Considering the beautiful new tooling of Airfix's Hurricane II I've recently acquired, I was deeply disappointed when I opened the box containing the earlier variant of this venerable airplane. Hiding in its flashy red box was a really "old dog" from sixties or maybe even earlier. I admit that this initial letdown almost made me put the kit aside, after all why waste time on something this ancient when there are so many more attractive offerings.
Here's the thing though - amazingly, there seems to be no other models of Hurricane I in 1/72 on the market at this moment! Airfix plans to release one later this year, but currently their old release is all that a fan of Battle of Britain can get in this scale. With this knowledge in my mind, I decided to proceed... but my heart wasn't in it.
As pictures below clearly illustrate, the model is extremly basic. With the exception of a generic pilot seat, the cockpit lacks any detail, not even a steering stick. Instrument panel consists of plain plastic surface, integrated with the fuselage halves. "Luckily" the canopy is thick and sturdy, thus obliterating any view into the cockpit once in place.
Airplane body is represented in equally rudimentary manner. Fuselage halves fit together well, but there is no crispness or detail to speak off. Joint between wings and fuselage leaves large gaps that need some work. Undercarriage is perhaps the most disapointing part of this kit - wheel wells are completely missing, thus exposing the 'dirty underwear' of model components.
If you get the impression that this modell isn't receiving a lot of "love" from me, you're absolutely correct. This lack of enthusiasm shows in the results - the fact is that I am mostly going through the motions here.
Hurricane I from Airfix shows its age and needs a replacement... badly!
Perhaps the most positive part of this kit are the decals of Irish Airforce.
This rather unusual option is what convinced me to proceed with the build.
In general, the model fits together rather nicely.
One exception is the joint between wing roots and the fuselage.
Underside of this model is really nasty! I should have tried to cover up this mess,
but I couldn't convince myself to spend more time on this kit than absolutely necessary.
Apparently the Irish stuck with standard RAF camouflage scheme of this period.
It was bound to happen sooner or later - one small mistake leads to another and then yet another, then you loose the patience and the final result is a scratched project. Well, in this case I should say "almost scratched", since I managed to recover, but it was a close call.
OK, so what happened? As reported in previous post, I was done with building, painting and the decals. My little Messerschmidt was ready for final stage - weathering. First off, I decided to highlight the panel lines. In Spitfire project I did this in traditional way - mix of black and burnt umber oils heavily thinned with turpentine was brushed into the engravings, with capillary force doing the rest of the job. This time around I've decided to try something else.
Couple of weeks ago, by pure coincidence, I found on Youtube a demonstration of weathering fluids from company called Flory Models. The results looked impressive to say the least, so I've ordered a couple of bottles of this "magic" product. The package arrived promptly just a couple of days later and now it was time to try it out.
I'm starting to realize that Youtube has become an invaluable assistance for modellers.
The weathering fluid from Flory Models is extremely easy to use, but using it for the first time was a little bit scary. It takes a tiny leap of faith to just slap a dark brown, dirty fluid all over a shiny, clean and freshly painted model. Pictures below show how the model looks after the application of the fluid - I think we can all agree that it's not a pretty sight.
Here's the thing though - all that grime can easily be removed with slightly damp paper towel and it doesn't matter when you do it. In this case, I've applied the fluid in the morning and removed it during late evening of same day. And of course, if dirt is the effect you're after, you don't have to remove all of it. In this first trial, I removed most of the residue, mostly to see how it would affect the areas of the model that I wanted to stay clean. I was very pleased with finding out that only a very faint darkening remained once I cleaned the model. All panel recesses were however beautifully outlined in dark brown.
Encouraged by this result, I've decided to take the weathering process a little bit further - with help of weathering powders I'd try to recreate the smoke stains around the engine exhausts and gun barrels. Simple task really - just take a little powder, add some turpentine and apply the mix in right spots. Right....
Things started to go wrong when I spilled a little too much weathering powder into the container. Didn't give it much thought at the time. Next, I couldn't find the bottle with turpentine. By now a little frustrated, I grabbed the bottle with rubbing alcohol instead - after all, one solvent is as good as another! The mix was a little thick, but yet again, I didn't think much about it until it was too late. I slapped it onto the model and left it to dry.
To say that the result of my efforts wasn't as I expected is an understatement. I wanted for the powder to leave gentle streaks of smoke residue. Instead, a thick, hard-edged crust was now blemishing my beautiful model. Allright, no harm done, I thought, I'll just remove it with a brush moistened in rubbing alcohol. Bad idea! To my surprise, my attempts had no noticeable effects on the powder crust. To my horror, the alcohol did have a visible effect on acryilic gloss varnish I applied as a preparation for deployment for decals and a sealer once they were in place. The entire project was rapidly going south and I admit that at this stage I was ready to toss the model into the bin.
In the end I decided to wait and access the damage once the alcohol evaporated. The inspection wasn't very encouraging - in spots where I tried to remove the weathering powder 'melted' into the varnish, resulting in ugly stains. In pure desperation, I decided upon one last rescue attempt by airbrushing the dark brown paint over the "damaged" areas. This worked remarkably well - thin layers of paint did manage to mask most of the ugly stains. If I had better control over my airbrush, I might even have done a pretty decent weathering job out of it. But I think it can safely be said that I was again a bit overeager and the final result is an airplane which looks as if it suffered a severe engine fire.
I've learned three important lessons from this project. First of all, rescribing the panel lines is much more difficult than I expected. Second, less is more when working with weathering powders! Third, acrylic varnishes and rubbing alcohol don't like each other.
Finished model. Areas where the "disaster" struck are plainly visible.
Sot areas around exhausts and gun barrels are overdone...
...but I have to say that by now I barely notice the mistakes.
