What's on my desk? Part 86.
Hello!
The second airbrush workshop took place last Sunday. I think it was a great afternoon and hopefully everyone walked away with a bit more knowledge and confidence in airbrushing. There's still interest, so I'll be doing this again. Don't hesitate to send me a message if you'd like to attend and be informed of future dates.
Last week of the summer holidays, and I've been making steady progress on my models. How about you?
On the Williams front, I've received the paint from Fire Scale Modeler, in a nice padded envelope:
Unfortunately, the blue colour isn't the same as the Tamiya decal colour. It's near enough to make small corrections, but for the blue on the back wing I've opted to use the decals anyway... I've applied the tire stickers as well. These are 'reverse' decals, in that they're printed back to front with the adhesive on top. Unlike the other decals, these do show their age, not sticking very well and only loosening from the backing paper with quite a bit of time and water. I've succeeded in applying them, although here and there they're not completely in line...
This one should be finished next week.
I also received a package from Hataka, containing paints and thinner for the PZL.
Orange caps are lacquer paint, red cap is acrylic. I have some acrylic sets at home that I've never really succeeded in airbrushing properly. Hopefully with the proper thinner it will work.
Colours are Light Blue Grey for the underside of the wings, and Dark Polish Khaki for the rest of the plane. The paints sprayed well, but they are a bit more smelly than acrylics.
I particularly like the light blue grey; it's a medium grey with a blue-purplish tint to it. The dark khaki is a dark brown colour. I closed it all off with a gloss coat and will leave everything unassembled until ready for weathering:
Next step, obviously, is the decals. And these are just bad, there's no other way to describe them. They're printed nice and sharp, with little border, but they're glossy, fragile and don't settle well into the detail. Which is pretty important, as the entire surface of the wings is made up of corrugated panels. The panel dividers are raised ribs, and the slightest pressure to get the decals to conform results in tearing...
Here's the bottom wing. The number turned out okay, but the Polish checkerboard is tearing everywhere and refuses to conform into/over the ribs:
At the tail more of the same:
I'll keep trying with Micro Sol, but if I don't succeed in laying these down properly, I'll need to remove them and find some after-market decals...
Meanwhile, I've slowly started with the next project. If the PZL was relatively simple, with one and a half sprues of plastic, this one is on the opposite side of the spectrum. 25 sprues, plus the upper hull, photo etch, rope, chain and cable. It's Takom's Bergepanther Ausf. A from 2018 (picture links to Scalemates):
Big box, full of plastic:
The kit comes with full interior. Hopefully I'll be able to leave some parts detachable to show it all off. Just to give an impression of the detail, here's the transmission, made up of 33 parts:
This one will take a while to build. :-)
That's it for now.
See you next week!