Revell Junkers Ju 88A4 - Part II

Work on cockpit area of the Junkers continues and one issue becomes apparent as I progress. In my opinion at least. this kit is ridiculously over-engineered in almost comical German fashion. The fuselage assembly around cockpit area consists of two parts that look like two letters L, bottom parts of which are supposed to fit together. Backend of this section is then supposed to fit into the rest of the fuselage - no problem there. The nose is then constructed out of several bits and pieces that go on top and bottom, some of them made out of clear plastic and it is crucial that everything fits together with very small tolerances, otherwise you're looking forward to rather advanced filing and filling session. This task proved in my case beyond my skills and I will now have to figure out how to mask a very visible gap between the fuselage and belly section of cockpit gondola.

This being said, I am still in awe of the detail of this kit straight out of the box.

My Badger is dead, long live Badger

Final post of the day and a sad announcement - my trusty Badger 150 died couple of days ago. Or, if I am to be perfectly honest, I probably 'killed' it myself with my slightly obsessive insistence to keep it very clean. Although I won't swear that this is actually what happened, I probably busted the needle bearing by ramming in the cleaning brush all the way through the length of the airbrush. This action (done repeatedly on several occasions) most probably dislodged or damaged the needle bearing, a small teflon packing ring, presence of which I was happily unaware of. As it turns out, it has a couple of rather important tasks, all of them vital for the airbrush staying in serviceable order.

The first indications of the problem occurred quite a while ago, when I found that paint has spread along the whole length of the needle. This is apparently not supposed to happen, as the needle bearing is supposed to keep the paint from 'wandering' back into the airbrush. So, if you find that your needle is covered in paint, you have a problem.

Happily unawares of the budding problem, I continued to use the airbrush without any noticeable problems until last week when I worked on the interior of the Junkers. The airbrush acted 'funny', but I accounted it to my difficulty with mixing the paint of proper consistency. Once done, I cleaned the airbrush in my usual manner... yes, that's right, the cleaning brush was yet again rammed into the airbrush body. Final flush with water served as undeniable evidence of the fact that the Badger had had it - flow of the spray was interrupted by what I can only describe as a 'hickup' before resuming for a second or two... then another 'hickup' and so on...

Having no idea what was going on, I asked Google for help and after a couple of minutes found Don's Airbrush Tips page. Thank you sir for a very valuable source of information about airbrushes, but even more important for your section about troubleshooting of problems with them. On this page, I found a link to this very informative movie, which described the symptoms I was experiencing to a tee and gave me the most probable cause of the problem. Sorry for not embedding the movie in the post, Blogger refuses to find it in its list of Youtube movies. (????)

The brush is now sent to the shop I purchased it from and getting the blown bearing replaced and work on Junkers had come to a grinding halt. Thinking definitely about a backup airbrush; if you have any comments about about the Iwata Neo? :)

Revell Junkers Ju 88A4 - Part I

Back to airplane kits; this time around I felt like really digging in my teeth into something bigger, so next object of my attention is Junkers Ju 88A-4 from Revell.

As it turns out, this kit is not only 'bigger' than your run of the mill fighter. Even the initial inspection of content of the package made it clear that this little puppy is most certainly NOT your average 'finished in one hour' Airfix fighter, but an advanced kit with level of detail and complexity that impressed and intimidated me at the same time. Considering its very reasonable price, you get a lot for the money.

The initial inspection also revealed another fact - one of the tiny bits (twin barrels of one of the machine guns) was broken off and missing. Slightly distressed, I searched Revell's site for contact information and what do you know, I promptly found an email address to be used for those very occasions. I fired off an email describing the problem on Saturday evening, got the response on Monday morning and the missing part arrived in an envelope about a week later. Thank you for excellent customer service, Revell.

So what about the kit itself? Well, the building process is slow, partially due to the fact that until recently it overlapped with final stages of Tiger II experiments, partially because I want to take my time with this model. By now I am done with sub-assemblies of the pilot cockpit and I hope that the picture below gives the justice to the detail level of this kit. Everything except the seat belts is out of the box.

Couple of words about those seat belts. They're from Eduard, prepainted and a major PITA to work with, but in my opinion at least worth every penny and minute spent on them. It's my first attempt at photo-etched parts and I have full understanding for folks who spend a fortune on this stuff. They really do enhance the appearance of a kit!

Dragon Models Tiger II - Part III... and a review of different type!

Allright, so just to put some sort of logical finish to the Tiger II project... In simple terms, it's done and pics below show the final result.

As mentioned in previous post, the final steps in this project were 'inspired' by the instructional DVD from AK Interactive called 'Weathering in 1 Hour'. It would be therefore a shame to miss the opportunity to give a quick review of this video. In short, it does what is written on the cover and shows a bunch of common weathering techniques on a 1/35 scale German recon car. If you're a beginner or intermediate modeller, you should definitely watch this video at least once. While there is nothing revolutionary in what they show, watching someone who knows exactly what he's doing even when it comes to very basic techniques, is immensely educational and much better than reading about those techniques in a book or a magazine.

Following techniques are shown in detail (I may have forgotten one or two, but these are the important ones):

• Applying enamel washes using Humbrol paints and white spirits
• Chipping effects with Vallejo acrylics
• Streaking effects with AK Interactive products
• Mud effects with AK Interactive products
• Highlights and modulation effects with white oils paint
• Rust streaks and effects with AK Interactive products

As you can see, the video is a bit of a promotion tool for the stuff from AK Interactive, but who can blame them. I'm sure that MiG would also use their own stuff wherever they could if they'd ever do a video of this kind.

So... how did my attempt at following their instructions go? Actually, quite well, but not without mishaps. Weathering with their mixture of Humbrol paints worked very well and I am happy to report that I was able to achieve best results so far in my 'career'. Excellent control over the wash and how it settled. Chipping in 1/72 scale turned out to be an unexpected challenge - it's damn hard to paint these dots small enough for them to look realistic. Streaking and rust effects is another area where practice should pay dividend - in this attempt I managed to wash most of the effects away, mostly because I am a bit of a chicken, afraid I may overdo it. I skipped over mud effects.

Finally, let's deal with what fortunately turned out to be the only major SNAFU - modulation effects with oils paints. In theory, this technique is pretty simple - apply tiny dots of oil paint and 'work it in' onto underlying paint job to create subtle shifts in color hue and satuartion. I've read about this technique on a couple of occasions, but never tried it before. As it turns out, there is a bit of a learning curve. In this particular case, I followed the instructions and worked with white paint to create bleached patches, trying to simulate the effect of exposure to sun and elements. Lesson number one - tiny amount of oils goes a long way. Lesson number two materialized a bit later, after I applied final matte coat on the model - oils take very long time to dry and apparently can pool together also in interaction with acrylic varnishes. If you take closer look at the rear of the turret and left side mud-guard, white patches are clearly visible - that's the white oil paint that pooled together in the medium of acrylic varnish. Annoying as hell, because otherwise I'm very pleased with how this kit turned out, but I'm keeping my mistakes as a remainder for the future.

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.