B-36 Peacemaker Group Build

Do you guys spray Future over silver paint (e.g. Model Master, Alclad) prior to decal application to prevent silvering, or is there no silvering problem when decals are applied over silver? I can't recall ever painting an aircraft silver (always did WWII camo) until this B-36, so I don't have any experience. No point in spraying Future if it is needed, although I figured I would overcoat with Future to help protect the decals.

I don't use Future as a sealer but don't think it would work any different with silver paint.  I typically use MM gloss coat out of a rattle can.  On the B-36 I used MM Metalizer paints and they make a "Sealer" just  for them, which I think is similar to their "Gloss" coat.

Teutonic, Reasoned is right in that MM makes a metalizer sealer.  I just finished an F-89 Scorpion where I applied the decals over the Model Master metalic paint.  You don't need to worry about applying a gloss coat first since the metal paints are smooth enough where you don't have to worry about silvering.  Then, after the decals were treated with MicroSol, I applied the MM metalizer sealer.  I like the stuff because it provides a protective clear top coat AND it doesn't degrade the look of the metalic paint.  In fact, it really doesn't change the look of your metal paint at all.

Just out of curiosity, I applied a clear flat coat over some MM metalics.  Holy cow!  It basically turned my silver paint into more of a dull grey!  So I would definitely NOT use a flat clear coat over your metalic paint.  I highly recommend the MM metalizer sealer if you want a protective coating.

While I have never used Future over my metalic finishes, I have read that it gives the metalic surface an unrealistic high gloss shine to the surface as if the aircraft was encased in a layer of glass.  But like I said, I've only read it.  I've never seen it with my own eyes.  It's for this reason, however, that I don't use anything like MM gloss coat on my NMF planes.

Eric

Thanks Guys,

I'll probably shoot some Future over my silver and metallic paints to see what happens. I was originally (and still may) use Testors Silver or Dupli-Color Silver out of the rattle can rather than Alclad or MM Metallizers. I wanted better durability than Metallizers and I not sure I want to go through the hassles of trying to remove every nit to make Alclad look good. (As a side note, since I'm doing a B-36J and they were clear coated, they lost some of the metallic look anyway).

My other issue is the decals. In most models you paint the aircraft, clearcoat with Future (to prevent silvering), apply the decals, clearcoat again, apply washes/pastels/etc. and then dullcoat. My intention for my B-36 model was to paint it silver and shoot the magnesium areas with dullcoat. I've already tested it and the effect is pretty good. However, the big US Air Force decal goes over the magnesium. If I coat everything in Future, apply decals, then reapply Future, then spray dullcoat on the magnesium areas I'll have some decals that are glossy and some that are flat. I wasn't sure what everyone else is doing to keep their decals looking correct, even if they aren't using dullcoat to give silver paint look magnesium.

Does everyone just apply decals over the metallic areas and not overcoat? This may force me to spray Alclad magnesium or find another slightly darker silver paint.

If I recall I went ahead and dull-coated the entire model (less in the aluminum areas), if nothing else just to tone it down a little.

Thanks Reasoned,

As mentioned, I don't intend to Alclad (I'm not sure my underlying finish would be good enough), but I've wondered whether a nearly realistic metal finish on a 1/72 scale model looks a little off. I know about scaling colors for different scales, but have never really examined it in relation to metallic finishes. I know one always has to be careful on high gloss finishes to keep them from making a model like a toy.

Kinda wondered how B-52 model makers handle the SEA scheme with the gloss black underside. Do they stay with gloss or go semi-gloss?

I just completed the B-36 cockpit. I went a little crazy on super detailing even though most of it won't probably ever be seen. I used a lot of my own decals for extra cockpit instrumentation, ECM equipment, wall-mounted equipment and notices, navigation and bombardier equipment. I also set up the flight crew in "almost" full landing position. During landing the pilots and engineers are in their proper position, and the rest of the crew (minus the two aft scanners) are supposed to take a seating position. Aft gunner actually lays in the bunk. In my cockpit the navigator and radio operator are still in their seating positions, just prior to moving into full landing position. I wanted a couple of extra guys in their seats for effect. I also recently learned that 2287 was in the 335th Squadron and they had a big 335 on the front of their red caps. So, I had to do a repaint on the caps. Dang tough to paint "335" that small. Since this is mid-1950s, flight crew has the greenish uniforms and the aircraft has gray insulation and paint on most surfaces.

WOW!!  This is absolutely magnificent work!!  Thanks for sharing!!!  You must have incredibly steady hands.  The patches on the sleeves and numbers on the caps, what amazing detail!  Even after the fuselage halves are joined you have excellent photos to show the detail.  A B-36 in 1/72 scale is on my wish list.  I'm saving these photos to inspire me when I finally find one I can afford.

Thanks Valkyrie,

I think a large magnifying glass rather than just steady hands is the key... and probably a little stupidity to do this on a lot of things that will probably never be seen. Since the photos I've added a few more black boxes above the nose gear bay and some electrical cables too.

Looks great Teut!  Yeah too bad that most will be sealed up in the fuselage but you got the pics.

Tuet,

I just now saw your pics of the crew members with the 335th on their caps. It is unbelievable to me that you could actually paint all of the extremely small details on them that you did. But somehow you did, so congratulations on your EXCELLENT job. You sure deserve it.

Roger  

Thanks Roger. I've found that starting with lifesize figures and then shrinking them in my Shrinkotron works better than trying to paint them in 1/72 scale. I hope you're okay with your position at the radio in the first photo.

Tuet,

No wonder I couldn't get mine painted at the 1/72 scale. Being new to modeling I just haven't learned the tricks of the trade. The RO position looks really great!

I just bought a Tupolev TU-95 (Bear) off of eBay and will have to try my new skills at building now that I am experienced (chuckle). As you probably know, it was the Russian counter to the B-36. I bought a 1/200 scale so it will be more challenging to paint the crew members. Maybe I will just have to send them on to you for your fine detailing skills.

How close are you to completion? Looking forward to seeing your final pics.

Roger  

Hello Roger,

Yeah, that Shrinkotron really works.

Good luck on the Bear bomber. It's one of my favorite aircraft designs. Crazy design, but still flying and supposed to until 2040 (like the B-52), I think.

I just glued the fuselage halves together and added the vertical stabs tonight. I've been superdetailing the main landing gear and bays so I can glue those too. Next step is filling, sanding, rescribing, and priming. That could take a while.

Whoops. I meant to say I added the horizontal stabs, not vertical stabs. I'm not building a P-38, so it only has one vertical stab. Maybe somebody would like to build a twin fuselage B-36 as a future project. :)

Hi All, I finally attached wings and stabs and this model is starting to look like an actual airplane. Luckily, I didn't need too much putty; although there have been a lot of intermediary re-puttying and re-sanding. The fuselage went together pretty well. I used a combination of brush on plastic cement and CA glue. The plastic cement is the best solution, but I don't like holding the fuselage halves together with tape until it dries because the glue that seeps out runs down the tape via capillary action and spoils the plastic finish. Thus, I spread plastic cement along a seam for a ways, then apply some drops of CA at either end of the cement line to act as the clamp to hold the fuselage together. I squeeze the fuselage and wing halves intermittently to allow some of the melted plastic to ooze out. When dry, a seam trimmer works great to trim the melted overflow, which in turn does a great job in filling small gaps (less putty). Doing this technique a few inches at a time allows me to get a pretty good alignment on part halves. The challenge was the wing-to-fuselage joint. My port wing joint on top was quite tight. I only needed putty to blend the contours a little better. The starboard side top joint had a much larger gap. It was almost as if either the wing or the fuselage was a little bit concave where they joined along the mating surface. More putty required there. The bottom gaps on both wings were pretty good. I didn't even want to attempt puttying and sanding because of the tight space, so I squeezed in CA gel and wiped off the excess immediately. That added some strength and helped fill the gap a bit. Since the bottom joint is practically a 90 degree joint and would look like a seam anyway, I think primer and painting will look fine. The bigger challenge was blending in the 3D printed bomb bay door plug and then scribing new bomb bay lines. The bomb bay plug works great, but I won't know how well it all looks until I hit it with a little primer (next step). The scribing was relatively straight forward, barring my slip ups (read: re-puttying and re-sanding above). Scribing across Green Stuff putty isn't the greatest, but I didn't know a better way to fill gaps and scribe until after I was done. I have a lot of tape all over the aircraft to plug holes. Since I drilled small holes for ECM antennas, radio masts, pitot tubes, vent ports, and canopy and blister holes, I had a lot to cover. Hopefully it kept the dust out. The next challenge is trying to figure out the best way to clean everything for the primer coat since I can no longer wash it in soap and water. I guess I'll have to use a compressed air can and a damp soapy rag.

I had a lot of free time this holiday to work on the model. Canopies are masked and painted. Shot everything with primer. I felt the primer was taking too much of the panel detail away, so I lost my mind and decided to rescribe everything. Egads, there are a lot of panels! About 95% are turning out perfectly. The rest are either requiring refilling and rescribing or I'm living with some of the not-so-noticeable mistakes. The rescribing is really bringing out the fantastic details and I hope they will turn out well once the paint is one.

I wish everyone a very Happy New Year.

Hey Guys,

I'm running into a couple of challenges regarding what to paint where.

1. I am modeling a Featherweight, but from all accounts it appears they left the turret gun doors in place. Even if they were replaced with just metal panels, I'm leaving my model alone with the doors as is. The big question is: were the doors aluminum or magnesium?

2. What portions of the vertical stabilizer were aluminum and magnesium? The Warbird 72 003 decal sheet (plan view, not side view), shows the leading and top edge of the tail is "Metallic Aluminum" (which would actually be the non-skid color per their legend), but they show it as "Metallic Silver" (actually aluminum) in the side views. However, the plan views of the Warbird 72 032 decal sheet shows a narrow panel on the tail in an "L" shape adjacent to the rudder (relative to the nose of the plane facing to the left). In contrast, photos seem to show a darker color in the panels that are central to the tail (i.e. not the panels at the leading edge or the panels adjacent to the rudder). I'm leaning towards an all aluminum tail except for the central panels which were magnesium.

Can anyone confirm?

Here is what I am using for reference.  I think the doors were always magnesium.

Thanks John. I've got the Squadron book and somehow forgot to recheck it for the magnesium/aluminum drawing. Thanks for the picture (and the reminder). The info on the turret doors was very helpful.

To all:

I've been told that page 65 in Magnesium Overcast identifies the location of the fuel filler ports for the auxiliary fuel tanks in B-36Js. It is one of the only two B-36 books I don't have. Does the book identify the fill port locations?

I've started painting. Woohoo! I'm using Tamiya Bare-Metal Silver for the magnesium and Duplicolor Chrome for the aluminum. I'll be musing Testors Magnesium Metalizer for the non-skid walkways. The trick (at least for me) was learning how to spray the Duplicolor without getting orange peel. I painted the chrome tonight and now need to let it sit for a few days to cure. It's pretty sensitive to the touch right now, but definitely has a real metallic look to it. I haven't obviously painted the white area above the cockpit; hence the reason you don't see aluminum there. I also have a spot on both horizontal stabilizers to add some aluminum, but they were so thin it was going to be easier to do the stabs in stages. That, plus too minor touch-up resprays where fat fingertips accidently touched the chrome.

Looking good Teut......(man I don't miss working on that) 

The Squadron publication states the jet pods were made of a combination of magnesium and aluminum. Does anyone know what areas were Mg and Al (or stainless steel)?

Not sure, the subject I did had the fore part of the pod painted yellow.

Yeah. Mine are red. But seeing the call out in Squadron got me examining every photo I could find. Unfortunately, virtually all of them do not show the pods close up or they're in the shadows or they're the Pima or Air Force Museum aircraft which have been painted (and obviously unused). I have this nagging feeling that the a** end of the pods should be either Mg or Al or Stainless Steel, but I can't find enough data on the various alloys at the time to determine which would offer the appropriate temperature resistance, if that is even an issue. Bottom line: I just want to know if the whole pod, minus the painted inlets, should be one color of silver or multiple shades of silver.

I'm nearing the end of the build. Everything is painted. Photos below. I installed the formation and navigation lights, temp probes (2 in the top canopy, 1 in the nose canopy), and added static wicks after the photos. We may be moving, so I'm not installing the landing gear, ECM antennas, pitot tubes, antenna wires, props and jet pods yet. I don't want anything damaged. It isn't perfect, primarily due to the natural metal finish areas, but it's as good as it's going to get. I love the model, but egads what a pain the a** to build and paint.

It looks nice!  I need to get back to painting mine.  It's just a morbid fear of failure that holds me back, and a workshop that is dusty from sanding too much balsa wood.

I hear you John. There were quite a few times when my wife was wondering why in the world I was building this thing (mostly after each time she heard me moaning about another paint strip and repaint or blemish or who knows what). She thought it was supposed to be stress relieving and pleasurable. Well, it was most of the time. It was this in between times where I felt like taking a shotgun to it.

End result: I'm mostly pleased. And...I'll never do an NMF aircraft again. Good news is that Duplicolor's Chrome actually works really well for natural aluminum if laid on properly. It's inexpensive, but don't mask over it even with a coat of Future or using Post-It Notes.

Looks great Teut, from what I can see, the walkway strips and NMF variations really are nice.  Yeah, this is a model that is a right of passage.....and I never want to build another one......EVER. 

Howdy Everybody,

    It's been nice reviewing everyone's work, way to go guys! I have a question that maybe some one can answer. Does anyone have or know where I can find or be sent pictures/drawings of the YB-36G/YB-60 cockpit. It's no doubt similar to a B-36 but different due to no longer having 6 turning but just 8 burning.

Andrew Magoo