Launcher's priming

In the core of blackness

Predictably I had had enough of swearing with the PE bits, so as soon as I could declare them done I started pondering on the painting processes. It was going to start with a primer, that being Vallejo's black primer again. And that was where the certainty also ended, as the follow-up steps were full of questions and uncertainties.

280mm and 320mm rockets

The rockets got painted in three sets, but I kept on holding, like the photo here showed, with my nitrile gloved fingers from the nozzle end. To finish those bits up I had no time when I had to stop airbrushing, so they had to wait for the next session.

I believed that these had to be painted green in the end, except maybe for the nozzles of the rocket engine. At this point I was interested in knowing if the barrel and the warhead body were of different materials and therefore of different colours. I had to investigate that, but my expectation was "they were all the same".

Personell

Like the rockets, I painted the little nazis in three stages as well. First from one side, then left them to dry while I primed some other bits. When the carousel had taken a full round, I flipped the guys around and blasted from the opposite end. On the last blast I fixed what I had missed before, if there was anything left unpainted.

An A stand for Ammunition

In the real world I started my painting operation from the rack, but that made no difference to the photos or this text here. Like the previous two subgroups, I airbrushed the rack in three separate runs.

This photo didn't show the homemade woodgrain effect, but maintaining it was the reason why I started priming with the airbrush in the first place instead of quickly paintbrushing the coatings on. Painting that wood was the next scary thing, but I was thinking of giving Uncle Night Shift's semirecent method ("I Made A Diorama From Google Street View!" from Nov 2023, linked to 22min 11sec) of oil painting wood texture on carved plastic. Of course I could also give another shot at the AK Interactive's wood colours but drybrushing this time instead of making an ugly wet mess.

Crates

My rocket crates were, thanks to the shapes and overlapping bars, the most difficult ones to prime. I left them to dry and thought that I'd brush any missing primer the next time. Otherwise I'd lose my nerves and an unacceptable amount of time. Already at this stage they were, I was happy to notice, looking much better. Just having the superglue frosting gone from the visible surfaces was a source of happiness to me.

Had I thought of the crates a bit more and in peace, I might have considered adding some surface texturing on them, using the Night Shift method. But thinking of how annoying building them without good tools was, and how much superglue (too much) I had resorted to using, maybe it was wise to ignore that idea without even thinking of it to begin with. I wasn't usually in the habit of digging blood from my nose, not with a prybar or without.