Puttying, filing and priming

Canyon filling

First things first, I applied a hefty amount of Tamiya's putty to fill all these insane megagaps of the plane. This is one of the main reasons I've always found plane models slightly annoying: if something goes a bit off while combining subassemblies even if the subassemblies themselves align properly, everything's ruined. That's something I really don't appreciate.

After the grey goo had cured for almost 24 hours, that being the next early evening when I had some time to fool around, I sanded most of the excess garbage off. Still, I didn' take too strict an approach. The best result would've been achieved, I assume, if I had sanded most of the greyness away, but then I'd also lost at least 90% of the still remaining surface details. I decided that a decent surface for painting was most important in this model.

I had to fake the remaining parts of the landing gear bay doors with putty because the kit pieces didn't cover enough

The sad greyness of the air farces

I wrapped up my part in the painting of this plane by priming it. Just in case I also sprayed some Vallejo Grey Surface Primer inside the plane, just in case the artist herself wanted to give her personal touch to the cockpit, too. The next phase, in any case, was not going to be in my hands.

Building gently

I was completely sure that I had taken a photo or two of the cockpit pieces before I glued them inside the airframe. Still, I just couldn't find them, so I guess I hadn't taken the photos after all. The cockpit, as I had said in the previous post, was pretty weird-looking. It consisted of two plates: an instrument panel + something that looked like it was supposed to be the silhouette of the pedals that got an aiming cylinder glued on it and then a massive bar that was supposed to be the joystick - and a rear plate where the pilot's seat was glued on. There was no floor on this plane.

The wing assembly was traditional: a large lower piece that got the left and right upper halves glued on. These bits didn't align too nicely but they settled after a bit of fighting. Taping the key parts shut was essential, as they tried to grin quite a lot everywhere.

There was supposed to be a brick-sized piece in the inner front of the cooler, with a sort of a grille-texture on it. But the brick was enormous and the opening on the wing required a huge amount of cleaning up and carving. I sliced off thin, thin slivers off the brick, dry-fitting it after almost ever one, but still I managed to ruin it and threw it away. Maybe this model would survive that. Interestingly the wingtips had two options, either the one she chose and what you can see in the pic below, which was larger and rounder (the one I also thought looked more Spitfire-like) or the noticeably shorter and tighter-arced one.

All in all the pieces were ridiculously thin and were bending in strange ways. I didn't dare to cut off the sprue-edges too close but left them to be filed off later. I just had the feeling that the tiniest of badly made cuts would've left the wings with insane gashes that would've been a pain to conceal.

The pointier and longer spinner was chosen out of the two alternatives. To my eyes the exhaust pipes somehow looked way too large, but maybe I'm just confusing them with the Messerschmitt 109's in my mind. Also, the mighty bar that supported the antenna cable didn't look like it fit in too well, but I trusted that the glue would hold it well enough.

Then I glued on the gun's tubes, the wheels in their wells and the landing gear plates to protect whatever they could cover before I joined the wings and the airframe. When I had done that I just sat there staring with wide eyes at the insane canyon between the airframe and the upper wing halves. I'd really need to putty this one up before I got to prime anything.

Project IV/16

Subcontracting project II

My Project Assistant had been asking for her own plane model (to paint and play with, of course) for quite a long while, thanks to five consecutive planes I've done. From the Model Expo 2016 she bought, with her own money, a Spitfire made (or packeted) by Směr.

The scale was the familiar 1:72, its variant was apparently 5c and the box art I assumed to be a representation of the Australian version. Not that it mattered to me, the paintjob would be Something Completely Different in any case.

Bits

All the pieces were spread over six sprues and looked like they'd require quite a bit of cleaning up. In my hands the plastic felt pretty flimsy, I just hoped it wouldn't get totally ruined while being cut off the sprues already... I was a bit concerned in advance. There were an amount of optional pieces, at least I could see at a glance two spinners, air scoops for the engine and canopies.

Decals

The decal sheet had a good amount of markings, for both RAF and (according to the instructions) RAAF, so I had guessed correctly, it was Australian. Oh and the Chech roundels on the lower right corner. And the cheese-eating surrendermonkeys had their roundels there as well, I'd go mad with the choices. Most likely I'd let the owner choose which markings she wanted, if she wanted any of them on her plane.

Guidelines

I'm pretty sure that the instructions for this plane were the shortest I'd ever seen, at least based on my (unreliable) memory. There were more decal-laying and painting pages than construction pages. Looking at the pics the cockpit interior looked very weird, even if you remembered that this was representing something designed by Brits.

Finished: Project III/16

Last minute 'mumblings

First of all I shook all the extra junk off my baseplate. The grass coverage lightened up a bit, I thought it looked better this way. I took a couple of "just for the fun of it" photos with the Kübelwagen and then for size comparison also with the A-10. The car took way too much space from the limited area on the base, but I had to try as it was on the box art. Had this kit included some tiny plastic people, I'd tried to reproduce the cover pic, but no, it didn't so I couldn't.

In case you were wondering the sorry state of the Warthog, the reason is that my Project Assistant accidentally dropped it on the floor on its roof. Of course it broke beyond repair, but that was ok, as I had already taken my photos ages ago. And it was me who left it there "just for a sec" in a dangerous place, so it was my own fault.

Now for something completely different: I chatted with a coworker of mine about the paints in general and the different shades. So I took a photo of all the paints and varnishes I used to satisfy my own curiosity. 23 containers were caught in the frame, only a few (5) had been used solely on the Kübelwagen. If you thought that I used 16 different paints to paint the Fw-190 and the camo pattern required only four paints, the obvious verdict should be that someone went gently but firmly overboard.

Heinz Bär's Butcher Bird

As usual I took a random pile of photos with as white and well-lit background I could arrange. I shot them from different angles and heights with the traditional cardinal and intercardinal directions. Finally I took a few pics of some supposed details. Following the proud traditions of the Project Mumblings the photos haven't been touched up beyond cropping and downscaling.

Finishing thoughts

The Academy kit was extremely pleasant to build, the pieces fit best in all the plane models I've ever built. My nemesis, the decal sheet was fine in some ways (the decals behaved well, with few exceptions) but the printing did leave some to be desired. If all the Balkenkreuz and the JG1 insignia had a one-pixel offset that bled the background colour, they shouldn't have gotten through the quality control.

Again I forgot to write down my time usage, so I can't really comment on it scientifically. If I said that I spent less than five hours in total, I don't think I'd be too far off. Those cursed decals alone took closer to two hours, over two sessions.

All in all this was absolutely the last plane model of mine in a good while. Maybe in the future I'll return on the wings, most likely with propellers. At least I haven't planned on investing in a single 1:72 scale plane, but something like a Bf/Me-109 in the 1:32 scale could be a pretty interesting subject, for example.

To the grassy airfields, march!

A stroke of genius

I got a mad idea: let's build a base for this plane, too. Change is refreshing, they say, so I wanted to do something different from the previous two (which also had been not too alike). During the second world war grass airfields were in use, so that's what I was going to do!

Mozart, help me!

There was a box of Mozardkugeln that we had bought from TXL and the lid was just about the right size in my mind. I tried the Focke on the lid and it sat there nicely, with no room to spare.

I thought that it might be beneficial to roughen the smooth plastic surface a bit to get the paint and glue stick better. So I took out a bit of fine sandpaper and did some crisscross sanding both on the top and the sides. All the sides I painted with Vallejo's Chocolate Brown (VMC 70872 Chocolate Brown) and left them there.

Glue and railroad decorations

After the paint had dried I dropped a good dollop of white glue on the lid and spread it around to cover most of the surface while avoiding getting the layer too thick. I gave the edges a bit of a clear buffer space just in case.

I started applying the greenery where the model itself would block the base and I tried to leave a bit of clear space where the wheels were going to end up. Then I pressed the plane on its place and kept dumping stuff on the remaining base. Mostly I used some green fluff  (Woodland Scenics: Coarse Turf, Medium Green), but I also tore up a few larger bits of the yellower green (Woodland Scenics: Foliage, Light Green) carpet-like stuff. In a few random places I dropped tussocks[?] (Noch: Grasbüschel Sommer; Noch: Grasbüschel Herbst) just to provide some variety.

When I was just about content with the result and coverage, I detached the plane and pressed its wheels in a straight line backwards from its standing place. My goal was to get slight but hopefully noticeable ruts. This way the plane shouldn't look like it had just fallen from the sky (see my nitpickings in April regarding the AT-ST in the wintery scene).

Yeah, I had applied the decorations quite heavy-handedly so that I wouldn't even accidentally end up with bald spots on my base. I left the setup to cure for about a day before I gently shook off the excess material.

projectmumblings.queue.append(project1, project2)

New foldables

I decided to skip the excess ramblings this time, so the short version's this: I got a couple of new project entities introduced into my work queue. Both were Metal Earth Models sets, one of them was to enlargen my Imperial collection with an AT-ST scout walker and the other one was very familiar from my childhood: the awesome leader of the Decepticons - Megatron!

Apparently the ME's line had been extended with new stuff since I last checked. According to the back of the packet there were three other kits: Slave I, Incom T-47 and a beautiful Lambda-class shuttle. I have no doubts that we'll see a couple of these at some point in the future.

I immediately had a feeling that Megatron would be pretty quickly in progress and in the 'Mumblings as soon as there was space. One of the first thoughts was "I've got to bring this to the office".

Of course the Transformers title theme started playing in my poor head immediately, accompanied with several quotes spoken by Frank Welker. And that was all very good indeed.