Is it too late to join in on this GB?  If not, I'll be building a Warhammer 40k Whirlwind.

TREYZX10R

Thanks Owl.just went back thru and reviewed the builds on this thread and there are some heavy hitters in here ,nice work everyone! Mike the preshade looks tight!

The office is ready to instal,not a very detailed affair but much wo'nt be seen once its entombed in the fuse anyway

The booms are ready to mate up to the pod, the gear bay design does'nt fit well and leaves a super thick wall. I've sanded it down some but its still way thick. Also took the time to open the air scoops up and thin down the leading edges

Lookin good  trey!

pyrman64

Is it too late to join in on this GB?  If not, I'll be building a Warhammer 40k Whirlwind.

There is still plenty of time! Ill get your build on the front page. What scale is that?

OWL, it's 28mm or roughly 1/68ish?

pyrman64

OWL, it's 28mm or roughly 1/68ish?

Im not used to wargame stuff, so this will be interesting to see!

Thanks Owl!

The seams have all been filled and sanded. The fit was pretty good for the most part,certainly have had worse to deal with in other kits. Also added some lead shot in the nose so hopefully it wo'nt be a tail sitter.

one contest is over, next on the 13OCT and after that in FEB2013 so i plan to have some new stuff for next year. i did my saturation and had a 50% win ratio. surprise was a first in post ww2 armor by my old tamiya CHALLENGER I i started in 1986, was built and brush painted but not finished. i know you aren't suppose to judge the base but it was on generic golan front gravelly terrain.

started my SHO'T KAL for this one. started with the turret and ordered a pair of afv club vinyl gun mantlets instead of trying to make my own. no side skirts and some interesting ideas on a possible dio. now i'm working on the hull. going real slow and learning from my judging on sat ( head dio judge and helped with airplanes). will post picks when i get to a pic point.

Canopy masked and some final tweaks and its ready for some preshading

For the preshade a thinned blue followed by a really thinned red. This is really more of a tint job than preshading

Next I decided to experiment with a blue powdered pearl added over the blue/red 'preshade'. I'm hoping after a thinned application of black it will give some background deviation and prevent a monochromatic finish.

Thinned black

After wet sanding with 1500

I then went with a Urethane automotive clear thinned 20% with reducer and a few drops of black

ooooh, shiny!

Trey -- fantastic! I wish I could get a finish like that, but not so far...

The raiden has moved along, I applied the IJN green (XF-11), tidied up the yellow and grey, and topcoated with Microscale Satin. Here she is right now:

I love the way the clear coat creates depth in the paint!

Okay, next will be the panel wash on the underside and over the yellow areas, then more clear (hopefully tomorrow) and she's ready for the decals, my chance to see the Aztec product in action.

Cheers, Mike/TB379

Mike thanks and the Raiden is looking sharp.looks like an excellent finish in the works!

I've varied the sheen in the dullcote and streaked the finish,also used some pastel for the exhaust staining then dullcoted over it.

NICE!!!

Excellent!  I like what you did with the superchargers.

Trey -- wonderful job, that's not an easy scheme to paint, and Lightnings are notoriously difficult kits for getting everything lined up accurately. You've done a first rate job!

The forums were down for a while over the weekend, so I didn't get to post progress pics Saturday night (our time). I accented the recessed detail using Promodeller "Dark Dirt" wash:

It's magic the way it makes the detail pop!

I have since recoated with Micro Satin, and the decals are well under way. The Aztecs unfortunately don't settle into the detail as well as I had hoped, after multiple applications of Micro Sol some have drawn in, some have not. I'll apply the last hinomaru today and keep at them with the solvent. I don't think you can get stronger stuff over here, though I'd need to check.

I'm hoping to spray the wheelwells and interior of the bay doors today, possibly also the tires...

Mike/TB379

looks sharp!

Looks awesome. Its a shame about the seam  along the back of the wing. Not much help for it though.

Trey: Super work there! I've never thought of pre-shading under the NM like that. Love the results! Going to have to give it a run myself!

Mike: Nice, recently tried the Flory brand wash myself, have to agree I've had much better results with it than my own mixed sludge washes.

Scorpiomikey -- yes indeed, that was the filler zone and I wasn't game to scribe into it... What I have done is add a pencil mark which hopefully under satincoat will allow the eye to see the shape, rather than the third dimension...

Decals are on now. Here's the Aztec generic sheets I used:

The process underway:

A last look at the rivet work before the hinomaru goes onto the right wing:

The Aztec decals don't respond terribly strongly to Microscale chemistry (I mean a dozen applications!), so they did not pull into the surface the way I had hoped they would. There's some detail to rewash, but not all by any means. Today I satincoated the decals, then masked and put the gear wells and gear components into aluminum:

She's looking good, I think. That last bit of panel work, then I can unmask the antiglare panel and canopy, do some chipping work in the high traffic areas (but not too much, this is obvioussly a fairly factor-fresh paintjob), and mount the gear and prop; then it's onto canon barrels, pitot tube, radio mast and antenna wires, plus exhaust stains and gun carbon to be done in pigments...

M/TB379

T-bolt...looks great!

Mike: Look great! Though I normally apply the decals and then add the wash over it. Have you had better luck going wash first?

I think you satin-finished it too. Most decals go down best over a gloss coat. At least, that has been my experience. Gloss, decals, wash, finish

Gamera -- I'm still kinda experimenting, in the past I've felt the decals needed stabilising with clear before working the wash over them, this time I thought , what the heck, do the wash as a single operation, then come back to the decals -- especially to try out a new brand for the first time. I'll do what wash I can over the decals and reseal it with clear. If I could get Solvaset it might have pulled these guys down tight into the detail... I'm thinking of trying Eduard's hinomaru masks and painting them on some future projects.

Cheers, Mike/TB379

Owl -- I've not had great luck with glosscoats so far, they seem to come our pebbly, while the satin is reliable and mostly bright enough to make decals behave -- but there's decals and there's decals, and no two are alike. I had some custom decals made by JBot in Canada for a project I finished at the weekend and they pulled tight into detail like you wouldn't believe, with all the same chemistry and paints...

M/TB379

Funny, I've had similar problems with gloss coats too. I stopped using Future since it always gives me a nasty orange peel, so pebbly it looks like a non-slip surface. Others give the same problem but not nearly as bad so I've been using MM acrylic gloss.

And I'd used Micro/Super Scale decal setting solutions for over twenty years now but on the last few models I've had really bad silvering then recently while washing a model for the final protective coat had the decals simply wash off the model. I'm wondering if Microscale has changed their formula. I switched over the Tamiya decal solution on the last few models and haven't had any of the same problems.  

Hm, Ive never had problems with Future. Normally 2 coats gets things super duper glossy. I normally buff the paint job with 0000 steel wool before I gloss coat to help with the roughness of the gloss finish

Interesting, everyone seems to have a slightly different experience. I have some Future here but haven't tried it through the airbrush yet. May I ask what you guys use for clean up? I've heard you need something with ammonia, such as Windex. Do you spray Windex through the AB to clean it? I'm building up my collection of MM Acryls so I can add their glosscoat to the set and give that a go. The Micro Gloss sprayed pebbly, so did Tamiya X-22 -- in frustration I threw up my hands and went with the low gloss which was the only one I've found so far that has been universally reliable.

M/TB379

I havent heard anything good about airbrushing future. Its self leveling for the most part, so brushing it on seems to work fine. I use soap and water for cleanup.

I brush it on and use windex for cleaning my brushes. Working fine for me

Wayne: Nice looking tank there. Good change of pace from the usual WW2 subjects- looking forward to following your build.

Guys, haven't tried brushing the Future on, may have to give that a whirl. I pretty much always dip my canopies and clear parts in it, makes small surface scratches vanish and leaves the part much more resistant to any more scratching.