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

Doug --the kit appears to be a 2004 vintage. The sheet looks fine but doesn't want to play. The headrest decal went on okay, I seem to recall, but even that might not have separated as readily as it should.

I've zapped a message off to Hobbico in the US, their website says they do Hasegawa tech support -- let's see what they can advise. I've got the EagleCals sheet on my eBay watch list... I *may* have a Superscale stencil sheet appropriate for the A-8 in this scale, which just leaves insignia. I was considering Montex masks -- has anyone used them? Are they designed to paint the crosses before or after the main scheme? If before, I'm stuffed...

I'll let you know what happens. For the moment, I'd better switch back to the Ta 152, she was ready for mottle and touch-ups when I left off.

Cheers, Mike/TB379

Mike... is this an older decal sheet? If so there probably is no saving them... I had some national insignia decals on a Revell Pro sheet, and they were horible, they (when viewed through a mag glass)were found to be cracked from drying out I guess, and I had to get a replacement sheet from Strike Eagle and they had a nice stencil assortment, alot of times I just buy from Ebay, a place called "Run for Cover out of NY.

Something helpful maybe on the ones that dont want to seperate from backing paper, I have a cup/candle warmer that I keep a small dish of water on and turn it on to heat the water which "helps" stubborn decals release. Just a suggestion. ?. Excellent weatherning on your build! Very realistic looking!

Doug

Hi guys -- I made a start on the decals this evening but have hit a snag at once -- the kit sheet seems to be no good. It's a fraction out of register, that I could live with, but the decals really don't want to separate from their backing and, if finally "encouraged," shatter.

Options -- there's an EagleCals sheet giving this subject, but not national insignia or stencil data. It would cost as much to source them all on separate sheets as the kit cost. What about a replacement sheet from Hasegawa? Does anyone know of a reliable service for Hasegawa replacement parts?

I was meaning to have this one done inside three days, but until the decal issue is solved, it's back on the shelf, and that's so frustrating. Nevertheless, here are the photos of the panel accent process, taken after the first round, there was a second to tidy things up before a clear sealant coat:

If anyone has any tips, I'm all ears. I can try Micro Liquid Decal Film to strengthen them but that won't do much to separate them from the paper. I tried two small ones and both broke up, I hate to think what the large ones will do.

Cheers, Mike/TB379

Looking really good TB ,, be watching for more!

Thanks, Mustang and Greg. I have just now finished the panel line accents and sealing coat -- pics tonight when I get back from work. I haven't started decals, but maybe tonight.!

In haste, M/TB379

Amazing how much work we can put into a model over a course of days and there isn't much noticeable change. Fear not, we all appreciate all your careful prep and touch up work Mike, even if it's hard to see.

Looking good!  

Man this thing is looking great Mike! I know what you mean about not much in the way of visible change but I think all of us here understand the amount of work that goes into painting these things and that any progress , however minimal it may appear, is monumental progress to the builder. Lookin good!

Joe -- thankyou so much, your comments are more than appreciated! I'm using Tamiya tape and paints all round, other than MM paints for the 04 and 76, and blutac for the hold-offs.

Well, today I achieved all objectives. I applied some satin clear around the rear fuselage to protect the camo from any masking problems, then remasked the DOR band and put three coats of XF-8 onto it, which nicely obscured the mess left from the tape. I also did the fine touch-ups required in all three camo colours, and did a basic oil wash on the underside for oil and grime. Then I finally applied a good, solid coat of satin clear over the whole thing:

It doesn't look like much is changing at the moment, but it's been a fair amount of work. Tonight I might be able to make a start on panel washes, which would line me up for sealing them early-ish tomorrow, and making a start on decals before I go out to teach at the U in the afternoon. Depending on how the decals behave, I might have them finished by that time, which sets me up to seal them the following day and move into the final leg.

Cheers, Mike/TB379

Wow, this is great. So much awesome modeling still going on here. Nice!!!

Clemens: Your monumental task is impressive to say the least. As is each of your 190's.  I'm going to tell you Clemens what I find so admirable about your epic endeavor. That is that, despite the magnitude of your task and the immense time investment, you are paying careful and thorough attention to detail on each and every aircraft. I know for myself I would be spending time taking shortcuts rather trying to nail the detail. You are doing a fantastic job and I am certainly a fan of your tremendous process. Also, thanks for being a good sport towards all the ribbing we've given you about taking on so many 190's at once. The bottom line is, I'm envious of your patience and fortitude. Thank You for the updates.

  P.S. Love the new camera and airbrush. That served to heighten the envy.

Mike: It is indeed good to see you with your replenished AB in your hand. And from what I'm seeing it is performing nicely in the hands of the master. Your mottling is magnifico!! Really choice work there. I regret that you are experiencing such issues with tape and putty residue. I use exclusively Silly Putty and Tamiya tape and certainly have never experienced these issues such as you. I believe, as you have observed, that it must be something to do with the paint you are using. For me, I pretty much only use enamels and that may be why I don't have as much of a residue issue. I dunno, just a random thought. Looking forward to some beautimous work from you.

Thanks guys!

Mike: She's looking very nice indeed! I love the mottling!

I just started applying the wash to the engines and gear bays. I'm going to the cinema tonight though, so I hope it's dry before I leave. Otherwie I'll post the update tomorrow.

Go fori it!!! Shouldn't be long on it now.

Thanks, Mustang! I had to use 76 to tidy up between the spots, and spraying super-fine sure used a lot of pressure relative to paint. The right side came out better than the left, I think, the very distinctive-shaped splotches on that side seemed almost like I didn't nail them, but once the decals are on the draw the eye they should be okay. I'm really looking forward to getting some clear on her to bind all the elements together, give depth to the finish and bring up the contrast. Oh, I unmasked the 04 area under the chin and the tape left no residue there -- the stain/residue problem could be an artefact of the flat Tamiya paints vs. the satin MM paints. Sigh, repainting the blue tomorrow, then get the oil stains done, then final touch-ups, and *then* into clear!

M/TB379

I'd say you've got that mottle technique to near perfection Mike. Looking good. Really good!

Today's progress: the mottle is done (fine tip and needle -- and with the high ratio of air to paint tip drying was a nuisance). A few touch-ups also were executed while the mixed shades were in play.

I then unmasked the DOR band and found to my disgust that the tape has either left a residue or partially desurfaced the paint (the edge strips are still in place):

Great work Mike and glad the AB woes are behind you now!

Clemens... Your an animal!!! And you sleep??? Would have never figured! LOL... Also great job. and nice toys!!!

Just did the touch up routine on my last one. Smart to have kept some mixed paint, Mike.

Looking goo-ood.

Dang Mike ! It looks good from here!!!!!

Thanks, Greg and all. Well today was about chasing overspray, repainting to deal with the blutac residue and firming up separation lines where paint density was lacking. In the process I lost some of the soft edge effect, but hopefully the mottle will restore something of that. Here's the evidence:

I have a little of each shade premixed in jars for spot corrections, and that's tomorrow's main job, the mottle. It'll be a relief to get beyond the stage of chasing overspray, but my target for tomorrow is to have the mottle finished, all touch-ups done, and to have her into clear, maybe even with panel lines accented. That also includes oil streaks, as they are done before clear.

If I can get to that stage, I'll be looking at sealing the wash and starting decals on Monday, Aus time, and from there it's downhill to the finish.

M/TB379

Mike, that is some sweet masking (and results) for sure. Looking great!

And finally some pics from the elusive of late SS. Clemens, I got confused just looked at your production line. No clue how you keep things straight, mate. They're looking good. A+ for your persistence regarding your little cowling mix up.

Nice looking paint job, Mike!

Thanks, guys! :-) I'm thinking a way to defeat the blutac residue may be to clearcoat the first shade before going on to the second -- something to remember in future.

M/TB379

Looking good there Mike.

You keep that kind of building up and you'll get a smiley face next to your GB badge! Good work!

My contribution for today was to soft-mask the fuselage of the A-8 and spray the 74 and 75, completing the main scheme. Here's the masking:

And here she is with most masking away:

You can see the blutac residue in the 75 areas, so my next job is to spot spray over those, hopefully without overspraying the 74 which kinda obviates the masking to begin with... Then I need to retouch some of the 76 on the fuselage sides to tidy up overspray. After that, unmask the tail, switch to the fine tip and needle and do the mottle. At that point, if all's clean and tidy, I can unmask the 04 and 24 areas, get the underside stained up with oil wash for leakage from the engine, and I'll be ready to lay on the first clear coat.

Cheers, M.TB379

Clemens, you are a modelling machine! That's the most ambitious production line I think I've ever seen! I think it's production lining if there's two back to back, but half a dozen??? WOW! Your capacity for work is nothing short of admirable!

M/TB379

Well I promised you some pics and here they are:

After looking at the pics of the gear bays and painted engines I realized two things:

• The gear bays didn't look like much without a wash so the pics are pretty much worthless.
• The engines looked like  steel-colored ugly chunks of plastic as well

So I decided against posting pics of those just yet, but I will split this update into two parts instead. One of them is the WIP part (what I'm writing now) and the other one will be posted either tomorrow or on Saturday (depends on when I get a wash on the parts and everything cleaned up again). In this update I'm going to cover everything that happened before I started painting.

When I started to dry-fit the wing parts I noticed a huge step on the forward gear bay walls of ALL the Doras except for the D-11 (it has a different sprue for the wings because it has 4 MG 151 instead of 2). To fix this (slightly larger than 0.5mm !!!) step I glued shims made from sheet styrene to the gear bay walls. They compromised the overall fir of the wing pieces, but a little gap in the gear bays is way better than a large and obvious step:

Next up was a little bit of scratch-building. The ejection chutes for the fuselage MGs on the Hasegawa kits were just slabs of plastic, so I added new ends made out of 2 pieces of C-channel styrene glued together:

Those tiny things actually took me 2 hours to make for each gear bay (so 4 hours in total) because glueing them together and then cutting them off ended in a flattened or otherwise damaged part (even with a brand new scalpel blade). I had to cut two slices of the same width, glue them together without losing or destroying them (hard to do when a small drop of glue ruins them already), then glue them to the kit parts, again without losing or destroying them. The last step was were I lost most of the parts: I had to sand them so they were kinda flush with the edges of the kit parts and looked decent on the top. I wasnt able to use a lot of glue, so most of them ended up flying off to never be seen again. I lost count of how many attempts it took me to get this to work at least kinda like intended... (sorry for the rant, but it was frustrating LOL)

Then I went ahead and cleaned up and assembled all the engine parts for the Eduard Doras:

The D-13 (blue plastic) is really badly molded compared to the rest, so it gave me a bit of trouble including a short-shot pipe (that blue stick-thingie to the far left). I simply cut it off at a good spot and I will replace the missing area with plastic rod.

The main wing assembly was straight-forward with only some minor fit issues. A bit of sanding and dry-fitting took care of that and then it was just a matter of getting all those seams sanded down (8 wings in total, A-8/R2 wings were already assembled), let me just say I didn't fancy seeing any sanding sticks for the rest of that week... I niticed that the tan eduard plastic remains very soft for a few hours after glueing it (although I used my "coolest" glue, Mr.Cement S) making it a pain in the rear to sand. That almost made me destroy a wingtipby ripping little chunks of plastic out of it. Got it repaired without any real trouble, but that wingtip is roughly 0.3mm shorter now You can only see the Eduard wings in this pic BTW because I was painting the Hasegawa and Tamiya gear bays at the time I took the pic and those can only be assembled after painting... You'll see them in the next update.

Next up were the Tamiya and Hasegawa fuselages:

The Tamiya kit actually surprised me in a bad way. I wasn't your typical Tamiya fit! I actually had to fight with the fuselage parts for quite a bit untill they finally kinda lined up (either the panel lines or the whole fselage halfes themselves were off by 0.5mm). Add the fact that the fuselage was warped and you almost can't recognize it as a Tamiya kit...

The gun cowl however simply fell into place...

The Hasegawa kits have no fit issues whatsoever and I was able to simply press-fit the fuselage halves (they stayed in place without glue) and add a bit of Mr.Cement S along the seams.

Same story with the gun cowls, but of course I had to mess them up big time. I glued the F-8 cowl onto the A-5 and the other way round. The F-8 however has additional detail on the cockpit sidewalls, so I couldn't simply leave it like that. I carefully cut them off the models and after a lot of sanding, a lot of swearing, even more sanding, a bit of glue followed by more sanding - OK, I think you get the idea...  Anyway they look halfway decent now and I'm not too worried about them not fitting perfectly because the real planes showed a quite poor fit in that area too with pretty large gaps around the cowls...

A-5:

F-8:

I also assembled one of the Hasegawa engine cowlings (for the F-8) and they are wonderfully engineered. Each of them consists out of 5 parts but they all fit perfectly and have a good amount of surface detail:

Well thats it for todays update, folks! I'm sorry for not showing pics of hte engines and gear bays jsut xet, but you really can't see a lot without the details being picked out (thanks to my poor skills at taking decent pics)

In case anyone is still reading at this point, here's the new "photo-hardware" i was talking about:

I can't believe I got this monster of a camera as a gift for no particular reason (at least I'm not aware of one). You could literally kill somewhone with that (big and heavy) sucker.... I hope My photos get better once I'm used to my new toy. Lotsa buttons and other stuff I have to figure out first...

And some more eye-candy: My secret weapon for all those crazy mottling schemes (I'm looking right at you, Yellow 10) arrived a while ago and oh my, she's gorgeous! I had no chance to use her yet, but that trigger tension adjustment works really well. I can reduce the spring load on the trigger to zero if I want to (needle won't go back if I do though) or raise it all the way to what my evolution feels like. Should help with preventing fatigue when spraying fine lines, dots and other detail stuff for longer periods of time:

And a final pic of her next to my trusty Evolution:

I got this Infinity CR+ with a 0.15 needle (smallest one available) so I can do the really fine detail work easier and I got 0.2 and 0.4 needles with my Evolution, so I can use them for the larger stuff (either in the Evolution or in the Infinity). The CR+ means it's actually chromed and not nickel plated so I won't get those ugly looking stains like on the Evolution (figured it was worth the 10 bucks extra)...

Cheers, Clemens

I strained paint in my enamel days long ago, it stank and made a big mess, and I don't think it ever really helped. Everything would have to be controlled to a much greater degree for such a factor to make a measurable difference, I think... That was when I was using my first AB, a Badger 200, and it was getting into a poor working condition, so I was looking for anything that might be contributing, without understanding how to clean it any more effectively than blowing turpentine through it...

If my headache will settle down I'll get into the fuselage soft masks after lunch...

M/TB379

Thanks for satisfying my curiosity, Mike. Now I can sleep tonight. :)

So all is well and am looking fwd to watching this one come together.

I hope I never need to strain paint, for the reasons you mention. Just does not sound like fun.

I'm glad to hear you got your AB back and it's working again, Mike! That 190 of yours looks very nice so far!

Thanks, Mustang and Greg! Well, it turns out the packing washer was fine and the needle wasn't bent -- I thought it wasn't! There was a residue of some very old paint, likely dating back to well before I started using the internal brush sets, and that was what I could see through the needle channel that I thought was damage to the washer. Also the #3 paint nozzle was worn out and I needed a gasket for the syphon jar. Beyond that, the splattering problem comes back to thoroughness of paint mixing, and possibly a call to strain the paint, though I've done that in the past and all it seems to do is make a mess and waist paint!

I'm hoping to get my head down to the job over the next few days and just maybe -- fingers crossed -- have the A-8 finished early next week.

Cheers, Mike/TB379