1/32 Eduard Bf109E-3 5/JG3 Black 11+- Unteroffizier Fritz Mias, Brombos, France, early August 1940

[CedB]

No worries Stew - I expect Jamie read the post  

 

Lovely internals - good job you have the pictures now it's closed up.

[Stew Dapple]

4 hours ago, CedB said:

No worries Stew - I expect Jamie read the post  

Thanks mate - I'm not sure if he did, he's rather preoccupied at the moment building 1/1 scale doors... he's got to make 6 of them I think. He sent me a pic of the first one, it looks really good and apparently it even opens and closes just like the real thing  

 

4 hours ago, CedB said:

Lovely internals - good job you have the pictures now it's closed up.

 

Amen, we won't be seeing most of it again  

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[Stew Dapple]

So, a quick catch-up of the weekend's progress... the rudder was attached and I used some Albion Alloys brass rod to replicate the rudder actuator rods - Eduard do provide these as part of the etched set, but they are a bit two-dimensional for my taste:

 

 

The tailplanes are completed; the tabs fix them in the neutral position but I imagine if you had a mind to, you could cut off the tabs and droop the stabilisers:

 

 

Then it was on to the wheel-wells for the main landing gear. It's a curious construction process with part of the bay going into the upper wing and part into the lower wing. I ignored Eduard's colour call outs (alumium for the bays and black for the gaiter in the round part of the well) and went with RLM02 - I painted the gaiter a couple of shades of tan and gave it a brown wash for a dirtied effect:

 

 

The 'leg' part of the bay was attached to the lower wings:

 

 

... and the wing guns were added, as you can't just pop them in after the wing halves are joined:

 

 

Finally, the wing halves were joined, it was a bit of a squeeze here and there but it all went together in the end:

 

 

I think the next steps are to add the ailerons, leading edge slats and flaps, I'll have a study of the instructions before I move onto that...

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

 

[franky boy]

Nice work Stu

 

Im currently building Eduards 109G-10 Erla in 1/48 and they fall for the gaitors to be black in that kit too. I did the same as you and just ignored it and went for tan instead. 
 

James

[PlaStix]

Lovely work on the interior Stew.

Kind regards,

Stix

[Stew Dapple]

Thanks very much gents  @PlaStix Stix, long time since our paths have crossed, hope all is well with yourself and Mrs Stix? 

 

This week I have been mostly doing wings. Added the flaps and ailerons - Eduard provide the flaps deployed but with the removal of a couple of tabs you can fit them raised:

 

 

I didn't fit the leading edge slats yet, as the exposed underpart is RLM02 which I will paint first and mask - I precoated in very dark grey, and as usual mixed too much, so I used the remainder on one of the wings as I will be doing those later anyway. I also remembered to mask the gun barrels:

 

 

Then I applied the RLM02 to the slats interior area:

 

 

Then to the undersides to fit the radiators. That bit of PE provided for the splitter gave me some conniptions, the contact points are virtually non-existent so I've no idea if they will still be there at the end of the build:

 

 

Finally, this morning I attached the wings to the fuselage. Going to need a bit of filler at the back underside of the wing, but it is now starting to look like a Messerschmitt  

 

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

 

 

[CedB]

Nice work Stew  

 

"conniptions"? Had to look that up! 'A fit of rage or hysterics' eh? I know how you feel…

 

I've started trying to convince myself that joins should be considered at 'the molecular level' and, proving the glue is bonded at the join between the parts, the join should work well without excess adhesive.

 

It's not working though  

[PlaStix]

8 hours ago, Stew Dapple said:

@PlaStix Stix, long time since our paths have crossed, hope all is well with yourself and Mrs Stix? 

Hi Stew. I know! I don't get up into the aircraft sections of the forum much these days - too many tracked things to build - often in GBs too!! Yes we are both well thank you. Mrs Stix has been building her dinos off and on and just posted some finished builds in the figures section. I'm finding less time these days to work on my builds but I can't complain - I still enjoy what I'm doing. I hope all is well at Dapple towers too.

Looks like the work on the wings went well. I can see what you mean about how small those PE parts were. It took me a while to spot them - must get new glasses!

Kind regards,

Stix

[Stew Dapple]

Thanks gents  Yes, one of the radiator splitters has already come off, I removed the other for safe keeping and will re-attach them later. I filled the gap at the back of the wing underside with Mr Dissolved Putty and sanded it:

 

 

Will need a little rescribing there. One unlikeable characteristic of Eduards is that they assume you want to have 'everything open' and seem to give less consideration to those of us who prefer a closed-up aircraft pace the engine itself. The cowling that would cover it was a terrible fit and I resorted to superglueing a piece of cocktail stick inside to force the sides out to get a passable fit:

 

 

... and this and the canopy were tacked on so I can remove them later to paint the framing and add the nose guns and exhausts after the main painting:

 

 

Hmm, definitely Messerschmitty now  

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[rob85]

Looking very good stew! 
 

Rob

[Stew Dapple]

On 8/13/2020 at 12:39 PM, rob85 said:

Looking very good stew! 
 

Rob

 

Thanks mate - hope you're doing okay and didn't have any flooding in the storm last week?

 

I masked off the insides of the leading edge slats:

 

 

... and stuffed some cut-off bits of an old washing-up sponge to protect the oil-cooler and radiator grilles from overspray of the black(ish) base-coat:

 

 

For the wheelbays I invested in some of this:

 

 

It worked very well (so far); it's more malleable than Blu-Tack and goes where you want it to without too much interference on your part - of course the proof of that particular pudding has yet to be sampled, but here's where I ended up:

 

 

So black(ish) base-coat next, then I can get on with the RLM65  

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[CedB]

Oooh, paint!  

 

Good to see you've invested in the 'putty' Stew. If it's like the Panzer stuff I have, a steady pull (fnaar) should get it out in one piece. If not, any small bits left can be picked up with a lump of the putty. But I expect you know that…

[Erwin]

Very nice to see the same kit. 

Will learn from it for my build.

Edited August 16, 2020 by Erwin

[rob85]

Cunning use of putty stew.

 

Im ok cheers mate, back at work so a little less time on my hands!

 

No flooding, thankfully (?) I only get the river flood, not the flash variety! Couple of hairy drives home from Hereford with the lightening, and flash floods, all part of the fun though.

 

Hope it’s not too bad up where you are?

 

Rob

[Silver Fox]

Very interested in the use of putty Stew, I looked at it in the not so LMS last time I was in.

[Stew Dapple]

Thanks gents

 

I'm happy to report that the putty performed as advertised. Is it better than Blu-Tack? Well, it's significantly more expensive, but being softer seemed easier to use, at least for the purpose I put it to. Also being softer it's less likely to crack off a previously glued part due to you pressing it in too hard. Anyway regardless of the point about the expense I have bought it now and will definitely use it again.

 

Black(ish) and Blue:

 

 

 

 

A few little retouches will be required for the RLM65, but I'm happy enough with that - I was less fussy about the fuselage sides as the will be subsequently mottled. The tailplanes are just clicked in place, so can be removed to paint the upper surfaces and make the mottling around the tail a bit less fraught, I hope.

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[CedB]

Beautiful blue Stew  

[spitfire]

Hi Stew it's not very often I get to this part of the site but being BOB I had to have a look, I am most impressed with the build so far especially the interior paintwork, in fact I'm going to have a look at it again to see if I can steal some ideas.

Despite my lack of interest in Luftwaffe subjects I actually have one of these kits in the stash, so I am taking notes as well, maybe I will have a Messerschmidt theme build of three kits sometime.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

[Stew Dapple]

Thank you gents  

 

Before I go further I'll just explain my reasoning behind how I will be painting the camouflage. As this particular 109 has a very low Wk.Nr it's reasonable to assume that it was an early one and would have been delivered in the 70/71/65 scheme. Later on at some point the 65 would have been extended up the fuselage sides and this would have most likely been done at unit level as opposed to being returned to the factory and possibly at the same time or not long after the RLM70 portions of the camouflage would have been repainted with RLM02. Later still the RLM71/02 mottling would have been applied to the fuselage sides, again most likely at unit level. 

 

Normally when painting camouflage schemes I would start with the lighter colour and then apply the darker, but in this case I want the overspray at the edges of the camouflage segments to be the lighter colour, so I painted the RLM70 first. I did get a bit of overspray on the fuselage sides, but I can tidy those up when I switch to my snazzier airbrush to do the mottling.

 

TLDR: I painted the Dunkelgrun:

 

 

I also fixed up the main landing gear ready to plug-in later on:

 

 

Finally I cleaned up the prop ready for a basecoat; there were some minor sink-marks on the reverse side which I filled with Liquid Green Stuff and sanded smooth:

 

 

I bunked off work a couple of hours early to do that and aside from the pure joy that bunking off early always brings I was quietly pleased with my progress  

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[CedB]

Nice work Stew - love that u/c!  

[Steve 1602]

Looking really nice Stew. The paint finish looks superb. 👏

[Stew Dapple]

Thanks Steve  

 

I switched to my other airbrush, the Badger Renegade, to apply the RLM02. I got a bit more of an overspray than I intended, I haven't quite got the hang of the Renegade as I tend to use my old 150 for everything... however I don't think I could get it much better to be honest, so will press on ahead:

 

 

Next will be the mottling, definitely a job for the weekend.

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

[Steve 1602]

That looks really sharp Stew. I’m looking forwards to seeing your mottling come together.

 

Steve

[Stew Dapple]

... and so to the mottling. As I said earlier this is going to be 'representative' rather than 'actual, partly because I don't know of a single photograph that is definitely of 'Black 11' but mostly because the best reference picture I have is the profile in the Kagero book by Janusz Swiatlon which is beautifully done and gives a view of both sides of the aircraft. However it is also significantly beyond my capabilities and patience to reproduce the scheme as shown. From the two photographs on the Asisbiz website it looks like the mottle was a layer of diffuse RLM02 blotches with a more widely-spaced layer of more compact mottles of RLM71 - this is as good as I could get it. First the RLM02:

 

 

It's quite hard to make it out due to the low contrast between RLM65 and RLM02; here's a closer look:

 

 

Then the RLM71 blotches were applied. The port side:

 

 

... and starboard:

 

 

It didn't come out quite as well as I'd hoped, but it's done. Now I need to not look at it for a while, hopefully when I do look at it again it will be better than my memory of it. I also cling to the knowledge that a mottled scheme always looks a bit less than I might have wanted but improves when the decals are applied, which I think is my next step.

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

 

[spitfire]

Looks good to me, nice tight pattern and good shapes, you can get carried away with them, I remember editing the mottles on my 1/32 scale He 219 because I did not like the shape or size of them. In the end I left well alone and was very happy with what I had done.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis