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I would like to enter my Revell 1/48 ME 262 A1-a
Flown by Major Walter Nowotny, Commander of Kommando Nowotny
December 1944
Very handsome T-34, great work!
______________________________________________________________________________
On the Bench: Nothing on the go ATM
Steve, The T-34 looks fantastic. I'm looking forward to your weathering on that bad boy.
"Not only do I not know what's going on, I wouldn't know what to do about it if I did". George Carlin
Looking nice Steve.
I am a Norfolk man and i glory in being so
On the bench: Airfix 1/72nd Harrier GR.3/Fujimi 1/72nd Ju 87D-3
I've been making progress on the T34/76, though I haven't really gotten into the weathering yet, other than a wash that didn't really have much of an effect, and the tracks, which are painted. I plan to go at it with weathering pastels and see how that goes. Decals are Archer dry transfer, which were super easy to use and look great - they're thin enough to allow the turret texture to show through. Very nice.
- Steve
Looking great, guys! There's some really nice stuff in here!
I still have some ways to go before 60, but starting to feel it already.
I just found this old article on FSM which says the colour was ANA 616 sand which then faded to pink.
cs.finescale.com/.../11087.aspx
This is backed up by a list of US paints on IPMS Stockholm,
www.ipmsstockholm.org/.../stuff_eng_colorcharts_us.htm
It also gives a few paints that can be used to achieve this. How you would then lighten it to the pink hue is another matter.
Bish Nice buy Ken, good to hear you'll be getting back. And happy birthday for Sat. Its my Stepson's BD on Sat as well.
Nice buy Ken, good to hear you'll be getting back. And happy birthday for Sat. Its my Stepson's BD on Sat as well.
.In another year, I'll hit the big 6-oh And I thought it was bad enough to see the 3-oh.
Anyhow, best Birthday wishes to youyr Stepson.
I was just starting to think about painting the 24 and the 17 with a brush Now, all I need is the pink paint. I read that the camo paint faded into the pink after a short time time in the North African sun. I'm comimng across some things on the internet that says it was painted that way to begin with. So which way is it?
A.K.A. Ken Making Modeling Great Again
Okay, I'm back in business. I previously purchased Campbell Hausfeld Air compressors. Big mistake. I bought 2 of them . and they both went bad and that was with very few hours on them. Well today, I bought Ridgid's vertical pancake . I was looking at Dewalts decimal .33 horsepower. When I went to Home depot. I came across the Ridgid. and it was only $20 more and its a 2 HP plus a 6 gallon tank. Hopefully, I won't ever have to buy another.
Thats my Birthday present to myself. My B-day is October 4
Good to see you back Doug and that your on the mend. Look forward to seeing some more progress.
Hey all,
I'm still here. Been sick for the last week or so. It's been a long time since I have been that sick with a cold.
From the looks of all the builds going on there is some great work being done. Outstanding paint jobs. I have taken a break form the USS Missouri as the masking job on the decks have been kinda hard for me to get going the right way.
I have been working on the Kennedy PT-109 just to break up the builds a little bit. I am not entering it into any GB's as I am not going for the historical look at the time that JFK was the skipper. I am building it for my son-in-law who really likes it.
Almost done eith it but I am having trouble with my airbrush at the time. I guess it's time that I take it apart and do a real good cleaning and hope it works.
Keep up the great builds and I will get back on the Missouri soon.
Doug
Nomad53
Rob, Thank You. That's quite a compliment.
and CMK, Thanks...again.Lol.
Great looking work guys...that engine, Joe, looks like it's gonna start up and power that plane!!
Engine is still looking great, Joe!
And the destroyer is excellent, Eric. It's easy to get "sea sick," since ships tend to take so long to finish. Nevertheless, it's very pleasing to the eye.
Thanks Eric. I'll have a look into the Iwata medea of which you speak. The Hobson sure is looking fantastic. Sorry to hear you are seemingly burning out on it but, rest assured, I'm enjoying the heck out of your destroyer.
Very nice looking engine Joe. (Some day try to track down a bottle of Iwata Medea Com.Art acrylics - hopeless for painting for great for weathering - some gray smoke or dirty oil delivers a part with a grimy color and a grimy feel. I've been using it for a couple of years - it's hard to explain.) Cameras have really changed modelling methinks. So much lovely detail work ends up getting obscured or buried by rest of the airplane and maybe a friend or a judge would see it. Now several fellow nuts can say, that's a sweet engine. (I should take myself more seriously: I just can't get myself excited over super detailing a cockpit that I know nobody will ever see - except poor souls on the board.
Hobson's components are coming together. The deck is not glued on, but it looks like things will fit. I might even build a base even though I'm sick of looking at the thing and really want to do a tank. (The new Tamiya MKIV methinks - it comes with a motor - can hardly wait.)
Eric
A model boat is much cheaper than a real one and won't sink with you in it.
Looking good there guys.
I've managed some progress here as of late. I've completed the engine for the Hellcat. Eduard certainly did an excellent job in molding this nicely detailed R2800. The cylinders were painted with Alclad dull aluminum and the case with MM neutral gray. The push rods were painted with Gunze flat black. This was the first time I'd tried a PE ignition wire set and at first it was a bit frustrating bending and gluing them but, once I got it down things went rather smoothly. The PE emblem and placard were also a very nice touch of detail. The engine was given an overall coat of Mr. Surfacer gloss and then treated with an oil pin wash. The engine was then given a coat of Testors semi gloss.
A note here concerning the color of the ignition wires. I have dozens of reference photos of the R2800 and I had not seen anywhere where it mentioned the color of the wires. In photos they will appear as black, silver and more often a dirty gray or green. Well the other day while reading the captions under pictures of the Smithsonian R2800 it clearly stated that the wires were in copper sheathing. This was quite clear in the photos of the engine. This would, for me, explain the dull grayish green you see in many shots as the copper would have oxidized. I opted to paint mine in the bare copper color as a bit of artistic license in order to create the contrast in colors and draw the casual observers attention to the detail.
Thanks for having look.
Lostagain, It is indeed regrettable that your initial paint did not work out but, your recovery paint job turned out fantastic. As the saying goes,it's not in the mishap, it's all in the recovery. Great job.
Moved on to the second level deck, painted and test-fitting.
Starboard
Port
Yes, very nice paintjob on the Wildcat, the preshading shows nicely!!
The extra work paid off, lostagain. That's a very good looking paint job on the Wildcat.
Schatten Spartan,
Thanks for the advice - unfortunately my patience had run out and I had already sanded back the paint to give a smooth base to rework off. This did however yield up an interesting look on the Wildcat, an effect which probably will come in handy on a bit of armour...
So I masked up again to redo the grey. Did black preshading this time and tried to keep the paint light. Lightened the original paint with sky blue to touch up the panel centres. The ailerons were masked after the initial paint job.
CMK, the amount of softness on the edge of the 'sausage' mask is related to the thickness of the sausage and the spraying angle. I was using sausages about 3mm in diameter, and spraying over the edge of the sausage to break it up a little but not too much.
The paint job has improved, and so onto the clear coat.
The propellor in the Academy kit was inaccurate around the cuff and boss, so I am trying to improve the appearance a bit by extending cuff leading and trailing edges and removing a large collar from each of the blade roots.. Haven't snapped a blade off yet, just a matter of time...
I've got the 1/700 Livermore/Monssen also. Obviously they're small, but the detail is exceptional for the scale. You'll probably have a smoother build too. It's just not possible to try the delicate moldings in 1/700 they did in 1/350 and therefore the part count is down a lot. As I recall there's just enough PE with the 1/700 that you could get a good kit just using WEM's generic 1/700 railings/ladders.
Eric, That destroyer is awesome. You've done some really terrific work on it so far. I'm really intrigued by your weathering method that you're trying. Thanks also, for the detailed history and analysis. That really adds to your build and reasoning. All these great ships being built is becoming quite a distraction from my efforts to work on my Hellcat. But, I'm lovin' it.
Ships ever where, we are assembling an armada. Nice start Eric.
I've got the kit in 1/700, so I'm looking forward to how your build goes, Eric. Nice work so far!
OK, we need a little more salt water.
I'm building the 1/350 Cyber-Hobby (Dragon) USS Buchanan 1945 Tokyo Bay. I intended this kit to be part of a D-Day Group Build on Finescale. It was a good idea really. We think of destroyers as being part of the Pacific War, but rarely was USN (and RN) naval gun power more appreciated than during the Normandy campaign prior to the breakout. (The same was true at both Salerno and Anzio.) In particular, US DDs were shelling German beach and close defenses at Omaha and Utah. I believe all of the USN DDs at Normandy were Gleaves Class with mostly late war fittings. But a Gleaves isn't necessarily a Gleaves, and Rick Davies at Model Warship kindly shared some of his data on the subject and concluded the Buchanan kit would match well with USS Hobson, Cory or Fitch, all of which served at Normandy. I think I'll use Hobson simply because I've got good photos. Regardless, this did mean that the kit would carry Measure 22 - which is fine by me because I find it the most pleasing to the eye. (Other USN measures were either too blue or too "busy" to suit my taste. Hats off to the gents doing the Measure 30's. It was no picnic giving Scharnhorst a Norwegian Fjord scheme, but at least the deck was wood color, and the lines were softer.)
Here's the kit and the intended destination:
This is my first Dragon ship model, but I'm well acquainted with their armor. The family resemblance shows. The detail is exceptional for a styrene kit. In most cases the fit is also excellent. But, as is the case with their AFVs, caution is in order because a Dragon screw-up can be major, and they lurk because you don't expect them. (I'm much more cautious when building anything from Eastern Europe because I assume that you'll get bitten in the face at any time. The Tamiya portion of DML's gene pool can lull you until you get wacked by something that would do Zvezda or Smer proud.) There was also driver error involved. I started the kit in Minnesota and had to put aside for several weeks - that's a very bad way to approach a build at least for me. More to the point, DML isn't happy if it isn't sitting at the point where many modelers would find their kits over engineered. Their designers are skilled and are able to create very detailed very small parts. Nobody will knock detail, but there are many times when one wonders if something made of three or four tiny parts couldn't have been done better with two - or one. DML's approach raises the part count and greatly increases build time. Probably the common complaint leveled at a Dragon kit are the poor instructions. Certainly true here. Parts are mislabeled, and placement is often very vague. Here is where you wish you had a Tamiya kit. Tamiya has very clear diagrams and/or photos showing what a component of the kit is supposed to look like after the parts are assembled. DML does that sometimes, and sometimes it doesn't. This leads to a lot of trial and error. I daresay that if I did another DML DD now, the build time would go down greatly. (I was dealing with two sets of instructions - one for the 1942 rendition, another shorter set detailed the changes required for the 1945 ship. It wasn't always clear where one ended and the other began.) I should point out that I've built Buchanan while having a DML 1/350 Laffey at the ready. Most of the parts are interchangeable. I've only had to use some of the PE to replace items lost, but it's been a great comfort to know that I could take a mulligan in case of emergency. If I hit the lottery I'll make sure to have two copies of every model I build. Anyway, as the kit stands now, most of the components are near completion. Here are several, although there is a lot of touching up to do: I've done some dry assembly of the components, and the fit bodes well for the final stretch - or so I hope. I did luck out with the PE. The standard Buchanan 42 comes with a basic set. I bought the 1945 kit second hand and it came with additional Cyber Hobby PE made for the 42 - including full railings ladders etc that look very nice. I like DML PE. It's less refined than Tom's or WEM but much sturdier. It also comes with a couple of jigs to help with some tricky bends. DML has plastic or PE choices for a number of parts, but not all. As luck would have it, the piece of PE that went AWOL was one with no plastic equivalent. With the two sets of PE included, there was no reason to track down a full set of aftermarket PE designed specifically for the kit. (I'm sure a more discerning modeler would have done so for the extra refinement.) The one place where DML let me down was the mast and the SC radar. The foremast was extremely fine and, in my few, unnecessarily segmented. I put it together and it looked very flimsy and really pretty lame. (The small mast on the aft deckhouse was pretty good and took some PE very well so I kept it. The fire control radar was done in PE and looks pretty good, although something more delicate would have been better.) The plastic SC radar was awful - something I saw right away. So I picked up a set of WEM WWII USN radars for the SC2. Nothing crude about WEM. I was a little worried about the rear frame, but actually was an easy bend and went on very quickly. I would prefer not to discuss how long it took to install the 16 dipoles in the front. (I saw another brand of radar PE - Empire I think - that dispensed with the dipoles.) Anyway, I scratched the mast in brass. Judging from the photos of the Gleaves DDs I've seen, the mast is actually pretty stout and I don't think this will be badly out of scale. The SC2 is in order - still have to work on some details. I would like to show what I'm up to with the paint job. I do a lot of armor and am very interested in the unusual but effective weathering techniques pioneered by a gent named Mike Rinaldi. (He has three volumes of his work called "Tank Art" that sell very well.) Rinaldi likes to do as much weathering as possible with shading and pigments. He argues, correctly I believe, that rust and chipping can be seriously overdone especially on allied vehicles which carried pretty solid paint jobs and tended to be only a few months old. But there's still wear so Rinaldi came up with something he calls "reverse dry brushing." What you do is lay down a base coat of a color that is close to but darker than what you want for the model. He recommends Tamiya acrylics for this stage. I used XF 17 Sea Blue after Vallejo primer for the lower hull and the pieces of the deck that I knew were going to end up blue. I sealed it with Future. The base I applied was LifeColor Deck Blue (624), LC Navy Blue both lightened with a bith of Vallejo Model Color Light Sea Gray. (I've found that LC mix perfectly well with Vallejo Model Color as both are water based acrylics with very similar painting characteristics.) Vallejo MC 905 (Blue Gray Pale) cut with MC 906 (pale blue) stood in for haze gray. Once the base colors were dry, I took a brush and dampened it in Vallejo Airbrush Thinner and slowly made some streaks. This would remove some of the light base and reveal some of the darker Tamiya. This creates a series of dark smudges. After staring at a few hundred photos of Atlantic Theater US DDs, this is what I was looking for. Hobson's history is pretty typical. After some proper fun and games with arctic convoys it returned to Boston in December 43 where I'd assume it was given a refit. It joined the Bogue "hunter killer" group and made another stop at Boston on April 2. Whatever was done was done quickly because it was dispatched to the UK where it worked with convoys near Ireland and prepared for Normandy. After service at the beaches it moved down to support ops against Cherbourg - a pretty busy ship. So overall I'd guess the Normandy DDs were in pretty good condition, but far from pristine. So this is where we're going to start - washes, filters and some streaking still to come. What I'm really going to be after is an uneven color scheme that will evoke a measure of wear (the sort of thing I see every few days when I drive by the Richmond refinery and check out the latest tanker to arrive) without a rustbucket effect. I think if you look closely at the pic of Hobson above, you'll see what I'm talking about. The illustrator for Dave McComb's nice Osprey book on prewar class US DDs must have been thinking along the same lines. Here's a linedrawing for Landsdowne which best shows the effect. (I daresay Landsdowne was more worn than Hobson, That's it for now. Will check in as things start going together. Lot of work left, but I'm going down the hill finally - that's helpful for a modeler like myself that is prone to project fatigue. Comments from wiser heads always appreciated. Eric
This is my first Dragon ship model, but I'm well acquainted with their armor. The family resemblance shows. The detail is exceptional for a styrene kit. In most cases the fit is also excellent. But, as is the case with their AFVs, caution is in order because a Dragon screw-up can be major, and they lurk because you don't expect them. (I'm much more cautious when building anything from Eastern Europe because I assume that you'll get bitten in the face at any time. The Tamiya portion of DML's gene pool can lull you until you get wacked by something that would do Zvezda or Smer proud.) There was also driver error involved. I started the kit in Minnesota and had to put aside for several weeks - that's a very bad way to approach a build at least for me.
More to the point, DML isn't happy if it isn't sitting at the point where many modelers would find their kits over engineered. Their designers are skilled and are able to create very detailed very small parts. Nobody will knock detail, but there are many times when one wonders if something made of three or four tiny parts couldn't have been done better with two - or one. DML's approach raises the part count and greatly increases build time. Probably the common complaint leveled at a Dragon kit are the poor instructions. Certainly true here. Parts are mislabeled, and placement is often very vague. Here is where you wish you had a Tamiya kit. Tamiya has very clear diagrams and/or photos showing what a component of the kit is supposed to look like after the parts are assembled. DML does that sometimes, and sometimes it doesn't. This leads to a lot of trial and error. I daresay that if I did another DML DD now, the build time would go down greatly. (I was dealing with two sets of instructions - one for the 1942 rendition, another shorter set detailed the changes required for the 1945 ship. It wasn't always clear where one ended and the other began.)
I should point out that I've built Buchanan while having a DML 1/350 Laffey at the ready. Most of the parts are interchangeable. I've only had to use some of the PE to replace items lost, but it's been a great comfort to know that I could take a mulligan in case of emergency. If I hit the lottery I'll make sure to have two copies of every model I build.
Anyway, as the kit stands now, most of the components are near completion. Here are several, although there is a lot of touching up to do:
I've done some dry assembly of the components, and the fit bodes well for the final stretch - or so I hope. I did luck out with the PE. The standard Buchanan 42 comes with a basic set. I bought the 1945 kit second hand and it came with additional Cyber Hobby PE made for the 42 - including full railings ladders etc that look very nice. I like DML PE. It's less refined than Tom's or WEM but much sturdier. It also comes with a couple of jigs to help with some tricky bends. DML has plastic or PE choices for a number of parts, but not all. As luck would have it, the piece of PE that went AWOL was one with no plastic equivalent. With the two sets of PE included, there was no reason to track down a full set of aftermarket PE designed specifically for the kit. (I'm sure a more discerning modeler would have done so for the extra refinement.) The one place where DML let me down was the mast and the SC radar. The foremast was extremely fine and, in my few, unnecessarily segmented. I put it together and it looked very flimsy and really pretty lame. (The small mast on the aft deckhouse was pretty good and took some PE very well so I kept it. The fire control radar was done in PE and looks pretty good, although something more delicate would have been better.) The plastic SC radar was awful - something I saw right away. So I picked up a set of WEM WWII USN radars for the SC2. Nothing crude about WEM. I was a little worried about the rear frame, but actually was an easy bend and went on very quickly. I would prefer not to discuss how long it took to install the 16 dipoles in the front. (I saw another brand of radar PE - Empire I think - that dispensed with the dipoles.) Anyway, I scratched the mast in brass. Judging from the photos of the Gleaves DDs I've seen, the mast is actually pretty stout and I don't think this will be badly out of scale. The SC2 is in order - still have to work on some details. I would like to show what I'm up to with the paint job. I do a lot of armor and am very interested in the unusual but effective weathering techniques pioneered by a gent named Mike Rinaldi. (He has three volumes of his work called "Tank Art" that sell very well.) Rinaldi likes to do as much weathering as possible with shading and pigments. He argues, correctly I believe, that rust and chipping can be seriously overdone especially on allied vehicles which carried pretty solid paint jobs and tended to be only a few months old. But there's still wear so Rinaldi came up with something he calls "reverse dry brushing." What you do is lay down a base coat of a color that is close to but darker than what you want for the model. He recommends Tamiya acrylics for this stage. I used XF 17 Sea Blue after Vallejo primer for the lower hull and the pieces of the deck that I knew were going to end up blue. I sealed it with Future. The base I applied was LifeColor Deck Blue (624), LC Navy Blue both lightened with a bith of Vallejo Model Color Light Sea Gray. (I've found that LC mix perfectly well with Vallejo Model Color as both are water based acrylics with very similar painting characteristics.) Vallejo MC 905 (Blue Gray Pale) cut with MC 906 (pale blue) stood in for haze gray. Once the base colors were dry, I took a brush and dampened it in Vallejo Airbrush Thinner and slowly made some streaks. This would remove some of the light base and reveal some of the darker Tamiya. This creates a series of dark smudges. After staring at a few hundred photos of Atlantic Theater US DDs, this is what I was looking for. Hobson's history is pretty typical. After some proper fun and games with arctic convoys it returned to Boston in December 43 where I'd assume it was given a refit. It joined the Bogue "hunter killer" group and made another stop at Boston on April 2. Whatever was done was done quickly because it was dispatched to the UK where it worked with convoys near Ireland and prepared for Normandy. After service at the beaches it moved down to support ops against Cherbourg - a pretty busy ship. So overall I'd guess the Normandy DDs were in pretty good condition, but far from pristine. So this is where we're going to start - washes, filters and some streaking still to come. What I'm really going to be after is an uneven color scheme that will evoke a measure of wear (the sort of thing I see every few days when I drive by the Richmond refinery and check out the latest tanker to arrive) without a rustbucket effect. I think if you look closely at the pic of Hobson above, you'll see what I'm talking about. The illustrator for Dave McComb's nice Osprey book on prewar class US DDs must have been thinking along the same lines. Here's a linedrawing for Landsdowne which best shows the effect. (I daresay Landsdowne was more worn than Hobson, That's it for now. Will check in as things start going together. Lot of work left, but I'm going down the hill finally - that's helpful for a modeler like myself that is prone to project fatigue. Comments from wiser heads always appreciated. Eric
I've done some dry assembly of the components, and the fit bodes well for the final stretch - or so I hope.
I did luck out with the PE. The standard Buchanan 42 comes with a basic set. I bought the 1945 kit second hand and it came with additional Cyber Hobby PE made for the 42 - including full railings ladders etc that look very nice. I like DML PE. It's less refined than Tom's or WEM but much sturdier. It also comes with a couple of jigs to help with some tricky bends. DML has plastic or PE choices for a number of parts, but not all. As luck would have it, the piece of PE that went AWOL was one with no plastic equivalent. With the two sets of PE included, there was no reason to track down a full set of aftermarket PE designed specifically for the kit. (I'm sure a more discerning modeler would have done so for the extra refinement.) The one place where DML let me down was the mast and the SC radar. The foremast was extremely fine and, in my few, unnecessarily segmented. I put it together and it looked very flimsy and really pretty lame. (The small mast on the aft deckhouse was pretty good and took some PE very well so I kept it. The fire control radar was done in PE and looks pretty good, although something more delicate would have been better.) The plastic SC radar was awful - something I saw right away. So I picked up a set of WEM WWII USN radars for the SC2. Nothing crude about WEM. I was a little worried about the rear frame, but actually was an easy bend and went on very quickly. I would prefer not to discuss how long it took to install the 16 dipoles in the front. (I saw another brand of radar PE - Empire I think - that dispensed with the dipoles.) Anyway, I scratched the mast in brass. Judging from the photos of the Gleaves DDs I've seen, the mast is actually pretty stout and I don't think this will be badly out of scale. The SC2 is in order - still have to work on some details. I would like to show what I'm up to with the paint job. I do a lot of armor and am very interested in the unusual but effective weathering techniques pioneered by a gent named Mike Rinaldi. (He has three volumes of his work called "Tank Art" that sell very well.) Rinaldi likes to do as much weathering as possible with shading and pigments. He argues, correctly I believe, that rust and chipping can be seriously overdone especially on allied vehicles which carried pretty solid paint jobs and tended to be only a few months old. But there's still wear so Rinaldi came up with something he calls "reverse dry brushing." What you do is lay down a base coat of a color that is close to but darker than what you want for the model. He recommends Tamiya acrylics for this stage. I used XF 17 Sea Blue after Vallejo primer for the lower hull and the pieces of the deck that I knew were going to end up blue. I sealed it with Future. The base I applied was LifeColor Deck Blue (624), LC Navy Blue both lightened with a bith of Vallejo Model Color Light Sea Gray. (I've found that LC mix perfectly well with Vallejo Model Color as both are water based acrylics with very similar painting characteristics.) Vallejo MC 905 (Blue Gray Pale) cut with MC 906 (pale blue) stood in for haze gray. Once the base colors were dry, I took a brush and dampened it in Vallejo Airbrush Thinner and slowly made some streaks. This would remove some of the light base and reveal some of the darker Tamiya. This creates a series of dark smudges. After staring at a few hundred photos of Atlantic Theater US DDs, this is what I was looking for. Hobson's history is pretty typical. After some proper fun and games with arctic convoys it returned to Boston in December 43 where I'd assume it was given a refit. It joined the Bogue "hunter killer" group and made another stop at Boston on April 2. Whatever was done was done quickly because it was dispatched to the UK where it worked with convoys near Ireland and prepared for Normandy. After service at the beaches it moved down to support ops against Cherbourg - a pretty busy ship. So overall I'd guess the Normandy DDs were in pretty good condition, but far from pristine. So this is where we're going to start - washes, filters and some streaking still to come. What I'm really going to be after is an uneven color scheme that will evoke a measure of wear (the sort of thing I see every few days when I drive by the Richmond refinery and check out the latest tanker to arrive) without a rustbucket effect. I think if you look closely at the pic of Hobson above, you'll see what I'm talking about. The illustrator for Dave McComb's nice Osprey book on prewar class US DDs must have been thinking along the same lines. Here's a linedrawing for Landsdowne which best shows the effect. (I daresay Landsdowne was more worn than Hobson, That's it for now. Will check in as things start going together. Lot of work left, but I'm going down the hill finally - that's helpful for a modeler like myself that is prone to project fatigue. Comments from wiser heads always appreciated. Eric
I did luck out with the PE. The standard Buchanan 42 comes with a basic set. I bought the 1945 kit second hand and it came with additional Cyber Hobby PE made for the 42 - including full railings ladders etc that look very nice. I like DML PE. It's less refined than Tom's or WEM but much sturdier. It also comes with a couple of jigs to help with some tricky bends. DML has plastic or PE choices for a number of parts, but not all. As luck would have it, the piece of PE that went AWOL was one with no plastic equivalent. With the two sets of PE included, there was no reason to track down a full set of aftermarket PE designed specifically for the kit. (I'm sure a more discerning modeler would have done so for the extra refinement.) The one place where DML let me down was the mast and the SC radar. The foremast was extremely fine and, in my few, unnecessarily segmented. I put it together and it looked very flimsy and really pretty lame. (The small mast on the aft deckhouse was pretty good and took some PE very well so I kept it. The fire control radar was done in PE and looks pretty good, although something more delicate would have been better.) The plastic SC radar was awful - something I saw right away. So I picked up a set of WEM WWII USN radars for the SC2. Nothing crude about WEM. I was a little worried about the rear frame, but actually was an easy bend and went on very quickly. I would prefer not to discuss how long it took to install the 16 dipoles in the front. (I saw another brand of radar PE - Empire I think - that dispensed with the dipoles.) Anyway, I scratched the mast in brass. Judging from the photos of the Gleaves DDs I've seen, the mast is actually pretty stout and I don't think this will be badly out of scale. The SC2 is in order - still have to work on some details.
I would like to show what I'm up to with the paint job. I do a lot of armor and am very interested in the unusual but effective weathering techniques pioneered by a gent named Mike Rinaldi. (He has three volumes of his work called "Tank Art" that sell very well.) Rinaldi likes to do as much weathering as possible with shading and pigments. He argues, correctly I believe, that rust and chipping can be seriously overdone especially on allied vehicles which carried pretty solid paint jobs and tended to be only a few months old. But there's still wear so Rinaldi came up with something he calls "reverse dry brushing." What you do is lay down a base coat of a color that is close to but darker than what you want for the model. He recommends Tamiya acrylics for this stage. I used XF 17 Sea Blue after Vallejo primer for the lower hull and the pieces of the deck that I knew were going to end up blue. I sealed it with Future. The base I applied was LifeColor Deck Blue (624), LC Navy Blue both lightened with a bith of Vallejo Model Color Light Sea Gray. (I've found that LC mix perfectly well with Vallejo Model Color as both are water based acrylics with very similar painting characteristics.) Vallejo MC 905 (Blue Gray Pale) cut with MC 906 (pale blue) stood in for haze gray. Once the base colors were dry, I took a brush and dampened it in Vallejo Airbrush Thinner and slowly made some streaks. This would remove some of the light base and reveal some of the darker Tamiya. This creates a series of dark smudges. After staring at a few hundred photos of Atlantic Theater US DDs, this is what I was looking for. Hobson's history is pretty typical. After some proper fun and games with arctic convoys it returned to Boston in December 43 where I'd assume it was given a refit. It joined the Bogue "hunter killer" group and made another stop at Boston on April 2. Whatever was done was done quickly because it was dispatched to the UK where it worked with convoys near Ireland and prepared for Normandy. After service at the beaches it moved down to support ops against Cherbourg - a pretty busy ship. So overall I'd guess the Normandy DDs were in pretty good condition, but far from pristine. So this is where we're going to start - washes, filters and some streaking still to come. What I'm really going to be after is an uneven color scheme that will evoke a measure of wear (the sort of thing I see every few days when I drive by the Richmond refinery and check out the latest tanker to arrive) without a rustbucket effect. I think if you look closely at the pic of Hobson above, you'll see what I'm talking about. The illustrator for Dave McComb's nice Osprey book on prewar class US DDs must have been thinking along the same lines. Here's a linedrawing for Landsdowne which best shows the effect. (I daresay Landsdowne was more worn than Hobson, That's it for now. Will check in as things start going together. Lot of work left, but I'm going down the hill finally - that's helpful for a modeler like myself that is prone to project fatigue. Comments from wiser heads always appreciated. Eric
I would like to show what I'm up to with the paint job. I do a lot of armor and am very interested in the unusual but effective weathering techniques pioneered by a gent named Mike Rinaldi. (He has three volumes of his work called "Tank Art" that sell very well.) Rinaldi likes to do as much weathering as possible with shading and pigments. He argues, correctly I believe, that rust and chipping can be seriously overdone especially on allied vehicles which carried pretty solid paint jobs and tended to be only a few months old. But there's still wear so Rinaldi came up with something he calls "reverse dry brushing." What you do is lay down a base coat of a color that is close to but darker than what you want for the model. He recommends Tamiya acrylics for this stage. I used XF 17 Sea Blue after Vallejo primer for the lower hull and the pieces of the deck that I knew were going to end up blue. I sealed it with Future. The base I applied was LifeColor Deck Blue (624), LC Navy Blue both lightened with a bith of Vallejo Model Color Light Sea Gray. (I've found that LC mix perfectly well with Vallejo Model Color as both are water based acrylics with very similar painting characteristics.) Vallejo MC 905 (Blue Gray Pale) cut with MC 906 (pale blue) stood in for haze gray. Once the base colors were dry, I took a brush and dampened it in Vallejo Airbrush Thinner and slowly made some streaks. This would remove some of the light base and reveal some of the darker Tamiya. This creates a series of dark smudges. After staring at a few hundred photos of Atlantic Theater US DDs, this is what I was looking for. Hobson's history is pretty typical. After some proper fun and games with arctic convoys it returned to Boston in December 43 where I'd assume it was given a refit. It joined the Bogue "hunter killer" group and made another stop at Boston on April 2. Whatever was done was done quickly because it was dispatched to the UK where it worked with convoys near Ireland and prepared for Normandy. After service at the beaches it moved down to support ops against Cherbourg - a pretty busy ship. So overall I'd guess the Normandy DDs were in pretty good condition, but far from pristine. So this is where we're going to start - washes, filters and some streaking still to come. What I'm really going to be after is an uneven color scheme that will evoke a measure of wear (the sort of thing I see every few days when I drive by the Richmond refinery and check out the latest tanker to arrive) without a rustbucket effect. I think if you look closely at the pic of Hobson above, you'll see what I'm talking about.
The illustrator for Dave McComb's nice Osprey book on prewar class US DDs must have been thinking along the same lines. Here's a linedrawing for Landsdowne which best shows the effect. (I daresay Landsdowne was more worn than Hobson, That's it for now. Will check in as things start going together. Lot of work left, but I'm going down the hill finally - that's helpful for a modeler like myself that is prone to project fatigue. Comments from wiser heads always appreciated. Eric
The illustrator for Dave McComb's nice Osprey book on prewar class US DDs must have been thinking along the same lines. Here's a linedrawing for Landsdowne which best shows the effect. (I daresay Landsdowne was more worn than Hobson,
That's it for now. Will check in as things start going together. Lot of work left, but I'm going down the hill finally - that's helpful for a modeler like myself that is prone to project fatigue. Comments from wiser heads always appreciated. Eric
That's it for now. Will check in as things start going together. Lot of work left, but I'm going down the hill finally - that's helpful for a modeler like myself that is prone to project fatigue.
Comments from wiser heads always appreciated.
Thanks for the tip, Joe. I have some of it; just never used it. It'll probably come in handy yet with the North Carolina.
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