonix]

3 hours ago, Marklo said:

Liking the PC10. The Germans nicknamed the RFC/RAF the sparrows and judging from my bird table none of them are olive drab, so I think the tone probably should be more towards brown/khaki.

 

CDL is also  troubling I think you need to decide what your modelling and work from there. I.e. if it’s a machine just out of the factory it’s going to be close to white with whatever additional hue from the dope, if it’s been in service it’s probably going to darken and discolour which is going to depend on the exposure to light and the chemicals in the dye and the dope. And if it’s a museum machine it will have aged so as to probably be unrecognisable from the first case. Which in a roundabout way leads me to the point that ‘accurate’ colour is something of a myth. I shoot for realistic/pleasing (if you’re interested  try figuring out what colour a Mk IV heavy tank should be or google 4BO  , as exercises in frustration)

 

As for the mixes the real thing in service would probably have undergone many patches and touch ups (it is a trainer after all) and I bet no two would be the same.

I completely agree with Mark. We WW1 modellers have to contend with the "experts", (where ex is an unknown quantity and spurt is a drip under pressure), who try to tell us exactly what shade/hue any given colour should be - WW2 types have to contend with the joys of weathering (or not) - all the while forgetting that it is our model and we really have done some research and found that however hard we may try there is no clear agreement. Because in reality PC 10 was mixed in buckets, (literally in many cases in the field), with whatever was available at the time. Not to mention fading, patching, other forms of wear, etc. So go for it Steve - what looks right to you IS RIGHT!

 

I agree with Mark's comment that perhaps PC10 should be on the brown side of Olive Drab but apparantly when the dope was still relatively new it was nearer OD.

 

P

[Marklo]

I think that modelling things that are not even in living memory means you’re never going to know if the colour is 100% correct for the subject at the time it is being modelled ( as far as I could  tell btw Mk IV s were painted tank brown which may or may not have been a chocolate brown as in the colour of Cadbury’s  dairy milk) but nobody really knows and any actual material we have is aged and or chemically degraded so the exact colour is pretty much lost. So again you might as well stick to pleasing colour because you’ll never know if it’s accurate any way.
 

In the course of my career I have worked on colour I know one end of a spectrophotometer ( a device for determining the exact colour of an object, more or less) from the other, how to use a Macbeth plot (nothing to do with a Scottish king btw @Martian Hale) On a totally unrelated point  I can also say flocculation without smirking.

 

and even with all this modern tech the business of colour matching painted items is head wrecking. So yes I bet that if you stood on the 504 production line the colour of any two machines was probably not the same let alone two factories/batches etc.  Fred probably spread his paint a bit more, Bill probably dipped the brush a bit more. To take it to extremes look at the olive paint on Fokker Dr1s, each one is unique.
 

hides soapbox

 

To summarise 504K looking good, remember to enjoy your hobby

Edited November 5, 2019 by Marklo

[Courageous]

I agree with both Mark and Pheonix about PC10, do what looks and feel right to you the modeller.

Nice to see paint on her, looks much better.

 

Stuart

 

[Brandy]

She's looking great! I agree re the colours, but also agree that your home-made PC10 looks better, so we're all happy!

 

Ian

[hendie]

ohh oooohh oooohhhhh coloring in!  

Nice colors - and you even stayed inside the lines.  Sadly, I have to agree with you as much as it disheartens me.  Your second attempt at thon color looks much better

 

Any more crayons coming? or is that it?

[Bandsaw Steve]

10 minutes ago, hendie said:

ohh oooohh oooohhhhh coloring in!  

Nice colors - and you even stayed inside the lines. 

 

Any more crayons coming? or is that it?

Mate! I’m a geologist! The mine engineers like to tell us that the only thing we are good at is colouring-in our maps. I -for one - never go over the lines, at least not at work. My painting efforts sometimes leave room for improvement though.

 

More crayons? Yes, some of the markings on this thing will be painted on and I think Marko has a point about the cockpit decking and the turtleback. So I might take that opportunity to add some variety to the currently flat uniform blocks of colour.

[Bandsaw Steve]

A bit of Variation

 

A few posts back @Marklo suggested adding a bit of variation to the clear dope by altering the shade on the upper decking of this thing and I reckoned that was a good suggestion. So the next bit of painting was as shown below. 

Mask off the upper decking, mix up a slightly darker version of my home-made clear dope and spray it on.

 

 

Looks OK I think. I was going to do the upper cockpit surround as well but the masking there promised to be considerably more involved so I think any variation in that area will be added later on when I do a bit of light weathering.

 

Meanwhile @kev67 very intelligently suggested using 'Johnson's Klear' as a way of sealing the edges of any especially critical masking. The idea being that if there is any bleed-under the tape it will be colourless and that once in place the layer of Klear will completely seal the edge.  Now that strikes me as a great idea! Here I'm trying this technique on the masking that will delineate the bright red unit marking on this model.

 

And here's most of the additional masking that I used for this job - even here it's not complete!  I have never regretted using too much masking but have often regretted taking short-cuts and using too little.

 

If anyone's interested here's the paint that I'm using for RAF insignia red.  I generally seem to have good luck with Vallejo paints and therefore don't mind the little bit extra that they cost.

 

After a brief couple of coats with the airbrush I had this - which looked OK to me. 

 

The tail got some attention also before the stripping the masking.

 

Then some more tape and 'Klear' went on in preparation for the blue on the tail.

 

Action shot - Vallejo 'Azul Intenso' being applied; this stuff airbrushes like a dream.

 

Masking removal - the moment of truth. Please disregard the little bit of wood-filler in on the foreground tailplane, that'll be sanded out and repainted soon.

 

I think the dodo looks alright!

As Kev67 suggested there was a slight ridge in the paintwork around the outside of it but it was mostly mitigated by the simple expedient of rubbing the paintwork - once completely dry - with my thumb.  I know that you should never ever touch paintwork but the soft fleshy part of a thumb is about the softest 'abrasive' I know and in this case it smoothed the edge nicely without scuffing the red surface.

 

And here's how the project looks right now.  A bit of variation in the colours and markings does wonders to liven her up a bit. 

 

I've still got roundels and serial numbers to go, these will most likely be waterslide decals and Letraset. There are still many little painted details to go, but I think we can now get a fairly clear image of what the final model will look like.

 

I'm happy with this so far.  👍

 

Best Regards,

Bandsaw Steve

 

[Gorby]

Nice paint job, but your kid is going to regret all that masking when their teacher as what the hell happened to their homework.

 

24 minutes ago, Bandsaw Steve said: