I decided not to go all anal on the Sherman and am just building it with a few add-ons.

This week I managed to mate the upper and lower hull together and add the bits & bobs, as they say.  

Here's a few ammo cases that'll be added to the engine deck

Eric: nice prison....ermmmm..invasion stripes on that RAF Mustang!

Bish: Holy cow......that's an impressive camo scheme!  Uhmm..the aiming vane is fixible, but it was easier to just scavenge a turret for now.

68GT: The P-51 is coming along great! I tend to mask and paint the invasion stripes, I used decals when I was younger but it never seemed to work very well. I've always painted the stripes, masked them and then done the rest of the plane though.

Greg: Looks great, really like the work you did to fair the pistol port in the side of the turret there.

Bish: Super work there on that crazy camo scheme. Some serious free-handing talent there!

It's 1/48, although I'd think a 1/72 would work about the same. I did use Golden Fluid titanium white and carbon black which are the most opaque paints on earth and a small brush. Vallejo Model Color would also work. I've never really worked much with MM. I wouldn't want to do much hand painting with Tamiya. You'd want to use masking with either technique I'd think.

You could mask it and spray it and then on the underside try a little overpainting with a brush - no need to get close to the edges: might give a little brushed-on look. If you don't like it, leave it alone or give it a couple of passes with fine sandpaper. Doubt anyone would notice. I do small medical experiments on out of the way parts of my kits all the time. Gives you a better idea of whether a wash/filter or whatever will work on the kit better than trying something on spare plastic.

Eric

Seems like putting the stripes on top of the olive drab would be best...most like real life.  And I like the idea of brushing it on.  If you're going to airbrush on a very opaque, very even coat of paint you might as well use decals, right?

So I was thinking that the stripes were painted around the insignias and possibly the code letters.  Am I over thinking this or should I just apply the decals over the hand painted stripes?  If I was spraying the stripes I wouldn't even give it a thought.

Going to put some clear on tonight and contemplate the stripes.

Was going to hand paint with Reefer White.

Seeing as I'm on spring break I thought I'd take some time and preshade my LCVP.  I saw an interesting technique here that I thought I'd try.  I'm not nearly as good at airbrushing as he is, and for some reason I can't get a very fine line with my airbrush so I'm not sure how well it turned out.  We'll have to see how it looks after I paint the grey on.  

Preshade 1

Preshade 2 (for some reason the camera didn't pick up the brown very well)

Also, my Academy machine guns came in today .  Here they are compared to the kit guns, I'm really glad I bought them.

Bob: nice choice on the Academy MGs.

The Academy .30 cals are a huge improvement. Try dialing down the pressure a tad on your air source and see about getting a finer sprayed line.

Most of my bench time today was spent here- tail gunners compartment. I added  strip and channel detail to the rear bulkheads that I made up recently

then a floor board using some sheet and half round strips as well as the tail gunner's seat- apologies for the neon green card background, but the white plastic  on white paper does not contrast well, teh green card was handy

rubber banded fuselage for a test fit with the gunner's armor in place

then a test fit of the stabilizers

All I need to do in the rear is scratch up the ammo cans for the waist guns, added the flex ammo chutes, and build the top turret... more coming soon...

During prep right before D-Day the ground crew painted around the insignia and numbers, so you'd want to put the stripes on first and then decals. Didn't think of mentioning it, but one way to show that the stripes are out of place is to weather the plane before putting them on and leave them totally clean minus panel shading. If you're going with Polyscale, I'd think "engine black" would do nicely - that paint is as black as Stalin's soul.

Eric

EBergerud

During prep right before D-Day the ground crew painted around the insignia and numbers, so you'd want to put the stripes on first and then decals. Didn't think of mentioning it, but one way to show that the stripes are out of place is to weather the plane before putting them on and leave them totally clean minus panel shading. If you're going with Polyscale, I'd think "engine black" would do nicely - that paint is as black as Stalin's soul.

Eric

I've only searched for British orders for the invasion stripes, and the only item I've found regarding their application was that they must not obscure the national insignia.  No mention  made s to how to approach the fuselage codes.  It depends at squadron level, or even the individuals, as to how neat the execution was.

Have seen some examples that have already been posted before, where they have gone to the trouble of actually leaving a thin outline, so the code letters stand out from the white stripes -  this can look fairly pristine at a distance (such as Bonnie 'B' that Stik has posted above), as well as this one:

Examples of painted over codes:

regards,

Jack

Thanks stik, I tried turning the pressure down to around 20 psi, but maybe I just didn't go low enough.  What pressure would you recommend?

Looking good stik!

Eric: I absolutely love your Cromwell! The weathering looks spot on and I'm really interested in how you're going to tackle the camo netting.

Ed: That's one lovely looking Mustang you got there! I'm not a huge P-51 fan, but I do love the Razorback variants in OD over NMF.

Bish: You chose a really nice camo pattern and pulled it off perfectly! I can't wait to see her weathered!

Greg: Good progress on the Sherman!

Bob: Nice pre-shading! Now throw some paint on there! The kit's guns really do look horrible.

Stik: Lovely scratchbuilding you got going there! You are really making the best of that kit!

Stik&Jack: Thanks for posting those pictures of the invasion stripes.

Hey everyone, sorry for the long absence.  Lots of "life" things happened (and still are)  in a very short time period.  But I'm back, alive, and well! 

Wow!  Great work everyone!  This being my first armor, I'm having a blast!  Having to consult Prof. Bish for ALL of my questions (thank you my friend for all the help!).

Here are some pics of the Puma.  I hope to have more tonight!  As you can see, the expert painting and weathering job I did on the body........   O.K., actually what happened was me trying out a new paint and what I initially thought was a big mess, turned out to be pretty cool...so I ran with it!  Here's what happened....I bought some Vallejo paint to try out (never used it before) with the AB.  Got everything ready, mixed the way it said to and sprayed......and you see what happened.  I was bummed!  Thought I Was going to have to stripe it and redo it.  Then, the next day I come in to check it out and it actually looked "weathered"!  Of course Prof Bish told me not to worry too much about it, that the interior can hardly be seen.  So, see, even mistakes can turn out cool!  So here are a few pics of what I've done so far.  Man, there are a tone of little bits for the suspension!  Are tracked vehicles harder?! 

I've got the tires glued also, but will paint and install them last so I can do some really nice weathering on the body. 

Eagle90

Stik and Jack:  Thanks for those great invasion stripes photos.  It looks like unless you are doing a specific plane, you have a lot of latitude there to still make them look authentic.  

Jack, since I am doing the Old Crow, I really appreciate the first photo you posted. I'll see if I can replicate that!

hey eagle

looks like the paint was too thin. i have had that happen to me especially when going between brands; tamiya has to be thinned a lot more than MMA.

i too have been absent for about 6 weeks with some issue. doesn't appear to be serious, doesn't keep me from doing what has to be done, but sure makes me feel like doing nothing else. also in a model slump but that should change after going on holiday so i can finish up a number of GBs and get ready for regionals.

Well I had a nice long reply typed out this midday to all the previous posts to add my 2cents to after my last one, and of course my stinking ASUS tablet had to dump it... If I did not have so much stuff saved on there I would take it down the street to the ocean and toss it into the surf for a saltwater and sand electronics death... one day

Silentbob, I cant recommend any specific pressure offhand, but I do suggest this: take a piece of paper or an index card and use it for testing. Dial down your air source another 2 PSI and do some test lines, if they are still too wide, dial down 2 more PSI and try again. You may need to thin the paint down a bit more as your pressure decreases. it is very much trial and error, but it works.

BlackSheep and Sparten, thank you. I am in the zone here and having a blast.

Eagle, youre off to a nice start on your 234. Those have an imposing air about them to me. the forerunners of todays BTRs and LAVs.

Schmidty, youre very welcome. AS you can see you have a lot of leeway in how you paint the stripes. If you look at the Tempest in the photo I posted, even on a single aircraft there can be variety. Extremely neat fuselage striping, coupled with less neatly done wing striping. Unless your doing a well photographed aircraft like Gabby's Jug or Old Crow, you are very much hard to be called inaccurate.

Wayne, I hope the problems pass quickly and successfully for you.

Today's update was minimal. I added the flex ammo chutes for the tail guns. I had some PE ones from a Verlinden US Aircraft MG set doing nothing but sittng in a drawer for years so...

More tomorrow...

Clemans, thanks. This is similar to the scheme I am doing for the Marder in the Hunters GB. But ever since I got the kit, I knew I wanted to do that scheme, but was worried I couldn't pull it off. With the Panther, I had originally intended doing a different one, but at the last minute changed my mind and went for this. And was really surprised with the results, so hopefully the marder will be a breeze.

Eagle, you know we were chatting about Vallejo air. I had the same problem but with the green, the yellow went down ok. As wayne said, it just seems to thin. You are doing the /2 with the turret ain't you?

Stik, nice work with those ammo belts, and chutes, some really nice scratch work on this.

wayne, hope its not to bad and things get sorted soon.

Eagle: Your first armour kit!?! Wow, that looks good, you wouldn't want to have seen my first! As Wayne said the paint looks a little thin, you might add another coat or two. And most German vehicles the interior was a light cream buff colour but if you're going to close the hatches I wouldn't worry about painting the inside at all.

SP: Very nice look with those ammo belts there!

Btw: I know what you mean about losing posts- though I think it's the FSM website so don't blame your poor tablet!  

Nope, it's my tablet. It does this every so often to me and the main culprit is the backspace key. The set up of the key board has no delete key and if I make an error typing the backspace key is what I have to use to eliminate the error. But if I hit the backspace key too many times or hold it down for too long-poof I just rolled snake eyes and the whole web browser shuts down.

I'm glad you guys like the ammo chutes, they busy it up just right back there with everything else.

Ahhhh, sorry just that I have issues with the website every now and then and just assumed...

No worries my friend... we'll raise up our glasses against evil forces ;-)

I've really become fond of water based acrylic modelling and have a boatload of Vallejo paints - 80% Model Color. MC need thinning and I've learned how to do it - or at least one of the ways. But I've had perfectly good luck with Model Air and their AK Interactive twin brothers. One thing's for sure - water based acrylics really want a good primer. The biggest problem adapting acrylics to plastic was the difficulty in getting the stuff to hold evenly - that's why it took so long for acrylics to catch on. And give Tamiya credit for figuring out how to make a solvent agent that wouldn't break down the structure of the paint itself - haven't a clue what it is, but it's a country mile from the polymer base found in Vallejo. (AFV gurus like Adam Wilder and Mig Jimenez consider Tamiya and Gunze to be lacquer paints: definitions get pretty cloudy in that area.)

The best primer is Vallejo's own - it looks like their paint but it's a tougher and coarser material. It needs a little longer to cure (overnight is probably best, but I've used it after two hours) than lacquer based primers but you won't choke to death using it. Model Air in theory uses the same pigments as Model Color (I'd sure take issue with that claim, although a color like Olive Drab might get a "make-over" every so often) but is thinned with flow retarder, self-leveling fluid and some kind of very thin resin (or at least I think so). It's not as forgiving as Tamiya when airbrushing. If you thin Model Air more than just a little, use Vallejo "Airbrush Thinner" - water alone will break down the paint. Vallejo rewards the low PSI, light coat style of painting, but when you get used to it you can give a good blast. I know some folk claim that Model Color can be cut with the same stuff - I'd use MC thinner which is white - sure sign of some kind of polymer or resin. (That's why the new Pledge/Klear in some markets is white.) When you get used to it the stuff is splendid. Terrific colors, quite sturdy and easy on the room atmosphere. I followed a Mike Rinaldi technique (details later) which called for Vallejo lighter shades sprayed over a Tamiya base. Rinaldi is also keen on Vallejo's "new" (actually been in their art section for years) collection of acrylic washes and I'll certainly second that. So Vallejo has a different drummer which explains why so many people find it hard to use and wonder "what the heck?" But it's great stuff when you learn to sing along.

Eric  

Just checked YouTube. If you want to get the Mig Jimenez take on acrylic weathering you can check

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGPH1BM4e_Q

or search "AFV acrylic techniques".

May only prove that Mig Jimenez can make a good tank with color crayons. Very interesting ideas though.

Eric

I am really getting into mixing my paint types. Enamels for priming,acrylics for base coats, and enamels for detail work. Any mess ups are then easily cleaned up with a thinner moisted brush with a few hours of detail paint work.

I got around to painting the LCVP tonight, and I'm a little disappointed in my photography skills as I just can't get a good picture tonight that really shows the preshading.  You can see the panel lines in the picture but the streaks are a little harder to see.  Looks really nice in person though.

What color did you use?