Greetings RAF fans,
After months of working on a cursed ship, I'm free to do fun modeling.
I promised Bish a Tamiya 1/48 Bristol Beaufighter – and hopefully more to come. (Is it time to do my Italeri Sunderland? Almost sure it flew for Coastal Command.) Anyway, here's the first report.
Brandon K has finished a very nice rendition of the Tamiya Beaufighter so I'll keep my kit comments short. This is a late 90s Tamiya model which translates into pretty good news in terms of build. It's a large model – I should have expected that after doing a AM TBM a while back, but I was a little surprised. It doesn't have the almost eerie precision of new tool Tamiya kits – and the added complexity of a twin engined kit will require one to stay awake, especially as the instructions are not up to new tool par either. But shed no tears, this kit will be smooth when compared to another company's offering (especially from the late 90s like Hasegawa or Accurate Miniatures.)
Initially I was thinking of doing the simplest kit I could think of – maybe a Tamiya Wildcat – as a good anecdote to an overdose of PE and rigging needed for “the ship” that almost ended my modeling days. But I've got an interesting notion of my own and have run into some neat ideas on YouTube (one of the few redeeming artifacts of our weary era) that I want to try out. So, there might be something of interest in this build to others beyond another Tamiya airplane.
First, I've been watching Doog's YT series on “black basing.” Briefly that's priming a model in black, following with an irregular coat of “mottling” and last a “blending coat” of the base colors. This means “painting small” - thin paint and low PSI. I'm making the “fighter” version of the Beaufighter that carries a sea gray/dark green scheme which should be perfect for black basing. Check Doog's initial video on the subject – it's very good. (The plane pictured is from 90th Squadron based in Scotland in 1943 – that means a participant in the very nasty air/sea war in the North Sea that started in 1940 and ended only with the Reich's demise).
Second, I'm almost going to be using Golden High Flow acrylics almost exclusively. Golden is a terrific US company that along with Liquitex pioneered the use of acrylic paints for a large commercial market (artists of all types and schools) in the 50s. Vallejo played that role in Europe – it's military colors came much later. I've been using Golden Fluid Acrylics for several years and like them a lot. (They're very like Vallejo Model Color.) High Flow is a line made for airbrushing, although it hand brushes very well. Golden has long had an airbrushing line, but before about 2015 it resembled Createx – designed for fabrics, leather etc. Or Iwata Com.Art which has become my “go to” paint for washes or winter whitewash. High Flow is a completely different formula and I was alerted to it by Chris Floodberg, a well regarded painter in Canada and also one of the top gurus on the daunting Model Warship board. Floodberg's tip was spot on and this stuff is flat out the best airbrushing paint I know of in the world of water based paints. The question is whether I'll be able to thin it enough to “paint small.” I'm guessing I will. I sure hope so, because I've really become fond of water based acrylics like Vallejo. (Nobody doubts the airbrush qualities of Tamiya or Gunze paints, and I've got several bottles, but it would be nice to live without them. I don't have the space for a proper spray booth, and I like orderless paints and so does my wife.) We'll see if how this works with black basing.
Third, Golden has no dedicated military colors so I'll have to make my own. This is the kind of challenge I like – maybe I liked finger painting but I think paint mixing is a gas. And Golden, being aimed for the art market has a series of “mixing” colors that create endless opportunities. Golden also has the best “virtual” paint mixer on the market – free of charge. It's very useful: check https://www.goldenpaints.com/mixer.
Fourth, I doubt this kit is perfect and expect some filling. I'm still on the look-out for good fillers, so I'm going to try a number of them here: Vallejo plastic putty, Golden Hard Molding Paste, probably Tamiya Light Cured putty (a variation of a dental product) and CA. I'll report in on that.
Last, I'm going to use a couple of pointers from uber-guru Paul Budzik (if you haven't checked his YT channel or his “Modeling Outside the Box” web site, I urge you to do so.) I'll be using a automotive lacquer primer that is both fillable and sandable coming from a Duplicolor can equipped with a proper fan cap. (Budzik's video on primers is particularly neat.) I've used the stuff on a mule and it's formidable. It fills scratches and small spots perfectly and because it's made to be sanded can be almost made into a gloss. If nothing else, lacquer thinners stay on, so if it's required to sand down to the surface (not far- it's surprisingly thin) no primer is going to peel. I'll also use the nasty looking #11 surgical scalpel blades Budzik likes – I can already see they'll be excellent for scribing. And the Tamiya putty is a variation on a dental cement Budzik likes for fine alterations on styrene.
So here's the first stage of the kit. As noted, I'm making my own colors. The first required was RAF interior gray/green. This is a neat color but very different than what you'd see on a US plane. I've seen color samples from RAF paint manuals (I also have a RAF paint guide from the redoubtable Nick Milman who runs the super Japan Aircraft web site and is a color expert). If my samples are right, there is no olive to this. It's more gray than green and pretty light in hue. Bish noted in a post on this forum that the color resembles Japanese interior green and he's right, although I'd say a little less bright. My rendition is just a tad light, but I knew it was going to get a black wash and I also knew that there wasn't going to be of the interior visible. This is the cockpit and inside of one fuselage with my interior green:
I gave it a simple wash with Iwata Com.Art transparent smoke. I'm a great fan of this stuff – I think it works fine for a wash but it also gives a kind of grime that to my eye is more realistic than clay washes and removes the need for some dry brushing. (There actually is some trusty Vallejo Oily Steel on and around the seats.)
The fuselage went together nicely (I'll report on fillers later) but, as you can see, killing oneself for a perfect interior isn't a paying proposition here - unless it's important that you know it's neat and don't care that no one else will.
More later and posts will be shorter.
Eric