Finally, a WWII plane! Now i'm 10 again.
This one should take longer than the others i have been spamming here with, i need to learn to spray paint. Before that, i need to actually buy the equipment
needed to spray paint. I have my eyes on a Neo for Iwata dual action gravity feed starter brush and a 1/6 or 1/8 hp air compressor with a 3l tank. Looking forward to getting the gear, setting up my work bench finally and trying my hand at a gun. So to kick this one off, here's the box. She's a 2005 new tool kit by Hasegawa with new decals included in the 2007 kit i purchased, i love the box artwork.
I taped together the wings and fuselage so i could have a look at the size of this machine in 1/48, tbh i didn't expect it to be this small!
Next cab off the rank i scoured the net collecting profiles and was immediately hit by the amount of different interpretations of the Luftwaffe RLM colours. All the memories of these dreaded RLM colours from when i skinned a couple of planes for EAW in the early 2000'scame flooding back. I went down the rabbit hole again in the last week, and it's still a massive, but very interesting, warren!
Then i remembered my little stash of FW books i had hidden away in a box for over a decade. Time to drag them out, all references are good i thought.
In the Sturmgruppen issue is yet another profile of this bird...
And a couple of pics of the real deal although that doesn't help much in the colour department.
By this stage all i knew i was going to struggle to get the colours even semi close if i kept on using spray paints. To stave off the inevitable (my brain knew i needed an airbrush and all that goes with it) and to fill in an evening i took a pic of the paint sheet, scoured model forums for RLM colours, downloaded different colour samples and started 'spraying' my plane. What can i say, it was a fun little hour and a half
I knew this was not what the real product would look like but was thinking it would give me a very basic idea of the can colours. It also made me make the final decision that these colours were just way off/too vibrant, unless i wanted a clowny looking rendition of the paint scheme. The RLM peeps would also eat me alive, and i wouldn't be satisfied myself with the end result. So, that settled that, i need a brush. With that hurdle passed the model sat here on my desk for the past few days until i thought, well, i could make a start with something at least. I decided i needed to up my game and add some detail to my kits, brake lines and the like and seat belts, yes , seat belts sounded cool! So seat belts it is, off to the net and there are a few different ways but the most common seems to be using aluminium foil with tape on both sides for the belts, paint them and add some buckles, it couldn't be easier! I raided the cupboard for some alfoil and got to it.
The basic belt strap was easy, as above, foil, modelling tape both sides, cut a few strips and mix up some earth brown and flat flesh, paint. The buckles/mounts i had seen made online were not what i wanted, just flat bits of card painted silver so i raided my cord box looking for some silver wire. Three cut cords later and all i had was some thin copper wire. Copper wire it is then, painted silver and bent into shape with the help of a blade. A couple of little straight pieces of wire (about 2mm long) cut to add some detail to the upper section of the belt, some buckles on the bottom section and i've got some semi decent belts built. Painted up the seat, added the belts and it doesn't look half bad. I added the pencil in some pics to give a sense of scale.
Seat base drybrushed to give it a bit of a worn look.
The beginnings of the seat belts.
An hour of mucking around with fat fingers and thin copper wire. The straight pieces are actually silver wire. I hacked into one of our many hdmi cords and used a piece of the sheathing which was a thinner silver wire.
Quick fit and some slight weathering to knock the belt colours back a little bit. I used a little bit too much glue and lost most of the effect of the seat wear unfortunately and made a bit of a mess at the front of the seat pad. Cameras really do like to highlight every error don't they.
After a coat of flat to take some shine of the belts. I'm going to give the seat another tiny dry brush on the edges to highlight the wear a bit more as the flat dulled it out more than i would have liked. That little glue mess i made on the front of the seat pad really irks me. I also made the top belts just too small to anchor behind the seat. I've either got to mount them on the top of the seat or make another set. I do like them though, i never thought at any stage in my life i would be making a set of miniature seat belts that's for sure.
Funny thing about this little seat belt making exercise? I looked up some Eduard or HGW belts when i had finished and could have had a neato little set here early next week for between 9 and 15 dollars.
Regards the whole RLM issue, everyone seems to have their own mixes but a lot of them are really close regards amount of paint and colour combos so it shouldn't be too much of an issue and it will be nice to have the flexibility of being able to muck around making my own colours.
Cheers all, hope you found my afternoon interesting!