Hasegawa Dewoitine D.520 - Part I

Switching back to 1/72 and actually to my intended focus for my slowly growing model collection - airplanes of early World War II. This time around I've decided to give some attention to what I believe is a quite neglected topic - French Airforce of early war years.

I happen to have what I feel is a perfect starting point for this particular subsection of airforce history - a double pack of Dewoitine D.520 and Morane Saolnier M.S.406 from Hasegawa. For no particular reason I picked the Dewoitine first.

Couple of words about Hasegawa - never worked with their kits before, but I'm somewhat familiar with company's reputation and its prices. To be honest, nothing I've seen in this particular box did initially strike me as overly 'exclusive'. The Dewoitine is surely nicely sculpted, there is no flash and panel lines are very subtle, but overall the kit is neither better or worse than latest offerings from Airfix. At the same time it has to be admitted that while this particular kit is very simple, the precision of moulding is excellent. The assembly was absolutely problem-free and I hardly needed to use any filler during the construction phase.

I wish I could say the same about the painting phase or rather my new Iwata Neo I used for the very first time. My 'regular' airbrush - Badger 150 with 0.5mm needle - is a very forgiving beast. The Neo, not so much. It is a very fussy animal indeed - the paint must be diluted just so or it will act up on every opportunity, either clogging or spitting. This behavior is the reason for rather horrid effort at preshading, as can be witnessed in pictures below.

Revell Stug 40 Ausf. G - Part II

This one is gonna be short and sweet - the Stug is finished and here's how it turned out. This time around I've decided to really push things to the limit with the weathering and threw everything I had at this poor little kit.

First off, couple of enamel washes from AK Interactive and MiG. A slightly frustrating experience, I have to say - in instruction videos the washes always distribute themselves in nice layers, but not so for me. Instead, the pigments pooled together and insisted on creating those ugly watermark lines. Not sure really why, as the kit was properly varnished with gloss before I applied the washes. Guess further experiments are required.

Once the washes settled, it was time for chipping and streaks. The thing with realistic chipping seems to be one part delicate work with tiny brush and one part of correct location selection. Hard edges, hinges, surfaces exposed to wear and tear - chipping seems to work fine on all of them, as long as it's not overdove. As for the streaks, any flat area works just fine.

Last, but not least, it was the turn for the rust effects. In this particular kit I decided to give shürtzen holders extra attention and slobbered  rust paint and pigments all over their upper parts.

Pretty happy with the final result.