Dragon Models Tiger II - Part II

Time for a long overdue update on Tiger II project. If I am to be earnest, there really isn't much to be said, except that once I dug myself out of 'paint those bloody wheels' quagmire, things started to move along at brisk tempo and without any further complications. That's the thing with 1/72 tanks - if you don't hit any major snags, the construction part is over before you know it.

Once the kit was assembled, the usual routine followed. Prime with grey, preshade with black and then it's time for some fun with the airbrush. In this particular case, the 'fun' didn't present itself though. Instead, I had a running battle with Lifecolor paints, which for some reason just refused to be of right consistency, making airbrushing a bit of a struggle. This affected the look of camo pattern, which in the end was decided more by mishaps with the airbrush than anything else. One thing is clear - painting German camouflage  freehand is a challenge I am yet to master.

Still, I was satisfied with the end result. Maybe not 100 percent as described in the instructions booklet, but it does look proper 'late war German tank'.

With pretty much everything assembled and painted, couple of days ago I proceeded to final stage - weathering. Here I decided to do something a bit different. You see, some time ago I've got hold of a DVD from AK Interactive called 'Weathering armour in 1 hour' or something to that effect. I've finally got around to watch it before I started working on weathering of the Tiger and I must say that I was quite impressed. The video itself doesn't show anything mindblowing, just the same familiar steps of washing, streaking, highlighting, chipping, applying pigments and rust effects. However, seeing it in real time how the 'pros' are doing it, is something of an eye-opener. If anything, this video shows that there really isn't anything magical about good looking weathering, just some brush work and a bit of patience. And yes, it does help if you have those weathering products from AK Interactive available to you, but that was only to be expected, wasn't it?

Anyway... the pics below show the model after basic paint job and then after the first stage of weathering process shown in that DVD (that would be enamel wash with Humbrol enamels). In the video, it took them 10 minutes to be done with it. I spent more than an hour on it before I was satisfied, but who's counting minutes? :-)

Dragon Models Tiger II - Part I

After all the frustrations of the last projects, I needed a change of theme. I then remembered that the title of this blog does actually also mention armor and it's been a while since I've built anything from that genre.

Selection of this particular model was completely random, although I have to admit that it was something of an internal joke for me; the topic is in my opinion slightly overdone and usually I can't help but smile sardonically when I see all these German big cats in magazines and at C4 Open. Personally I never built a  Tiger or a Panther in my life, so that would be a new experience.

Another first consisted of the fact that this particular model comes from Dragon. In my teens, tanks have actually been the main output of my modelling, but they all came from Airfix, Hasegawa, Revell, ESCI... All nice models, but the their quality cannot be compared with this one. Zimmerit out of the box, photo-etched parts... stuff like that was simply unheard of in this scale some 20 years ago.

My positive first impression quickly turned into frustration as I proceeded into the build. The first negative surprise appeared when I discovered that the mud guards were at least a centimeter too long for the undercarriage of the tank. It seemed that a mistake has been made during packaging of the kit and a sprue intended for Jagdtiger II was put into the box by mistake. I resolved the issue in simplest possible way, albeit not the most 'historically correct' one - I cut away the bits that stuck out.

The next mishap was self-created. The wheels of this kit present the main challenge - there is over 50 of them. I dutifully primed them, sprayed them with dunkelgelb and finally in a painstakingly slow process painted the rubber rims without removing them from the sprue. Next I removed them from the sprue and had to correct all the damage to the paint job. Then, by pure coincidence, I found out that Tiger II had steel wheels without any rubber rims. Another correction. And finally, as I put the wheels together, it turned out that the fit between the parts was so tight that some of the paint had to be removed for a good fit... yet another corrective paint session was required after that. In total I believe that I spent some fourteen hours on the wheels of this tank. The kicker consists of the fact that they can without any problems be installed on the chassi and painted afterward - perhaps three hours job in total!

Oh well, yet another 'learning experience'! Anyway, that's where I am in the project at the moment. Once the wheels are installed, it's time for some fun time with the airbrush!

Impressive detail of main components.

Those pesky wheels.

Excellent detail  and photo-etched parts do impress.

Wheels finally painted and put together. Turret assembled.
Tracks sprayed with flat black and then painted with a thick wash of
Humbrol Dark Earth require more work for 'natural' look.

By mistake, I fitted the rear end plate without zimmerit-coat to the chassi.
Once I discovered my mistake, it was too late to rectify it.

Close-up of turret. 

Academy Models P-47D Thunderbolt - Part V

Funny how a single model can literally suck out all the joy out of this hobby. Don't take me wrong, this kit is an excellent, simple model which results in very nice reproduction of a Thunderbolt. For the price you pay, it presents excellent value for the money. But sometimes there is one thing after another that goes slightly wrong, demands more effort than it should and it the end you just want to walk away. This was the case with this kit. Between my troubles with Alclad2 lacquer, parts that 'disappeared' and got swallowed by mat monsters and the frustration over the decals with semi-transparent white sections and which absolutely refused to budge to Microset/Microsol combo, this little puppy finally wore me down and earned heart-felt resentment.  Thus, it took me couple of weeks to complete the final steps of this project and I didn't even bother with outlining the panel lines.

OK, enough whining. Here is the final result of my efforts and frustration.

Academy Models P-47D Thunderbolt - Part IV

Well, this project has turned into something of an adventure, and I don't mean it in a good way. If previous stage was a learning experience in respect of usage of Alclad2 metalic lacquers, the stage that followed gave me a valuable lesson in regard of how paints from different manufacturers interact with each other.

In theory, once the aluminium finish was applied, painting stage of this project should have been practically finished. All that remained was the anti-glare olive drab stripe on the top of the fuselage and red edging at the front of engine cover. I decided to apply the olive stripe first. Masking the correct shape turned out to be much trickier that I expected, but after some trial and error I managed to tape off a shape that looked satisfactory. Next time, I will make my life a bit easier and will first make a paper template which I will the be able to use forboth sides of the stripe, instead of eyeballing it. Extra effort maybe, but at least the shape will be guaranteed uniform on both sides.

Couple of words regarding the paint I used for the anti-glare stripe, the Olive Drab "acrylic" from Tamiya. Yet another paint from that producer that behaved wonderfully when airbrushed - absolutely smooth finish with a bit of thinning and a delight in regard of control. I must say that Tamiya paints are quickly becoming my favorites when it comes to airbrushing, with LifeColor and Vallejo Air in second place and Humbrol as a distant third choice. It's such a shame that Tamiya's color range is so limited.

Final detail that I wanted to paint with the airbrush was the red 'edging' on the engine cover. Foolishly I decided to mask only the part of the component - after all all it would take would be a quick pass with the airbrush. Wrong! The Humbrol acrylic paint I used for the job (Crimsom Gloss 29) turned out to have very poor coverage and several layers were required to cover the olive drab stripe at the top. Due to lacking control of the airbrush and mounting frustration, I managed to overspray the masking in several places. This meant that I now had to mask of the red edging before correcting my mistakes. Said and done... the only problem was that when I removed the masking tape covering the red paint, the section that was sprayed over the Tamiya Olive Drab followed along with the tape like some sort of latex skin. I don't think I need to describe my frustration at that time.

Luckily, I was able to remove all of the Humbrol paint from the engine cover with my fingernails before more or less starting from scratch. This time around I applied red paint directly on the Alclad metalic and then resprayed the olive drab stripe.

After letting the paint dry for a couple of hours, I've decided to do 'just a little' work on the decals. The most prominent decal for this particular model is a head of an Indian chief, covering the left side of engine cover and fuselage. To fit, the decal had to be cut in two pieces before applying. I marked the outline of the engine cover on the backside of the decal, cut it in two and put the parts in appropriate positions. I was a bit surprised over how easy it went... I was also quite disappointed in the quality of the decal - its white sections are translucent', clearly showing the deep red of underlying surface. The problem is consistent for all decals for this kit, white sections show through quite a bit. It's a shame, because otherwise it's an excelent set of decals, with vivid colors and resilient to handling. Also, Microset and Microsol seem to work with them rather well.

Oh well... once the indian head was in place I decided to apply 'just a couple more decals'. Three and half hour later, even the most miniscule decals were in place.

Academy Models P-47D Thunderbolt - Part III

So... with the airplane body put together, primed and pampered to the smoothness level same as that of a toddler's behind, I was ready to turn plastic into pure aluminium... or at least give it that desired bare metal-finish! Alclad2 Airframe Aluminium bottle was firmly shaken, its magic... eh, I mean metal particle were agitated. The paint was poured into the paint container of my trusty Badger 150 and I nervously pressed down its trigger.

I've read in one of the articles dealing with Alclad2 lacquers that one was supposed to keep the first coat very light, let it dry and then apply the second, final coat after 10-15 minutes. Well, I don't know if I should call my first pass with the airbrush as very light, after all my control of the airbrush is still rather hamfisted. Still, I was quite pleased with myself once I was finished - first signs of very nice metallic look were clearly visibile. And those scratches and small spatter dropplets would surely be covered by the final coat.

Well... once I was done with the second, heavier coat, four facts became visible to me, and I don't mean metaforically; they were really visble. First and foremost, my polishing of the the primer left a lot to be desired and resulted in a very uneven finish of the metallic paint. Second, any scratches on primed surface are 'reproduced' on the metallic surface. Third, airbrush spatter dropplets will not be covered by the subsequent lacquer coats. Fourth, working with Alclad2 isn't as easy as they want to make you believe!

In vain hope that the rather unpleasing finish would be improved with additional coats of Alclad, I sprayed on both a third and fourth coat within 24 hours of each other. Parts of the airplane where the primer was properly smoothed took on a very pleasing aluminium shine, but those with a bit rougher initial finish remained grayish and less shiny. Additional coats had no effect on scratches and spatter spots. In a final desperate effort, I sprayed two light coats of Alclad gloss varnish, hoping that its uniform shine would even things out - that step helped a little in respect of overall finish, but I was still not very pleased with final result.

I admit that I was very tempted to take the easy way out, grab the Aluminium spraycan from Tamiya and spray it over the unsatisfactory Alclad. However, not knowing how the two paints would react with each other - after all, Alclad is a lacquer and God only knows what content of Tamiya's brush cans is really based on (I'm pretty sure though that it isn't a purely acrylic). More importantly though, the mishap with Alclad was an honest mistake and part of a learning  process. So, better to keep the 70 percent satisfactory job for future reference and hopefully as bottom of measuring stick of future improvement.

Pictures below (in pairs) show the model after first, second and final coat with Alclad's gloss varnish on top.

Academy Models P-47D Thunderbolt - Part II

A quick update on progress of Thunderbolt project. As is customary, the first step was dedicated to the cockpit. The detail level is on par or a little better than that in recent offerings from Airfix - nicely detailed floor (although apparently incorrect for that specific type), a bit of detailing on the sides and simple, but adequate pilot seat. One detail that is different is the instrument panel - a truly lovely little piece of plastic with instruments engraved with surprising detail. In my opinion a much nicer alternative to the decals.

Since I intend to have the cockpit in the closed position, I didn't spend much effort on the interior. Cockpit green was sprayed everywhere with the exception of the instrument panel, while the detailing on the sides was picked out with a mix of black and german grey. The instrument panel was painted with same mix and when dry, slightly drybrushed with silver. As a last step, I filled in the instrument displays with gloss varnish, although I have to be honest and admit that in this scale it was a bit of a wasted effort.

With cockpit finished, it was time to put the model together. This step is idiot-proof and very simple. Grand total of six tightly fitting components produces a very nice Thunderbolt airframe.

Next it was time to proceed with the paint job, which is the main reason for me picking up this kit at this time. Since this particular Thunderbolt has mainly bare metal finish, it gives me the opportunity to try out these fancy Alclad2 lacquers everybody is raving about.

Couple of words about Alclad lacquers. First of all... well... they're laqcuers, a medium I have zero experience of and quite wary of. After all, anything that can only be cleaned up with cellulose thinner is guaranteed to be nasty stuff.

Oh well... who dares wins and all that. I've read up on Alclad lacquers on the net and was aware of the fact that black primer was a necessary first step. I used Alclad's own primer - my Badger 150 with 0,3mm needle didn't have any problems handling that paint, but cleanup was something of a nightmare. Anyway, the primer handles very well, dries very quickly to a mate finish. Having read that the finish of the primer is decisive for the final result, I took the extra mile and spent some time polishing the areas I could get to with 10.000 grade polishing sponge stick.

Academy Models P-47D Thunderbolt - Part I

Time for another first for me - this Thunderbolt is my very first model from Academy Models. I was aware of the company already in my teens, but for some reason I always thought that it was a second tier company. It's a good thing that I finally decided to grab a couple of their models, because the impression of this kit straight out of the box is very positive.

When comparing this kit with what I am used to get from Airfix, even their latest offerings, two words come to mind - delicate and basic. Individual components are beautifully moulded, with very nice recessed panel lines. Cockpit, instrument panel and wheels can best be described as functional, but not entirely deprived of detail. Construction process seems very traditional and straight-forward - based on initial impressions it could be a very nice beginner kit. I also appreciate the inclusion of a very nice selection of armament and external fuel tanks.

If a weak spot is to be pointed based only on initial inspection, then it's this kit's engine. Real world 'Jugs', as P-47s were called, were famous for their huge rotary engines. The engine included in this kit is surprisingly small, so much so that even I who normally am very insensitive to this sort of discrepancies raised an eyebrow in bewilderment.