Grumman Martlet Mk. IV; Airfix 1/72 - FINISHED

[Ngantek]

EDIT: link to post with the final model:

 

 

Hello! This build was intended to be a nice easy thing I do in the background, and I wasn't therefore intending to waste a lot of forum space on a WIP thread. But a few sessions in, I feel like my memory is so rubbish that I'm actually missing having the 'diary' of sorts to keep track of what I was doing. Plus the questions, the endless questions that keep popping into my head. So apologies in advance for you poor souls who are unfortunate enough to stumble into this thread!

 

So yes, the Airfix Wildcat, which seems to have garnered much love on these forums. I was lucky enough to stumble on one of these at KB models in Havant on the south coast (a hidden gem of a shop for those of you in the area). After seeing @bigbadbadge's terrific build of it a few months ago, I couldn't resist. This'll be OOB, the plan being to just have fun and not get too fussed with making it rubbish, rather enjoy the build and be free to try out new techniques and materials along the way.

 

I'm slowly planning to work my way through various FAA carrier aircraft, and am always on the lookout for wing fold versions. The new Arma of course is very appealing but doesn't, I believe, have that option OOB. Finding a decent kit modern kit with a wing folding option is fairly rare I think in this scale; that alone is a big selling point for me.

 

So far, the cockpit has gone together OOB. Airfix instrument decals are, let's be honest, a bit naff, and the single worst looking bit is the centre instrument panel, which of course is the one bit of the cockpit that you can actually see. Ah well, build it and move on.

I got a bit lazy on this; I tried using klear, which wasn't all that great, gave it a quick wash, and kind got bored about the time that I was meant to be highlighting it. So, it's a bit meh, but I'll move on. Airfix, I think, messed up the decal callouts on this one but it's no biggie. Oh and some Eduard belts that I was also too lazy to paint. Sorry, top quality content you're getting here!
 

The undercarriage needed a fair bit of cleaning, the molds are showing signs of seam build up and a fair amount of misalignment on the wee fiddly struts. Engine got a lick of some random paints, and here we are.

Notice the shim of styrene I added under the cockpit, the idea being I wanted to leave the two windows in the lower fuselage clear, since I thought they might add some lighting to the interior; but wanted to avoid being able just to look straight through out the other side of the fuselage. I was equally lazy in not varnishing, washing or highlighting the wheel bay. Sorry! Maybe I'll do some of the undercarriage later.

 

 

I'm lucky enough that a wander over to Duxford is not a particularly uncommon event, and the wildcat VI (I think it is), is often on display. I copied the colour from that, which is a mix of I guess Grumman grey, sky, black and aluminium.

 

 

I actually undercoated everthing in alclad aluminium and build up the various colours gradually on to in the hope of getting a bit of that 'worn to metallic' look you can see here. It didn't work very well, I think overshading the colour with metallic might have looked better.

 

So fuselage has gone together rather nicely without any obvious issues.

 

Except of course that the PVA glue for the windows was still drying and I stuck my finger right into one and pushed it in so that it was precariously hanging by a corner, soon to become the most annoying permanent fuselage rattle.  Fortunately... there this little gap in the cockpit floor, just about large enough for a sewing needle, and the window had hung on enough to get it back in. I should stop using the kid's crappy PVA glue really...

 

 

Airfix seem to have made a bit of pig's ear of converting the double wasp-fitting fuselage of the original F4F kit into the single row cyclone cowling. Reading back through the forums here and looking at the sprue, it seems like they correctly included the cyclone orignially, but used a wasp-powered Martlet Mark II for the cowling shape. Then on discovering the error, added another sprue that extends the forbody and has the correct shorter cowl. I'm hoping this means I can use the unused MkII style cowl to turn one of the F4F-4 kits into a Mk. II in the future...

 

But anyway in the meantime, the forebody extension is a bit off; the detail on the cowl doesn't quite align, and because the original fuselage tool is rounded off at the front to taper into the wasp cowl, the extension doesn't lie flush at all. It looks like Airfix made a half hearted attempt to put a 'lip' on the extension to bridge that gap, but that didn't really make it past quality control in this case.

 

I opted to add the two sides of the extension to the fuselage individually, pushed hard back, and do as messy a job with the cement as possible to minimise the gap I'd have to fill to remove that extension line. The added bonus is that it leaves a very airfix-like-panel line extension! So a fair bit of filling and rescribing to do there, but nothing too major.

 

So there we are, lovely kit to build so far.

 

Cheers,

Andy

 

 

[stevehnz]

Liking the look of this, one I have in stock so shall follow as you go, a good way to handle the fuselage extension I reckon.

Steve.

[bigbadbadge]

Hi Andy, thanks for the mention,  that's very kind of you.

Great progress and looking good. Great idea for the divide under the cockpit too.

It was pointed out to me on my build that the extension section that Airfix instructs you to add should not be there on this aircraft.  It was too late for me of course. 

I do have a Wildcat to build as a Mk.V or VI in the stash too.

I hope you enjoy this one

Chris

[Ngantek]

On 19/07/2022 at 06:13, stevehnz said:

Liking the look of this, one I have in stock so shall follow as you go, a good way to handle the fuselage extension I reckon.

Steve.

Thanks, it's turning out to be a nice kit, although I think with my copy, the quality control has let it down a little.

 

On 19/07/2022 at 09:47, bigbadbadge said:

Hi Andy, thanks for the mention,  that's very kind of you.

Great progress and looking good. Great idea for the divide under the cockpit too.

It was pointed out to me on my build that the extension section that Airfix instructs you to add should not be there on this aircraft.  It was too late for me of course. 

I do have a Wildcat to build as a Mk.V or VI in the stash too.

I hope you enjoy this one

Chris

Thanks for the heads up on that one Chris. Yeah, reading back, it looks like it's that cowl extension line that needs removing. I've had a go, but more remedial work still required I think.

 

 

!!warning meandering drivel!!

Actually looking at that 'incorrect' cowl that was shipped by Airfix, it looks too short to be suitable to turn a P&W F4F-4 kit into a Mark II; it's barely longer than the replacement one, so I'm not really sure what it was supposed to be. Perhaps an FM-2/Mk. VI, whose cowl I believe is longer than that of the earlier Wright single row Wildcats? Anyway speculation for another time. In all truth I'd quite like to make the second kit into an HMS Audacity Martlet of 802 squadron. Having an earlier colour scheme that predates Grumman's TSS matching, it would make a change; and seeing as no one can seem to agree what that scheme really was, I'd be free to do something to my tastes! I seem to see wildly varying reports as to whether they were Mk Is or IIIs or even folding wing IIs, but basically it's not looking like there's an obvious way to turn an F4F-4 kit into one. Ahh well.

!! \meandering drivel!!

 

Anyway back to the build, another week of not much progress, but have be tinkering on the side when I got the chance. Some Mr surfacer 500 went down on the seams:

 

The wings got assembled. They took a little more fettling that I was expecting to be honest, but the tool design seems good. I drilled out the wing section perforations and did a little masking.

 

And the canopy got masked pretty roughly and then had some interior green. The whole thing's had some of that delicious Mr Finishing surfacer 1500, which mostly ended up all over my hands when trying to lazily decant it straight from the can into the airbrush cup.

 

More work needed on those seams. I might experiement with some CA glue.

 

Photos of this the aircraft in the included scheme show it to be in reasonable condition. Those pesky FAA fitters and their cleanliness! But I might nonetheless do them a disservice and have a go at weathering this one a bit more with layers, chipping and sanding.

 

Anyway that's it for now!

Cheers,

Andy

[bigbadbadge]

Hi Andy great to see the paint starting, drilling out the holes in the wingfold is a cracking idea and should look good when painted up.  Great progress so far , looking forward to the TSS emerging. 

Chris

[heloman1]

Looking good. I'm not want to prime my models before painting but with my latest build, an Italeri Wessex HAS 3in the Falklands 40 Anni GB. I did and what a difference. I think I may be hooked.

 

Colin

[Ngantek]

On 26/07/2022 at 17:59, bigbadbadge said:

looking forward to the TSS emerging.

Cheers Chris, you and me both. Something I've noticed, getting into the hobby recently, I spend a lot of time looking forward to future stages, and of course future kits, and could probably stand to enjoy the 'now' rather more. I think opening the box and cutting into fresh plastic, the application of paint scheme, and the completion are the really payoff moments, and I have a tendency to treat the interim bits as chores! Something to learn!

 

4 hours ago, heloman1 said:

Looking good. I'm not want to prime my models before painting but with my latest build, an Italeri Wessex HAS 3in the Falklands 40 Anni GB. I did and what a difference. I think I may be hooked.

 

Colin

Thanks Colin. I confess I'm very much a novice, but yeah I think primers are great and to be honest a time saver in the long run. The mild smoothing and filling, the way they highlight gaps and unevenness, and of course the massive improvement they make to the quality and durability of the paint finish. becomes very obvious when you forget to or try to get away without priming certain bits and pieces.

 

Your wessex is looking fantastic by the way, I had missed it!

 

Cheers,

Andy

[Chuuurles]

Looking good so far! I love your WIP's and glad you made one, learning and positive vibes mixed together

[Ngantek]

4 hours ago, Chuuurles said:

Looking good so far! I love your WIP's and glad you made one, learning and positive vibes mixed together

Cheers for popping by Chuuurles. Hows the spit coming along?

 

Not a huge amount of progress, some more filling and sanding. I experimented with CA for the last job, having heard good things about it for a 'sealing' filler for tiny levelling jobs, which might also prevent ghost seams. I gave it the advertised 30 minutes, but I think with my combination of CA brand and outside temperature, it was probably too hard by that point. I think as a result I took rather more off when levelling the CA than I had intended; which in turn meant rescribing (which I really truly suck at, as seen below). I hit the primer back with some 3000 grit sponges, having learned the folly of ignoring surface finish in my seafire build.

 

So, crappy scribing aside, I think we're about ready for some paint. All these wonderful F4U builds of recent with layers upon layers of worn down metal, primer, overpainted schemes make me want to do some rather shambolic experiments with that stuff here. In my mind, I've been thinking of starting with some strategically placed bits of Tamiya aluminium lacquer (an idea shamelessly stolen from @Mick Drover, I know from bitter experience that Tamiya LP paints must be made of the same stuff as aircraft black boxes). Then primer... though which I've not found a definitive answer. I've seen pictures of the fuselage wing mount in Grumman Grey on the factory floor, or there's zinc chromate yellow. I'dve thought Grumman grey over zinc as an 'Admiralty precaution' would just be unnecessarily heavy. Whichever, then the camouflage, I suspect freehanded both for practice and to avoid extra layer thickness of the EDSG on top of DSG. The question then is, if I wanted to add a marbling effect, would that have to necessarily be at the camouflage stage or could I 'black base' the primer? Ach lots of chat, not progress! I promise to bring my homework next time.

 

Cheers,

Andy

[mark.au]

I use CA glue as a filler on occasion.  I make sure to sand it as soon as it’s dry to touch, about 5min. As you’ve discovered, 30min and it’s too hard.

 

An alternate view on primers; I never use one.  In my opinion all they do is compensate for surface issues that could/should be fixed before painting.  This includes wiping down the plastic with cleaner (I use windex).  
 

I do check suspect seams with a quick spray of a random colour, but otherwise I don’t see a benefit to adding a layer of paint between the plastic and the final finish coat.

 

Lastly, I might well be in a minority on this, so take this for what it’s worth!

 

Cheers.

 

 

 

Edited July 29, 2022 by mark.au

[opus999]

On 7/25/2022 at 11:08 PM, Ngantek said:

The whole thing's had some of that delicious Mr Finishing surfacer 1500, which mostly ended up all over my hands when trying to lazily decant it straight from the can into the airbrush cup.

That happens to me more often than I care to mention.  I love that Mr. Surfacer 1500 though!

 

2 hours ago, mark.au said:

I use CA glue as a filler on occasion.  I make sure to sand it as soon as it’s dry to touch, about 5min. As you’ve discovered, 30min and it’s too hard.

CA is my filler of choice, and I have to agree with Mark on this... as soon as its dry to the touch, I take care of it!

 

This is looking very good so far!  I have one of this same boxing in my stash and hope to work on it sometime soon....

On 7/27/2022 at 7:53 PM, Ngantek said:

I spend a lot of time looking forward to future stages, and of course future kits, and could probably stand to enjoy the 'now' rather more.

So I'm not the only one, then?

[Ngantek]

18 hours ago, mark.au said:

I use CA glue as a filler on occasion.  I make sure to sand it as soon as it’s dry to touch, about 5min. As you’ve discovered, 30min and it’s too hard.

 

An alternate view on primers; I never use one.  In my opinion all they do is compensate for surface issues that could/should be fixed before painting.  This includes wiping down the plastic with cleaner (I use windex).  
 

I do check suspect seams with a quick spray of a random colour, but otherwise I don’t see a benefit to adding a layer of paint between the plastic and the final finish coat.

 

Lastly, I might well be in a minority on this, so take this for what it’s worth!

 

Cheers.

 

 

 

Wah, that makes me sit up and pay attention! Your paint finishes are always immaculate, so whatever you do must be worth a try. I confess that I'm so cack handed, I suspect any unprimed paint layer won't last more than 2 minutes in the same room as me, but I will certainly experiment. As you say any additional thickness is a detriment, I just figured it was the price of doing business. You use latex acrylics?

 

Thanks for the pointers on CA, will try that next time.

 

15 hours ago, opus999 said:

This is looking very good so far!  I have one of this same boxing in my stash and hope to work on it sometime soon....

Thanks for popping by. I look forward to it, this one already has the whiff of failed experiment to it! Likewise, thanks for the help with the CA!

 

Cheers,

Andy

 

[bigbadbadge]

Hi Andy 

The CA filler us good,  it you add some talcum powder to it it makes it easier to sand , you can rebuild damaged areas for example a wing trailing edge too, very handy stuff to use.

The more talc the easier to sand, but the less time to work with.

Chris

[mark.au]

2 hours ago, Ngantek said:

I suspect any unprimed paint layer won't last more than 2 minutes in the same room as me, but I will certainly experiment. As you say any additional thickness is a detriment, I just figured it was the price of doing business. You use latex acrylics?

I sometimes use Hataka acrylics but mostly use these, thinned with Windex and mixed to required shades.

 

Once I have the shade I want, I thin with Windex and I add a little Future/Klear which I’ve found smooths out and toughens the finish even more.  They spray beautifully when thinned correctly and I can get an edge fine enough for 1/48 scale freehand camo.  They dry within minutes, can use Tamiya tape or blutack on it five minutes after spraying.  After a couple of hours it’s solidly cured and as tough any acrylic is.

 

These aren’t for everyone or every project, in fact on my current Swordfish I’ve used Hataka for the EDSG and DSG and only used the artist acrylic for the black.  But my previous Four or five projects have all been painted with these.

 

But, to bring it back to your original question - the key is surface preparation and with acrylic paint that’s making sure the surface isn’t greasy.  I wipe with Windex, and thin with Windex because it cuts grease so I have a clean paint to plastic coverage which is looks good and is infinitely variable.

 

Hope that helps; remember it’s just a hobby and experimentation is part of the fun, and sometimes works out really well!

 

[Grey Beema]

After cleaning you model, only handle wearing rubber gloves (don’t leave greasy finger prints!).

 

I then spray with a Halfords Aluminium acrylic spray.  Then leave it for at least 24 hrs.  The Halfords aluminium I like to think as the bare metal finish and being harder than the acrylics I’ll spray after will help with chipping wear and tear.

 

As this is a Grumman product I would spray all over Zinc Chromate and then TSS over the top.  For the wear and tear you can use abrasive paper to wear through the TSS to the Zinc Chromate or aluminium as you require..

 

This is how it looks on a Hellcat I did last year..

 

 

Hope this helps..

[Ngantek]

22 hours ago, bigbadbadge said:

Hi Andy 

The CA filler us good,  it you add some talcum powder to it it makes it easier to sand , you can rebuild damaged areas for example a wing trailing edge too, very handy stuff to use.

The more talc the easier to sand, but the less time to work with.

Chris

Thanks Chris. I remember seeing Paul Budzik favours CA with dental acrylic powder. I might misunderstand, but I believe the particular powder he uses doesn't cure, which is to say it's just inert and therefore only thickens the CA to the required consistency. I guess this is much the same idea with talcum powder, essentially allowing it to be thickened to give it more filling 'body'? I will look into trying this, cheers!

 

21 hours ago, mark.au said:

But, to bring it back to your original question - the key is surface preparation and with acrylic paint that’s making sure the surface isn’t greasy.  I wipe with Windex, and thin with Windex because it cuts grease so I have a clean paint to plastic coverage which is looks good and is infinitely variable.

 

Hope that helps; remember it’s just a hobby and experimentation is part of the fun, and sometimes works out really well!

Thanks for the detailed answer Mark. I was probably happier still thinking you achieved your results through a combination of some long defunct unobtainium paint and voodoo! Your point about care and cleanliness is well taken though I'm constantly complaining that my builds are so messy and then I realise I have the thing out in a dusty room for months, handle regularly with snack infested fingers and wonder why everything looks so shabby. The Klear addition is a really nice idea though, I will in future have to experiment with this kind of mix on well prepared bare plastic. Any additional layer of anything is just an extra excuse for me to slather on the muppetry, so the fewer the better!

 

13 hours ago, Grey Beema said:

After cleaning you model, only handle wearing rubber gloves (don’t leave greasy finger prints!).

 

I then spray with a Halfords Aluminium acrylic spray.  Then leave it for at least 24 hrs.  The Halfords aluminium I like to think as the bare metal finish and being harder than the acrylics I’ll spray after will help with chipping wear and tear.

 

As this is a Grumman product I would spray all over Zinc Chromate and then TSS over the top.  For the wear and tear you can use abrasive paper to wear through the TSS to the Zinc Chromate or aluminium as you require..

 

This is how it looks on a Hellcat I did last year..

 

 

Hope this helps..

Cheers mate, I've been referring back to your builds a lot, and the recent Hellcats are wonderful. I've seen people using chipping in many deliberate stages layer by layer, but I think it might have been this build that made me aware of more 'even' and probably natural wear method of sanding lots of layers down, and the results are fantastic. I'm going to have a crack at it a bit here, but with no experience, and with a lot of new materials that I'm fairly sure won't play nicely together, the expect result will be to have some fun, learn a bit, then have to strip it down and paint it 'in the old style'. Anyway, thanks for such a detailed account!
 

 

 

So following on from these, I added some of the lower layers. As I say above, I don't have great expectations of this working at all, really, just as with the seafire build earlier, I'm using it as a kindof makeshift practice piece in the process of finishing it the old way, and I'll no doubt end up with a fairly dull opaque layer over the top, either to cover up all the horrors, or because it needed stripping back to plastic and painting again.

 

I gave the thing a bit of Tamiya lacquer aluminium LP-38. I dunno what's up with the camera, it really does look more metallic than this:
 

 

And then without missing a beat, some rough form of grey primer colour. It could've been Zinc Chromate, and the info I've randomly stumbled upon through these forums (like your thread for that lovely F4F conversion @Grey Beema ) suggest that over grumman grey. However the points against it are: 1) I have a nice eduard hellcat in the stash with certainly will get zinc chromate, so this adds, I suppose, some variation, and 2) the only zinc chromate colour I have, (without a reasonably low effort mix job, I grant) is the rather robust Mr Color lacquer, and I wanted the next layer to be a bit less hardcore. Also I wanted to test Tamiyas under colourcoats, which judging by various things I've seen on this forum (like @Procopius's low opinion of the former during the lovely mustang build) this is an approach with a very low probability of success. Oh, and the wheel well is grey.

 

I have very little idea (or bother actually) what colour Grumman grey actually is, only browsing through my various Tamiyas showed most to be either too dark or too yellow for the clear image-in-my-head-backed-up-by-absolutely-no-knowledge-or-data. So we went with the rather inaptly named light blue XF-23.

 

Envious of all the beautiful thin glossy layers you all seem to be able to spray, and conscious of the overnight porridge consistency I was able to achieve on the seafire, I experimented this time with a pretty thin mix using MLT (rather than x20a) thinner with a few drops of x22 (credit to @John Laidlaw, as you guys are seeing there is no level of shame that will prevent me from blatant idea thievery). I kinda ran out with another pass on the wings still to do, but figured it was not going to make much difference, and might even add a little texture.

 

I was tempted to bang straight on with the colourcoats, but given the chemical horrors that almost certainly await that combination, I should probably at least give it a day to dry.

 

So there we are, not much, but a good time to take advantage of parallel builds. Back to 1/700 and the carpet monster we go.

 

Cheers,

Andy

 

 

 

[Grey Beema]

This is the Martlet IV I built.  Converted from the Tamiya 1/48 F4F-4.

 

888 NAS Operation Torch..

 

 

 

[John Laidlaw]

That's turning out nicely, Andy - I think the end product will be great!

[Ngantek]

23 hours ago, Grey Beema said:

This is the Martlet IV I built.  Converted from the Tamiya 1/48 F4F-4.

 

888 NAS Operation Torch..

 

 

 

Yep that's the fella. Thanks for posting, fantastic build!
 

23 hours ago, John Laidlaw said:

That's turning out nicely, Andy - I think the end product will be great!

Thanks. I'm using this one increasingly as a guinea pig, the poor thing, so I wouldn't keep your hopes up!

 

 

I'll try to keep the update reasonably brief. Basically, TSS has gone on. I had a mess around 'primer basing' the sky. I'm using colourcoats for the first time, they seem really nice and well behaved.:

but had not the cohones to let that show through:

 

 

I thought I'd have a go freehand, which slows the whole process down rather. Noticing I had a copy of Xtradecal Yanks with Roundels pt 1, with a similar scheme, I figured I'd go with that one to justify my random bouts of retail therapy for variety. Annoyingly the decals came with one of the pages missing, so there's a bit of imaginative interpretation of a low res image I found online. I don't suspect they were that accurate even before I butchered them with freehand mistake cover-ups. I'm not sure pencil guidelines is the way to go, though:

again I did some experiments adding 'texture' to the DSG, but the necessity of trying to create a sharpish edge means it's hard to apply a uniform effect, and harder still to overcoat gradually with a wide thin spray. Also I suck at airbrushing so the this approach leads to bumpy paint if you're me, kinda defeating the nice satin texture of the colourcoats. Also it was taking forever, so as I went on, I got lazier and lazier with this technique, particuarly because my lack of ability to make it look non rubbish.

 

And finally the EDSG

 

A reasonable amount of repair work needed, and while the booth LED accentuates the contrast a little, I think I might spray a light filter all over to tone it down a bit; the DSG in particular is a little bright for my tastes.

 

So my thoughts; yeah with my dodgy airbrushing I feel I may as well have blutack masked the scheme; I'm not up to giving it texture this way, and the sacrifice is a looser edge definition and much less even paint applcation. Not in a 'add variation' way, in a 'that be some schoolboy paintwork dere' kind of way. The demarcation taper is overscale. I knew that of course, I tend to like the look of over-tapered TSS, but I discovered the obvious truth that the taper sharpness is defined not by the sharpest line you can airbrush, but the accuracy with which you can airbrush the same line over and over again; which for me is... not.

 

Any hoo lots of airbrush practice and some good lessons learned. The great thing is that I didn't craze the Tamiya with the colourcoats. Coming up next, the comedy of me trying to repair the landing leg I snapped off when using it as a croc-clip target.

 

Cheers,

Andy

 

EDIT: oh and my arbitrary painting of the TSS scheme on the separated wings randomly almost lines up. Who knew!

 

[mark.au]

I think you underestimate your airbrushing abilities.  That’s not a bad freehand job at all.  One technique I find very useful to tighten up the edges is to use a very thinned mix at low pressure to gently - patiently - clean up the overspray.  This is a subtle process but it can turn a good paint job such as you’ve achieved to a great one that fully represents how it would have looked IRL.

 

Texturing is an inexact science, and much to personal taste but I always do mine after the base coat using thinned complementary tones.  Trying to do too much in one coat of paint is a recipe for a mess, which is why I do it in multiple visits.  Happy to elaborate on that if you would like.

[John Laidlaw]

36 minutes ago, Ngantek said:

Thanks. I'm using this one increasingly as a guinea pig, the poor thing, so I wouldn't keep your hopes up!

Guinea pigs are always a useful step, and to be honest, I think this is looking great. Don't forget, you're freehanding camouflage on a 1/72nd scale model, and that can be tough. As Mark just said, you've done a good job.

[bigbadbadge]

Looks great to me too Andy,  great job  with hhe Airbrush fella.

Chris

[Ngantek]

15 hours ago, mark.au said:

I think you underestimate your airbrushing abilities.  That’s not a bad freehand job at all.  One technique I find very useful to tighten up the edges is to use a very thinned mix at low pressure to gently - patiently - clean up the overspray.  This is a subtle process but it can turn a good paint job such as you’ve achieved to a great one that fully represents how it would have looked IRL.

 

Texturing is an inexact science, and much to personal taste but I always do mine after the base coat using thinned complementary tones.  Trying to do too much in one coat of paint is a recipe for a mess, which is why I do it in multiple visits.  Happy to elaborate on that if you would like.

Thanks Mark. I will have a try at that, as you can see I'm not quite calibrated to these paints yet, so there are occasional issues with thickness and pressure; particularly on a longer job like this, the paint seems to change consistency (presumably as it settles in the cup), and with the heat in the UK at the moment, the tip needs cleaning, so it feels like a bit of a moving target. 

 

I'm sort of torn on this one, I had resolved to bosch it together with little thought to the final product or spending too much time tidying mistakes, but as it's turned into more of a paint mule, it's probably a good time to get practice on these things. I guess the decision is whether to practice tidying those lines now, or hit it back with light sandpaper first.

 

As for texturing, thanks I appreciate the help. I don't want to drag you into a long detailed discussion, but a quick rough bullet point of the stages you might do would be really helpful! In particular what you think of a 'complimentary colours'; being colourblind I have no trust in my own eye on these things. I see people breaking out all these gaudy colours from across the spectrum to match the weathering and texture of a dull grey airframe, and it looks fantastic, but I can't for the life of me see those colours in the source aircraft or indeed the final model!

 

 

15 hours ago, John Laidlaw said:

Guinea pigs are always a useful step, and to be honest, I think this is looking great. Don't forget, you're freehanding camouflage on a 1/72nd scale model, and that can be tough. As Mark just said, you've done a good job.

Thanks. Yeah, I think I've learned that, for me at least and in the near future, there's not a huge amount to be gained freehanding on future allied disruptive schemes, since the 'wear' aspect didn't really work, and if I just want well applied paint with a controllable taper, masking would produce better results and probably faster. No doubt that's not the case for more adept modellers. Perhaps I should've learned that lesson the first time I tried to freehand on 1/144! 

1 hour ago, bigbadbadge said:

Looks great to me too Andy,  great job  with hhe Airbrush fella.

Chris

Thanks Chris, It'll be a long time before I can get as nice results with all the expensive airbrusshy gadgets, as you can get with the good old hairy stick!

 

Cheers,

Andy

 

[John Laidlaw]

2 minutes ago, Ngantek said:

Perhaps I should've learned that lesson the first time I tried to freehand on 1/144! 

Blimey - you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

[Grey Beema]

Andy,

 

I am not sure what your source said but when it comes to putting the squadron markings on they read left to right Ø7D on both sides (I'll need to check fir around the roundel).  If your references say anything else they are incorrect.  If that is the case - give me a shout..

 

BTW - great job on the TSS.

 

 

Edited August 1, 2022 by Grey Beema