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Eduard / Hasegawa 1/72 Liberator GR Mk.V Coastal Command


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2 hours ago, LorenSharp said:

I especially like the nose gear assemblies both you and @Navy Bird have tried to recreate. Early on I decieded to use the kit nose gear because of the weight of the model. I would have had to made it out of soldered brass or cast metal to be sturdy enough. right now mine weighs in at about a kilo. As funky as the gear is I'm pretty sure(well, in my care sure,just not pretty😜) printed gear would have held up. I do have a question though, in your instructions,do they show the position of any other lights other than the wing tip Navigation lights and the landing lights near the main gear.? Formation lights,etc. Searching everything I have reveals nothing. the B-24 had the formation lights on the spine and the tail in addition to the lights along the bottom at the bomb bays.

@Navy Bird's nose gear was definitely funkier! I cheated a little bit by adding some plastic between the main part of the gear and the wheelbay roof so the weight is carried in compression through a fairly sturdy piece of plastic rather than bending, cantilevered off the bulkhead. Either way you can't see much of it so build straight out of the box would have been ok as well. I'll have a look at the Eduard instructions this evening and check for lights, I think there are some others on the wings in addition to the wing tip lights. I'll take some snaps and post what I find.  

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@LorenSharp asked about the landing lights on the Eduard/hasegawa kit and I've taken some snaps of the instructions and circled all of the lights in red (sorry the photos aren't great). 

 

This page shows the the coloured lights between bomb bay doors and leading edge light on port wing. Inset bottom right also shows the tip lights being removed I think:

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This one has light by wheel bay and on undersides of wing tip:

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And finally there are blue lights shown at back of spine and on tail plane:

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Talking of lights does anyone have any good hacks for lights/lenses? I was looking at cheap sets of shiny gems for decorating fingernails (that'll confuse the algorithms) but couldn't find any which weren't faceted. Also wondering about whether you could make little lenses from heated clear sprue or plastic packaging somehow... I'll let you know if I get anywhere!

 

Finally, bit of extra detail added with ammo belts in the dorsal turret (inspired by @Navy Bird and @LorenSharp) light was lousy for photos but you get the idea:

 

51375336760_2ea16e73af_z.jpg

 

 

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Some thing to watch out for Sam,on the wingtip navigation lights, the Privateer's were on the out tip of the wing. The B-24 were on the top and bottom of the wing tip. The little faceted jewels work ok for light lenses. if you can punch out a dot of clear acetate to put on top all the better. hope this helps.

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5 minutes ago, LorenSharp said:

Some thing to watch out for Sam,on the wingtip navigation lights, the Privateer's were on the out tip of the wing. The B-24 were on the top and bottom of the wing tip. The little faceted jewels work ok for light lenses. if you can punch out a dot of clear acetate to put on top all the better. hope this helps.

 

Thanks! Yep, just saw you have used a "gem" as a landing light and will give it a go, I've found a pack that goes down to 1.5mm and comes with a set of tweezers and a dotting pen!

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I have to admit that I trimmed the little formation lights off the spine before I realised what they were (I'm sure they are not mentioned in the Hasegawa instructions). Regarding replacements (if yours are no longer present on the kit) small dots of Micro Kristal Clear can make an effective clear replacement which, when dry, can then be tinted with something like Tamiya Clear Blue/Red/Orange/Green as appropriate - though the challenge would be to get them consistent in size.

 

If the lights are still present a surprisingly effective method is simply to paint the light silver then tint with Tamiya Clear as above - I am indebted to @Navy Bird for that one, it works very well for tiny lights of that sort.

 

It's coming along great Sam, I hope you're having as much pleasure building it as I'm getting from watching it progress B) 

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

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I've used those teardrop templates that at least used to come on almost every Eduard PE fret. Heated up some clear sprue over a candle and forced it through the template. A lot of misses before I got a couple of usable ones. When the plastic has cooled off carefully cut off the teardrop shaped blob and glued to the tip of a toothpick with some white glue. Paint with clear blue (or whatever colour you need) and they look quite reasonable:

 

UVov2XM.jpg

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10 hours ago, Stew Dapple said:

If the lights are still present a surprisingly effective method is simply to paint the light silver then tint with Tamiya Clear as above - I am indebted to @Navy Bird for that one, it works very well for tiny lights of that sort.

 

This does work very well.  I came across a tip on someone else's build (can't remember who) that used white paint instead of silver before the clear colours, and I think in certain cases it looked even better than using silver. It gave more of an illusion of the lens appearing to be transparent.

 

Regards,

Tom

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@Stew Dapple @elger @Doolie, thanks for the tips gents, I've started to play around melting some clear plastic sprue to see what I can do - I nearly got a teardrop using the eduard template trick but when I came to cut it off it pinged off to never be seen again, d'oh! Anyway, don't need them yet but can see the promise.

 

Engines painted up now, these are out of the box and I think look pretty good - the close up makes the black wash look a bit clumsy but happy with them when viewed with the naked eye and installed in the nacelle:

 

51378709412_65ab7166bf.jpg url%5D 

 

I'm also getting the wings prepared for some paint: wheel bays have been painted with alclad over matt black base and now getting carefully masked. The nacelles are glued on (no filler required) and the hole for the resin turbochargers made ready. I'll probably glue the painted engines in place, and mask them so that I can add the inlet lips before starting to paint the wing. One thing I have to remember is to mask the wing root where it inserts into the fuselage - this fits beautifully at the moment but I suspect will be too tight if it gets a few layers of paint on.

 

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Evening all, weekly update here, nothing too exciting to show as most of the work over the last few days has gone into getting the undercoat down.

 

51395854128_275d1277ab_z.jpg

 

The silver splodges are going to receive some carefully applied masking fluid which will be removed later to create chips. I've still never really nailed this effect so trying a slightly different approach this time, fingers crossed! Once this is done I'm going to build up a "marble effect" over the black base which will hopefully provide a bit of life to the final coat that goes on top. I'm starting with the dark grey and green on top so there's going to be plenty of masking over the next few days! 

 

 

 

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Good to see the progress, Sam.

 

Don't know how I missed last week's discussion vis-a-vis little marker lights and how they can be replicated.  I agree with Navy Bird via Stew Dapple on the tiniest coloured ones.  A tiny, precise drop of silver paint or Molotow chrome overpainted with the appropriate Tamiya clear colour works just fine.  That trick doesn't work well on white lights (looks like an out-of-place chromed doodad; jarring, spoils the illusion), or on moulded-in lights that got sanded away in construction.  

 

For those cases I've been experimenting with UV-setting resin glue, Bondic is the brand I have.  On a non-stick backing paper salvaged from a vinyl sticker, I make a bunch of tiny dots shaped as appropriate, then set them with the UV light.  Suitable candidates are then coloured with Tamiya clear, and the best of the lot get stuck to the model.  PVA works well, but on a matte-finish model matte acrylic also works and saves touch-ups.  I used this method used to reinstate the moulded-in wingtip lights on my AVG Curtiss Hawk.  

 

I've never tried using hot clear sprue in a photo etch die as Elger mentioned above, I've no idea how to clean up a plastic part so tiny and un-hold-on-to-able.  The results look great but I don't know how I'd get there.

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Half a roll of tape later and the first masking session effort is pretty much complete!

 

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Preshading and coloured paint to follow soon!

 

@Jackson Duvalier, thanks for the tips on the lights, I'm a little way off having to tackle these yet but the Bondic tip is great, I'd seen something similar elsewhere but couldn't remember the brand...

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Watching this build makes me want to sell one of the kids, the house, the car  some of my stash and get one of these kits. Some top shelf modelling right here!

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Evening all, "real" painting has begun this weekend! First thing I've done is add little dabs of maskol on the aluminium patches. These are mostly located around the engines as I thought this is where the wear and tear would predominantly happen. I've had a practice with this technique on a trusty p-51 paintmule and it works ok, it's also much more straightforward than hairspray chipping. The maskol is painted on with a fine brush which I keep moist with water so it doesn't get too "gloopy". The only place I wanted heavy chipping was on the front of the intakes and here the maskol is dabbed on with a sponge and touched up with some more brush work:

 

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Once happy with the maskol chipping I started to pre-shade with thinned tamiya medium grey over the rubber black base. First pass shown here:

 

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...and the second pass with a little more white and a light brown added:

 

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This is now pretty much ready for the dark slate grey to go on top - I'm going to add this in a few very light coats so that I can pick the right moment to stop without obliterating the preshading work. Wish me luck!

 

 

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Evening all, hope everyone is well and enjoying the much needed sunshine! 

Progress is being made with the B-24. I finally got some coloured paint on the upper wings and fuselage though the missing wing in the photo is still in the paint shop for final touch ups. I'm pretty happy with where I've got to with this, there's a hint of pre-shade showing through and the masked chips have worked quite well (I'll get some better photos of these up later...). The colours look a little bit bright and the chips a bit too stark at the moment but fairly confident it'll look about right once its been varnished and weathered with oils and pastels. Once the other wing is done I'll mask the top sides and start on the white underbelly. Thanks for dropping by! Sam

 

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p.s. Liberator wings are too long and result in ropey out of focus photos! 

 

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Evening all! Second wing touched up to my satisfaction and couldn't resist a snap of it together looking like a b-24. Paints are as called out in the instructions: Mr color c333 extra dark sea grey and a mix of c38 olive drab 2 and c40 German gray, they look ok to me! Next will be the white undersides which will really bring it to life.

 

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Evening all, not too much to report this week. Masked off the top of the fuselage (recycling as much tape as possible!) and layered up the preshade:

 

51458814408_08d15853f9_c.jpg

 

This has become my "standard" approach - black base with rubber black, a medium grey mottle and then extra bits of white, all sprayed on very thin, but not so thin that you get spider webs. This time I also added a little bit of brown, focusing more on the undersides and panel lines. I've not sprayed a white plane before and I'm winging it a bit so really looking forward to seeing how it comes out. I'll now start adding thin coats of white and try and stop when it's "just right" - I'll post when it's done, tomorrow evening hopefully. 

 

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Can't fault your prep work there Sam, I'm sure it will turn out fine; I've never used that technique on a white finish either, but the principle must be the same and generally I've found the lighter the colour the more pleasing the effect, so good luck mate :) 

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

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A couple of thin coats of tamiya flat white later and she's looking like this:

 

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Nearly there I think - I've left it at that this evening so I can see how it looks in natural light in the morning. It probably needs one more pass at a decent distance to pull it all together. Can't wait to see what it looks like with the masking off!

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