Fighting Them on the Beaches - Miles Magister "Maggie-bomber"

[Max Headroom]

11 hours ago, Putty Animal said:

I'm kind of wondering how I'm going to do that too.  The bombs will be alright, but the frame that they hang from is going to be something else...  

 

Just stumbled on this thread and I’ve now

picked up my jaw from the floor. Small doesn’t mean easy and your work so far is astonishing.

 

My only suggestion is to make the bomb racks but leave them empty, on the premise that it’s just returned from bombing practice?!

 

Trevor the awed 

[Putty Animal]

Hi Max, glad you found it

1/144 is a bit funny in that it turns a lot of things on their head with regards to ease and difficulty.  Making a set of wings for example in 72nd or 48th is often a major engineering exercise involving huge chunks of material and a lot of filing and sanding.  Whereas in 144 the materials required are minimal and the amount of mess, time and sheer elbow work is only a fraction of the larger scales.  The biggest challenge is in the degree of accuracy.  Being out by 0.5mm in 1/48 scale for example is something that can often be lived with.  But a similar variation in 1/144 can alter the look of a model drastically.  Usually when I'm making it feels like I'm mostly doing it by the numbers, as I'm constantly measuring back and forth between the plans. 

[Putty Animal]

‘What did you do in the war, Daddy?
How did you help us to win?’
‘Take-offs and landings and stalls, laddie,
And how to get out of a spin.’

- Anonymous

 

 

 

 

 

 

First coat.  Felt like a traitor for not using Humbrol's Trainer Yellow...

Edited August 14, 2020 by Putty Animal

[Heather Kay]

My first reaction was "Oh my life, that’s so cute!" 😍
 

I know. I’m sad. This is splendid work, and puts my rough efforts in larger scales to shame.

[Cookenbacher]

Tiny and elegant.

[Putty Animal]

It looks like a baby canary 😅

[Putty Animal]

 

I was given the usual training on biplanes before I was sent to join 1 Squadron in July.
But I’d never flown a Hurricane before. They gave me forty minutes on a Miles trainer

when I got to the squadron, and then up in a Hurricane the next day.

-Pilot Officer Tim Elkington

 

I always love putting a coat of Dark Earth on.  That's when I begin to feel that I've turned a corner and all the hard work is beginning to pay off.

 

 

Masking -  Looks like a mummy wrapped in bandages...

 

 

Out to the balcony for a squirt of green, then back inside to unmask before the paint hardened too much.

 

No dramas.  Phew!

 

 

And couldn't resist making a start on the markings.  I should have let the paint harden up for a couple of days but I couldn't resist.  There aren't any suitable roundels available in 1/144 (the curse of the Divine-scale) so I had to made some from scratch.  These ones are individual disks cut from painted decal sheet.  The larger disks are done with an improvised circle cutter; a scalpel blade superglued to a needle with a suitable spacer in-between.  While the tiny 1.1mm red dots etc are cut with the aid of a suitably sized piece of brass tube, with the inside reamed out to form a sharp cutting edge at the end.

 

The whole thing looks a bit weird at the moment, what with the glossy finish and no shading, but hopefully it will come up alright in the end.  I got super-lucky with the intake on the side of the cowling.  I didn't appreciate that the paint demarcation was supposed to bisect it, and it was pure chance that it was in exactly the right place.  Very happy about that! 

 

Edited August 17, 2020 by Putty Animal

[Pete in Lincs]

Quite lovely.

[Cookenbacher]

Wonderful paint work.

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

2 hours ago, Cookenbacher said:

Wonderful paint work.

Most definitely some great work on this.  

[Putty Animal]

 

But with the blast shield down I can't even see!

-Flight Lieutenant Skywalker

 

Thanks for the kind words about the paint finish.  At the risk of taking all the magic out of it though, I must admit that getting a good finish on a small sized model like this is actually much easier than doing so on a larger kit with a more open surface area.  That being said, the port wing was a little bit touch and go on the dark earth areas where I masked a little too early and the tape left a faint texture in the surface.  A couple of light clear coats are needed to carefully sand and smooth it out a bit.

 

The serials went on okay.  Much better than I was expecting considering they needed to be placed one digit at a time.  The fin flashes were made from little bits of painted red white and blue decal and nudged into place.  The tricky bit was the blind flying hood.  I've been pondering this for a wile and opted to do the frame out of nickel silver wire, then give it a brush coat of Mr Surfacer primer so that it forms a membrane between the ribs and shrinks as it dries.  Maybe it will work...  I dunno.  

 

 

 

I spent a lot of time on the glazing too. Probably going through 6 or 7 trials before I got the right look. I originally tried making the front glazing from 3x pieces of thin acrylic sheet, but it was a house of cards. In the end I went with some very thin 0.08mm overhead transparency film, which worked very well.

I discovered that the film has a clear coating to allow it to be put through a photocopier. However if you take a piece and soak it in water, you can soften this coating and wash it off. The rear cockpit glazing was steamed on a piece of brass tube, held by a small bulldog clip. Then trimmed to shape. The metal tube helps spread the heat. Initially I tried it with a wooden paintbrush handle, but that did nothing at all.

The front one is scored and bent from a single piece. The clear sheet has a directional grain to it (extruded I imagine) and folds in one direction much better than the other. It doesn't like to tear or snap, so it is quite durable when trimming it to shape. The first one was the wrong shape, so I used it as a template with small adjustments where I thought I had gone wrong. The second one was better but still not quite right, so I used that one as a partial template for the next... And so on.

The 5th one was a beaut and looks about as in-scale as I reckon I'll get in 1/144. I also started on some shadows and highlights in oils, but will need to seal these with a clear coat before doing some more.

 

I also added some panels from decal sheet that was painted a slightly different colour.  Namely the entry doors and the little square panels on the wings.  Plus the walkway on the starboard side.

I couldn't resist doing the beginnings of a bit of shading with oils too. 

 

 

Edited August 21, 2020 by Putty Animal

[Cookenbacher]

Amazing.

 

Thanks for sharing your techniques for the glazing, not that I'll ever be brave enough to try them!

[Putty Animal]

I'd just be happy if a few more people gave 1/144 a try.  It has a bad rep due to the very sketchy kits that that were made in the 60's and 70's and can still be found today.  However the scale has changed a lot over the past ten years or so.  I'd encourage anybody to pick up one of the recent reboxings from Eduard of the beautiful little kits originally made by Platz in Japan.  The Fw-190D, F6F Hellcat, P-51, P-47, N1K2 Shiden and A4 Skyhawk are the ones to watch out for.  They are as cheap as anything and beautifully accurate.  In next to no time you can have a gorgeous little nugget parked on the corner of your desk. 

 

[Putty Animal]

 

We feared they were going to use gas.

We carried our gas masks and had them on quite often, and we had these
little anti-gas panels. They were yellow and if any chlorine gas came over, their colour
was supposed to change, to red I think. They were on buildings, poles, everywhere.

We used to look at them all the time. 
-Squadron Leader Sandy Johnstone

 

 

Added the gas patch from some painted decal sheet that is a paler yellow than that on the fuselage.  I'll need to dirty it up just a with a wash of something to tone it down.  I inquired in the WW2 aviation subsection of the forum the darker frame around the outside and was very helpfully informed that it was a most commonly a reddish coloured tape.  Looking at contemporary photographs, the tape appeared to be 1 inch wide, which would equal 0.17mm in 1/144 scale.  Using my calipers as a straight edge I was able to cut some red-brown strips of decal and fit them round the edges.  For placement I used a similar Magister a a guide.

 

 

Result is below.  I also made a start on the bombs and bomb rack.  The bombs themselves are straightforward enough to do, if not somewhat tedious.

I tried making the bedframe portion of the bomb rack out of individual parts.  First out of wire and again out of sprue.  Both attempts were rubbish. 

 

In the end I decided to cheat.  I've got some .25mm acrylic sheet that is beautifully clear, so I masked and sprayed the framework onto a piece of the stuff.  Being largely hidden from view beneath the aircraft it should be very difficult to pick it as a solid piece.  There's some notches cut into it that will allow the legs to get glued in firmly.  With luck it should be pretty strong once it is assembled.

 

Stage-4 lockdown is certainly providing me with plenty of extra time at the bench.  I think by this time next week I might be able to get it finished off.  

 

 

 

[Heather Kay]

Love the bed frame! What a great solution to an awkward problem. 

 

One small point, the bombs were usually a yellowish buff colour during the early part of the war.

[AdrianMF]

Wonderful! Is the bomb carrying mechanism two light bomb carriers with some bracing rods between them, or is it a custom carrier?

 

Regards,

Adrian

[Putty Animal]

44 minutes ago, Heather Kay said:

Love the bed frame! What a great solution to an awkward problem. 

 

One small point, the bombs were usually a yellowish buff colour during the early part of the war.

Ach nein!  I totally forgot about that 

I was basing the colour on this shot, thinking that the colour was black or dark grey.  Now that I look at it again, maybe the rear portion should be buff.  Or the whole thing...  Is there a recipe out there for yellow/buff?

 

 

 

17 minutes ago, AdrianMF said:

Wonderful! Is the bomb carrying mechanism two light bomb carriers with some bracing rods between them, or is it a custom carrier?

 

I'm not sure about that.  I'm guessing it was a fairly Heath Robinson sort of affair?  Information was sketchy, and all I had to go on was a frontal photo and the racks plus the very small drawings in my +4 booklet on the Magister.  Plus the instructions for an RS Models kit in 1/72. 

Edited August 23, 2020 by Putty Animal

[Heather Kay]

That photo is showing yellows as dark. See the outer ring on the roundel? 

[Putty Animal]

Yeah it wasn't until after you mentioned the buff colour that I went back and realised that.  Doh!

 

[Putty Animal]

I was trawling around looking for a clue about the shade of buff and found an excellent link from Dogsbody that contained a profile of the elusive 20lb fragmentation bomb. Now that I have this much better drawing I’m tempted to make the bombs again.  

 

 

 

[Putty Animal]

The new bombs are in full production.  I'll put some shots of them up over the weekend once I've got some paint on them.  Unless anybody can come up with a better suggestion I'll go with a patchy dark grey for the main body and the yellowy-buff colour for the rear portion and the fins.  Maybe a silver nose cap too if I can manage it.

 

In the meantime, here's a shot of the prop and the cone over the hub.  The prop is styrene carved to shape and brushed with a few coats of Mr Surfacer to help blend in the contours.  The propeller boss often appears as a bright metal or painted piece, however I didn't think I had a hope of painting it crisply while it was in-situ.  With that in mind I jammed a piece of silver rod into the end of my dental/jewellers drill and shaped the end into a kind of mushroom profile. I polished it before carefully separating it from the rod. It fits really nicely into the hub of the propeller. Although it is so shiny it looks like a headlamp. I'll have to paint it (scary thought) to tone it down a bit. Either white or a dull silver, judging from the profile I'm working with. The shot below is just dry fitted into place. Looks nice though! 

 

 

 

 

An overscale Hugo Sperle showed up in his swimming togs to have a look where the bombs were going to go later...

 

 

See you on the beach Hugo!

Edited August 28, 2020 by Putty Animal

[PeterB]

On 8/23/2020 at 7:38 AM, Putty Animal said:

Ach nein!  I totally forgot about that 

I was basing the colour on this shot, thinking that the colour was black or dark grey.  Now that I look at it again, maybe the rear portion should be buff.  Or the whole thing...  Is there a recipe out there for yellow/buff?

 

 

 

 

I'm not sure about that.  I'm guessing it was a fairly Heath Robinson sort of affair?  Information was sketchy, and all I had to go on was a frontal photo and the racks plus the very small drawings in my +4 booklet on the Magister.  Plus the instructions for an RS Models kit in 1/72. 

Probably totally wrong - I usually am, but it looks to me as if the upper section of the yellow outer circle on the roundel in the above pic may have been at least partially overpainted when the underside was painted what I assume is "night" black - same thing happened on some conventional bombers such as the Wellington I believe. If that is the case then it seems as if the bombs may also have been given a darker wash over the buff - I have read that it did happen, particularly to make ones stored on the ground less obvious, though sometimes only the upper part was treated. The tails on the rear row definitely look to have some sort of darker paint on part of them, whereas those in the front row look buff on the side nearest the camera. Just to add to the confusion, the tail sections on most bombs may have been stored seperate to the main body so you could have a blacked out bomb with a buff tail or vice versa. 

 

Pete

Edited August 27, 2020 by PeterB

[Cookenbacher]

It'll be a shame to paint over that metal spinner - looks amazing.

[Putty Animal]

 

They discovered that among those of us who’d been recruited for Operations Room training,

there was one man who’d had over a thousand hours’ flying experience.  That was Dudley Mason.

He was quickly winkled out and given a Tiger Moth somewhere down in Surrey,

where they were busy welding milk crates under the wings to carry bombs with which to

bomb the beaches when the Germans landed. He told me, ‘The darn thing won’t
even fly, never mind carry bombs, not with all that garbage on it.’ 

-Sergeant Tom Naylor

 

 

 

Big thanks to @Heather Kay for keeping me on the straight and narrow.  The new improved Mk II bombs are now ready for loading!

I hope the colours are okay to most readers.  I went with the buff tail cone and fin assembly with the splotchy dark grey fronts and a steel nose cap.

 

 

 

On 28/08/2020 at 03:50, PeterB said:

Probably totally wrong - I usually am, but it looks to me as if the upper section of the yellow outer circle on the roundel in the above pic may have been at least partially overpainted when the underside was painted what I assume is "night" black - same thing happened on some conventional bombers such as the Wellington I believe. If that is the case then it seems as if the bombs may also have been given a darker wash over the buff - I have read that it did happen, particularly to make ones stored on the ground less obvious, though sometimes only the upper part was treated. The tails on the rear row definitely look to have some sort of darker paint on part of them, whereas those in the front row look buff on the side nearest the camera. Just to add to the confusion, the tail sections on most bombs may have been stored seperate to the main body so you could have a blacked out bomb with a buff tail or vice versa. 

 

I was thinking along similar lines.  If Mr Hitler had actually made it across, I imagine the Tiger Moths and Magisters would have had a very tough time of it during daylight hours, and would perhaps have been employed at night instead.  The prospect of a night-painted Tiger Moth was certainly intriguing.  It kind of made me yearn for some previously undiscovered what-if BBC television series from the 1970's  "Sandra Jones - Night Witch"    

 

Edited August 29, 2020 by Putty Animal

[Torbjorn]

You must have bigger matches in Britain. My eyes hurt just looking at those little bombies.