I've never had much success with my own in progress thread - but that's mostly because I tend to move around between builds. My hope is that this thread will keep me on task, gain some wisdom from you all, and help my complete this build by the end of July.
This will be the first black finish I've done - I'm a little nervous about weathering a black seaplane - but also excited to try something new.

Honest feedback & suggestions are highly appreciated. I think it will help motivate me with the build.

This is the aftermarket I'll be using for this build - pretty simple. I also have a Eduard canopy mask set that didn't make the photo.



Fuselage walls have been preshaded, painted and oil washed.



No aftermarket in the cockpit area as the detail is already quite nice - and I'm fairly certain you wont be able to see much anyway when the build is complete.




Cockpit was painted interior green with aluminum drybrushing and an oil wash.



Here is the rear gunner's area. Still work to be done on the ammo chute. Same process as the cockpit.



Rear bulkhead. You can also see the beginning of the work I've done on the instrument panel in the upper left of the photo. I have some IP decals to place once the future is dry.



Not the best photo - but here is the work done on the gear bay. Can anyone confirm or deny what color these would have been painted? As well as the color of the gear struts?



thanks for looking!

One thing that amazed me is the size of the wing on the PBY - its friggin' huge! The way monogram designed the wing is quite nice. I'm fairly certain I can wait until the end of the build to attach it. That said. I've glued the wing together and have started the sanding and putty process. Some gaps need to be worked on, but overall nothing major.



Here is a seam on top of the wings that will need some love.



Some work on the wingtips needs to be done as well.

Some work done on the IP. Not the best photo but it will do.

Nice work, I congratulate you on the panel detail my hands would shake too much to do that. You can probably find period photos in color, but most images seem to indicate that the gear well and struts were painted the same color as the rest of the aircraft.

KRT - I tend to agree with you. It looks the well and struts should be black. From a modeling standpoint I wish they were a different color, just to help provide some needed contrast. I'm going to really have to weather this build well to make up for all of the black!

Also, just a note on the IP. Those details are not freehand, but decals provided with the yellowhammer decal sheet. There is no way I could do that myself! Instrument panel work went like this:
1. airbrushed flat black
2. drybrushed with aluminum
4. airbrushed gloss coat with future
5. Decals placed with solvaset
6. airbrushed gloss coat with future
7. airbrushed dull coat
8. placed 2-3 coats of future inside the instruments to get a "glass" effect.

Interesting. I built on of these with my dad when I was a young kid, not to the detail of course, but it's a great memory of my dad. Thanks dad!

Minor work done today as well as some confusion on my behalf. Seems I can't find part 62 (the clear window on the front of the hull). Strangely enough though - it doesn't appear to be a place for it on the clear sprue? No "62" marker on the sprue as well. Strange. I'm sure I'm loosing it on my end, but could someone who owns the kit confirm or deny the existence of this part? Luckily, making a new once should be easy using some clear plastic from product packaging.




Anyways, cleaned up some of the clear parts and dipped them in future. I don't always do this - but most of these pieces had some odd scuff marks.



And here's my hi tech dust prevent system while the future dries!

Looking good!

All the Cats I've seen, both in the air and in museums, have had the gear bays painted in the same colour as the rest of the aircraft.

Looking good so far.

Too bad it has the wrong windows aft (The Bubbles) if it had the right ones I would have been interested in one myself. Swedish Air Force Tp 47 has a lot smaller bubbles aft and they are more like hatches.

Fenix,
The Sweedish PBY is a gorgeous paint job. A quick google search and I found with what looks like modified bubble windows - much smaller. This would be a difficult modification to do.


And then I found this photo. I looks like the windows were simply removed and faired over - this would be a simple modification too the kit. You could simply rebuild the window opening with plasticard.

Small update - but hoping it will keep me "on track"

Glued the sub assemblies into the fuselage. Some minor warping might make joining the two halves together we shall see.



Gear wells are installed as well - I glued them in and then used a strip of testors tube glue around the interior joints of added support. I don't want them to "cave in" once the fuselage is joined. Well is painted interior green, but these will get a spray of black as it appears most PBYs had the gear wells the same color as the fuselage. In this photo you can also see that I've istalled the eduard masks. I love these things - and pick them up for whatever build I'm currently working on. My last build was a 1/48 B-24 and it saved my sanity!



IP installed. "Mystery" front window - found and installed (it wasn't a clear part after all). I still need to paint it to match the interior.



Future has dried on the clear parts. Man, I love this stuff!! I'll probably wait another 24-48 hours before masking them off.




Thats about it for now. The build is somewhat on hold while I wait for a set of nose weights to get delivered. I've used nightiemission's weights on a 1/32 A-10 in the past and it made life super easy. A great product! While I wait, I'll most likely work on sanding and prepping the wing. Or I'll drink a beer. Or both

Great build log! Watching this eagerly, and picking up some tips.

Not too much to show - but with the fuselage closed up - I've been able to install the canopy and mask it. As you can see I've used white-out to fill in the small gap around the canopy. This will get "wet sanded" down with a q-tip and paint thinner. I don't remember where I picked this tip up from, but it works well for smaller seams. I used the White out applicator and carefully apply it to the seam being careful not to apply it over the canopy masking. I'll let it set for 30 or so minutes. It dries pretty quick. Then to remove the excess you can either sand like normal or you can use a q-tip end and gently remove the excess white out using a small amount of paint thinner on the q-tip. Be careful not to use a lot of thinner, in fact I usually rub the q-tip down on some scrap cardboard to get the excess thinner off of it. Then you carefully rub against the seam. Usually I'll use the other end of the q-tip as a "secondary" pass to really clean the residue off.



Here is a photo after me working on one side of the canopy for about 30 seconds. There is still some more to rub away, but you get the idea.


blister canopies are masked off as well. Looks like I'll have to paint these before attaching them to the fuselage.

Coming along very nicely! Nice job on the instrument panel, btw.
Looking forward to reading about your progress.

Well, Primer is on!
I added the elevators and used white out again for the small seams. I painted the canopy and gun blisters green chromate, then layed a first coat of primer. I use Tamiya grey primer in a rattle can - fantastic stuff! After the first coat I sanded some imperfections and layed another coat. Next up will be preshading and the first color scheme glue/grey - which will eventually be covered with black tones. This is about to get interesting. Praying to the modeling God's this paint is going to turn out OK.

Nice job you're doing so far!

Sorry guys, I fell a little behind on this thread. Time to catch up!

The base layer of black is on - I'll be adding lighter coats on the top as well as the top of the wing...even the base layer is not very dark. I'll probably go a shade darker for the bottom of the hull, wings, and elevator (crappy cell phone pic)
and yes - the blue grey scheme is underneath! - hopefully we'll see that soon again :-)

Well, it was time to go big or go home - so I went big and started "scrubbing" the black away revealing the blue/gray camoflauge underneath. I figured I shouldn't wait for the paint to get overly cured. so off I went!
Anways, this was all done rubbing a Mr.Clean magic eraser over the areas I wanted to be faded and rubbed away - this was most heavily done around the cockpit and top of the wings. After one "pass" I went back and touched up a few areas I overdid with the airbrush.
Honest feedback is appreciated. Overly done? Not enough? Convincingly real or not good at all? Let me know - I want the feedback!







I can't really take credit for the magic eraser trick - The yellowhammer decal sheet I'm using has instructions to achieve this effect. They recommend using a scotch-brite pad. I dug underneath the kitchen sink and found one - but it really didn't seem to do much. So I dug a little deeper and found the magic eraser. It works pretty good. It takes a decent amount of pressure and movement to start taking the first layer of paint off. The trick is to stop without reaching the bare plastic. It also seemed to help to get the magic eraser wet.

I did touch up a few areas on the wing with paint (after the photo was taken)- as I thought I might have taken the effect too far.

Last night I also starting doing some paint chipping and installed the landing gear legs. Pics to come later today.

The next big weathering question is if I do a chalk dusting on it? I'm not sure how "dirty" a plane like this would get. (think:dirt) on a seaplane? maybe the tops of the wings and fuselage?

I'm hoping to achieve something like THIS with the brownish hue (Photo credit Luc Janssen @ LSP)

Matt,
Just my observation. Fuselage looks pretty good. May I suggest using warm water mixed with dish soap and the Mr Clean sponge. Good choice in the Mr. Clean as the Scotch-brite would have left deeper scour marks. Scrub the wing in the direction of air flow as it appears you went length wise to me.

Fabric areas are convincing as done. Another suggestion is using the salt technique in combination with what you've already done. That would create some fantastic weathering results based on the environment these planes operated in.

Also consider pigments with the use of white spirits. You can achieve some wonderful subtle effects with these as well.
Some reading to consider: http://missing-lynx.com/rareworld.htm
With aircraft use very small amount of pigment and build up. If you error scrub with a old tooth brush to remove most of it.

Keep up the great work!

WingNuts

Thanks for the help and tips everyone! I was tempted to try the salt weathering technique - but I've had sub par results doing it myself in the past, so I decided to keep the weathering simple. I did add a small amount of brown chalk on the top of the wings - not much, but enough to add a little variation.

I've managed to get alot of work done and I'm not doing some of the final stuff.
Some things I still need to finish:
1. rigging.
2. prop decals/weather props.
3. touch up in a couple of areas with a dull coat.
4, add the ordnance to the wings and antenna.
5. Add guns to the rear blisters.

When I'm all done I'll take the time and get some proper photos. For now - just some shoddy cell phone pics.