Hansa Brandenburg D.I - Finished

[AdrianMF]

A sneaky bit before work today. Added another coat of canvas (Humbrol 237) to the wings, hollowed out the exhaust, trimmed the engine cover and drilled some 1.2mm holes for the exhaust:

Macro photography is a killer - I’ve cleaned up the edges of holes 2, 3 and 5.

 

I’m still happy with the wood effect now that I’ve seen it in daylight - always a relief.

[AdrianMF]

Painting and fixing engine cover, inspection plates and exhaust this evening:

[Paul Thompson]

That's the first time I've ever seen the starstruts go together and fit okay (including the one I did). Right. What did you do wrong? If you pick a WW1 subject without any rigging it's supposed to hurt in some other way.

 

Paul.

[AdrianMF]

1 hour ago, Paul Thompson said:

That's the first time I've ever seen the starstruts go together and fit okay

Well, it hasn’t happened yet, but not worrying about whether the struts line up with the holes and not worrying about the weird strut ends both help! In all fairness Toko did a good job on them.  I’m modelling on with my fingers firmly crossed and I’ll bodge the ends when I get there. That’s why I’m not worrying about fancy translucent canvas effects either, because I see a lot of sanding in my future.

 

Thanks,

Adrian

[Courageous]

Looking very nice, love the wood effect.

 

Stuart

[TheBaron]

I had to record this thread and play it back in slow motion to watch it properly: my goodness you work fast these days Adrian!

[AdrianMF]

3 hours ago, Courageous said:

love the wood effect

Thanks Stuart. That slow drying gel medium is good stuff - turns modelling acrylics into oils, more or less.

 

2 hours ago, TheBaron said:

you work fast

I actually have a sophisticated multi-lane system: glacial (long term builds waiting for another dose of mojo, like the Empire, Fairey Long Range, Bristol Type 42), regular (scheduled builds like the Century GB F-102), pop-ups (hello this one), and truly impulsive (like the Airfix Matador refuelling tanker that arrived from EBay on Thursday and is all over bar the shouting in the AFV WIP section). 
 

Organised, me.

 

or should that be 

 

Organised? Me??

 

Regards,

Adrian

[DaddyO]

Brilliant stuff Adrian

Really enjoying this thread and will now be scouring FleaBay for a Toko SS 😁

 

Best tip I've seen so far is to get the struts sorted out before splashing paint about (Currently having a rare old time avoiding getting glue on a finished wing whilst adding he struts - plenty of touching up to do which is really annoying)

 

Paul

[AdrianMF]

3 hours ago, DaddyO said:

scouring FleaBay for a Toko SS

Thanks Paul! Mine is an Eastern Express re-pop, which might be easier to find.

 

[edit: ironically, the cheapest one on there at the mo is a Toko, currently at half the price of the cheapest Eastern Express one]

 

And I'm hoping to scratch away a tiny little patch of paint to attach my struts with minimal disturbance - what could possibly go wrong?

 

Regards,

Adrian

[Dave Slowbuild]

I guess we are all waiting with baited breath to see how the scary struttery on the X-wing fighter is resolved.  I hope the force is with you!

[AdrianMF]

A bit more progress. I glued little blocks of 30thou card into those strange recesses in the ends of the struts and sanded them down to blend in. And the machine gun fairing had sink marks all over (it’s a pretty thick lump of plastic) so I took a note of the detailing, scraped off the high detail and filled the sink marks with putty:

[AdrianMF]

On 08/08/2022 at 14:08, Dave Slowbuild said:

X-wing

On 08/08/2022 at 14:08, Dave Slowbuild said:

I hope the force is with you!

I saw what you did there

 

Regards,

Adrian

[Black Knight]

I think the 'Brumowski' type camouflage on the decals of this kit are a rather coarse

Hannants does this sheet of Brumowski swirls. They are much finer on it and much closer to the real look

https://www.hannants.co.uk/product/PSL011

 

[AdrianMF]

4 minutes ago, Black Knight said:

I think the 'Brumowski' type camouflage on the decals of this kit are a rather coarse

Ah, so that’s what they are meant to be! I’ve not yet seen a picture that shows a D1 wearing them, but now I know what I’m meant to be looking for I will have another look. Although I think I’m happy with CDL on this one TBH.
 

Thanks,

Adrian

[AdrianMF]

Not the most interesting update but I’m grinding down my list.

 

First up, the above-wing machine gun fairing, now with sink marks filled, has been sanded smooth, re-scribed and detailed with aluminium tape:

 

And I’ve got some colours lined up for highlighting the fabric, this being Radome tan+Humbrol 237 over Hu237:

 

I also realised I need to annotate my list of things to do with an order of doing things so I don’t suddenly find the top wing in the way!

[DaddyO]

😎

Managed to get the Toko boxing of this last night on Evilbay for the princely sum of £8.50 (half of which was P&P) - well chuffed 😀

 

(All I need now is to decide which of the many kits I've recently picked up to start after the Nieuport. Must say I'm tempted by an early Albie since I can easily replace the struts with brass, but there again . . . .)

 

Paul

[AdrianMF]

On 13/08/2022 at 07:09, DaddyO said:

Managed to get the Toko boxing

Check to see if they managed to mould the gun casing without sink marks - mine was quite bad but I think that’s an Eastern Express re-pop problem.

 

Talking of gun casings:

 

Does anyone else ever have that moment when they think they need to move to a finer brush, before realising that they are already on their finest brush?

[GrzeM]

On 8/10/2022 at 1:43 AM, Black Knight said:

I think the 'Brumowski' type camouflage on the decals of this kit are a rather coarse

Hannants does this sheet of Brumowski swirls. They are much finer on it and much closer to the real look

https://www.hannants.co.uk/product/PSL011

 

Careful with these - Brandenburg had "S" shaped swirls, these at Hannant's are "6" shaped (or just round) fit for Albatros Oeffag D.III.

 

The build is great, congratulations! I love this aeroplane!

Best!

G.

[AdrianMF]

I forgot to take a picture of “peak masking” so here it is with the tailplane done:

 

Top side:

 

Bottom side:

 

Very happy with the topside (after a couple of washes with the lighter Radome tan), but I will go lighter with the undersides. I’ve just done that experiment freehand on half of the tailplane and it looks better but not spectacular…

[AdrianMF]

Well, much touching up, sanding and applying washes later, we have this:

 

The underside - hmmm, well, it won’t be seen much. I still have to work on my technique there. The topside I’m happy with. I stippled the darker colour over the tailplane topside but I painted it on for the wings. It turns out that stippling causes less seepage and doesn’t leave ridges, so I will be stippling everything from now on.

[Brandy]

The tailplane definitely looks better in my opinion. Just that bit more subtle. The wing still looks good though!

 

Ian

[AdrianMF]

16 minutes ago, Brandy said:

in my opinion

Thanks Ian. I will do a wash or two more on the wings I think. Any thoughts on what I could try to get the undersides a bit better?

 

[edit: …apart from “don’t start from here”!]

 

Regards,

Adrian

[DaddyO]

1 hour ago, AdrianMF said:

Thanks Ian. I will do a wash or two more on the wings I think. Any thoughts on what I could try to get the undersides a bit better?

 

[edit: …apart from “don’t start from here”!]

 

Regards,

Adrian

Hi Adrian 

It looks like you are an acrylic user as well. I've found that using some glaze medium with the paint rather than just water allows a thin coat without that annoying 'wash' effect where the paint just runs into the crevasses (I use this technique a lot when figure painting to blend two colours together) Using an airbrush you could obviously ghost a thin layer of the  ridge colour over to blend things a bit. 

(Not intending to teach Grandma to suck eggs or anything, but might be useful for someone reading this 🙂)

 

Loving the thread so far and can't wait for the kit to arrive, although I intend making a dent in the projects started pile first . . . .

 

Paul

[AdrianMF]

1 hour ago, DaddyO said:

glaze medium

Good point! I need to get some. Diluted washes like I’ve been doing today are a bit fragile because there isn’t enough “acrylic” in them.

I’ve only got the slow drying gel stuff, which is great for some stuff (like wood) but not ideal. I use matt varnish as a medium for my “grime” coat, killing two birds with one stone, but it’s not ideal by any means.

I will have a look next time I’m in an art store, or on eBay, which will probably be sooner…

 

Dont forget to post a WIP!

 

Regards,

Adrian

[AdrianMF]

Actually, I think I can live with the underside effect:

 

I remember being quite pleased with my BE2 the first time I tried this, and I think this one is better (while still being a long way from good)