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Airfix Lancaster B.III 1/72 Old Tool!


SaminCam

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Morning all, slow progress here but nearly got the top sides masked. You might just be able see that I've masked around the "walk here" lines as I never have much luck with long thin decals so going to try and paint them. Running out of tape!

 

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Real life getting in the way here but a bit of progress made with the stand for the lanc. Plan is to have removable bomb bay doors held in place with little neobydium magnets. The stand will then screw into the bomb doors. The result (hopefully) is that the lanc can be easily removed from the stand while at the same time revealing the bomb bay. It's a bit hacked together at the moment but think it should work... bomb bay needs reinforcing and I'll use a piece of polished steel rod rather than the cap head I've been experimenting with. Thanks for looking, hopefully get a bit more done this weekend. Sam

 

Magnets fixed to either end of bomb bay:

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Metal strips on bomb bay doors to clip on to magnets:

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Balanced carefully and flying!

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Little bit done on the old lanc this week: I've been gradually building up the black on the undersides with a very thinned mix of xf-1 sprayed over the preshade. After 5 or 6 coats i called it a day and i think it's about right - there's enough variation to break up the large expanse of black. I'm slightly regretting masking and spraying the thin lines on the upper surface - there's a bit of variation in the line widths so they don't look quite right up close. There's not much i can do about it now though so will just have to get over it... Next up is an all over gloss coat and then some 40 year old decals! 

 

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5 hours ago, Thom216 said:

Don't sweat the shading on the upper surface, it's looking good. Some weathering will probably help blend them in if they are too stark for you.

Totally agree. At the moment, your eye goes to them because there's no markings and no detail added yet. Once you get some exhaust stains on there, decals and clear bits unmasked, you won't notice it.

 

It's looking beautiful :)

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Thanks @Thom216 and @woody37, really good advice as usual! Still not getting much time at the bench but I've gradually been adding coats of gloss varnish when I have the chance. For this I've been using Pledge Klear which seems to do the job and is a fraction the price of "proper" model varnishes.

 

Today I got on to the decals... I'd done little bit of experimenting on the faithful p-51 mule so I wasn't that surprised when it turned into a battle! Despite being left out in the sun on a window sill for the last two months the carrier film on the 40 year old decals is still yellowed, they're also pretty thick and inflexible. Having painted the black lines (a good idea in the end!) I cut out the "walk here, walk aft, etc" text with as little carrier film on them as possible but haven't been able to stop them from silvering quite badly - hopefully they will look better with a couple more coats of varnish, some weathering and a flat finish. As you can see in the photo below I've continued to cut as much of the surrounding film off the bigger transfers as possible.

 

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So far they are going on ok....ish. They haven't disintegrated but they don't really "sit down" and behave oddly when microsol-ed. I think I'm getting there but again hoping that they will settle in once varnished applied on top. Still, despite all the moaning I'm still enjoying myself and she's finally starting to look like a Lancaster. I think the finish line might nearly be in sight (before Christmas?!?). Thanks for looking, happy modelling! Sam 

 

 

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Morning all, it's been slow progress on the lanc the last couple of weeks as a combination of work, man flu and real life have kept me away from the work bench. The model has not really been helping me to relax either as the 40 year old decals have been a battle every step of the way. I've ended up cutting a lot of the carrier film off entirely but still not stopped a lot of silvering and I've also had to "glue" down some, which just weren't adhering, with pledge/future. Decal softener did weird things as well so I gave up on that fairly early and in the end I was feeling pretty dissatisfied.

 

Having left her for a couple of days and come back to it, I'm not so unhappy - I think one positive decision I made was to mask and spray the thin black and red lines as they came out nice and crisp and definitely look better than they would have done with decals, the preshading has worked quite well and i think the colours are about right. At least the big transfers look ok, you never know, the flat coat at the end might help tie some of the shiny smaller decals in as well. Not too much left to do, I've got to mask and paint the turrets and tail wheel, do some weathering and finish off the base. Not going to get done before Christmas but maybe by the end of 2019?!? Thanks for looking and Happy Christmas!

 

 

 

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Started on the weathering yesterday and thought I'd share a few "in progress" shots.  I'm trying something a bit different (for me at least) as I've used artists oils, thinned with white spirit and then sprayed through my airbrush. The plan is to build up the exhaust staining with black, then brown, then light grey streaks and so far I've got the black laid down on one wing. It took a bit of experimenting to get the right consistency but chuffed with the results so far. The nice thing about using oils is that you can pretty much wipe it off and start again if it doesn't go well and the only downside so far is that airbrush cleaning needed extra care. Thanks for looking! Sam

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Evening all, Happy New Year! Still not quite finished this one yet and now have a backlog as Father Christmas brought me two more lovely looking models: the Eduard FW190A-5 and a Coastal Command Liberator. I've spent quite a lot of time faffing around with the exhaust stains and have definitely not followed the "less is more" adage. Having said that spraying oil paint definitely works and I'll be trying it again in the future. For the exhaust stains I looked at some well known photos which you can find online like this one:

 

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There are plenty more here (as ever BM is incredibly helpful):

 

I was also sent some more up to date pics of the BBMF Lanc from Rick @isaneng. These are absolutely awesome and perhaps aren't as well known, thanks Rick!

 

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So armed with these photos I sprayed thinned white oil paint on top of the black stains - this looked ok and I perhaps should have stopped at this point (no photos I'm afraid). However, the BBMF photos seem to show that the stains are quite streaky and non-uniform so I had a go at reproducing this with dots of unthinned oil smeared back with a thin brush. At first I slightly overdid the streaking and I had to rub some of it away, this in turn made my sprayed stains a bit less subtle and overall the effect is slightly clumsier than I had hoped for. Still I think it is a technique worth persevering with, if I was doing it again I might do the dot-streaks first and then spray the more uniform stain on top. Anyway, see what you think:

 

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As well as the exhaust stains you can just make out some bits of chipping and more oil weathering, done with a brush, on the rest of the wings and fuselage. Since taking this snap I've put some stains on the tail planes and next I'm going to seal it all up with a flat coat before flipping her over and doing some weathering underneath. Thanks for looking, let me know what you think!

 

Edited by SaminCam
typo
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Done!!! Well, except for doing the stand properly... RFI tomorrow hopefully. I've really enjoyed this one (except for the decals) and really happy to now have a lanc in my collection. Thanks for all the encouragement and help along the way!

 

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