Frankenschmitt (1/72 Tamiya/ICM Bf109E-3 crosskit)

[azureglo]

On 12/20/2018 at 1:34 AM, Procopius said:

Gentlemen, I regret to inform you that my mottling looks like crap:

 

 

Young Edward, in this coming Joyous New Year, make  peace with thine Sotar 20/20F ( for verily ye have said thou hast one) and open up to the wonders of Mr Paint and ye shall have fine mottling, the like of which pixies shall praise...and remember the Lord sayeth onto Baby Jebus, no more than five  PSI or prepareth thou for the flood...

 

 

 

 

Anil The Blessed of Small Mottles

 

 

[Procopius]

9 hours ago, azureglo said:

Young Edward, in this coming Joyous New Year, make  peace with thine Sotar 20/20F ( for verily ye have said thou hast one) and open up to the wonders of Mr Paint and ye shall have fine mottling, the like of which pixies shall praise...and remember the Lord sayeth onto Baby Jebus, no more than five  PSI or prepareth thou for the flood...

 

Fortified by Anil's sage advice, a glass of champagne, and a half-litre of Dr Pepper (my first caffeinated soda in almost two years, more on the reason why in a jiff), I tried again for my first modelling of 2019.

 

Greetings to all of you already firmly ensconced in the far-future year of 2019. Can it be worse than 2018? One would hope not, but the last few years have certainly seemed to indicate that the arc of human history bends downwards on a pretty much permanent basis these days.

 

Sometimes, of course, things must get worse that they might grow better, but cold comfort to those living through the tumult.

 

 

 

We spent the last week or so in Michigan, a part of the United States so not unlike Finland that large numbers of Finns left their homeland to experience the same extremes of temperature in a country where vowels were in rather shorter supply. (Mrs P's family, however, are of Quebecois and Romanian extraction. Incidentally, I've often thought a fascinating book could be written on Romania's consistent failure to pick a geopolitical winner to throw its weight alongside throughout the twentieth century.) It was cold, I'm heavily implying, and I should know, as I walked 51 miles over the course of the week, mostly in 8-mile circuits around my in-laws' house, listening to an audiobook of Leo McKinistry's Lancaster; I had initially started with Big Week, by James Holland, but the narrator had one of those weird raspy American accents that're supposed to sound manly but sound instead like a chap manfully struggling to talk through some gas which may prove to be horrifyingly more without making a mess of himself, and it make it hard to keep moving, or indeed to want to do anything but curl up and die in the snow. 

 

We were supposed to head home yesterday, that is, the 30th of the previous year, but Mrs P's heart is closed to joy and she retires for bed at 9 PM on NYE, so sees little reason to be home in a rested condition for it, and she also wanted to stretch out the amount of time she could fob the children off on her parents before spending a long week of Quality Time home with them when I returned to work. (She also said she feared that I'd just sit on the computer all day and ignore them; I had been unaware this was an option, but I confess I was intrigued by the notion.) So on the morning of the 31st at 5 AM local time (Michigan is an hour ahead of Chicago), we packed up our children into the Subaru and began our 360-mile trek home, arriving at 10:30 AM Chicago time almost on the nose. Through a comedy of errors I then totally failed to get a chance to take the nap I was promised for acceding to this request, so I took the opportunity to catch 90 minutes of shut-eye when I put Winston to bed. ("May I have the pillow too?", he meekly asked me.) Then it was off to my parents' house to find that they'd totally forgotten about me (which shouldn't have been a surprise going on the last thirty-five years of my acquaintance with them) and waiting in the rain on the stoop for about an hour. Splendid. 

 

Anyway, that all sorted, we rang in the New Year with the aforementioned champagne (sparkling wine, technically, since it was made in Britain*) and I returned home at 12:15 AM in the grim future year of 2019. 

 

 

Naturally, now was as good a time as any to try and do stupid things with models, so using much, much much thinned Colourcoats, I -- well, fixed might be too strong a word, so -- confused the mottling on the flanks enough that I think it's passable.

 

 

 

 

Far from perfect, but I trust you will agree, enough of an improvement that we can all get on with our lives.

 

I also did the wheel hubs:

 

 

Just need to do the gear legs and gun barrels.

 

And for the spinner, all that remains is to mask the prop blades and spray the metal of the prop hub, then assemble the whole kit and kaboodle. 

 

 

 

So here we are. Hope you have a great year, I'm certainly hoping against evidence for one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

* 

 

 

 

[azureglo]

Much better Edward, I feel for your travails re the parents , however my mother loves me like a son, granted not like one of hers, but close enough...

[06/24]

Lovely mottling young sir!

[CedB]

Happy New Year Egbert!

 

Well, that mottling looks pretty good to me and I'm sure it's an indication of what's to come in 2019. It'll be a good year if we make it so (oooh, came over all Jean-Luc there)

Remember, as our joint life coach advises, "Life is like a sewer…"  

[Kitchen Modeller]

16 hours ago, Procopius said:

Far from perfect, but I trust you will agree, enough of an improvement that we can all get on with our lives.

This came out beautifully - your first sweep did leave a lot to be desired - I don't think it looked crap but I know where you were coming from - far from what you wanted. But it served as a good base for the next sweep which came out quite close to perrrrfect (at least from where I'm standing)  The best thrills you get from this hobby is turning what seems like a total muck up into inspired brilliance -  ending up better than what you hoped for. Very nice come back - sir, you have a stunner on your hands. 

Edited January 2, 2019 by Kitchen Modeller
spelling

[Procopius]

2 hours ago, CedB said:

 

Remember, as our joint life coach advises, "Life is like a sewer…"  

I was just telling Winston this the other day, when Mrs P caught me.

[Procopius]

So, my first full day of 2019 began early, when Winston, his diaper practically sloshing, bellyflopped into bed with us and began demanding all sorts of things in his harsh early morning whisper until I grimly shambled out of bed on three hours sleep and blearily "played" with him downstairs. I use play loosely, because he will ask you to play with him in the saddest if-I-only-had-a-friend-I-might-know-what-it-is-to-be-loved voice imaginable, only to immediately yell at you if you actually touch any of his toys or even worse, seem to be having fun with whatever third-tier toy he's fobbed off on you. He's a work in progress. Eventually Mrs P appeared after about ninety minutes and I in turn vanished back upstairs and slept for another two hours. Most of the rest of the day was spent on stupid little errands put off until the last possible second, but this evening, after walking five miles (seven hundred kilometers) on the treadmill with 1-lb arm weights, I managed to make it downstairs and get some modelling done. 

 

Nothing fancy. I did the tire black of the wheels; the contrast is more visible in person:

 

 

Painted the gun barrels:

 

 

And added the bracing struts to the tail. The Tamiya parts fit the ICM mating surfaces perfectly. So weird.

 

 

Irritatingly, the struts, both Tamiya parts, had a lot of seams, and I needed to shave them down a bit, and may yet need to shave more.

 

Anyway, I'm quite tired and have to go back to work come Wednesday morning, so more later. 

 

 

 

[06/24]

Incremental progress (I'll leave you to decide if the description better fits the 109 or offspring).

[jean]

Hi Mr P,

 

And a great Merry New Year to you and your family!

The mottling is perfectly confused and to such a degree that it even looks like a mottling painted by a confused Luftwaffe mechanics! Bottom line, it looks damn good! Do not even look at it any more as your piercing gaze may alter the space time fabric and nobody wants a continuum tear in a mottle!!!

So congrats on the work done! So who stole the molds from the other company? This is becoming creepy!

Plus I thought I saw a 190. Need to check where that one is coming from?

 

Have a lot of fun! And remember, that we are the masters of our own destiny! You can tell the Universe to f... off if you do not like the script you were handed, and write your own!!!

Have done that for many years and see where I am: from a bright young engineer on a meteoric, upwardly path, to living in the middle of nowhere surrounded by wildlife trying to eat me, flatten me, and then some! Now, where did I go wrong?

 

Cheers

JR

[Procopius]

17 hours ago, jean said:

Have done that for many years and see where I am: from a bright young engineer on a meteoric, upwardly path, to living in the middle of nowhere surrounded by wildlife trying to eat me, flatten me, and then some! Now, where did I go wrong?

Same, but I was never bright or an engineer.

 

Anyway, I was exhausted last night, so I only got a little bit done: the landing gear legs and the spinner and prop:

 

 

Getting close now. Should gloss and decal soon, I hope. And HOPEfully, the Arma Hurricanes will be delivered today, and I can begin the Hurricane build that I spent three hours researching last night.

[jean]

Good evening Mr. P,

In my usual nit picking and myopic way, am I right in saying that the propeller has been painted black, or is your Schwartzgrun really Schwartz?

Have fun!

JR

[Procopius]

4 minutes ago, jean said:

Good evening Mr. P,

In my usual nit picking and myopic way, am I right in saying that the propeller has been painted black, or is your Schwartzgrun really Schwartz?

It's Colourcoats RLM70, so I feel exquisitely confident there.

[Procopius]

Just got a call from the Mailroom. Parcel from Arma! WOOHOO!

[Procopius]

My Hurricane build thread will be here.

[06/24]

32 minutes ago, Procopius said:

Just got a call from the Mailroom. Parcel from Arma! WOOHOO!

So it’s got to the mid-west quicker than to Scotland. 

 

@azureglosummed up this unsurprising experience very succinctly earlier today:

 

"We are pleased to confirm dispatch of your requested part by Royal, Mail !st Class ( equivalent to Zimbabwe 3rd class tortoise mail).

 

Yours,

M. Orethanmyjobsworth”

[The Spadgent]

Happy new year sir. Mottle tastic! Start. Bravo 😀

[Procopius]

Well, after a long Hurricane-related hiatus, this one is done as well, though not without a fight. When I unmasked the canopy this evening, there was a huge white distortion all along the front and sides of the windscreen. Thinking quickly by my standards, I removed it:

 

 

It proved impossible to scrub or otherwise abrade off, so I had a rummage, found the ICM windscreen, masked it off, and resprayed it. It fit perfectly.

 

 

 

 

Don't worry, I remembered to add the cannons after I took the photo. So this is done, and I can report it's pretty easy to just use the ICM fuselage as a Tamiya correction set. 

 

 

 

 

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Glad to know the canopy was replaced. This looks great PC, now to get a few of these Emils. Id love to add a few of them to the collection.  

Edited February 17, 2019 by Corsairfoxfouruncle

[Procopius]

2 hours ago, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

Glad to know the canopy was replaced. This looks great PC, now to get a few of these Emils. Id love to add a few of them to the collection.  

In this case it's a crosskit, which basically doubled the price, but if you want to eliminate the middleman, the ICM kit alone is more accurate (if worse-fitting) than Tamiya and pretty cheap if you look around. And all the Tamiya aftermarket fits!