Sorry, this was put on NMS III which appears before IV on the Group Build list.

Reporting in on the quest to build an NMS model with as little lacquer as possible. I hope nobody was too concerned about WIP pics on a $12 Revell Texan, but as you can see it's together and primed with Vallejo primer. This was the first Revell kit I've built since I was a nipper. It wasn't bad for the money, and it does look the part. Detail was reasonable. Fit was okay - only one serious wacko on the airscoop - but nothing really went together cleanly. Anyway, I did a lot of sanding and prep, so we'll hope for the best. This is a kind of styrene laboratory. I want to make a decent kit (the Texan is actually a very handsome plane to my eyes) and learn what I can about NMS paints and weathering NMS finish and I assume I'll run into problems of my own making. But the raw material is adequate.

Now to the spoons. The first spoon pic are of three dedicated "metallizer" paints. From left to right they are 1.  Hawkeye Talon - a true water based acrylic; 2. Gunze Super Metalizer Stainless Steel; 3. Gunze Super Metallizer Superfine Silver. The Gunze's were painted on black primer and the Talon on a clear brew of Golden GAC 200 (a hardener) and Golden Airbrush Medium. (For some reason I neglected to add the Talon I did on a black primer.) Do note that I made no particular effort to make sure the spoons were in perfect shape. I'd been sanding enough and figured I'd get the picture without the bother and I did. I don't have Alclad to compare them too, but I'd say all three are very good. The Gunze's are lacquer's - not to be confused with standard Mr. Colors. They were not hard to deal with - not too noxious and requiring very little lacquer thinner for misting coats. (I did all spoons at about 18 psi using multiple light coats - shows the tank building and Golden fluid experience I guess - all of that is best done with a slow build up.) They dried very quickly and I think look very good. I know other reviewers consider them the equal of Alclad. I was very impressed with the Talon - which has just gone out of business. As noted I'm used to low psi painting so I found Talon easily applied. It appears lighter because it's on a white background but I can see the white handle on the Gunze superfine spoon and it looks almost the same. I'd be glad to live with that paint. Absolutely wonderful to use: no odor, quick dry, results that will be perfect for anything I'd do. Now, what we'll be seeing is how these guys do with Future put on them. I've been told not to put clear on these colors but I'm going to as long as I'm only losing spoons. Must remember the plane is going to get a good dose of weathering. Spoon 1:

Spoons 2 are water based acrylics. From left to right are 1. Golden Fluid Silver over black; 2. Golden Fluid Silver over Gac/white plastic; 3 Coat d' Arms (formerly Citadel); 4. Pollyscale Pistol Silver. As it stands none of them gives as fine a coat as the first batch. However, I think any of them would do the job, and after a polish and some future on them they might look better yet.

Will report in as the spoons get coated and polished. Hopefully I'll know enough tonight to decide whether or not I'll need a black coat on top of the primer. As things stand, consider the fact that each paint held very nicely to plain plastic, I'm inclined to leave well enough alone.

Eric

I got the first two coats down. On top of the plane I put Hawkeye Talon. I liked this stuff a lot. I'm used to thin layer spraying so I found it easy to apply and the very fine texture will be adequate for my needs. It may not match the lacquers but I'll take the exchange as the stuff is as benign as any paint I've used. (Still should use a mask with inorganic pigments - but because you can't smell the stuff, it might be easy to forget. I do that with Golden Fluids and Vallejo Model Colors for the same reason.) I know some people had bad luck with it. Might have been the batch. Hawkeye was a three guy operation and has ceased making paint as of August. They were making it per order. There are still some off colors like bronze at Sprue but no more aluminum. I really hope someone picks this stuff up because they've proved you can do a very fine pigment metallic with a water based acrylic.

The bottom was done in two shades of Gunzer Super Metallizer. Both were trumps on the spoon test but didn't work as well as I hoped on the T-6. That could be that the spoons were either coated with black acrylic or a clear Golden hardener and were very smooth. I primed the T-6 with Vallejo Air gray primer which is a polycarbonate. As you can see, a bit came off because I masked the control surfaces. (More on that later.) It's also true that the Revell's surface is anything but smooth with lots of raised panel lines and rivets. It might also have needed another coat. The last pic shows the Texan with the front end stuck on.

Should note that I usually do canopies individually. The Texan has a lot of glass and I used an EZ Mask on it. EZ is a two person company in Canada that makes canopy masks. They use a very different material than Eduard. I can't generalize about all of their masks, but this one did not match Eduard's for precision. There are two canopies included (for $4 and cheap shipping) but the second one didn't match the alternate canopy available. So to do that one I had to use part EZ and I tried some chrome adhesive paper that some auto builders like. The paper worked really well until it came time to get it off when the delicate nature of the material which made it so easy to cut made it hard to get off - and it left a residue. (I get that with Eduard too.) EZ required a little patching up, but it has some real advantages. It's made from a thin plastic adhesive paper that can be slid around a little like a decal if you wet it. I like that a lot. And there was no problem with underspray - zero. And it comes off clean as a whistle. So while it's a trade-off, I will be trying more of those.

I'm now picking out bits and pieces of the plane that need a different shade of metallic. The control surfaces are done. I did them with Golden because I thought it looked the most like paint which is what I wanted because the control surfaces were dope over fabric, not metal. The flaps are already done with Citadel stainless. They're okay. I'm not really sure why many NMS planes show such uneven colors - often randomly. I think the front of the Texan may have been done in stainless: there are no rivets and in every photo it shows a slightly different hue than the body. Actually I think it's lighter. But it's different. And as I really can't get lighter than the base coats, the variations will be shades of darker - even thinking of throwing in a tiny drop of maybe green. We'll see. As noted, this is a laboratory. We'll also have to see about weathering. Swanny has a section on weathering raised lines that sounds interesting. Really want this thing to look in decent shape but well used. Ironically this plane has been hard to research because it's the world's most common "warbird." There megatons of contemporary photos of museum planes or someone's pride and joy. The trouble is that they don't look like my wartime pics at all. At that time the Texan was the advanced trainer for a staggering number of airmen and would have seen a lot of service. More later.

Eric

i like the spoons idea, i may just get some and try it. saves wasting actual model parts on practising. nice!! i had a problem with vallejo primer lifting off my canopy when removing Eduard masks too. they also pulled up the future i had dipped them in . not a happy bunny.

Got most of the thing together. Now all I have to do is figure out how to weather a model completely unlike anything I've done before. At least I've found out that I can make a perfectly good NMS plane with acrylics. If applied correctly they were all pretty good. Pollyscale was a very pleasant surprise. And the planes I have in mind in the future will have a lot of camo on top so the necessity of getting the perfect NMS finish will be of lesser importance.

It's been a while since I've used any solvent based paints outside of weathering. I've gotten used to using paints that you could probably eat and I have to admit that I found the Gunze paints - which were not that bad - very much like regular Mr. Color - unpleasant. (And so does my wife. She doesn't like Tamiya.) Anyway, I think many of the things that reward Alclad fans - very good finish, a good smooth black coat over a solid prime - will aid the acrylics too. Let's not forget that paints like Pollyscale and Citadel are widely used by railroaders and sci-fi/warcraft figure fans and both genres have some very demanding and skilled modelers. What you probably couldn't do is something that is intended to have a proper "wow" impact - like a factory fresh F-86 or Mig 15. (Armor weathering guru Karl Logan is also a car fan. I'd guess doing a Ferrari or a Cobra would really push the painting and finishing envelope.)

Eric

Wish i could work as fast as you and get such a good looking result. it looks very smooth .

Took this week off work. thought i would get this GB finished up. Now my wife has taken this week off as well. 

Almost there just need to respray the intake ring glue on the canopyies attach the shock cone and burners and, maybe, put a couple of hydraulic pipes in the airbrakes. it would seem silly not to now that i have wired up the canopy and gear legs.

DSC02133 by omgpainful, on Flickr

DSC02129 by omgpainful, on Flickr

DSC02136 by omgpainful, on Flickr

Looks like i may have used too dark a gray for the panel lines, I'll know better next time.

Eric: Wow, now that looks great! If I hadn't invested all this money in Alclad you'd have sold me...

TL: Panel lines look good to me, in fact she's really shaping up into a contest winner!

BTW: Sprayed the yellow trim on the nose of the P-47, hopefully will be able to get it masked off and the anti-glare panel painted, then finally I'll get to the NM finish!

I forgot that I'm cross-posting the P-47 here and on Doog's P-47 GB, I did finish the engine last week and didn't think to post it. Anyone that wants more information just look up Lawdog's post on wiring radials over on the aircraft forum, I just followed his walkthough: 

Talentless:

I've followed your build and maybe I missed something but it went from shinny to washed. I like the wash. I like the grime - just what I'm looking for. What did you do to it? At least like to compare it to a brew from Swanny.

Doog,

I tried out a cloth disc on my dremel and it does appear to be very useful. I bought a Chinese knock-off with a plug-in and at low speed, that thing is not gong to melt plastic - although the felt might. (I've never gotten what I thought I should out of that gizmo, although it was sure helpful when cutting through 8" of ancient styrene when making Oregon.) Appears to be several cloth wheels to chose from and using my strategy of throwing money at any problem, I'll try several. I did stumble on a site for the clever: comes from the sewing world and shows how to make a custom soft polishing wheel that looks like it would be pretty easy and perhaps very effective.

desiredcreations.com/howTo_TLDremelPolish.htm

Eric

Gammera - sweet wiring job, looks perfect.

Eric- i have done allsorts. This is my first plane and first weathered NMF so it been a bit trial and error. There was no actual all over wash done.

Remember this is alclad not acrylic so any solvents i used may be the kiss of death to your plane!!

First thing i tried was chalk/pastels applied dry the alclad, no clearcoat. just put a bit on my finger and lightly brushed the plane in the direction of airflow along leading edge of the wings tail etc. make sure the chalk is properly ground or it will scratch the paint! Very easy  to do too much (i did). then i used light grey pastels to dirty up the decals, the tail and spine and othe parts of the alclad. Next was thinned tamiya flat black sprayed lightly to blend in with the chalks, again i went too far. then shot it with alclad semi matt. this turned out too flat for a nmf.

The panel lines were originally done with grey chalks applied with a microbrush smoothed over with a dry finger to remove excess but with all the handling this entailled a lot of it had dissappeared by the time i had finished. the plane was then sealed with alclad light sheen which gave a much better look than the semi matt. By this time i had realised i had gone too far with the weathering so had to go back over bits  with alclad, really low pressure really light coats! And respaying the tai/spine too. Then of course a lot of the pannel lines etc had to be redone (the never ending story). This time the were doe with faber castell brush tip PITT artist pens. they do a shades of grey pack and work beautifully for panel lines, dulling decals, small areas of grime going round the canopy frame to colouring in  where the primer showed at the edges. these thing are great! Credit to Hawkeyes models for this. see linky. altough i didnot sand back the finish as suggested in the video due to the paint/clearcoat i used, i quickly removed excess with a wet finger or cotton swab.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUYFxTXIJ6M

i had worried about the decals looking "stuck on" to the weathered finish on the tail untill i saw this. If you zoom in the plane looks the same. result!.

Image1 by omgpainful, on Flickr

and if youwant to see a dirty operational finish

eelightning (55) by omgpainful, on Flickr

airbrakes done

Image1 by omgpainful, on Flickr

Great looking T-6 and the EE Lightning is awesome!

i have a question for everyone, Ive gotten to the point where Ive got all the decals on, now im wondering what the best approach to sealing them (or putting on a clear coat) would be. the NMF is alclad 2, its not super shinny or anything, but i would rather not dull it out, or make it glossy. do i even need to worry about sealing the decals?

thanks for the inputs.

-Andy

The Texan is Finis.

I've went into the acrylic NMS theme behind this whole enterprise and as noted above am pretty convinced that some care can render a perfectly good NMS warplane for those of us that don't like lacquer paints. (The first pic below is how it looked before weathering.)

I also decided to push out of my comfort zone with weathering. Nothing courageous involved because I've never done a Revell plane with raised lines etc and could see no way of making it into a T-6 that belongs to some millionaire in Austin and who likes nothing better than to polish his warbird. (Such things made up the bulk of the photos online. It's true that the huge number of flyable Texans makes wartime pics hard to come by.) Instead I wanted to weather the plane in manner that I thought would evoke a well used trainer in 1944 when the US was mass producing birdmen. To tackle this I not only looked through my Osprey T-6 book (thank heavens I had it - it does have wartime pics) but also looked around at a recent trip to the Oakland airport where they have a lot of small plans and even a little museum in addition to jet liners. Almost every plane I saw was in some state of untidiness - mottled in appearance with odd reflections off odd angles and a large collection of fluids and grime almost everywhere. Also talked to my brother who used to fly and service Beavers for the Forrest Service. He said big radials burned a lot of oil. The FS kept theirs very clean but they also had service schedule that would put the wartime military to shame. Anyway: there are a couple of pics of what I was thinking about.

You are certainly forgiven if you think the weathering fails. Actually it was about what I wanted, so for once I can't blame the hand not following the mind's eye. I combined three techniques. First I used a Faber Castell Pitt artist pen (warm gray) to mark the raised lines. I got this suggestion from Hawkeye which has a video on YouTube. Should point out that Faber Castell unlike most pens uses india ink - that means water-proof which Hawkeye seemed to have missed. If it dried it would have stayed on there without solvents. But when wiped down quickly it left a nice line with some grime behind it. (A water soluble pen would have simply wiped off.) Then I put Swanny's raised panel line "sludge wash" to further untidy things and break the surface color. Lastly I used Medea Com Art "transparent smoke" and "oily green" put on very finely with an airbrush. Got to know this stuff through model railroaders and used it with great success on Oregon. It's like a cross between a light acrylic and a well-mixed pigment. I think this stuff has great potential. It's artist paint really (Vallejo is coming out with a modelling version) - something I think like Createx - designed to be used on fabrics. On a primed plastic it can be built up very slowly (it's thin and airbrushes beautifully: also works fine with a brush). It's also extremely forgiving: you can remove the stuff with soapy water the next day. I liked it a lot for two reasons. First it gave the surface an uneven blotchy look - just what I wanted. I really liked the oil color (some smoke and Future was mixed in) and applied it around the cowl but an extra jolt out of the exhaust (natch) but also on the bottom where I'm told oil collects. I didn't seal it which means the surface is a little fragile, but if I had it would have lost that moist look where it was heavily employed. Really the whole idea is to break up the surface and make the eye work a little. If I ever want another easy and fun build, I'd do this bird again but paint it all kinds of neat Navy or foreign colors. But when used by the USAAF (and later the USAF) it was NMS. The decals show it's American. That's enough. Pics below.

Eric

Awesome Build EBerg!

Eric - wow you have done a great job on the weathering, looks really convincing.  i have no idea how you do it so fast too! Both swanny and hawyeye are invalube resources if someone here cant help.

Looks great Eric! I tend to go too clean on my aircraft, the grime looks very convincing.

Calling it on this now. this is a provisional pic. ill post better ones tomorrow hopefully as i have to faf about moving tables and setting up lights and packing SWMBO off out so i can do it in peace. And do a ready for inspection as well maybe.

I have just taken delivery of two sets of Bronco tracks. OMFG 7 sprues each about 450 parts in the Chally2 box. wtf am i doin'! bang goes a month of my life.

DSC02174 by omgpainful, on Flickr

Final pics. ill put more in a RFI post. Learnt a lot on this build and made some mistakes i will not make again, but it is my first plane so not too bad and I'm quite happy with it. Hard to make a plane look like NMF in photos and not just grey too.

a3 by omgpainful, on Flickr

DSC02249 by omgpainful, on Flickr

a4 by omgpainful, on Flickr

a5 by omgpainful, on Flickr

DSC02242 by omgpainful, on Flickr

She turned out fantastic! Your first plane? Wow! The different metallic shades and weathering looks great plus all the extra detail you added in the landing gear and elsewhere. 

Thanks mate, am thinking of doing a f104 in bmf and buffing metalizer next see if i can balls that up should be fun.

First coat is done.  Hopefully I'll have a chance to finish up the painting this weekend.

c'mon DJ, hurry up only a month to go!!

Vetteman -  can i have a GB sig pic Now

Either of the first 2 pics would do. 

I have a small, yet important update to post. Man its been a while, life is interferring with modeling lately

All gloss black and shiny! Will need to sand to smooth out for the NMF to follow on Saturday

Underside:

If things go according to plan, she'll be shiny on Saturday! 

DJ & B-17: Those look just flawless- good work!

EBergerud you wrote a great commentary on your build, and the methods you used to achieve the finish, but what happened to the pictures ? I want to get one on the front page and need one for your badge. And I want to see them too

Talentless the shading variances on your Lightening are fantastic !! It looks very grimy and used hard and often. Spot on IMHO sir. With all the added detail and that finish it is definitely an eye catcher. Your build is on the front page along with your badge, hope you like the badge had a heck of a time getting it to look good.

DJinFlorida you have a nice smooth looking base to start with there, looking forward to seeing what comes next.

B17Pilot that gloss black looks great man Should be a nice base for a very shiny NMF jug for sure.

I'll try to fix the original post: know idea what happened to the photos. Here they are again. They start with two real Texans that show what I was looking to emulate. The next one is the T-6 "metalized" and almost done but unweathered. The rest are the final product: as noted, the effects of the Com.Art paints are not as clear on the photos - you can see it best on the front end and on the bottom. I've noticed in films of NMS fighters that camera angle changes the view greatly - probably the same thing here:

Thanks a million, Vetteman, im very proud of my first badge 

now if only i could figureout how to use it  

Erbergerund - weathering looks fine to me  very good!!

Am making some slow progress with my P-47D:

BING!

BANG!

BOOM!

EBergerud Love your Texan !! All your work using various brands and types of paint paid off in a big way. The T-6 looks well used and comes very close to the pictures you posted of the real thing. Well done sir.

Your finished build picture is on the front page and your badge is there also.

Gamera Glad to see you back working on the jug buddy ! That engine looks great, cant wait to see it sitting behind the cowl. I like the shading on your build as well, and that yellow nose is gonna look great.

I have to say, and this is not taking away from any of the builds in any of the NMG groups. We started out crawling and are now running marathons with the finishes on these NMF builds. Its been amazing seeing how the methods of achieving this finish have progressed over the years. My hat goes off to all of you.  

On another note: I wanted to order some more Talon paints a few days ago and found that Hawkeye has closed down that business. IMHO it was the best NMF paint and powders around, got to where I loaded up the airbrush with it for anything metal on my builds with his paints. Even found if I stripped chrome parts and dipped them in future then used his steel or aluminum powder on them it looked very realistic on nurf bars, firewalls, rims and such.

I was going to get some of haweyes powder too, gutted. I bought some C1 metalizer powder instead. I only used it on the intake ring and the ring around the burners but it seemed ok especially as it was not put on a properly prepared surface . Dont know how it compares to others as it the only stuff ive used

Major Paint fail.  Went to spray on the NMF and several spots decided to wrinkle and act like it won't stick. See for yourselves:

Worst of it after some peeling and sanding.  Will have to had more primer has a couple spots went all the way to plastic.

 And to think I was getting a step closer to finishing this up.