Talentless the spine and rudder look white to my eye, did you use a flat clear on it ? It's been my experience that flat clear always makes metal flake look white.  But man the rest of it is perfect and I wouldn't mess with it at all.

Maybe, just a suggestion here, you could mask the spine and rudder and try doing a streaky type of finish on them letting a bit of the white show through might be an interesting effect. I know when aluminum gets hot it turns almost white.

Update to the mustangs. I've made more progress on one than the other. thought is since this is my first attempt at 1) a true NMF and 2) first time using alclads i wanted to try stuff out on one before i did the other. its a good thing i did too because i learned a lot from the first one. you can see several blemishes, bumps and missing paint on the painted one... i should've been more careful with my surface prep. i also didn't use a micro-filler primer before i sprayed the gloss black undercoat. (i honestly forgot that step ) and because of that theres seems and such visable.

So, you can see that i am starting the second mustang and not making that last mistake again... i will prep the $#!% out of that one before i proceed to the gloss black and NMF. Decals come next for the painted one.

on another note, i got the correct bulbs for my photo box, (daylight as opposed to soft white) so my pictures are not so dark anymore.

link to my photobucket

http://s1170.photobucket.com/albums/r525/andy_84/

Err yes the spine and tail are white. this is the plane it is modeled after, although this is obviously an airshow finised plane, not what i am after.

eelightning (28) by omgpainful, on Flickr

It is coated in alclad semi matt clear (apart from the chrome bits). It toned down the too shiny metal ok but left the white maybe a bit too flat.

Spark84 doesn't look too bad to me at all, you should see what my first one looked like if ya wanna see a bad finish. Looking forward to more progress

Talentless awww man !!! Open mouth, or in this case engage fingers with keyboard and insert foot or in this case popsicle sticks under finger nails. My apologies sir I didn't realize it was suppose to be white in those areas. Ignore what I said and DO NOT change a thing !!

thanks Vetteman, guess i'm my greatest critic.

Started decaling

Red top

DSC01971 by omgpainful, on Flickr

wheel bay covers with a little lens in the leg door

DSC01970 by omgpainful, on Flickr

Micro sol does its job beautifully, looks like the decal is painted over the cable cover

DSC01972 by omgpainful, on Flickr

DSC01978 by omgpainful, on Flickr

Decals need a bit of toning down yet.

Thought i had riuned one of the large reg numbers that go under the wings i tried to move it and i folded and twisted into a mess. lifted it off and put it into water to wash off the microset, gently moved it around with two brushes to unravel it and floated it back onto a bit of carrier paper, slid it back onto the wing and with a bit of sol and set it looks almost perfect . A tribute to the resilience of Xtradecals, many other decals would have fallen apart under this treatment.

Spark84

thanks Vetteman, guess i'm my greatest critic.

Spark84 I find that is a universal fault most modelers have.

Talentless great save on the decal man I have had that happen more times than I want to remember. She is lookin good there buddy.

Ok so Bonehead the dog decided my Stuka looked like a tasty morsel and well she chewed on it some.

So to consol my self I started on the B-29 again and even decided on markings "  Double Exposure " Flew recon missions over Japan during the bombing of Tokoyo. Just ordered decals this morning. I was planning to build her as Cream of the Crop but have changed my mind. Anyway as this thing is huge I will have to hang it on flight and so I can also display it on her wheels I am planning to pose her on final approach with the gear down and flaps at 15 or 20 degrees. Now for the real problem no one, I mean I cant find anyone who makes flight crew figures that can be used sitting in the aircraft !!!!!. So it looks like I will be cutting, modifing, and reposing figures I have. Got lucky and have a couple with captians hats on. After mocking a couple of them in the pit, its gonna look pretty cool I think. Pictures coming soon

PS The dawg still lives

vetteman42

DJinFlorida Nice work on the pit man ! I like the figure too, really lookin good. How do you like the kit so far ? I fell in love with mine and have 2 or 3 more of them on the shelf.

Well, I'm still putting the fuselage together (life has been getting in the way recently).  Some of it just doesn't seem to be lining up right, like at the front of cockpit, where the canopy meets the fuselage, the 2 halves of the fuselage don't match.  Also, on the top just behind the canopy there is a hole where the 2 halves meet.  Neither of these are too big of a deal, just a little putty and sanding. 

What has be baffled right now is the rear wheel well.  There is nothing there.  I have the rear wheel, but other than that, it is just a big hole.  I'm not a scratch builder, so I don't have anything to put in there.  Suggestions?

I'll put up some pictures later this week.  We are changing our internet providers, so hopefully I'll be able to upload pictures faster. 

Vetteman - your dog has good taste

Spark: how did I miss this your P-51s look great! Love the red nose and antiglare panel.

TL: nice work there too, I hate decaling missiles.

Randy: OMFG! I'd make a dogfight joke except that you'd probably kill me. Gee frigging whiz....

For NMS fans here, thought I'd note that the DragonUSA site is now selling a "Wake Island" version of the TBD Devestator. The plane was used with some success in the early war raids and at Wake but as a level bomber so there doesn't appear to be a torpedo included. There are, however, proper markings for a "yellow wing" NMS version that was used in the February 42 raids off Enterprise. It's a much more imposing kit without that insane torpedo sitting, at least in my eyes. Looks like there'd be three different NMS colors - at least two. www.dragonusaonline.com/item_detail.aspx .

The real world has thrown another monkey wrench into proper modelling. But I'm pretty sure I'll still have time to enter the Revell Texan here. I'll be looking for excuses to break the base color (whether accurate or not) because I want to use the kit to experiment with as many NMS acrylics as possible. I don't doubt lacquers are the way to go, but I've found it very hard to share a house with them. Sure wish I could install a booth, but there's just no way in my little modelling cave. And I don't really care if I have the world's greatest Texan. I have three US fighters and three Japanese Army fighters that cry for a partial NMS and the T-6 should serve as a good laboratory. (Can always give it a heavy weather which I bet would be fairly accurate for a T-6 circa 1944: imagine the hours they would have had. Be an interesting to see how best to do it. You wouldn't want battle damage, but a look at a Texan in the air gives you an idea of how much oil those radials burned. I'd guess that one used for thousands of hours would have built up a film over much of the aircraft.)

Eric

Eric: thanks for the heads up on the new TBD. And I think a Texan will look pretty cool - saw a couple perform at an air show some years ago and have been hankering to build one since.

Gamera no worried buddy I can take a bit of ribbing What I havent said is the dog got into the mancave again and had another party Didnt eat anymore models though, but man what a mess she made. I cant figure out what has gotten into her as she has never done this before, well not in the cave anyways.

EBergerud welcome to the group ! I look forward to seeing your experimentation, after all its what the group is all about. I think you will like the Revell T-6 kit too, I really liked mine and added 2 more to the stash after building the first one. If you are sharing your mancave and using acrylics for your NMF might I suggest, if you are using an air brush, Talon NMF paints, they actually smell good to the ummmm fairer ones in the house. You can get them at http://www.hawkeyeshobbies.com/ I have used most of his Talon paints and powders and have been very happy with them. Just be sure and watch the tutorial about spraying the paint, you have to mist the paint on in 5 or 6 coats. Sounds like it takes a long time but it doesn't as you only have to wait about 5 minutes between coats. The paint is pretty tough too unlike others, I have used regular masking tape over it with no lifting troubles at all.

Ok: here's the plan. I've broken out the Revel Texan. It looks like a perfectly good kit and I've had enough heroic modeling to last me a year after ripping a 60 year old battleship kit apart. I'm counting on a simple build. Then I'll sit down and read the accumulated wisdom here as my NMS experience is very spare. The idea will be to try to employ the absolute maximum number of paints that I can. This will be a wartime build and I don't intend to make it look nice and shinny. (You can do that with $10 kits that will probably build in a day or two. Not sure I'd be so confident if I was doing one of those ritzy new Mustangs from Japan.) The object will be to try out as many acrylics as possible. So we're looking for good, not perfect. I've got Talon, three types of Floquil, two Citadels, two Gunze Mr. Colors (yes, they're probably laquers but so are Tamiyas and neither is especially tough to deal with. Hard core lacquer paints are for outside use only.) Just in case, for a kind of "control" I've bought some of the new Gunze "Super Metallic" silver and steel. We'll see if they need a gas mask or not. So we'll be seeing a lot of painted plastic spoons and three major types of base (one for the lower wings, one for the upper wings and one for the fuselage) with several panels done with something different. (Think I'll used Golden Fluid Acrylic silver for the control surfaces: it wouldn't be the best NMS paint but it might be the best silver paint.) I've got enough photos to lead me to believe that with a little luck it may actually be a fair approximation of a well used plane. And if not, hopefully I'll know a lot more than I do now. I've got some very sweet US and Japanese kits in the stash that will need NMS and I don't want to blow those. Not sure about primer and which black to employ: I'll read the list and see what wise heads think here. I'd think a light blast of Tamiya gray surface primer with Tamiya gloss will be adequate. Also thinking about putting on some hardener and using Golden's Carbon Black which has astounding coverage and is darker than Stalin's soul. We'll see. Anyway, I'll submit periodic updates. Will try to get good pics of NMS plastic spoons - like ten of them. Here's the plane and a good sampling of the paints I'll try to sneak in.  

Eric

Starting the project - a subject of which I know little. I do know that some metallic paints use non-organic pigments. Some of the earth color acrylics that use them can have pretty thick bits of pigment - carbon black would be a good example. Anyway, I've heard that for at least some of the metallics that it's a good idea to use at least a .35 nozzle: that some of the smaller nozzles can clog. My main gun is a .20 Harder Steenbeck, but I also have a Paasche Talon at .5 that I use for a lot of stuff. I'd really not like to find the hard way that tiny hunks of metal are going to gunk up the HS. Anyone know if bigger is better for nozzle size and NMS paints?

Eric

I dont think pigment grain size is a problem unless you are trying to spray on iron filings.

I regularly use a .2 needle with tamiya, gunze, and alclad metalics when spraying small items. I use the .3 for the majority of sprying, not because of pigment size but for larger coverage. Clear coats go on better through a larger nozzle because they are generally thicker than thinned acrylics or enamels. You may have to thin the paint more for a .2 needle but tats about it. Alclads spray through a .2 right out of the bottle no probs.

On both Alclad and Metalizer I spray it right out of the bottle without even thinning it, so I wouldn't think you'd have any worse problem with clogging than any other sort of paint.

Small update

This is whats been eating my time lately

DSC02074 by omgpainful, on Flickr

DSC02080 by omgpainful, on Flickr

An overview of where i am

DSC02046 by omgpainful, on Flickr

DSC02045 by omgpainful, on Flickr

DSC02050 by omgpainful, on Flickr

i have actually resprayed slightly since these were taken to even out and reduce the weathering on the whole plane and coat it with alclad light sheen. ill take more pics whe there is more progress.

Wheels on

DSC02093 by omgpainful, on Flickr

DSC02111 by omgpainful, on Flickr

DSC02103 by omgpainful, on Flickr

This shows airfix new what they were doing with the wings kinking nicely.

DSC02096 by omgpainful, on Flickr

Gee whiz, TL that looks fantastic!!! Never superdetailed the gear (they're on the bottom and hard to see aren't they so why bother?) but I may have to give it a try.

Kudos sir!!!

Finally, I have the internet back and had some time to do a little work.

First, here is a little hole to fix and a little issue with alignment.

A little putty and some sanding, and I'm ready for paint.

Now I get to do my first NMF.  I will hopefully have time to do it on Saturday.

i have never been able to get a good finish with that green stuff, how do you manage it?

talentless

i have never been able to get a good finish with that green stuff, how do you manage it?

Lots of sanding, reapply, more sanding, find a spot I missed, apply, more sanding.  Then I finish with more sanding.  We'll see how good it turns out.

Well. If you are not happy wigh it you could possibly try , ohh i dunno, a bit of sanding :-P

Been painting spoons black: I'll forward a few pics on that kind of interesting. Texan is ready for priming. The intention here is learn something about metallic finishes, so I'll be trying out several that aren't Alcald. (I don't have a spray box and the lacquers are too heavy duty for in house duty.) I'm sure 50 million modelers can't be wrong and that Alclad is best: so we'll be looking for #2. I'm not too concerned because I'm not looking for a bright and/or polished finish. This project is really a prep for several fighters that will best mostly NMS (US planes) or partly (Japanese Army.) They'll all be warplanes so we'll be looking for an NMS plane that's seen some time in the air like this USAAF trainer in 1946 and they will be weathered:

I'll certainly prime the plane, but is there anything special about gloss black? Swanny's suggests using a black lacquer primer (they must be weaker) to protect the plastic from the ultra-shine alclad paints like chrome. Or if needed a black enamel paint over a different primer. I get the need for primer. What I don't get is the need for black. If you're not looking for something to blind the eye, would the primer color matter for metallic acrylics or "kind of" acrylics like Gunze? If this is an Alclad specific step, I'd think it would be best to skip it. Advice from wiser heads?

Eric

DJ: Nice! Coming right along.

Eric: Yeah, if you're not going for a super shiny finish you don't need the gloss black though I generally do it anyway. Grey primer should be ok, I've had good results with Tamiya spray primer and Mr. Surfacer 1000 or 1200. On some of the shiny paints that aren't as strong as Alclad you don't need a primer at all and can apply the shine to bare plastic, I don't like this though because most putty you use for gap filling will stand out like a sore thumb here.

Good luck!

Cliff

For high shine alclads use a black enamel primer and polish it too. The black primer is ued because the alclad coat is so thin you can see the primer through it. Its what gives it the depth of shine. If you put these high shine alckads on too thick you lose the effect. For other alclads or tamiya etc i use normal grey primer but stil polish it up a bit. I think gunze mr super metalic are supposed to go straight on to the plastic but i am not 100% sure. I tried it once and it stuck better to the plastic than it did to the primer. allthe instrutions are in japanese so i cant confirm it. I havent tried it over putty though.

the spoon test remains.  (The first spoon test is in: the glossiest and darkest finish comes from Golden Carbon Black: it's not as tough as Tamiya black gloss though: more spoon tests.) I'm going to try six paints - maybe more. Just no alclad.

looking forward to the pics with interest!