Heather's Workbench - Faithful Annie, 1/72nd Avro Anson

[TheBaron]

That's looking really smashing now  Heather. Those oil coolers do look stunning - the only bit of that Flightpath set that really worked for me visually. Did you swear as much as me though putting them together?

[AdrianMF]

54 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

Did you swear as much as me though

At least it was PE…

 

I made a lovely oil cooler for an Airfix Demon a couple of years ago. Five thou plastic card, five thou spacers, all drilled up to thread up on some stretched sprue. Lovely! 
 

Waved a brush full of Tamiya thin near it, ended up with a blob of dissolved plastic!

 

Your Anson is looking lovely. Hope the last lap goes well.

 

I’m looking forward to Telford and I will check out the BoB SIG.

 

Regards,

Adrian

[Heather Kay]

1 hour ago, TheBaron said:

Did you swear as much as me though putting them together?

Funnily enough, no. Which is unusual for me and PE, I must admit. 
 

27 minutes ago, AdrianMF said:

Waved a brush full of Tamiya thin near it, ended up with a blob of dissolved plastic!

Argh! 

 

My Italian trio should be in the table, and I’m thinking about offering some Fleet Air Arm, too. It’ll be great to meet you in person at last!
 

2 hours ago, Hamden said:

Anson looks spot on Heather not far to the finish line now!

Thanks Roger. It won’t get finished before we head off to Somerset for the weekend. It is close, though.

[Heather Kay]

Back from Somerset, feeling a few days simply wasn’t sufficient to recharge batteries. Being the sole driver didn’t help. Over 400 miles, some across winding country roads, much more on boring dual carriageways. Still, we enjoyed it.

 

Annie has been looking at me hopefully since we got back.

 

 

On with the transfers. Thankfully, only the main markings, squadron codes and aircraft serial to do. None of those annoying stencils and electrical bonding marks to worry about here. I’m sure there were plenty of them on the real plane, along with trestle locations and all that malarkey. Anyway, as expected, the Special Hobby transfers behaved impeccably. The wing roundels have been given a coat of Micro Sol just to help them into the paving cracks, but the fuselage stuff went down nicely. If I have any complaint it’s the code letters are a shade on the dark side.

 

I will leave that lot to dry, then apply some varnish to fix them in place. I should get on and put the props and undercarriage together.

[Brandy]

That's looking fantastic. All those nasty seems are well hidden!

 

Ian

[Heather Kay]

20 minutes ago, Brandy said:

That's looking fantastic. All those nasty seems are well hidden!

Choosing the right angles for photos always helps!

 

My next challenge is getting a surface finish between matt and satin that doesn’t show brush marks. 

[Head in the clouds.]

I always feel you have hit a milestone when the decals go on and all seems good with the world....as long as they behave.

 

Nice work Heather, Annie is looking suitably dressed and presented...🙂

[Heather Kay]

It had all been going so well. There was bound to be something sooner or later - well, later in this case as it came almost right at the end.

 

It was time for final odd details. Propellers. The kit styrene ones are utter rubbish, shapeless blobs, alleviated only slightly by PE hubs which are too large anyway. Tough. It’s what I’ve got and it’ll have to do. Each prop was stuck to a 1mm brass rod for later fitting to the engines.

 

Undercarriage. The early characteristic forks are cast resin, and as fragile as I feel right now. Some very careful tidying got them almost close. I entertained the possibility of using the Flightpath PE details, but didn’t: they’re designed to fit the ancient Airfix kit, and would probably not fit this kit nicely. The main oleo legs had the wheels fitted, but left unglued so I could arrange the flat section later on, and were then stuck as firmly as possible onto the vague shelf arrangement. Happily, they are almost aligned with each other and more or less point straight down. Not pigeon-toed or knock-kneed, but close. Painting would be attempted once all was nice and solid.

 

With no further paint or varnish, how about revealing the glory of the glazing?

 

 

Oh, bottoms. How the heck did all that crud get in there? I was ever so careful to avoid it. As you can imagine, i wasn’t very happy about this. Again, no way to do anything about it, though thoughts of anti-static devices occupied my head for a while. Obviously, this is close up, but it’s still pretty obvious. Ho, and indeed, hum.

 

 

At least nothing else came adrift inside the cabin, so there’s that.

 

Much more success with the nose light. Happy with that.

 

 

Another of those things I left until last was the turret and gun mount. The instructions show the resin mount parts sitting in a ledge in the turret ring. Over that slips a transparent ring, and then the dome on top. Only the ledge is where the ring sits, and the mount assembly has nothing to fix it in place.  PVA is holding the gun barrel in the recess, and likewise the dome on top. You can’t see anything in there anyway. I know there should be all kinds of vanes and details on the dome, but by this stage I didn’t care much any more. I wanted it finished and done.

 

I’ve just carefully glued the fragile PE control surface operating levers in place. They will get a careful dab of suitable paint. I was going to use some more of the Flightpath PE for such things as the windscreen wipers, but frankly I’m done with this model now. Once I’ve rigged the tail and fitted the radio antenna wire, I’ll get some portraits done, post in RFI and bung it at the back of the cabinet. 
 

Disappointed by the dust. After all my efforts to avoid it. Bah. If you have any ideas on how to encourage the stuff into hidden parts of the cockpit, please let me know.

 

[perdu]

It might not please you Heather but I have to tell you.

 

 

I LIKE THAT!

 

Dust, nobody escapes it but to be fair you've done it better than I ever do.

 

How about suction from a vacuum cleaner applied to a suitable orifice, I have removed some dust from models by using a weird little computer keyboard vacuum but often think I might custom fit a small tube to the domestic beastie to make a better fist of it.

 

Anyway Annie?

 

I think she's a little darling with lovely canopy frames.

 

So there

[Heather Kay]

6 minutes ago, perdu said:

I think she's a little darling with lovely canopy frames.

Aw, thanks Bill. Despite the dust, she’s not turned out too badly. 
 

Now, I am considering whether a vacuum might do the job. There aren’t many likely orifices I could use, but I could attempt an unobtrusive hole in the belly. Food for thought.

[Brandy]

That is a lovely little Annie, despite your misgivings. I'd certainly be happy with her as is.

 

Ian

 

PS 2 sets of Battle landing gear are now in a little container, heading your way soon.....

[AdrianMF]

Dust!

 

Find some artificial fabric - sports gear is perfect, the more synthetic feeling the better. 

 

Roll it into a little ball.

 

Rub the underside of your model vigorously with the rolled up fabric. *

 

Flick the canopy smartly with a fingernail. **

 

Dust should migrate floorwards towards the new charge. 

 

Worked for me, and it's worked for others. See here.

 

* No liability will be accepted for wiping off underside details with vigorous rubbing.

** Or breaking the canopy. Steady now!!

 

Regards,

Adrian

 

PS looking great and that paintwork looks smooooo-ooooth!

[Dave Slowbuild]

Annie looks great to me Heather!  You’ve done a super job.

 

I share your pain with the dust, having had the same problem for a few builds running.  I stopped painting the inside of the canopy with Klear, and have not had a (significant) problem since.  Can’t explain why, I don’t understand electrostatics…

 

Dave

[TheBaron]

Exquisite masking Heather - I like that a lot.

@AdrianMF's anti-dust procedure looks so effective I might go back and try it on mine.

[Heather Kay]

12 hours ago, Dave Slowbuild said:

Annie looks great to me Heather!  You’ve done a super job.

Thanks Dave. I still like her, despite the dust. Having got a second plane in my Coastal Command collection built, I’m quite keen to add some more. Let’s see, what do I have? Sunderland, Stranraer, Lerwick, Hudson, Beaufort. That’s a big modern kit, old school big biplane, vacuum form (shudder), ancient incorrect kit, shiny new kit. Oh boy. Choices.

 

15 minutes ago, TheBaron said:

Exquisite masking Heather - I like that a lot.

@AdrianMF's anti-dust procedure looks so effective I might go back and try it on mine.

 

Cheers Tony. Although the Montex vinyl wasn’t terribly accurate, most of the panels being just a little bit small in one direction or another, the end result was alright. I think the dust mostly came from attempts at fairing in the large glazed rear with the dodgy joint in front of the turret. Despite my best efforts, a lot got in through some very small gaps. I tried Adrian's method last night. Perhaps the material wasn’t synthetic enough, because I didn’t see anything budge from inside the clear parts.  I’ll try another time. Failing that, discreet holes in the nether regions under the belly and a small vacuum cleaner might help - and potentially suck the cockpit details out as well! 
 

I may feel up to RFI photos today. We shall see.

[Heather Kay]

Sharing a shelf with a Whitley. The portrait shoot went a bit too well, so I expect the images will be as rough as a badger's backside when I get to processing them later.

 

I'll share the RFI clicky linky thing when I’ve posted it.

[Dave Slowbuild]

I propose you fill one of those glasses with an appropriate beverage to toast another job well done!
 

Dave

[Heather Kay]

There we go, folks. 

 

 

 

[Mr T]

Although I have already made a comment on the RFI, I will say it again that you have done really brilliant job on the Anson. The kit seems to have come from a time when the manufacturer went out of their way to engineer the kit to be unuser friendly. I built the Hudson from a similar time period and it spent a considerable while on the Shelf of Doom as I became frustrated with fit issues, largely as a result of lack of location points and instructions so vague or inaccurate. I wondered if they were written by someone who had actually seen the kit Parts, or looked at a real aircraft. 

I will look out for you at SMW. It is nice to put a face to the people who build the models that appear on BM (apart from the lack of hair I look nothing like my avatar, it is just what my secretary called me at work)