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.

Revell Stug 40 Ausf. G - Part I

Been a long while since I've posted anything about my own projects and for a very good reason - there is only one and it moves with snail's pace. After the Spitfire I finished in August, I didn't have much time for modelling and then one thing came up and then another... Before the I knew it, it was start of October. Trying to revive some momentum, I pretty much picked up closest random model from the shelf and it happened to be another StugIII from Revell.

 Having a vague memory of previous build, I'm pretty sure that this Stug is basically the same kit as the one I've built couple of years ago. I also remembered the problems I was having with the tracks. So, this time around I decided to try something different than my usual 'routine' with tanks. Normally when working with armor, I assembly and paint chassis and superstructure separately, then join them together and tidy up the paint job before final steps of varnishing and weathering. As part of 'usual procedure', I also paint the wheels before gluing them in place.

Not this time though; remembering previous build and problems with correct track alignment as well as being curious about the fact that many modellers seem to complete the assembly of the the kit even before priming, I've decided to try doing it that way. Well, having tried that approach, I've got to admit that not having to handle partial paint jobs throughout the assembly process certainly does speed things up! Took me about six hours to have the kit syanding assembled on the table, with most of the time being spent on the track assembly.

The kit fits together superbly, there are no gaps or problems worth mentioning. However. be careful about the direction of the tracks as you glue them into place! Also, heads-up about a bit wierd issue - as it turns out the chassis and superstructure fit pretty good together in two 'positions' - one with front edge of superstructure overlapping the front edge of chassi and the other with superstucture's edge placed behind the front lip of chassis. The assembly instructions are pretty ambivalent about the correct alignment of those two major components and if you do it wrong, the entire backside of the model will simply not fit. OK, so what's the right alternative? The second one, with superstructure front end behind, leaving the front lip of chassis visible from above. Other than that, the assembly is so straight-forward that there really wasn't much point in posting any pictures from that stage of the build. Once the kit was assembled, it was primed in grey and preshaded with black. Not really a good idea actually, as the black undercoat is pretty harsh with German dunkelgelb as base color. Luckily, the disruptive pattern of diluted Olive Green mixed with a touch of white softened the harshness of the preshading. Next, the wood and metal details were painted and that's pretty much where I am right now. Next, gloss varnish and decals, followed by another shot at realistic weathering.

C4 Open 2014

Last week I had the great pleasure of visiting yet another installment of C4 Open, my local modelling exhibition. As always, there was a massive amount of wonderful kits, although I could also observe some rather worrying trends - number of dioramas was decreased noticeably when compared with last couple of years. Hopefully it's not an indication of things to come. Anyway, a bunch of pictures was taken by yours truly and is ready to be viewed in galleries below. Hope find them to your liking.

Arnhem vignette - Part II

A Sunday afternoon put to good use - basic layout of the Arnhem vignette is clobbered together. Shoddy worksmanship (on my part, that is), but considering my limited experience with diorama buildning and the fact that I am pretty much shooting of my hip in regard of the concept as well as the layout, it will have to do.

Arnhem vignette - Part I

And now, as they say over to something completely different. An online modelling group I belong to has announced a group build. The topic is operation Market Garden, due to the fact that the 70th aniversary of its start is just around the corner. To begin with, I intended to ignore it, but then I remembered that I have long, long time ago purchased  a 1/35 scale British Paras set from Dragon. It seemed like a good occasion to do something with it!

After a bit of pondering I decided to try making a little vignette with two of the miniatures. While I had a general idea of the concept and layout, I needed to know the size of the miniatures before starting the work on the vignette scenery. And so, here are the two minis in semi-assembled state. Left arms are not attached to make painting easier. Brass rods have been inserted in holes I bored out and will serve as holding pins during painting process and then be re-used to anchor the figures to the bases.

Airfix Spitfire F Mk.22 - Part II

It seems that I've managed to delete some pictures prematurely, so this time around it's a fast forward directly to the finished kit. However, there really isn't all that much more to tell about the building/painting process. Once I discovered that the Alclad2 experiment wouldn't work out, it was (as mentioned in previous post) time to move to Plan B, which consisted of a spray can with Testor's buffable aluminum metalizer. The choice was logical, as both Alclad2 and Testor are lacquers and I didn't expect for them to react negatively to each other. Two coats of Testor laquer seemed sufficient and I left it at that, although in retrospect a third pass would have been advisable.

Once the model was painted, I fitted all the small parts and the kit was ready for decals and 'post-processing'. Just for the fun of it, I bored out exhaust pipes with 0.3mm drill - whether it improved the kit is doubtable, but it was a bit of a challenge and I'm glad I tried it.

Decals were applied after 48 hours of drying time - as I was not previously familiar with Testor's lacquers, I preferred to be safe than sorry. Decals (of excellent quality as in all recent Airfix releases) were applied straight on the painted surface. As always, I used Microsol and Microset to soften the decals; I'm glad to report that they did not cause visible reaction with the lacquer. As a final step, I outlined the panel lines with a mix of burned orche and black oil paint heavily diluted with white spirits. The cleanup that followed did cause some discoloration on aluminum surfaces, but that was to be expected and can be regarded as part of the weathering process.

As for the weathering... well, I admit that I am a bit of a chicken when it comes to excessive weathering and metallic finish, so I was very sparse. I tried applying some black pigment in an attempt to depict sooth around the exhaust pipes, but I didn't like it and washed most of it away. I put some burned orche pigmet pigment on the wing roots and liked it a bit more. However, with harsh artificial lighting used during yesterday's ad hoc photo shoot, the effect of the pigments is barely noticable.

Overall, a very enjoyable kit and another Airfix offering I could recommend to the beginning modellers. The fact is that I liked it so much that I picked up another kit, which I intend to do with the other 'out of the box' color scheme.

Warsaw Military Museum

Here are some pictures from this year's visit to Warsaw Military Museum. Tell me if you find them useful, I may have more pictures of the subject that interests you.

Airfix Spitfire F Mk.22 - Part I

After prolonged odyssey with Revel's Junkers 88, I was in the mood for something simple and hopefully quick to build. And so, I picked up Airfix's Spitfire F Mk.22 from my stash - not only was it a kit I was already familiar with after building Spitfire I, but also, it's bare-metal finish offered minimal paint-job effort.
The kit itself is an excellent, simple build that pretty much falls together all on it's own. Also, it's panel line engravings are delicate and not as deep as those of its Spitfire I sibling. The only minor issue during the build of airframe consisted of slight inaccuracy in fit between fuselage and the wing roots, but it was easily fixable with little putty and a low grade sanding stick.

Once the airframe was put together and was ready for some paint, I was faced with the only serious issue in this project, if it can be called as such. Since I had set my heart set on metallic finish, a decision had to be taken - Alclad2 or not Alclad2. After all the problems I've experienced with this system on first occasion I used it, I had my doubts. However, I did spent a bit of money on several products from that company and it would be a bit silly not to give it another shot. So, after long deliberations with myself, I convinced myself to give Alclad2 another chance. This time around I would really ensure that the kit would be blemish-free.

The first unpleasant surprise presented itself once I poured the Alclad black filler-primer into the airbrush cup. When I first opened it for last year's Thunderbolt build, there was no problems with its viscosity, it could easily be sprayed directly from the bottle. Not so some nine months after the bottle was opened for the first time - primer's consistency was now almost syrupy and wouldn't be pushed through an airbrush in a million years. Only after thinning it with cellulose thinner was I able to work with it. Even then, the surface, after drying, was extremely porous and  needed some serious sanding and polishing. As for the airbrush cleanup that followed, let me limit myself to saying that it made me immensely grateful for existence of acrylic paints.

After very laborious polishing process, I discovered that in a couple of places (raised edges and details) I managed to rub off the primer. Not willing to put my Badger through another contact of third degree with enamel paints and cellulose thinner, I instead drybrushed the primer over those exposed sections and polished them yet again after that brush-applied coat has dried. I then prayed a little prayer that the distinctly different finish of dry-brushed bits and pieces wouldn't show once metalizer was sprayed over them.

Some 24 hours after all the fuss with the primer, it was time for the main event. Following Alclad2's instructional video on Youtube, at first I sprayed only a light, barely visible on the model, dusting of metalizer. It was a good thing that I did, because as soon as that was done, it was obvious that I could have saved my prayers - these dry-brushed areas stuck out like sore thumb.

It was time for plan B.

Dragon Sherman M4A1(76)W VVSS - Part III

So the thing with these 1/72 armor kits is that when you put together your chassis, hull and turret, you're usually pretty much done with the construction phase. Then it's time for the fun part - the painting.

Since we're dealing dealing WWII Sherman here, there is plenty of paint scheme choices to pick from as long as you pick olive drab of some sort. And so, olive drab it had to be. First however, I put on the standard primer coat followed by black pre-shading. Once that default step was done, I applied couple of thin coats of Lifecolor UA220. For once, I managed to preserve the preshading around the panels and hatches.

Next, I started to experiment. I'm starting to realize that there are no rules set in stone when it comes to painting AFV:s, you can do pretty much whatever you want within reason.

At the same time, it pays off to take a moment and think about the subject matter for a moment. In this case, it's a Sherman during Normandy campaign - so it wasn't in the field for very long and the elements it would have been exposed to would mainly be summer sun and probably some rain. Raised areas would therefore be exposed to sunlight, which means bleaching. To simulate this, I airbrushed a light coat of base paint highlighted slightly with a beige paint on all large raised areas - top of the turret, engine deck, sides of the hull and so on... The result was a bit peculiar - a 'glowing' green tint. Even though it didn't look very natural, I let it be, counting on that it would be subdued by weathering steps that would follow.

It turned out I was correct. Next step - grime wash for green vehicles from AK Interactive dulled down the glowing effect and nicely brought forward all the details of the tank body. Another AK Interactive wash - dirt streaks - was applied next in vertical streaks, blended into the body with white spirits. Maybe I should have been a bit bolder when applying that effect, but I kept reminding myself that this tank has not seen much action yet.

Finally, the final touches - a bit of chipping here and there, drybrush of gun metal to exposed details such as hatch hinges and track edges and finally another try at filtering with oils. Remembering bad experience with white oils and the Tiger, I went for faded green this time around. Miniscule amounts of oil paint were dabbed onto large flat areas of the model and 'massaged' into the paint job. I then left the kit for 48 hours before applying first coat of matte varnish. Once it was try, I applied some brown pigments onto lower parts of the model, but as always, most of that effect was wiped out by final coat of matte varnish.

And so, here we are - another Sherman ready to be added to the collection. Very nice, detailed kit I had tremendous fun building. Highly recommended to all fans of allied tanks.

Dragon Sherman M4A1(76)W VVSS - Part II

Remember that Dragon Sherman I was supposed to work on in time gaps during Junkers project? Well, things didn't work out that well with that plan. But the build is now solidly under way, with all main sub-assemblies complete.

What can be said about this kit? First of all, it's insanely detailed and fiddly. With some effort and attention to details, it looks great, as I hope can be seen in the images below. The build itself is done without major hickups. The only major critique can be directed at the assembly of suspension, where what I assume is some sort of hydraulic shock absorbers need to be inserted into wheel assembles. Not only is this piece completely hidden from sight once the assembly is done, it also makes the fit much more difficult than without it. Annoying and unnecessary.

There is substantial number of photo-etched parts in this box; remember we're talking about 1/72 scale here. I put on some of them, but choose to use plastic components for light guards for the simple reason that my kits serve double duty as game pieces in wargames. Photo-etched parts are too fragile for frequent handling. That's maybe my decision to use photo-etched components for rear stowage rack isn't the best I've ever made. Initially I just wanted to make it and get some experience with photo-etch. But then it turned out so nice... So what the heck, I can always put on the plastic variant if it gets knocked off in the heat of the battle.

At this moment I have to do some last minute cleanup of the turret and then it's time to get out the primer can.

Revell Junkers Ju 88A4 - Part VII

And it's finished. My final verdict about this kit is overall very positive, although as already mentioned, I have a couple of serious reservations regarding some aspects of its design. The nose assembly is overly complicated and made unnecessarily tricky by use of transparent parts that end up being over-painted to 80 percent. Clear parts functioning as joints that are subjected to tension pressure (due to the complexity of nose assembly) is another thing that I'm not very happy about. And finally, that tricky belly copula sub-assembly will probably succeed in driving an angel into righteous fury.

OK, that was the last of my 'whines' regarding this kit, I promise. Yes, it's challenging and no, it's not for complete beginners. It taxed my limited skills to the limit, perhaps beyond them. But that's how you learn and develop. I know, a horrible cliche, bite me... ;.-) In this case, it's 100 percent true, I've learned quite a lot while working with this kit.

Two 'last time I did this' that I need to make a comment about, both of them related with clear parts.

First of all, this is the last time I've used liquid masking fluid for canopies. To each his own and I know of folks who use it like a magic wand, but I never liked the stuff to begin with. In this project it turned out to be yet again a major PITA, horribly difficult to clean up, especially in the corners of masked areas.

Second, a warning - based on my experience in this project, "Glaze 'n' Glue" from Deluxe Materials, intended for gluing of clear parts, is not able to handle even slightest tension on the joints. When dry, the glue turns into clear rubber-like material that stretches if the joint is 'pulled apart'. This was a very unpleasant surprise to me and caused me significant problems while working with nose assembly. Now you've been warned.

Finally, a couple of words about the weathering of this kit. Once the basic paint job was done, I sprayed the kit with Vallejo Acrylic gloss as preparation for the decals. Once decals were in place, another coat sealed them in. Next, Flory's dark brown was applied everywhere. It was then wiped off and I proceeded with final stages of the weathering, consisting of applying random streaks of black and dark brown pigment all over the fuselage and wing surfaces. These subtle color shifts broke up the monotony of greens in a very pleasing and dare I say, realistic manner. Finally, I applied 'default' soot streaks around the exhausts. I must admit that I am not very confident when working with this particular detail and the end result is far from convincing.

The finished kit turned out like this.