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Listening to the Solstice


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18 hours ago, CedB said:

I know you’re not going to like this, very soon you’re going to have to bite the bullet and paint it. 

Be brave my friend, you know you can do it

You got me bang to right guv'nor! :rofl2:

I ain't able to displacement meself out of this strait any longer so some of yer actual paint got sloshed on this afternoon! 🖌️🖌️🖌️🖌️

7 hours ago, keefr22 said:

"Oh no he can't...."

"What was that boys and girls? The genie's out of the bottle?" :laugh:

7 hours ago, Heather Kay said:

is there any reason for not going with an off-the-shelf pot of such paint? 

 

5 hours ago, Procopius said:

right out of the tin.

You are both correct of course Heather & Edward but I rather like mixing my colours by eye directly onto the aircraft.

It's a kink* I have...

 

*that's quite enough from you young Ced...

 

5 hours ago, Fritag said:

 

I’ll have to forget previous attempts (I find forgetting stuff gets ever easier as each year passes) and have another go.

 

5 hours ago, Heather Kay said:

I’ve found the best way to use it is to apply it, then almost immediately (minute or two) use a damp finger or cotton bud to wipe it away again. The PPP stays in the nooks and crannies, especially things like wing root/fuselage joints. 

Heather's dead right Steve :nodding:

I too find working it damp/wet to be the optimal method. this was a repair I had to do earlier to the tailplane:

48919884062_7b1107e15f_c.jpg

1. PPP scraped across repair with scalpel blade

2. Wet scalpel immediately to plane flat (doesn't have to be perfect at this stage, really just taking away the excess).

3. Allow to dry, then soaked fine-gfrade W&D (very) gently stoked across at alternating angles to blend into surrounding levels.

4. Gentle Micromeshing when dry again if required.

 

Great at gaps and dings up to about 0.5mm in depth/width i've found; for anything deeper though not so good and I tend to revert to either CA/flour or Milliput, depending on the nature of the repair.

5 hours ago, Spookytooth said:

Paint it Black...

I recommend Dulux , covers all sins.

As for varnish, you can`t beat Ronseal.

:rofl2:

Woodchip and Magnolia for the wheel wells?

 

Stiffening the sinews for painting by making nozzle-fairies for cleaning out the airbrush:

48919677311_3872c66714_c.jpg

This rather daft personal primary school ritual always helps me focus the mind on the task to come...

 

After all predations and tidyings of the week, re-application of a thin layer of Alclad primer to check for flaws:

48919884012_afc92482aa_c.jpg

Much, much better now than the horrors shown up by the initial priming last weekend.

 

Just as well I'd paused to examine the aircraft before proceeding as I'd forgotten to rescribe the elevators top and bottom:

48919677191_d42147dc09_c.jpg

 - and nearly forgot to squirt some greenery into the undercarriage openings and landing light recess too:

48919677216_4c263484d7_c.jpg

Then it was time for some underpainting. Closest colour I've got to Ultramarine would be a Flat Blue so this was thinned 50:50 and airbrushed on in a semi-random variegated fashion around the underside areas:

48919677231_cd435de1ce_c.jpg

The notion here is to introduce just enough of that blue under-colour to give some fugitive colour effects when overlaid with black pigment. This intended to try and mimic (as subtly as I'm able...) the slightly anisotropic look that Night has in some photos, where tonally and chromatically it seems to possess quite few shifts in variation across surfaces in relation to the angle of light falling upon them.

 

I've also stopped checking paintwork under bench lighting almost entirely these days - the directional intensity of it produces too many exaggerated changes to colour perception for my liking so I prefer daylight diffused through the net curtains (hence the window sill shots.

 

Instead of using a black acrylic, I've decided to continue with the Alcalad primer as the black top coat. It has such a lovely 'carbony' look (and slightly 'chalky' feel to the the fingers) that I reckon it performs quite well as the second part of the Night formula:

48919677326_eae3e1e376_c.jpg

The blue component in the image is actually slightly stronger than in the flesh as this shot was taken taken in the window at the beginning of dusk and I forgot to re- white balance the camera.

 

The darker tones here are a more accurate reproduction:

48919146293_c484e01fe3_c.jpg

Closer in:

48919884187_08c50acec8_c.jpg

A light Micromeshing and then later on a sealing with matt varnish should suffice.

 

Next job is to look at masking the undersides before beginning work on the camouflage; I must remember to cut some masks for the N9945 serial numbers tomorrow too so that I don't need to paint them in black after having done the camo.... :facepalm:

 

Friday night. Hope you're either having - or about to - a good one.

:bye:

Tony

 

PS. Came across this the other day when researching paints - concept art for a Royal Mail Mosquito:

48898772957_2ddeba07ee_c.jpg

🎵

Postman Pat,

Postman Pat,

Postman Pat does a ground attack.

Early in the morning

As the day is dawning... 🎶

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Love the RM Mossie. Then again, any Mossie will do.

Nice black Annie. Have you tried polishing a matt finish? The micromesh might go through the topcoat.

I've used bits of old T shirt to lightly polish the paint. It smooths it out and adds a sheen which can take decals.

 

16 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

Friday night. Hope you're either having - or about to - a good one.

I'm on BM and there is a glass of red to hand. Happy.

Regards, Pete

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19 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

but I rather like mixing my colours by eye directly onto the aircraft.

It's a kink* I have...

Fairy Nuff. It’s a hobby, after all. We should derive pleasure from it any way that suits us. :) 
 

In other news, PAINT! That very nearly sneaked past us! :o 

Edited by Heather Kay
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4 hours ago, Heather Kay said:

In other news, PAINT! That very nearly sneaked past us! :o 

Had to look again too..... I can only drop by occasionaly because otherwise I do not get any modelling of my own done and here you are applying paint! Wonders will never cease....

I was pleased to read that you have recovered from your vertigo and are back on this one: hope all continues well in future..

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Applying night paint the Baron way... see above. 

Applying night paint the Ced way, open a tin of Colourcoats. 

 

This is a prime example of how much further I need to go to get my master modeller badge. 

Not the only example, just a prime one (or 3, 5, 7...)

 

:worthy:

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17 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

The micromesh might go through the topcoat.

I've used bits of old T shirt to lightly polish the paint

 

16 hours ago, Spookytooth said:

maybe an old T.Shirt or similar.

Good call Pete & Simon. I'll take that route I reckon. :thumbsup2:

17 hours ago, Heather Kay said:

Fairy Nuff. It’s a hobby, after all. We should derive pleasure from it any way that suits us

That's what makes this forum so fun I reckon Heather - seeing just how many ways there are to make a bird of paradise from a few old sticks! 😆

('course I can indulge myself horribly without the time pressure of clients wanting it done last Thursday...)

17 hours ago, keefr22 said:

 

Yes, it was very stealthy......

 

:coat:

A coat? I can use that to rub down the undersides. Most generous Keith! 🗞️😜

13 hours ago, pheonix said:

Wonders will never cease....

I was pleased to read that you have recovered from your vertigo and are back on this one: hope all continues well in future..

You are kind as ever Mr. P on all counts. Likewise I hope that your own work is endeavouring to give satisfaction. :thumbsup2:

12 hours ago, CedB said:

This is a prime example of how much further I need to go to get my master modeller badge. 

It's actually a medical condition Ced - science has no cure and I'm a pariah in normal society.

Lucky you're all as cracked as teapots on here so I'm perfectly camouflaged.... :rofl:

 

No, not vacillation, but some further percautionary analysis regarding marking as I want to get the masking cut before spraying topsides. To whit, a chart of scaled parameters:

48922666628_4e2bc8f69f_b.jpg

(Spot the mistake - now corrected - on the B roundel ratios...)

 

National markings and id number seem straightforward enough but I found a flaw in my rationale for squadron codes.

 

109 Sqn codes for WW2 are generally given as 'HS', but having (belatedly) noticed N9945 crashed in November 1940 - before the official reformation of 109 in December of that year - it's wrong to apply this code. In the Appendix to AMO A.154/39 - A.298/39 (as reproduced in 'British Aviation Colours of WW2' published by the RAF Museum) there is a 1939 code for 109 Sqn given as 'EH', however this is irrelevant as WIDU aircraft such as N9945 were only absorbed into 109 Sqn in the Dec reformation.

 

In such circs. aisde obvs. from the wing roundels, it seems prudent to simply paint on the fuselage roundels and ID number at the tail leaving the Squadron and Flight letters vacant. As a Special Duty aircraft from Boscombe, I've no way of knowing what (if any!) codes might have been generated (and based upon what procedure), plus,given the chaotic speed of events in this period of 1940, wonder if such a detailed record would even exist. With N9945 going down in November, she certainly wouldn't have been carrying the code of a squadron not yet reformed.

 

Right.

 

Need to convert those roundel colour ratios to 1/72 scale and get designing some masks. More late hopefully.

:bye:

Tony

 

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Funny how you mentioned primes earlier Ced:

15 hours ago, CedB said:

Not the only example, just a prime one (or 3, 5, 7...)

Once I realized the ratio of the colored bands on Type A/A1/B RAF roundels are also prime numbers, this made it easier to scale them down simply by knowing what the outermost diameter of each roundel is and working backwards.

Designs for the marking masks cut:

48924119067_7a860becf7_c.jpg

I expected some fun on the blade turns for the smaller ID lettering and wasn't surprised: in the past on small lettering (2.8mm high in this case) the blade has a tendency with Oramask to lift the inner negative spaces of some of the numbers, like that on the 4 or 9 without actually damaging the letter/number shape itself.

 

Took longer than anticipated (it always does, hate the job) but the underside all masked off as well today:

48923919316_578cc46d36_c.jpg

I'll pencil in the camo outlines either later tonight or tomorrow and hopefully squirt some colour. Does it matter which order you paint in? Dark Green/Earth or vice versa? :shrug:

 

Interested to note in the Dec '87 issue of Scale Aircraft Modelling (where they have an 'In Detail' section on the Anson) that they illustrate 'A' and 'B' versions of this camo type (essentially mirrored/inverted patterns) which varied between odd and even numbered Ansons. Hadn't heard of such a thing before (not that that says a lot... :laugh:)

 

Big day over in London. Watching with compassion.

:bye:

Tony

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Ah, which colour first, always a question.

Acquired wisdom says to do a full coverage of one colour and then mask and spray the other to avoid those lines between the colours. Which one first? Most people do brown I think. With good paint the coverage isn’t an issue.

But what do I know... :) 

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5 hours ago, TheBaron said:

A coat? I can use that to rub down the undersides. Most generous Keith!

 

No worries Tony, just watch out for the moths, they'd make a heck of a mess squashed onto that lovely paintwork...!!

 

K

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Oooh, colour!

OK then, paint, as I've been reliably (?) informed that black is not a colour. But maybe black based on blue IS a colour? 

Either way, she's looking good.

I'll be using Misterkit RAF Night. Far easier.

 

Ian

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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, to quote Nigel Tufnell “ How much more black? And the answer is none. None more black. “ 

lovely darkness kid. 
I think I did brown first. But it’s much of a muchness. 😇🙌

 

Jont. 

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Are you coming down with a touch of Ceditus Tony ?   You have a rash of postings averaging over a post a day and you've even got paint on Annie already.

 

She's cleaned up remarkably well.  It's hard to believe she's the same airframe from a few pages ago. 

 

 

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21 hours ago, CedB said:

Which one first? Most people do brown I think. With good paint the coverage isn’t an issue.

Brown it is Ced! :thanks:

20 hours ago, keefr22 said:

No worries Tony, just watch out for the moths, they'd make a heck of a mess squashed onto that lovely paintwork...!!

:rofl2:

19 hours ago, limeypilot said:

OK then, paint, as I've been reliably (?) informed that black is not a colour. But maybe black based on blue IS a colour? 

Night is the new black Ian... 😄

19 hours ago, limeypilot said:

I'll be using Misterkit RAF Night. Far easier.

We don't have none of them fancy Middle Eastern pigments here. If we want a dark shade it has to be ground from the bones of sheep burned in a ritual fire beneath the rising Pleiades.

4 hours ago, The Spadgent said:

I think I did brown first. But it’s much of a muchness.

Another vote for brown then. Never let it be said that I wasn't a slave to fashion Johnny. :laugh:

1 hour ago, hendie said:

She's cleaned up remarkably well.  It's hard to believe she's the same airframe from a few pages ago. 

I must admit to a certain level of surprise myself H.

I think part of the credit has to be to do with being bed-bound last week and as a consequence only able to do small tidying jobs around the aircraft, rather than plunging prematurely into paint and only then noticing the manifold flaws!

 

1 hour ago, hendie said:

You have a rash of postings averaging over a post a day and you've even got paint on Annie already.

Without rushing unduly I'm trying to get as  much as poss. done this weekend as the week itself will be extremely busy at work and next weekend will be taken up with staying in Dublin to see Philip Glass and his PGE at the National Concert Hall.

The ticket alerts patrons to the fact that the concert will last FIVE hours and includes a break for dinner but being Dublin, also two breaks for drinks as well! :laugh:

 

Caught a second wind last night and realized that I needed to get the port engine and cowling mounted to the wing if I was to start painting the upper camouflage scheme. The constituent parts:

48928344753_e7fb18a825_c.jpg

As you can see in this shot I in facgt had to cut a lot off of the back of the resin engine and sand it flat so that it would sit fit flush up against the nacelle.

 

Homemade gauge for ensuring the prop shaft is central within the cowling:

48929074117_2eeb125f3c_c.jpg

As there are no locating marks for this it was a fiddly job not just getting centred, but ensuring that the engine was orientated correctly inside the scalloped perimeter of the cowling as well as hole in it for the exhaust:

48929074107_f8e2cc7f98_c.jpg

Generous amounts of Gator Grip were used to set these into place.

 

One tricky repair job involved that exit hole in the cowling for the exhaust - with the cowling being so fragile after having to thin the walls so much, I'd managed to damage the opening a long time back:

48928344553_f9f355f85e_c.jpg

This is it repaired with CA/flour, which has rapidly become a reliable goto for me now in such tasks. the hardest part was getting the filled material flush wit hthe cowling again in that tight space as a file could easily damage the scalloped shaped unwittingly. In this regard just patiently carving it flat with a fresh blade in the scalpel proved a slow but reliable method.

 

About 90 mins work all told and it was looking similar enough to the real thing:

48928883296_c74978a848_c.jpg

Landing lights also got painted and fitted:

48928883321_657a808d7d_c.jpg

Last jobs of the evening then were to GG the transparency over the landing lights and epoxy the port engine on, leavingb oth to cure on top of  the kitchen stove for the night.

48928883336_bdac47bb76_c.jpg

 

This left the field free to start a Study in Brown this morning.

 

Luckily I'd written myself a note in capital letters before retiring last night that warned me to finish a couple of masking jobs first.

 

Landing lights. These have a thin dividing partition down the centre so the mask had to be designed in two parts, each about 2.8mm wide:

48929073992_939694b890_c.jpg

Oramask of course.

 

Then the ID numbers at the tail:

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These went on without any drama.

 

Then it was on with the gravy:

48929074012_2e2a3b7112_c.jpg

The starting point was to sketch out some salient features and bits of visual interest with some NATO brown undercolour, in order to give some variation between brown and black of the primer. I'm not slavishly trying to diagram out specific features here, so much as give a variety across surfaces that mimics (in an 'almost-not-there' manner) the manifold differences in texture and colour present in  how a life-size version of this catches the light in photographs.

 

Then time to work on the actual Earth colour, starting with a first pass to build up continuities across surfaces without losing too much of the underlying tonalities:

48928883411_cec650ffaa_c.jpg

This mainly involves *not* keeping the airbrush at a uniform distance the whole time but varying both distance and pressure the whole time.

 

After a few more passes, eventually I got to that point where instinct tells you to stop otherwise you'll get tunnel vision on detail and lose track of the 'global' appearance of the aircraft:

48928344673_6dfa5a0fec_c.jpg

The details were starring to pop out of the colour nicely enough (always hard to tell in black primer alone!) so it was time to smooth and polish up what was there to see how it looked in toto:

48928344678_095d92331a_c.jpg

You can see some problems where I'd been uneven in the polishing over on the port wing but otherwise things seem to be moving in the right direction:

48929074097_d854b56b40_c.jpg

I was a little parsimonious with the brown around the lower part of the nose section and along the demarcation lines at the rear of the fuselage but can waft a little more over those regions next time. Aside from finessing the polishing in a few places I'll leave it at that for now and come back to the beast with fresh eyes whenever time permits.

 

Thanks for dropping by all of you - I'm off to roast some spuds.

 

:bye:

Tony

 

PS. The observant amongst you will have noticed I'm down one inner port aileron hinge. Carpet monster had his lunch earlier...

 

 

 

 

 

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