What's on my desk? Part 144.
Good morning!
September was good, let's make October even better! As you know, October 31st is the birthday of Modelist. It's our 3rd year now, hopefully we can make it to 30!
On to the models, then.
The Fairey Battle's underside was airbrushed light grey:
Unfortunately, the Belgian ones were painted aluminium dope, so I'll have to respray...
Speaking of aluminium, I made a complete mess of the aluminium paint layers of the Hurricane. My Ammo colours are really finally getting too old and I overthinned my paint in the airbrush. Instead of stopping and fixing it, I stubbornly kept spraying and now the colour coat is very uneven. The gloss coat, weathering and satin varnish did little to hide that fact, but eh, I'll apply a little pigment dust over the worst patches.
I do like how that copper tube turned out. It was painted with Citadel Retributor Armour. My Ammo Brass was completely dead and didn't cover at all...
The tubular frame of the cockpit in this model is built on top of the wing, then the two halves of the fuselage will go over it:
I think it looks great and gives very good detail, but still I ordered some Eduard extra's. A better seat with PE seatbelts, a 3D-printed instrument panel and some interior details will majorly improve on the kit parts. Decal seatbelts just don't look like actual belts, being too flat. The instrument panel also is a decal over raised instruments, which, while not bad, is too much effort when I can get a drop-in replacement.
For later in the build, I have some resin/3D printed landing gear, cannon barrels and exhaust pipes coming in to improve on those areas.
I masked my Strv 103 running gear and tracks with paper and tape:
I took care not to tape on the top run of the tracks, everything is held in place from the bottom:
Why? Because then I mounted the side brackets and I want to be able to slide all my masking out from underneath those when painted:
It won't work 100%, but at least I can now mask the camouflage properly.
To be continued.
Finally, I'm really struggling with planking the Jolie Brise. The pins are too thick and split the ribs when trying to hold the planks, so I reverted partly to rubber bands. Still, there are too-big gaps in between the planks which I'll have to fill and sand. A step which was coming anyway, but I was hoping to get my planking a lot cleaner.
Luckily the hull will need to be painted. If these were going to be naked wood in the end it would be a much bigger problem.
That's all for now.
See you next week!