Fw 190 Butcher Bird 2013 (extended to June 2014) Group Build

blackdog62

This must be the build that wouldn't stop...lol

Thunderbolt:This looks great so far. I like the mask off procedure as well!

Clemens:Well let's bust out with those 190's there good buddy!

My bench is finally cleaned up again! I'll post some pics of the bench upgrades later today for all of you interested.

Now I'm off to sand those seams on all my 190 wings...

Being this. GB DOSENT WANT TO GO AWAY MAYBE WE CAN DO A 190 AND ADVERSERYS.

A 2 PLANE build or maybe ground wepons fighting back

I think your paint is looking great the way you laying it on. I have this paint came in a bucket and it could be mixed with water gas turpentine diesel I don't what the base mix was but cutting it water or turpentine this stofe must have bin a wonder paint.

not to mention this was happening on all fronts that would includ extreme heat/cold and high humidity /

none.    WOW. I'm a painter by trade never seen anything like that.

bd, It is great to see you back on here building so soon. It does my heart good to hear that you are recovering well. Are you going to buy a new house or rebuild? As far as the floor polish drying goes, the longer the better. I'd give it, at the very least, a healthy 24 hrs. It is also very kind of Joe to allow you to finish. I'd expect no less from him. He's a pretty darn good ole chap. Regardless of the number of photos he has in the Post Office.

This must be the build that wouldn't stop...lol

That's a great looking bird I don't have a long wing in my stash

I got permission to Finnish my ta 152 c-1 from mustang since she was primed and read for paint for the lasy several weeks we have bin in and out of different motels after my house burned down The insurance finally got us a rental few days ago and my bench was set up to day.

I'm trying somthing new and that's pre shading.   I need to put floor polish on the glass how long till I can mask it?  

Whoa, do I ever need to get caught up here.

Scott: My Gawd! What a monumental effort on your part to stay with it and salvage your Airfix. You are certainly a prime example of the saying "When life hands you lemons, make lemonade". I for one know what a rewarding feeling it is to pull off what seems like a daunting recovery. And yours is nothing short of miraculous. Wonderful, wonderful work indeed.

Mike: Sweet efforts so far. Everything is looking awesome so far.

Cheers, Clemens! Well, I took yesterday away from the bench and thought about things, and today decided the XF-61 was too dark and too olive, indeed it was just not the hue my eye was looking for, so today I resprayed the dark green in XF-26, not because I think it's a match for RLM 83 but because it is closer to the hue and density I'm associating with the colour. The Tamiya paints are dead flat, which looks odd against the MM satin, but that'll all even out under the clear coats:

Today I also made up some more 76 for the A-8, to block in the outer faces of the landing gear covers, the underside of the lower split flaps, the droptank, and to redo the tail fin after a seam, exposed by the first coat, was redressed.

I guess that puts me back on masking, as the next jobs up are the top fuselage camo on the 152, and the 74/75 scheme on the A-8 and the lil 109.

Working along -- will keep plugging away.

Cheers, M/TB379

Looks good to me, Mike!

I wouldn't sweat the clorors too much. I doubt the paint quality of the Luftwaffe was all that great at the end of the war and no two batches of paint were exactly the same at anytime anyway.

I had a fairly busy day, but not on the bench... I hit my target on the 152, though.

First, I cut softmasks and applied them with blutac:

Then I sprayed the XF-61 (yes, the AB splattered in the process, it seems to do it more for Tamiya paints than MM):

Okay, what do you think? Is it too dark and too olive to be the vaunted RLM-83? I've left the masks in place, I can apply another green with no further fiddling...

I doubt I'll get any bench time tomorrow, but I'll try to get filler around the tail of the A-8 before I turn in tonight.

Cheers, M/TB379

Mike, she's really coming along. Beautiful masking work, btw.

Scott, wow. I love your 190. I tip my hat to your perseverance, mate.

Nice work, Mike!

Hi guys -- progress over the last 48 hours. As mentioned, I masked the flaps and gear bays on the A-8, which was a less difficult task than I had expected (I'll brush paint the edges of the bays at the finish):

Then I primed in white where the yellow panel would be, and preshaded overall:

This morning I added the 04 -- the Acryl is so thin and transparent that the degree of strikethrough from the preshade you see here is coming through seven coats -- basically all the paint I made up I used on this area:

Then I headed out to the LHS while the paint hardened up, and masked it when I got back:

Speaking of the LHS, I decided it was time to graduate from 46mL bottles of thinner, this is the 250mL carton, for getting serious about modelling in bulk!

And finally, I did two mixings of 76 and laid them onto the underside and fuselage sides. I'll need to do another mixing for other parts, and possibly redress some joint work around the tail the paint has shown up as needy:

Target for tomorrow: get the darker green onto the Ta 152, whether with masks or freehand. The Bf 109 shares the same 74/75 scheme with the big bird here, so I should get some masking done on both to move toward getting the greys on.

I'm not sure when I'll have them done, but it can't be too far off, and of course the D-9 is waiting patiently for her turn in the paint bay as well.

Cheers, Mike

Archangel... unless your dead set on the exact set that came with the kit, ebay has loads of aftermarket decals, if you are set on the original... let me check my stash, I know I have a set, and when I get a kit I remove the decals and try to preserve them in a stable temp and humidity location.

Doug

Ps... great job on your build, glad you finished it!

Thanks, Mustang -- it's a case of making a call and hopefully the finished model will look the part (which I'm pretty sure it will...) I didn't get to the LHS today for paint and thinner, so I'll make a special trip tomorrow. What I did get done today was to mask the gear bays of the A-8, prime the under-cowl area with white, and reprime the overspray areas of the DOR band outside the masking, then preshade in black overall. I was out this evening, thus didn't get a chance to apply the 04 to the chin area, so I'll do that before going out tomorrow, and hopefully she'll be ready to mask when I get back -- in which case I'll get the 76 onto her.

Photos tomorrow...

M/TB379

Mustang...Stuka huh? Do you know where I can get my hands on a set of 1/48th decals for the old Monogram 1/48 Ju=87DD? I check everywhere with no luck so far, only set I came up is for a Hungarian bird.

Scott

Wonderful looking model Archangel. Great cammo and decal work. The open panels and cowling latches really set it off. Thanks for finishing it.

Scott: Dude you've done a magnificant recovery on this thing. I had been thinking about this bird throughout the build and had wondered if it had made its way back to the trash can or stayed on the bench. Looks like it was the latter. Sometimes it just takes that "This things gonna get built no matter what" mindset to pull through. I'll be happy to post this among the fine builds that are up there in the Completed Builds section and would like to thank you for being part of this GB Scott.

Thunder:  Looking good so far. I've had hang ups with references before as many have had. Sometimes its just up to the best interpretation you can come up with. I'm building Polz's Stuka in the Stuka GB and I've already found SEVERAL color interpretations/ references for this thing. One says its a red spotted snake, another says its a tan snake, camo patterns are different from reference to reference, yada yada yada.  I just went with the red snake because it has a more sinister look to it and went with a pattern that looked good to me. Sometimes that's just how it is. Coming along nicely and am looking forward to the paint on these builds.

Luckly I came across a review telling how the eng fans would extend beyond the cowling some 5mm. The reviewer built a new eng mount bracket while I went with sanding the cylinder assy halves which came out fine.

I really like the Ultracast seatbelts and in this scale they were easy to work with and I would recommend them. The antenna wire was one length of fishing line threaded through a drilled hole from the aft canopy wall working it's way out of the canopy and to the tail mast. It was actually rather easy and one of the few things that went right with this kit.

The wing mounted guns were plastic tubing and a brass set in the eng gun bay.

Okay...here's something I have not touched since I was maybe 6 yrs old when JC was a L/Cpl and that is building a model car. This is the Italerii 1/24th Mercedes Benz 540K and will be in the dio. Just started on this recently and so far it's going together well. Figures in this scale is sadly lacking, seen a race car pit crew that might work with some modifications.

And something from the stash box that looks a little like the group badge. Hmmm guess I need to complete this kit too

I'm admiring the model (the FW that is) now that it, with the exception of maybe adding more wiring to it, is done but boy she was a bear to work with. Were it not for other commitments I have had I would like to have done more but then there were times of utter frustrations in the build that I had to walk away from the kit for awhile but I hung in there and walk back to it.

Happy Modeling to all

Scott

Hi Mustang! I believe I will use this pic to add to the fine list of better finished 190's. Everyone of them is a real beauty too, I have seen some mighty fine workmanship by all here and some great tips too. Hats off to all of you.

I will post a few more pics after this post.

Scott

Thanks for the comments gents she's certainly no contest entry but step a couple feet away she does look good though there's been more than one time that I wanted to toss this one away.

It started out well and having read of the problem with the engine fan assembly extending some 5mm beyond the engine cowling ring I was prepared for that issue and took care of it by sanding down the front and backs of each cylinder assemblies as I was building up the engine and it worked.

The troubles really began first with the cockpit instrument panels with the upper panel nearly covering all the bottom panel from view which was a real shame it looked so good.

The gaps at the wing to fuselage were huge but that was overcome, having believed that was the worst of it I found that the warpage of the fwd fuselage was preventing the cowling ring to fit correctly hence the need to finalize the model in a engine maintenance setting. That shouldn't take too long to do but am out of time for the build here. I tried using the Scale Aircraft Conversion landing gear set but like it said on the package it's meant for the Trumpeter kit, and the kit MLG seems weak so I'm worried that it would snap. One other thing I want to do is to add some more wiring to the engine-gun bay areas.

Now having bought the kit in Riyadh back in 94' and moving around a number of times may well have accounted for the kit warpage but having built a couple of other 24th kits by Airfix, I have encounter similar issues but not this bad.

The paints used were Model Master enamels RLM 74, 75 and 76. Decals by Eagle Strike productions No# 24001 and they laid down with no issues. The seat belts I got from Ultracast and a shout out to the folks there, the product and their customer service were great.

Will try to post the final pic of the bird later this evening after work. Got two computers, the new one won't let me copy pics onto this page and the old one hangs up just as I am nearly done submitting my work. It's always something isn't it? More later.....

Scott

Update on today's activity -- I got the first green onto the 152. I was all set to mix the 82 when I realised MM had the 82/83 codes backward on their Acryls as well as enamels. So, 82 straight out of the bottle and 83 is not in the range yet. Most references I've found online cite Tamiya XF-61 as a fairly close match, or you can mix it with others, depending on your optical taste. I should have had some but I can't find it, so I'll pick up some tomorrow. Here's three or four coats of Acryl 82:

Hopefully I'll be able to freehand the demarcation, but if it's not looking right then I'll move to the soft masks.

On the A-8 front, today I masked the DOR band, first outlining with strips:

Then I filled in with more strip:

Other work today included finishing the rub-down of the engine joints -- it's as good as it's going to get now -- and masking the upper inner faces of the split flaps. I have a while before I hit the sack, I might start masking the gear bays. The 04 patch under the engine does not appear in Hasegawa's instructions, but it is on the box art and side panel build-up. This is Hans Dortenmann's plane, and most references I've seen show the yellow panel -- but not all. I find myself wondering if it's either a research confusion or if there was a period when this plane did not carry that patch.

Target for tomorrow -- get the A-8 as ready for main paint as possible, perhaps reprime around the DOR band with grey or white, maybe preshade, and pick up an acceptable 83 for the 152. I need thinner as well...

M/TB379

Bravo Sir!   Outstanding!!

Scott -- that's the Airfix 1:24? Brave to take it on! I remember reading many years ago that it had problems but I remember only something about a proportional problem, the length of the nose or whatever. You've made a difficult beast look pretty darn good, and the engine is worth showing off -- usually the engine vanishes in a closed up kit, the fan removes even the final hint of engine.

Well done with an obstinate kit!

M/TB379

Amazing looking build there, a big well done for having the guts to take it out of the bin and give it another go.

Are any of these Airfix 24th kits any good, I take it they are all old kits.

Scott... In the immortal words of Chief Lone Witiie (The Outlaw Josey Wales)... We must endevor to Perservere... Nice work my friend!

Doug

Truly amazing work on a very difficult kit! I'm glad you decided to finish her!

YES!!!!!!!!!!!! I have been thinking about this build here and there and was wondering about it. Man Scott you've really come a long way with this bird. You've got yourself a build to definitely say that you've won the battle with and I'm glad to see you sticking this one out to finish it. Post a pic that you would like in the Completed Builds and I'll get her up there for you there Scott!

Having faced one problem after another with this ill fitting Airfix kit, I am finally done with it. I will need to finish it off as a maintenance hanger dio, something I don't have time to complete here.

Having gone from this....

To this...

Main reason for making it a maintenace dio with the fwd cowling ring off.

If I were to attemp to correct this defect the stress will cause the bottom engine fuselage halves to split open.  

And now I'm having issues with both my computers so I'm going to post this now before I lose this for a third time and follow up with afew more pics shortly.

Scott

TB... Yup, The VL is a nice gun, and by all means it is a pain in the rump to keep "in tune" . the trick to installing the trigger is to stand it in its nose angling slightly away from you and insert the trigger, then the rocker and insert needle after your sure the openings are in line and clear. Tweezers help when inserting rocker. After 25 years, I';d guess that the seal needs to be replaced. Sometimes, if you use a color cup, you might see little bubbles (like foam) in the cup during use. Sure sign that the air is not being contained in the mixing chamber by the seal. I had a VL for many years and still have a V but since the creation of the Gravity guns, I use it only rarely. Hope it smooths out for you, Great work on your 190s , Take care...

Doug