What's on my desk? Part 99.
Hello and welcome!
Last week of November. Let's make it a good one.
Blog Nine-Nine! Should I do something special for number 100?
The McLaren is finished! I'm not 100% happy, but it is looking good. I polished the gloss coat a bit, then put the outer shell and the rear wing on the base plate. Doing this, you need to be very careful, because there are two antennas sticking out of the headrest, which need to go through the appropriate holes. Of course I forgot about these and broke both of them off...
No big deal, I replaced them with some brass tubing. I added a dollop of super glue to the end to close them and thicken them slightly:
A bit of black paint and the F1 car is finished.
Here are some overview shots:
The backlight is throwing off the white balance of my phone camera in this first photo... This top view gives a better idea of the colour:
Here's a mistake I made: I neglected to base the brake light in white or silver. As a result the red transparant paint is not showing up well from the rear.
The other thing I'm not satisfied with is the gloss coat. At some point during gloss coating and polishing the gloss yellowed slightly, and the final result is not as shiny white as I'd wanted. Maybe the cloth I used to polish wasn't 100% clean...
The Tabu decals are very nice, and slide off the backing paper easily, but they're shiny and a bit on the thicker side.
Bergepanther time. I've applied a dark wash over the rivets and detail of the wheels. A somewhet tedious task, and maybe not entirely necessary, but it's good practice.
Here's the difference between plain and washed:
You need a gloss coat, so the wash flows in the details, but then you need to clean up any excess:
The wheel on the left is just after application of the wash, the right one has been cleaned with a damp brush. I treated 4 wheels at a time, to allow for some drying time before cleaning.
On a pure dark yellow the effect is pretty obvious. Here's what it looks like on the camouflaged bits:
Top ones are washed, bottoms still untreated.
I also sprayed the tracks with Ammo 'Rust Tracks'. It's a dark red-brown colour, drying very matt, perfect for further weathering:
The kit includes formers, so you can make and weather the tracks in the correct shape before applying them on the hull. They do need the idler wheel and drive sprocket, so I need to finish painting those first.
Finally, the Buckeye received its first colour. I first primed the entire plane white, then airbrushed Mr. Hobby 311 (a very light grey) to the underside. I also cut out the landing gear doors because the attachment points were going over the outside surface... I stuck them on a piece of cardboard with tape and wrote the numbers alongside:
I ran out of 311 Friday, but I still had a full jar at home, so I'll be able to continue this week.
That's it, I think.
See you next week for blog post number 100!