A Tale of 3 Hawker Sea Furies

[Brigbeale]

Work proceeded on the stripes on the FB10 tonight.

Rather than use the small strips of tape to gauge the outlines for the black stripes I simply measured them and used a sharp(ish) blade to mark the distances at the front and towards the rear of the wings. Tape was then placed over the wings to mask off the white for the black stripes. 12mm discs were also placed in top of the wings for a background for the upper wing roundels - where the background remains white. 

The underside, again, had tape placed on to line up with the tape on the upper wing surface. 

I inadvertently forgot to mask the gap underneath for the serial number so that was done tonight. The clear white section will be masked off and painted Sky for the serial number to be fitted to.

The fuselage was also measured and taped off in the same manner, but again the Sky coloured box for the aircraft number was missed, so that will also be sorted out later.

 

The stripes were airbrushed on using Tamiya Flat Black.
While that was drying, I was cleaning the airbrush and the stand/pot (does anybody else clean the airbrush pot/stand after each use or is it only me?)

 

I then removed the masking which turned out very well. The only hiccup was just in front of the tail where some paint found it’s way through the masking into the white. I’ll touch that in later.

 

Then it was a case of patiently painting the 15 propeller blades front and back by hand on the three Sea Furies. The propellers look 100% better now they’re painted.

 

Edited June 30, 2022 by Brigbeale

[bigbadbadge]

Oocracking job on the stripes Brian , they look sweet,  loving the group photo, they all look wonderful. 

Great job all round.

Chris

 

[Johnson]

Looks very good with stripes Brian.

 

On 6/29/2022 at 9:50 PM, Brigbeale said:

I also masked the aelerons to keep the white paint off them as I read that Sea Furies didn’t have them painted when the stripes were added.

 

There was a great deal of variation in the position of Korean war identification stripes on the wings on Sea Furys. Sometimes they were completely inboard of the ailerons, sometimes they were further out and partially covered them and as you've done, sometimes they left the ailerons unpainted. The pros and cons of stripes were that they supposed to i/d UK and Aussie aircraft and stop the Americans shooting them down. On the other hand they did tend to make the planes a bit conspicuous.

 

21 hours ago, Brigbeale said:

does anybody else clean the airbrush pot/stand after each use or is it only me?

I clean my airbrush pot/needle/nozzle etc every time it gets used. If I get a problem it's usually down to a build up of paint.

 

Cheers,

[Brigbeale]

2 hours ago, Johnson said:

 

 

I clean my airbrush pot/needle/nozzle etc every time it gets used. If I get a problem it's usually down to a build up of paint.

 

Cheers,

I clean the airbrush out as much as possible each time I use it as a matter of course, but I was talking about the airbrush cleaning pot/stand.

 

Thanks for the information on the stripes. I think then if there was so much variation, it’d be hard to get it completely wrong - but not impossible😆.

Edited July 1, 2022 by Brigbeale

[Brigbeale]

I added the home-made decals to the FB10 tonight. They went on with no problems at all. 
The serial numbers and RN stencil decals were applied first and with a little trepidation the roundels went on afterwards. The wing upper decals were fitted from a set printed onto clear decal paper. I was very pleased that they went on perfectly and look fantastic. The fuselage and underwing roundels were printed in white decal paper.

The printed decals were sealed with Matt spray lacquer varnish and left for a couple of days.

The overall effect on the FB10 is very striking and I’m very pleased with it.

 

With the decals fitted it was time to add the wheels and gear doors. The now spare pair of wheels from the T61 Bagdad Fury were used for the main gear and a 3D printed replacement tail wheel was made and painted. I must remember to make a pair of tail wheel doors.

The stainless panel either side behind the exhaust outlets were painted, and while I was about it I did the other two Sea Furies as well.

 

The landing gear was fitted to the T20. The only slight hitch in that one was each actuation brace has a locating hole in the gear leg but no hole for the angled pin to go into in the wheel well, so I had to drill my own. Other than that, they fitted reasonably well.

 

The T61, being a wheels up model required a stand, so I borrowed one from a small Corgi Spitfire which I picked up a while ago and made the stand for it. I’ll 3D print a better stand for the T61 though, but this one will do for now. I did contemplate doing a Sea Fury shaped one to simulate a shadow. That should be fun!

 

With the small finishing touches to do and some light weathering, the three Sea Furies will be finished by tomorrow night hopefully.

 

[Johnson]

35 minutes ago, Brigbeale said:

but I was talking about the airbrush cleaning pot/stand

Ah, I see. I don't have one of those, maybe I need to investigate them!

 

They are looking very smart.

[Brigbeale]

I found a few silhouette images of Sea Furies and copied it to Onshape. I decided a 110mm wing span would be big enough. I sketched it out using a spline to copy the outline and sent it to Cura for slicing before I can put it on an SD card for the 3D printer. 
The only problem was, it only measured 11mm wide - yes, I measured it in cm and forgot to add the ‘0’ for mm. No problem though - I just took the image size from 100% to 1000% which mad it the right size.

it should take about an hour to print out, so I’ll do that tomorrow in Black filament.

 

I’d hate to see how long a Vulcan silhouette would take to print!

Edited July 1, 2022 by Brigbeale

[Brigbeale]

I 3D printed the silhouette base for the T61 and used a short piece of clear sprue for the upright for the Bagdad Fury to sit on. In retrospect, the silhouette could have been a little larger but it’s working fine the way it is. 
Light weathering was carried out to all three Sea Furies mainly in exhaust stains and general grubbiness of aircraft in use. The T20 being used in a race would have been clean anyway (I presume), so didn’t require much weathering.

I went a bit overboard with the exhaust staining in the FB10, but was able to recover it with a damp cotton bud.

 

Photos were taken with the individual aircraft in their working printed bases (The T20 was photographed on the carrier deck printed base as I didn’t have a decent tarmac one to hand). A photo was also taken of the FB10 with the rest of my FAA family.

[Johnson]

Nice display Brian. The Bagdad Fury looks really great above the silhouette.

[Brigbeale]

The RFI can be found here.

 

[bigbadbadge]

Great work Brian a stunning trio, the silhouette stand looks ace and a cracking  FAA collection there.

Love it

Chris