Hello on another sunny warm day!
I'm still waiting on paints (both the Williams blue and Polish light blue and 'dark khaki)', so progress was made where possible. I'm usually not that hung up on the 'correct' colour. First off, a lot of exact colour shades are lost to time. Second; with weathering and use these shades quickly changed. So for military subjects, you can use any colour that is 'close enough'. However, in these cases I'm making an exception. I already explained that for the Williams most of the blue now on the model comes from the decals, and I do need a paint that is (hopefully) exactly the same so I can make corrections.
The Polish Dark Khaki is a very particular colour, only used on Polish planes. Arma Hobby indicates approximations in other brands, but only Hataka C-010 seems to be the 'right' shade. I've had bad experience with Hataka in the past; I couldn't airbrush a decently smooth coat no matter which thinner I used. But those were acrylics (with red caps). This time the C-010 is a lacquer paint. I also ordered the accompanying thinners from the same brand, so let's hope this time I succeed in using Hataka paints.
So, what have I been doing while waiting?
I continued decalling the Williams. The upper rear body needed some more markings. A few of these are running over a seam line, so I clicked the body in place before laying them down:
You can clearly see the 'ELF' and 'Tactel' decals had to be cut over the seam.
The wheels have 'Fondmetal' decals going inside the rim:
Finally, I laid out all the parts approximately where they will go:
Not long to go...
The PZL then. I ran into a bit of an issue with the wings. These are commendably thin but as a consequence, the attachments to the sprue are pretty large. On the leading edge they go on top of the wing:
On the trailing edge they have to go on the inside, because there's detailing on the wing that would disappear otherwise.
You have to be very careful when cutting loose and trimming the attachments. Sprue cutters can cause stress marks and deformation in the plastic if you're cutting from the wrong angle:
Even worse, you can take away too much plastic, making a hole:
This can't be fixed for now, but when we glue the wing halves together, we have a surface underneath we can work with:
So I squeezed a bit of
Plastic Putty into this, planning to recreate the corrugated metal with a scriber later.
I glued the fuselage halves together and applied putty to the seams. You can see how exposed the pilot's head rest is, and why I opted to paint this later:
Finally, I painted and weathered the engine. This is a licensed copy of the British Bristol Mercury (the same engine used in the Gladiator). Most of it will be hidden, but the front of the cylinders will remain visible:
It's installed in a conical fairing, which will be impossible to properly paint if I assemble it all beforehand. So I'm leaving it all deconstructed. Same for the wings. Underneath they (and the tailplanes) need to be light blue, while everything else is painted Dark Polish Khaki. But the gull wing and struts will make it very hard to mask. So this will be an example of 'paint first, assemble later'.
I arranged everything in its (approximate) place:
You can see I cut out some sprue and left it attached to the tailplane and rudder. I can later grip this with a clothes pin, so I can handle it while painting. The nose parts will be mounted on toothpicks on the inside for the same reason. I can now mask the cockpit and start priming with white.
That's it. I'm expecting the paints to arrive this week, and hopefully I'll be able to make some more progress then.
See you next week!
