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Airfix Lancaster B.III 1/72 Old Tool!


SaminCam

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Nice work Sam - Riveting looks pretty good from here - I know how hard it is but looks like you pulled it off :) Glad you've discovered the wonders of mr surfacer and MLT - it really is the best primer though I still sometimes use tamiya fine surface primer for little jobs. 

 

Cheers - John

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@Kitchen Modeller, @The Spadgent, thanks gents! Little bit more done this weekend, mainly working on the pre-shading. My current technique is to lay down a flat dark base coat (Tamiya rubber black in this case) and then fill in panels with a lighter colour. I prefer this to highlighting the panel lines themselves as it leaves a smoother transition from light to dark and allows you to mottle things a little which will hopefully make the top coat look a little faded and weathered. The first light coat was medium sea grey and I then added some wood deck tan as I thought it would help blend in with the top coat. Hopefully I'll get the tailplane and fins pre-shaded and glued on later this evening and then I think she's ready for the dark earth. Before committing to the lanc I'll do some some experiments as I've ordered a pot of Mr Color 22 which i'll compare with my Tamiya acrylic mix - trusty p51 paint mule will be called into action and I'll post the results. Thanks for the comments and encouragement, more soon hopefully! Sam 

 

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With wood deck tan added (lousy light in this photo, sorry!):

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Interesting, looking forwards to seeing the paint over the top. I struggle with pre-shading as I seem to lose all the effort so tend to do post shading. Something else I've found to add to the final effect is varying the amount of varnish I apply, perhaps more over panel lines and less over the middle of panels so that you get a varied sheen. It doesn't photograph very well but looks great in the flesh. 

 

Great progress on this old kit  :)

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Thanks @woody37, I like the idea of the varied varnish, might give that a try.  I've been experimenting with the dark earth and best outcome so far is shown below. I fancy quite a worn look on this build but not sure I dare to go as light and faded as @SafetyDad's picture on the previous page. I'm stressing about this but trying to just accept that dark earth seems to be really subjective and I just have to find a colour that I think looks ok... so first step was to preshade p51 in same way as the lanc, I then added some brown to tone down the dark panel lines (ignore previous test on outer half of wing where I went too far):

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Then I added light coats of the mr color 22, thinned with mclt and with a touch of deck tan to lighten:

 

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And tried to stop before effect gets lost completely:

 

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 The light is a bit rubbish in these photos but what do people think? I could probably go a bit lighter still so might try post shading between the lines tomorrow. I'll also test the green as i think the interaction between the colours is really important. In the mean time I started to mask the lanc so some colour will go on soon!

Edited by SaminCam
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Yes, good test and an interesting debate. I've sometimes gone lighter to create the illusion of lighting reflections on panels by using masking tape against a panel line (across both axis) and spraying a slightly lighter base colour (white mixed in) but the Halifax I'm building at the moment was quite new so over doing it wouldn't be right in that case. For an aircraft that's seen quite a bit of service, I think you could get away with more (or less by leaving it as in your second photo) as that also looked good

 

This was where I first tried the technique:

 

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Looks fantastic Sam. 

 

Ive recently started to use a marbled technique such as you have used and found the top colours are best applied really thin (a lot thinner than you would normally go) and in very light passes. This should ensure the marbling shows through and give you the shading and fading. 

 

You probably already know this, so sorry if I’m of no help whatsoever 😀

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Evening all, bit the bullet this afternoon and got some paint on having got the sides masked up during the week. In the end I combined Mr Color 22 Dark Earth with xf78 wood deck tan, thinned down with mr color levelling thinner. I'm not sure the exact proportions but was something like 4:1:10 so it was quite a thin mix much as @Antb has described above. The photos below are where I've got to after about 6 coats. About half way through I redid the wood deck tan preshading/highlighting on the panels but I don't have photos of this step, this helped to lighten things up quite nicely

 

I think I'm going to leave it at that, I want this build to be quite worn looking and there will be more weathering to come. I've left it for this evening as I want to see how she looks in sunlight before starting to mask up for the green. Thanks for looking!   

 

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The old Airfix Lanc is really a classic and I agree with other s that the fine raised rivets are more accurate than scribed  lines.

 

Keep up the great work

Edited by Paulaero
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Moment of truth came this afternoon after a few thin coats of xf-81 RAF dark green were laid down and (lots of) masking tape removed. Happy with that! The preshading is still quite prominent on the brown but I think it will tone down a notch or two once its had a few layers of varnish applied. I'll also try to add some slightly darker tones of green back in with oil paints once I get to the weathering stage. The next step is to mask the brown and green and get to work on the undersides. I've also got a cunning plan for the stand which I'll try and make some progress with this week. Thanks for looking!  

 

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