Eduard 1:48 Spitfire Mk. 1a

[Procopius]

Brother Ngantek asked the question I would ask. Can you use lacquers or do you have access to them? I get good results with AK Extreme Metals and Alclad, and I think on the acrylic front, mon frere d'autre mere @Cookenbacher has had some good results with Vallejo's acrylic metallics and metal paste(?) which apparently you can't eat so why bother.

[Chuuurles]

6 hours ago, Procopius said:

Brother Ngantek asked the question I would ask. Can you use lacquers or do you have access to them? I get good results with AK Extreme Metals and Alclad, and I think on the acrylic front, mon frere d'autre mere @Cookenbacher has had some good results with Vallejo's acrylic metallics and metal paste(?) which apparently you can't eat so why bother.

I wish I could laugh and thank a post with the reactions, instead of being forced to choose one. 
 

I have access to everything you mentioned but have no experience using lacquers. My LHS is great, I love going there, the employee’s are all salt of the earth types and their paint/model inventory are pretty decent. 

 
Next time I will pickup some Alclad paint and have a play. 
 

@Ngantek 

 

So much better, this actually get’s me excited (my wife say’s she wants to paint her nails with it 😬😬🤢). Many thank’s again for the correction! 
 

Finally some nice weather here in Toronto  this past week. Got to cut my WIP mini pitch with my Greensmaster 1000 @0.75” …one of my favourite pastimes. 

 

Edited May 15, 2022 by Chuuurles

[Ngantek]

Yeah, looks like you win at LHS!

 

Alclads are great, I adore them, but they do come with some caveats. Being lacquers, you need to take extra care with ventilation and PPE of course, but also the solvent is pretty hot, so you need to take care about what you spray both under and over them. They work beautifully over lacquer primers like Mr Surfacer; for the high shine alclads they have an enamel black gloss primer which people are so so about. I've found some alclads are okay with humbrol enamel gloss, some not. Tamiya black lacquer gloss works for me, I suspect mr colour will too. As for sealing them, I've cracked them with lacquer varnishes on occasion, their aqua gloss is pretty good, I hear Klear/future/pledge can work. Basically it's worth having a test with the specific combinations you're going to use for a model since YMMV.

 

They spray straight out of the bottle beautifully at low (~15psi) pressure, so much so that, being some of the first paints I used out of the airbrush, they kinda made everything else seem really fussy and difficult by comparison.

 

[Chuuurles]

Thanks for all this. After my post I started realizing how much I have to learn about paint and your follow up comment really confirmed it. 

 

Turns out I do have some experience with lacquer based paints from using MFS 🙃. I have a cheap little spray booth venting outside and a good 3M mask with organic vapour cartridges, so all good on PPE.

Forgot to buy enamel thinner for the xf-21 (they did not have it in acrylic) so painting will have to wait until tomorrow. 
 

Learning is the fun part !  

[Ngantek]

You could have a go with white spirit if you have some lying around. But I've never used Tamiya enamels, I'm not sure you can even get them in the UK, so I'm just guessing here.

[Chuuurles]

1 hour ago, Ngantek said:

You could have a go with white spirit if you have some lying around. But I've never used Tamiya enamels, I'm not sure you can even get them in the UK, so I'm just guessing here.

Interesting , I think I will change tack, play it safe and locate some acrylic XF-21 tomorrow. Lacquer, enamel, and acrylic paint combined with a total noob sound’s like a recipe for disaster 😛 

[Procopius]

FWIW, I'm extraordinarily reckless with Alclad and never (well, hardly ever) pay any price for it. I spray it over other paint, over bare plastic, on my fingers....

[Cookenbacher]

Lovely Spitfire Chuuurles with three "u"s!

Since you've got an extractor and good PPE, I'd recommend lacquers for metallics or anything else really, they just spray so nice. But whatever you're spraying, I'd recommend an inline MAC valve (it doesn't have to be any particular brand - this is just the first one that came up in my web search). That way, if your paint ends up too thin in the cup, just dial down the pressure a little and keep spraying - it covers a multitude of paint mixing sins!

[Chuuurles]

My accumulations for the day, forgot the MAC valve but I will be picking one up. 

 

 

[Chuuurles]

18 hours ago, Cookenbacher said:

Lovely Spitfire Chuuurles with three "u"s!

Since you've got an extractor and good PPE, I'd recommend lacquers for metallics or anything else really, they just spray so nice. But whatever you're spraying, I'd recommend an inline MAC valve (it doesn't have to be any particular brand - this is just the first one that came up in my web search). That way, if your paint ends up too thin in the cup, just dial down the pressure a little and keep spraying - it covers a multitude of paint mixing sins!

Thank u for this and apologies for all the u’s 😛. I agree that the lacquers spray nice (and I will keep an open mind) but at the risk of sounding soft… I do enjoy the ease of use of acrylic paint.

 

Today I bubble bathed my Spitfire. 

Packed away the Badger

Broke out the big gun.. 

And sprayed some XF-21

natural light 

I watched too much YouTube last night and have the idea in my head to try some pre-shading with brown along the panel lines and then another light coat of XF-21. 

[Procopius]

That looks really good!

 

I'll freely confess to being a bit of a plodder, but I never achieved much with preshading.

[Ngantek]

You got such a lovely crisp finish, it almost seems a shame to go over it again. Why not try a post shade if you want to create some variation?

 

I use the same Iwata, love it.

[Chuuurles]

On 5/16/2022 at 6:34 PM, Procopius said:

That looks really good!

 

I'll freely confess to being a bit of a plodder, but I never achieved much with preshading.

That was enough motivation to move onto the topside. 
 

Yesterday I shuffled for 23km on a trail. The journey took 3 hrs and 15 minutes. I can hardly move today, but still managed a little modelling.

 

Masked off the underside 

Then I mixed four parts XF-49 and one part XF-72 and sprayed the Spitfire. 

Tomorrow I will start masking the camo pattern. 

[Cookenbacher]

On 5/16/2022 at 2:58 PM, Chuuurles said:

Thank u for this and apologies for all the u’s 😛. I agree that the lacquers spray nice (and I will keep an open mind) but at the risk of sounding soft… I do enjoy the ease of use of acrylic paint.

Never apologize for your bold and creative use of 'u's, great username! I mainly use water based acrylics because of ease of use and cleanup, but they can definitely be finicky to spray.

 

Lovely paint work Chuuurles, and glad you decided to preserve that smooth Sky finish.

[Procopius]

1 hour ago, Chuuurles said:

 

Yesterday I shuffled for 23km on a trail. The journey took 3 hrs and 15 minutes. I can hardly move today, but still managed a little modelling.

 

 

5 MPH is a pretty respectable pace for nearly 16 miles, I should think!

[Chuuurles]

12 hours ago, Procopius said:

5 MPH is a pretty respectable pace for nearly 16 miles, I should think!

hmm. Well I seemed to be holding my friend's back. I shouldn't mind as none of them have reproduced and so they can exercise constantly. I personally have not cycled for a year or run for 2 years. The plan is to do it every other week until we have finished The Bruce Trail (880km) .

 

Here we are at the southern terminus. Today I'am even more stiff  

 

 

 

I think i found something I do not enjoy about modelling. Masking cammo! 

 

Trying to make white tack sausages was a fail. It did not seem to want to sit level on the surface and I could see an overspray moment in my future. 

 

 

This took approx 2 hrs.. 

 

It's wildly innaccurate in places. 

 

 

[Procopius]

4 minutes ago, Chuuurles said:

 

 

I think i found something I do not enjoy about modelling. Masking cammo! 

 

I gotchu fam: http://www.yolo.net/~jeaton/mymodels/spitfire/templates/SpitTemp.html

 

 

4 minutes ago, Chuuurles said:

hmm. Well I seemed to be holding my friend's back. I shouldn't mind as none of them have reproduced and so they can exercise constantly. I personally have not cycled for a year or run for 2 years. The plan is to do it every other week until we have finished The Bruce Trail (880km) .

 

 

 

I know the feeling. I blew out my knee and needed arthroscopic knee surgery a few months before my first child was born and it's been a struggle ever since. 

[Chuuurles]

1 hour ago, Procopius said:

I gotchu fam: http://www.yolo.net/~jeaton/mymodels/spitfire/templates/SpitTemp.html

 

 

 

I know the feeling. I blew out my knee and needed arthroscopic knee surgery a few months before my first child was born and it's been a struggle ever since. 

Wow, seriously thank you! I emailed a few of my local hobby shop's your wish list of kits, in some attempt at trying to thank you for the help...

[Cookenbacher]

I can attest that the paper masks work a treat - and I daresay that your airbrush skills will allow for you to try some free hand camo too.

[Chuuurles]

2 hours ago, Cookenbacher said:

I can attest that the paper masks work a treat - and I daresay that your airbrush skills will allow for you to try some free hand camo too.

Well, I tried the paper mask. Cutting it out , making loops out of tape. I love the concept for the feathered edge. However, through inexperience I couldn’t seem to attach them properly. Instead, I used the templates kindly provided by your brother from another mother and made some accurate ish mask’s out of tape.

Does not show up in the photo but I attempted to feather the green into the tape.

 

[Procopius]

I find blu-tac or rolled Tamiya tape works well for me, but your method looks classier. How did it turn out? Come on, get 'em off, let's see! (That has never worked before, but maybe this time...?)

[Chuuurles]

1 hour ago, Procopius said:

I find blu-tac or rolled Tamiya tape works well for me, but your method looks classier. How did it turn out? Come on, get 'em off, let's see! (That has never worked before, but maybe this time...?)

Ha ha I am dumb enough, could not wait. I will do a bunch of little touch up’s but not too bad.

 

[Procopius]

🔥🥵🔥

[bigbadbadge]

Wow this has come on well, looking very nice indeed , your paint finish looks lovely.   

Chris

[Chuuurles]

Sorry for the lack of updates. I had to go to the cottage (cabin in 🇬🇧) for the long-weekend, where i was heavily exposed to covid-19. 

 

Somehow, beofore I left, I managed to dropped a piece of masking tape on the decal sheet. The tape of course landed right on one of the roundel's i plan on using, when I removed the tape it took some of the carrier film with it. I wonder if the decal is still serviceable? I'll add a picture later.