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Mojo restorer -- 1/72 Hasegawa Fw-190A-7


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I hit a slump back in April and didn't have the enthusiasm for a lot of my interests, this one included.  Getting back into it, I found the current double Japanese build lacks the right paint color.  So I took others' advice and am going to try a "quick" build to shake the cobwebs out.

 

Here's what I chose; low part count, (hopefully) good fit, and I have the paint for it!

 

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Last night I painted the cockpit and assembled it.  When I went to put the decals on the IP, I had a nasty surprise.  Even though the paper covering the decals was waxed, it stuck to the decals terribly:

 

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I did a test on the Hasagawa logo decal and I was able to clean the paper off with water.

 

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Trouble is, I'll need to clean them as I apply them, because obviously as the decal starts getting wet it starts coming off.  Since they looked a little yellow anyway, I decided to find replacements in my spares, and remembered that I didn't use the decals in my Airfix Fw-190F-8.  Perfect!  The national insignias on the sides were wrong though, but I was able to find those as well.

 

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The stencils on the Hasegawa sheet look OK, which is a relief, but I will need to paint the red band on the fuselage and the black and white stripes on the cowl, which is OK, because anymore I'd rather paint those kinds of things.

 

Anyway, back to the cockpit:

 

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I got the fuselage buttoned up, which went very well and very little filling/sanding.  I had to put an insert in the top of the cowl and it sunk in one corner:

 

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The shiny part in the corner is where it sunk.  Luckily, I could see exactly where to fill, so that was fixed in short order.

 

This morning I got the wings together and on, again with very good fit.  I spent two hours masking the canopy -- it was very difficult to get around that rear view mirror.  Plus the canopy was scratched up badly, and I had to buff them out.  So here's where I'm at now:

 

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Here's the part I fixed on the cowl:

 

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luckily the seams at the wing roots were good:

 

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Now I have some sanding on the wing leading edges and get the cockpit finished so I can glue the canopy on.

 

 

 

 

Edited by opus999
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Hi Opus,

 

Great choice and brilliant progress! Hope this helps blow those cobwebs out - I'm sure it'll be just the ticket!

 

I'll pull up a chair and watch from the sidelines, if I may?

 

Cheers,

Mark

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That's a nice kit. I built a few of these in their various boxings. When modelling was fun - well, possibly less stressed than it is now.. 😄

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My day turned out differently than I'd planned -- my Dad had me help him fix a plastic piggy bank from 1952 which required micro drills, a brass rod and super glue, all of which are found n my modelling tool box.  Then the kids wanted to play board games... all of which are good things, so I happily put off modelling until this evening. 

 

I cleaned up all the parts and gave them a primer coat.

 

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In addition, I painted the red stripe and spinner.  I was going to use some enamel I had, but I realized it would be tacky for a couple of days and I wouldn't be able to mask it until then.  So I dug out a really old Tamiya acrylic red, which may be over 20 years old.  It was still good, so I mixed it with some levelling thinner.  I sprayed OK, but a little pebbly, but it will look fine with a flat clear coat over it.  

 

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It was still a little tacky because of the levelling thinner, but when I last checked, it felt like it had pretty much dried, so I'll be able to mask it and start painting tomorrow.

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Got to painting today. Things moved pretty fast once I got in the groove... plus the preshading stencils I use really speed things up too.  First I masked the red stripe after confirming the paint was fully dry

 

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Then I went over the area with Mr. Surfacer Black 1500.  I then remembered that the cowl had to be masked, since it will be black too... so...

 

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And then I painted the RLM 74 Gray green using the stencils:

 

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I then put on a top coat and while I was doing that noticed in the instructions that I was supposed to fill in the ventral radio door.  So out came the CA and I sanded it smooth...

 

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I should've realized this, but I wasn't really supposed to do that... Hasegawa got it wrong.  At least according to my Fw-190 book (I was looking at something different and saw that just a couple of minutes ago).  So I guess I will be penciling it back in when I'm done.  ugh.

 

A quick mask for the RLM 75 gray violet:

 

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and once that was done, a quick mask for the RLM 76 Blue:

 

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And when all was said and done:

 

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Masking the area where the wing met the fuselage was tough.  I see now that my glue on the canopy looks bad... not sure what I can do about it, but I'll see what I can do.

 

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I had to put the spinner on, just to see! :) 

 

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So, next up I need to paint the white stripes on the cowl and the few RLM 75 mottles on the tail.  And the little parts....

 

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The paintwork is coming right along!  😎   Just saw you were even off on this adventure.  Looks like a decent, easy to work with kit.

 

I'm slowly learning to appreciate pre-painted and masked stripes; my habitual method is to 1) apply factory paint, 2) mask and paint unit markings and field-applied livery.

 

My most recent "completion" is a P-38J with full invasion stripes.  I toyed with the idea of painting booms and wings separately to ease the masking, but in a fit of motivation wound up assembling the whole before painting.  It made more sense in that case to apply and mask off the wing stripes before the colour coats, and then apply the boom stripes after.  I really ought to post an RFI or three but the laziness gets in the way.

 

 

1 hour ago, opus999 said:

...I wasn't really supposed to do that... Hasegawa got it wrong.  At least according to my Fw-190 book (I was looking at something different and saw that just a couple of minutes ago).  So I guess I will be penciling it back in when I'm done.  ugh.

 

I know that feel.  Betrayal hurts.  You expect it from AZ, but Hasegawa?  😟


 

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19 hours ago, Jackson Duvalier said:

Looks like a decent, easy to work with kit.

Yeah, the fit is quite nice.  It's been a lot of fun to work on.

 

19 hours ago, Jackson Duvalier said:

My most recent "completion" is a P-38J with full invasion stripes.  I toyed with the idea of painting booms and wings separately to ease the masking, but in a fit of motivation wound up assembling the whole before painting.  It made more sense in that case to apply and mask off the wing stripes before the colour coats, and then apply the boom stripes after.  I really ought to post an RFI or three but the laziness gets in the way.

 

I'd love to see the P-38J.  My dad did one ages ago with invasion stripes and it wore them well! ;) 

 

19 hours ago, Jackson Duvalier said:

I know that feel.  Betrayal hurts.  You expect it from AZ, but Hasegawa?  

That's what I thought too!  I actually paused for a second before I filled it and thought "is that right?", but I've kind of forgotten all the intensive Fw-190 study I did last year so I just shrugged and went on with it.  I figured they knew what they were doing since they had me fill the gas filler cap on the port side behind the cockpit.  At least they got that right!

 

17 hours ago, 2996 Victor said:

Great progress, Opus! This is moving right along and looking really good - it's tempting even me to have a go at a Luftwaffe subject :) mottling = scary!

 

Cheers,

Mark

 

Well, I felt the same way once... but a good quality airbrush and properly thinned paint really made it easy.  You ought to give it a go on a test piece.  Before long you'll be mottling everything that's not moving... the desk, kitchen plates... the cat... oh, wait, no... that usually doesn't turn out well... :devil:

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5 hours ago, opus999 said:

a good quality airbrush.....really made it easy.

Something I desperately need - it's on my shopping list, but somehow never seems to make it to the top!

 

5 hours ago, opus999 said:

Before long you'll be mottling everything that's not moving... the desk, kitchen plates... the cat... oh, wait, no... that usually doesn't turn out well... :devil:

:rofl2: that's actually quite tempting :evil_laugh:

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Last night before dinner I masked the cowl.  It went much more quickly than I thought so i was able to paint it last night.

 

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After painting the cowl, i did the mottling on the tail.  They're pretty big mottles and I followed the instructions exactly.  On the port side the pattern looks pretty nice, on the starboard side it looks more like big dots.  That's what the instructions had though. 

 

So what I did was made a thin mix of paint, something like 4:1 or 5:1, and turned my compressor down to something like 7 psi.  Then I take the protective cap off the front so that the needle is exposed and I can get very close and I can make super fine lines that way.  I have to point it at a paper towel once in a while and give it a blast to keep the paint flowing, but if the airbrush is clean, this technique works very well.

 

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I got to looking at my Fw-190 book last night and realized that my mottles were too sharply defined.  So after work today I loaded up the airbrush with another thin mixture, and low psi, but kept the protective cap on the airbrush and went over them again.  It softened the edges, but I think I could've made them even softer than this.  Well too bad, I think that's as good as it's going to get from me!

 

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I put this model off because the paint scheme didn't thrill me, just looking at the box art.  However, now that the painting is pretty much done, I have to say I think it looks really cool!  I'm really happy with ti.

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1 hour ago, opus999 said:

So what I did was made a thin mix of paint, something like 4:1 or 5:1, and turned my compressor down to something like 7 psi.  Then I take the protective cap off the front so that the needle is exposed and I can get very close and I can make super fine lines that way.  I have to point it at a paper towel once in a while and give it a blast to keep the paint flowing, but if the airbrush is clean, this technique works very well.

 

 

I admire those fine lines you've accomplished.  What sort of airbrush do you use?  

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The great thing about working from home is I can apply clear coat and wait for the minimum cure time to apply another coat. If I was in the office, It would take a couple days to get the surface smooth enough for decals.  But yesterday before work I applied a coat of Alclad Aqua Gloss, and then again at lunch and a third time after work.  This allowed me to put on some decals before bed.

 

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The Hasagawa decals that I absolutely needed from the sheet that had the paper stuck to it cleaned up nicely.  What I did to avoid releasing the decal from its backing was use a paint brush with water to scrub the top of the decal and avoid getting the backing paper wet.  I would use a cotton swab to clean off the glue and paper.  I was able to get the decals clean before applying them, so as bad as that decal sheet looked, it turned out fine.  Really the worst problem is the slightly yellow emblem on the side of the cowl. 

 

While I was applying decals I noticed this red streak behind the stripe.  It's more noticeable in real life, but you might get the idea:

 

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Its almost like the aqua gloss activated the Tamiya acrylic and made the streak when I was applying the aqua gloss with a paint brush.  It wasn't there before the gloss coat.  Weird.  Well, at least it's easily fixed.

 

Stencils go on tonight....

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On 8/24/2021 at 8:22 PM, Jackson Duvalier said:

 

 

I admire those fine lines you've accomplished.  What sort of airbrush do you use?  

 

 

I've got an Iwata HP-C.  When I first got back into the hobby, my wife saw me struggling with the Testors-branded Aztek I had and she did a bunch of research and picked the HP-C to give me for Christmas.  She said it seemed to be the best value with good performance for not a ton of money.  I suppose there are better airbrushes out there, but I haven't felt the need to go looking for them.

 

I used this technique on the complex mottling on Hemmo Leino's Bf-109G  and on the crew-applied ad hoc camo on Waldemar Wubke's Bf-109E.  It works really well for small jobs like this, but for jobs like the Bf-109G, it gets tedious because after a while the airbrush starts to spit and the paint doesn't flow well.  Then I have to blast some lacquer thinner through it to get it to work the way I want again.  Probably because of junk in the paint... or junk in the airbrush...

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I think the evidence is clear some of the enthusiasm and mojo is coming back mate. Fantastic paint job by the way!

 

Enjoying this build, good stuff.

 

Cheers,

John

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3 hours ago, opus999 said:

I've got an Iwata HP-C.  When I first got back into the hobby, my wife saw me struggling with the Testors-branded Aztek I had and she did a bunch of research and picked the HP-C to give me for Christmas.  She said it seemed to be the best value with good performance for not a ton of money.  I suppose there are better airbrushes out there, but I haven't felt the need to go looking for them.

 

Say no more!   High-five to your wife, I like her style.  I've an HP-CS that is my first-love Japanese airbrush, and she's sprayed much freehand camouflage, and everything else really for the past five years or so, a huge step up from the Aztek I had previously.  Excellent equipment, the Iwata, still works well despite her somewhat ham-fisted operator.  I recently impulse-purchased a GSI-Creos Procon Boy 0.2mm.  It's almost a carbon copy of an Iwata HP, but with more finesse and improved fine control.  I was surprised how much less fatiguing it makes my freehand-heavy style of painting.  You could ask for one for Christmas, surely you deserve it?  

 

The Focke-Wulf is looking lovely with the decals on.  I see what you mean with the Hasegawa off-white on the cowl emblem, but it doesn't look too jarring.  The opacity of that ink over the stark black/white cowl stripes is impressive.

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