ANZAC GB Sept 2012 to Sept 2013

You can pick up medical syringe thingies from most chemists. Its just the measure and plunger bit with no needle. Its designed to give small children liquid paracetamol. That might be one way to do it,

Hi Blitz,

For measuring paint mixes and the like, I use a dropper from one of my kids medicine bottles from when they were little. I've seen them available in pharmacies too. You can then add your flat base drop by drop. Same with custom paint mixes and even thinner to paint ratios.

I've not tried XF-86 myself, but I spent a while with Tamiya flat base and gloss clear, and also tried Gunze flat clear. Whilst I had some successful finishes, I couldn't say that I was ever certain of a good result.

I now use Testors Dullcote, which sits fine over the aforementioned brands of acrylic. It's reliable, but is thinned with lacquer thinner and  I wouldn't want to sniff it.

Maybe there is  some useful information for you somewhere in this ramble.

Cheers

Tony

Yeah I'm gonna put this one down in the experience column. Frustrating to get so close to the end only to have problems come at at this stage of the build. I going to need to find a more accurate way of measuring how much flat base gets put into the clear flat, although I was at a hobby shop and found a bottle of Tamiya XF 86 Flat clear, so I'm going to give that a try.

Owl that is a nice Hornet, and an INCREDIBLE cockpit from the box. How did you do it?

thanks guys! Im pretty happy with it.  :)

Blitz - yes I've had that happen before.  Flat base is very potent stuff, mixing your own not only requires thinning it down, but adding future will help.  Even when mixed well, if it allows to pool as you are spraying it on, it can dry white. When spraying just do a pass or two, then wait to see if it needs more.

Owl - cool looking Hornet and pics

regards,

Jack

Great work on the Hornet, OWL.  Nicely done and well-photographed.

Scorpiomikey

Also i think thats the first time ive seen an RAAF hornet in the snow lol.

my planes get around

Also i think thats the first time ive seen an RAAF hornet in the snow lol.

Very nicely done. I see what you mean about the dark paint. It looks awesome though.

Aaaand Im finished!

here are a couple of in-progress pics. I did this kit OOB.

Cockpit

all the stuff that hangs off of it

painting done and ready for decals (Turns out the paint was too dark and some of the stencils later disappeared...)

and final pics!

USFDon2012

Hello. I'm not sure if I'm too late to get in on this group build, but I've recently started building an 1:48 Revell SBD-3 Dauntless and was planning on doing it up as if it were an RNZAF bird of the 25th Sqn. out of Seagrove in Aukland from 1943.

Is there any way for me to get in on this build? Thanks.

updated!!

It's struggling a bit. I ended up having to paint over some of it, and now I've got another flare up on the right wing root so I'm scratching my head on it and working slowly now, and probably start spraying again until I start painting my next build which is a 1/72 Airfix Sea Harrier FA2 so it shouldn't take too long.

Hey Blitz, how did you get on?

Yeah sure. Im sure OWL is around somewhere to update the list.

Hello. I'm not sure if I'm too late to get in on this group build, but I've recently started building an 1:48 Revell SBD-3 Dauntless and was planning on doing it up as if it were an RNZAF bird of the 25th Sqn. out of Seagrove in Aukland from 1943.

Is there any way for me to get in on this build? Thanks.

wet it down, wipe it off, clear coat it with gloss once its dried. start again.

Thanks for all the comments guys, I've really enjoyed this build and have been very happy with the results so far, and I'm happy you like it too. 

Happy new year guys, I was really eager to get started with the matt finish today and got to work this morning and here are the results. 

It was turning out really beautifully until...............

I have no idea what happenned, whether I didn't mix the Tamiya flat base properly with the clear coat, but this happened to just that one section, and I was so close to the end too. The white fades when you moisten it but it comes back as it dries, and I have absolutely no idea apart from a one sided model. Anybody encountered this before?

Not a good start to 2013 at all..........

Blitz, liking how the P-40 is turning out.  When I stumble on decal problems like you have there on the rudder, I just carve out the area in question.  Then later I'll go back in and just paint in the proper colour.

If you are keen on rivets, there are a couple of AM producers (Archer and HGWmodels) of generic types in various scales.  They are raised resin on decal paper, and as such are applied just like decals.  No worries about silvering as these are painted afterwards with the whole aircraft.

regards,

Jack

I hate when decals do that, Blitz.  They are unpredictable at best.

Nice camouflage, Mikey.  Looking good so far.

I am working on Brian Carbury's Spitfire; progress is just slow at this time of year.  Hope to finish up soon.

Happy New Year!

Wow, that is gorgeous. Well done.

Ive been making progres on the skyhawk. keep forgetting to post the pics here.

Got alot of touchups to do.

So thats where im at. Was hoping to have it done by new years, but it didnt happen. So thats where im up to.

Thanks Scorpio and Checkmate, I really like how the rivets came up too. My only fear now is that I will think planes without rivet details will look to plain from now on, and I'm not particularly keen on making rivets on a plane yet. 

One more day until I go back to work so I'm racing through to try and get it done before that day so the decals went on today. I'm generally pretty happy with how the decals have gone on with no major blunders, although I'll probably need to do some touch ups with paint around the shark teeth area because the decals don't seem to quite reach each other at the centre. 

I could just kill this single decal though because it just wouldn't settle properly even after I made some small cuts into it and large amounts of Mr Mark Softer to try and get it to settle over that little bump. You can see the Mr Mark Softer has done great with the rivet detail and lines on the tail, but it just wouldn't settle over that light or whatever it is. What is even more frustrating is that it did the job on the other side just fine. 

Tomorrow I'm going to spray on the matt coat before attaching the guns to the wings, attaching the gun sight, doing some exhaust stains and trying to do the rigging from the tail to the wing with stretched sprue before calling it a finish. 

Blitz, I think the paint job came out looking really good--especially good appearance to the rivets.

hey i like that. One thing you can do is spray some satin or semi gloss along the colour demarkation lines. You see that alot on real aircraft where the paint overlaps and gets worn down with the weather.

Two days in a row, it's definitely been a great break so far, and this is the before shot.

I used blu tack for the masking which was easy enough, but for some reason the Vallejo paints that were so great yesterday gave me a real nightmare today as the dark earth colour gave my airbrush a major case of dry tip, every few minutes giving me sudden bursts of gritty paint that landed in areas where it wasn't supposed to.

So out came the middle stone colour again and I resprayed the areas which weren't supposed to be and decided to also give a light overspray to the dark earth areas to try and fade the colours as the contrast was too stark. This is the result .

I'm not quite sure how to go about fading the yellow areas though because now those areas are too smooth. Being eager to see how the rivet details come up I decided to apply a wash to one of the wings to see how the rivets come up.

I think it comes up pretty good, and had a lucky side effect of breaking up the flat yellow areas so I might spend my next lot of model time applying a wash to the rest of the model before starting with the decals.

I've got a week and a half off work between Christmas and new years, and it's been a pretty good week so far in terms of progress. I've used Vallejo paints for this model and they have sprayed on very well. The underside and topside have been sprayed so far and only the dark brown colour needs to be sprayed which will go on tomorrow. 

The propeller and spinner has also been assembled and painted, as well as the landing gear. I've added brake lines to the landing gear.

I haven't quite decided how to weather the plane yet, it will probably be some paint chips and paint fading somehow. 

wow, very nice so far.

I've pretty much finished the construction of the fuselage. Only small amounts of filler was required for the wing to fuselage fit so I went ahead and primed it. 

Now the fun really starts...... Although I'm also starting to think about my next build too...

I just havent been able to find the time. But now that im on holiday i should be able to get a rattle on.

I just havent uploaded pix yet. Ive been slacking on that part, but the build is really close to being finished. Plenty of free time on break :)

Any updates from anyone? Ill be doin a bit more over the Christmas break. Ive got 2 weeks off and its gonna be hot as all holy hell here.