World In Miniature

Rusting Metal

2012-02-12T17:27:00.004+10:30

Creating convincing rust is an artform, every armour modeller knows how, and there are a plethora of techniques. Oil pinwash creates very convincing old rust that has been rain-streaked down vertical surfaces, and capillary action draws oils in a very visually pleasing way around all three dimensional detail to the same effect. Pigments and ground pastels can be used to generate very convincing rust staining, but these are all 2D colour applications. What about when the rust has actually eaten into and modified a surface?

I recently came upon a quick technique for making rust bubble up on tank exhausts. It’s a combination of methods but takes only a short while.

I first brush on liquid cement, then scatter the wet cement with saved sanding dust – yes, when I sand putty I tap the resulting dust into a container and save it for jobs just like this! The glue locks it in place and when it’s dry I overspray with acrylics in a colour close to that of the finished rust. Then I brush it over with Migs, a red rust shade, then a black for soot and to give it depth.

The result can be surprisingly realistic for minimal effort. It doesn’t always come out perfectly, much depends on the randomness of the powder scatter in the first part, but it’s never less than an interesting and unusual effect. The accompanying photos show the exhaust of an Academy M51 Super Sherman (kit review coming soon) and the muffler of my Academy/Tamiya StuG IV, which is finally taking shape.

Kit Review: Fujimi 1:72 British Phantom F-4K (H-8)

2012-02-02T10:48:00.012+10:30

About two years ago I posted about the face-off between Hasegawa and Fujimi in the late ‘80s to mid ‘90s period, and particularly their battle for the Phantom marketplace (see The Great Phantom Shootout.) It’s taken me a while but I finally have a review of the Fujimi product to offer.

This particular kit, though undated, is contemporary with their Phantom FG.1 “Silver Jubilee” kit (H-6) which was reviewed in FineScale Modeler in August 1987, and is substantially the same kit with different markings (offering 767 Squadron, FAA, c. 1969-1971, based at RNAS Yeovilton, one of the original units that worked up the Phantom for the Royal Navy. Their distinctive yellow eagle on the tailplane is quite unique and attractive).

Having worked on a couple of other Fujimi Phantoms (as yet unfinished) I was impressed that the company had refined their moulds and engineering approach to simplify construction so the model exhibits minimal seams, and lines up very comfortably. The kit is highly detailed, featuring finely recessed panel lines and tiny elements such as the pressure sensors in the intakes. The cockpit features raised instruments, for which a decal option is offered, and the seats are perhaps the best styrene representations of MB.7s I have seen to date. There are a number of alternate parts on the trees, as Fujimi, like Hasegawa, always pushed its mouldings for maximum versatility, in this case giving you the option of the hyper-extended nose gear leg, open canopies (a single piece canopy is provided for the closed option, which unfortunately does not fit very well at the front, leaving a noticeable gap around the windshield) and open engine auxiliary air doors (which fit so poorly they cannot be posed in the closed position without looking phony). Three other marking options are included, featuring the short-lived 700P Squadron (which only received five planes) and the fleet-service 892 “Omega” Squadron, plus an aircraft of the Phantom Training Flight that replaced 767 in 1972 when they transferred from RNAS Yeovilton to RNAS Leuchars in Scotland.

See the web for histories of the squadrons involved: ACIG Database for a general history of Phantoms in British service; and a close-up on 892 Sq. at Wikipedia. Wikipedia also offers a very useful look at international operators of the Phantom which touches on 767 Sq. FAA.

Parts breakdown is logical and straightforward, with full fuselage halves (as opposed to Hasegawa’s answer to covering the variants, their fuselages being separated into forward and rear sections, which inescapably gives you an extra seam to deal with), and the wing roots are a close, tight fit, requiring minimal dressing. The fuel dump at the tail is moulded with the fuselage halves and is so delicate that if you can avoid breaking it off, you’re a better modeller than most (this is a pet peeve of mine regarding most 1:72 Phantoms, I even wrote to Quickboost to suggest they produce a resin replacement, they would be sure to sell thousands of them…)

Detailing is correct for the British bird, with the recontoured fuselage to accommodate the Rolls Royce Spey engines, slotted tailplanes, and a choice of 600 gallon tank or Vulcan gunpod for the centreline hardpoint. I had been going to mount the gun, but the central pylon is moulded with the wing undersurface, and situated in the declivity between the engine bays makes carving it away impossible without a powertool. I ended up leaving the centre station empty but going with a full battery of missiles, so the aircraft is configured for a medium-range combat air patrol/interception sortie.

Eduard’s Phantom canopy masks are designed for the Hasegawa kits, and while the Fujimi may be very similar, I was more confident to go with a set of vinyls designed specifically for these kits, made in Canada. I've mislaid the backing sheet so can't quote the maker -- unfortunately, as they are an excellent product that worked very well. I mostly airbrushed Tamiya Acrylics, XF-2 for the underside, and substituted XF-63 German Grey for the Dark Sea Grey. Gunze 333 is an exact match but can be hard to find here; Gunze is also a brand I have no experience using so far. XF-63 may be a tad dark, but RN Phantoms look a different shade in every picture, from pale grey to royal blue… The metallic areas were painted with Model Master Chrome Silver enamel as my metallic acrylics have been misbehaving lately. The radome was Tamiya X-18 Satin Black, the afterburners X-10 Gunmetal. With prepainting thoroughly dry a long round of masking ensued to protect metallic areas, intakes, canopy and radome, then the underside was sprayed, along with gear bays, doors, struts, pylons, rails, tanks and missiles. Another round of masking established the wrap-around of the topside grey under the leading edge, then the XF-63 went on. Main coats were allowed to dry overnight before further attention. Next was to unmask the last round only, do any touchups required, then get arty with black and dark brown oil washes, laid on with a small flat sable brush. This simulated the Phantom’s characteristic oil leaks that stain the pure white of the underside from the front of the engine bays backward, and behind the flaps and airbrake junctures. This was a surprisingly easy task, and when complete and dry I laid on a coat of Micro Satin acrylic clear to protect everything.

The panel lines on the underside were accented with Promodeller Dark Dirt, as were lines on all the other white-painted items. The topside could have been treated with their Black wash, but I was in two minds about whether it was necessary, given the way the clear makes the panel lines visible. If I change my mind I can always treat them in future. More clear sealed the panel lines, and I tackled the decals.

The decals as supplied in the kit are extensive, with hundreds of items of stencil data complimenting the unit markings. The kit plans are fairly inaccurate in terms of placement, especially as data placement varied among the four units on offer and they only wanted to provide one full set of data drawings. The boxtop art is in fact far more accurate and I followed it in conjunction with photographs sourced from the web. Three kinds of ejector triangles are supplied, and the plans recommend large ones with heavy white outlines. None of my reference photos show this type, and I used the regular, borderless style.

A major difference is that the plans suggest the underwing serials for 767 Squadron should be wholly situated on the fixed portion, however photographs clearly show that all aircraft of 767 Squadron have serials overlapped the folding outer panel by a large margin, which translates into a discrepancy of nearly two metres! I have in fact so far found only a single reference photograph that shows a British Phantom of the period without the serials overlapping the outer wing panels (an RAF FGR.2 in the camouflage era). I have found at least two examples of profile art showing 892. Sq. planes without evidence of serials on the outer panels, but artwork can be based on incorrect information. 767 Sq. is firmly supported by the photographic evidence and if the serials are correctly positioned according to these sources, some stencil data supplied in the kit must be omitted as it is designed to be used with serials positioned closer in... The jury is out, as they say, but I’m going with the photos for this subject.

The big underwing serials are also potentially hairy to apply as they cross the attachment points for the outer pylons and fractionally overlap the gear doors as well. Obviously, the pylons go on after decaling is complete, for which one may be glad the fit is pretty excellent and tiny dabs of CA at the locator pegs alone will do the job. All serials begin “XT 8…” so these characters are supplied as one decal, with a set of extra digits to depict any of the four aircraft. The parts that overlap open gear bays, well that’s up to your creativity. Cut the decals and apply the slivers to the doors? Shave away the overhang and paint the disembodied bits?

All this is excellent and quite clever, the decals separate cleanly, albeit after a lengthy soak, but I can honestly say I have never seen decals “silver” so badly. Not all of them, certainly, but many, and mostly the tiny stencils. Even over clearcoating and using the Microscale chemistry they were not all that keen to conform to underlying detail, and after a day’s drying the silver bloom in the clear film was a great disappointment. The needle-prick method helped, but was by no means a cure. Using a sharp blade and Future also failed to improve matters. Decaling took four days, a total of 154 items being applied (plus a dozen pieces of coloured strip from an AM source for the missiles, and fragments of the large numbers that ended up on the bay doors), and while it’s pretty comprehensive, some of the decals are also out of register. The British roundels are perfect, but the yellow in the eagle is notably “over the line” and some small items backed with white show a distinct rim of their base. I did check online for an AM sheet depicting Phantoms of 767 Sq. but could not find any currently in production, nor early FAA stencil data, and I also wanted to get this project off the bench, so persevered. I found stencil data by AirDoc, but only for RAF birds in the camo and grey era, so again the kit sheet was the practical alternative.

I made a mistake when clearcoating the decal work, in underestimating the tenacity of the decal fluid residues. I did not wash the model adequately and though the fluids are invisible against the paint they show up instantly a clear is applied. There is also zero you can do about it other than strip the whole job and start again, which I was not willing to do. There are random flat patches in the finish now, though I managed to spot the problem and properly wash remaining areas, so the left wing at least is free of the issue.

Fitting the landing gear when all painting was complete reveals a lack of proper alignment. The assemblies are detailed and look great but there is no way to adjust their alignment. When they drop into the locator holes, that’s it, and the main gear plus retraction struts sit toed-in and canted in, which looks wrong. To combat this in future I would assemble the legs and struts, trim the locator pin from the strut and seat it with CA wherever it falls when the gear is straight, and leave it at that. Retraction struts are also supplied for the inner doors but I left them off as there is no way I could see for them to ever line up with their locators. The small doors are also very weak and I could not count how many times they simply fell off in the course of handling.

This model is not one of my best and some of the problems can be attributed to the kit, some to my own skills. It looks good on the shelf, but under the magnifying glass the issues with uneven paint, masking problems, decal silvering and residues, and visible gaps where the pylons meet the wing despite all filing and pushing and pulling, plus the gear stance, make this one a learning piece. Applying the lessons learned here to a larger scale may return a much better result.

In conclusion, the Fujimi F-4K is a good kit, though not a perfect one, and a skilful builder with experience working with paints and decals can produce a very nice looking model, though there will be a fiddle in a few places. The kit counts as “vintage” but can be picked up on eBay from time to time for reasonable prices.

Kit Review: Tamiya #35156 M1A1 (ODS) MBT

2011-12-30T21:17:00.011+10:30

What is there to say about this kit that hasn’t been said before? Probably nothing. But it’s a good one and deserves to be revisited. It’s commonly available and while the accuracy brigade are quick to point out the many flaws (more in the nature of omissions than flaws, really) it builds with typical Tamiya ease straight from the box and the finished model captures the stance and feel of the Abrams.

The M1 Abrams Main Battle Tank is one of a handful of vehicles that seem to have reached a plateau in the development of armour. No new MBT has been designed in America in 33 years, there has been no need because the M1 is largely invulnerable to other tanks, is invariably lethal to them, and after three decades in service is as much an institution as the M16 rifle (which has been around for five). In that time model companies have produced a lot of kits, some better than others, some more buildable than others, but not a single one is 100% accurate, not even Dragon with its patented slide-mould technology. Experts have done the work for the modeller having an attack of AMS (Advanced Modeller Syndrome), you can compare several of the top kits at Vodnik’s site, while a complete list of necessary modifications to accurise any particular kit, assembled by those highly versed in the m1’s anatomy and evolution, can be found here as a downloadable .pdf. On the basis of that .pdf, there are a great many details I overlooked, but I’m not quite so afflicted with AMS that I am up to putting 1:35th scale split-pins and retaining chains on bolts. I can’t build an Abrams without doing at least some superdetailing, and I have done more on this one than previously, around 18 physical additions, plus AM decals and every finishing trick I can think of.

This kit was a retooling of Tamiya’s early-production M1 of 1982, produced about a decade later to reflect vehicles used during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. Basically it is an early generic M1A1, identified as such by the 120mm main gun, revised MRS, main sight, ammo blowout panels and crosswind sensor, smoke grenade stowage boxes, long turret stowage bins, and of course the “bustle rack” for crew gear stowage. The only hull modifications are the NBC environment panel on the port flank (which is missing an important detail) and the cutaway rear panels of the skirt armour.

Assembly is largely based on the 1982 original and the kit falls together as well as it ever did, the only hitch being a tiny mismatch in the upper hull to rear hull joint line, which calls for a bit of finesse and maybe a lick of filler. It’s largely up to you how much superdetailing you want to do, some details are easier than others. Drilling out the solid-moulded towing lugs fore and aft is a no-brainer, and adding missing bolt heads from slivers of styrene rod is another easy one. Relocating the portside grab handle on the forward hull about a scale foot forward to its proper location is another easy one. I also floored the bustle rack with Voyager's photoetched wire mesh part, a distinct improvement on the vinyl mesh supplied in the kit.

Tamiya missed a host of details. The “Z-springs” that tension the hinged forward mudguards are still absent and are easily made from bent spring steel wire. On the NBC panel, a triangular fillet is needed, with a hole drilled to represent the crew heater drain; likewise, the cabin heater intake is missing from the port flank hull and can be made up from a few small pieces of plasticard. On the starboard flank, under the edge of the turret, the bilge pump outlet is missing (only Trumpeter seem to have nailed this detail), and it can be scratched from card and brass tube. A bracket was missed from the hinges of the rear engine bay doors, and some plates and lift lugs too, all easily scratched from cardstock and wire.

A major criticism is the running gear (above), as the return rollers and idler axle detail are entirely spurious. I had been going to rebuild it all, including the track tensioning piston on each side, but realised that it would be wasted effort. This tank has side skirts and not one item I just mentioned is ever going to be seen, so why bother? The T-156 track is not accurate, the guidehorns should be between links rather than centred on them, but, that said, Tamiya’s T-156 track is the most accuarate in any kit, whether vinyl or styrene (according to Vodnik), and the only replacement set is both very expensive and of the dreaded individual link variety, so I was very happy to overlook this point (as discussed in my previous post).

Assembly was largely trouble-free and the most fiddly and frustrating jobs were late in the process. The barrel of the 7.62mm MG was snapped on the sprue, as was one of the tow cables, and they required very delicate repair with cya, and the antennas are fully scratched. The shorter mast I always make from .015” wire, but the heavier, taller mast I make by scraping .035” rod thinner toward one end, then bending it and CA’ing it into place. The tiedown is usually a plaited bungee chord, and for that I used spandex thread (EZ-line, rather simpler than unpicking elastane thread from a pair of nylons, like I did last time I built an Abrams!), twisted repeatedly, and this took three attempts and a large part of an afternoon. Tying knots with tweezers is my least favourite thing (barring L&L tracks…), but it makes a pretty realistic tie-down. The plastic balls on then ends of the masts are made by dipping the tip repeatedly into paint, and the flexible spring-type mounting at the base of the big mast was done with strips of tape, painted metallic. Trumpeter moulded this part properly, and Academy did so, on other subjects; I doubt their Abrams kits feature them as they were cloned from Tamiya’s.

I used Echelon decals which went on without a hitch (but for one which flicked away from the scissors and vanished) and my only criticism is that they are rather glossy. For that reason I held off on a final round of Mig pigments as I’ll see if I can source a decent clear flat to take the shine off the decals first. One task in pigments that came out very nicely was the burned metal on the transom above the exhaust vents (below), accomplished in seconds with two shades, Vietnam Dust and Black Smoke.

To this day Tamiya provide only tiny scraps of clear plastic for the periscopes, a great let down. I replaced them with styrene inserts and painted them all gold to suggest the prismatic tone of the real deal, but I was not very happy with the way they turned out. I would prefer to look for an aftermarket substitute in future.

Overall paintwork was Testor Model Master Acryl #4812 US Army/Marines Gulf War Sand, a non-FS shade originally mixed from available supplies in-theatre. It went on very well indeed, though my surface prep could have been better, I found myself respraying some spots around the front end when masking took the paint straight off. The tracks, as detailed in a separate post, were done with mainly Tamiya Acrylics.

The finished model looks the part and has enough extra detail to satisfy my desire for accuracy without breaking the bank re my bench hours, or my pocketbook. I could go on, but… Who looks under a tank model to know if the hull bottom is accurate? To be fair, the next Abrams I build will be Trumpeter’s HA and one of the Dragon offerings with all kinds of fine detail, including non-slip texturing moulded in: I ignored the necessity this time as there were some –A1s in Desert Storm which had not received the coating when they went to the Persian Gulf, so I can claim at least some accuracy. I’m happy with the model, my first Gulf War armour, and feel this kit, despite its age and legacy of parts from 1982, captures the design well enough to provide a solid basis for superdetailing, while avoiding the fit and assembly issues reported of at least some of the kits which offer superior detail right out of the box.

Tracks: A Six-Part Process

2011-11-29T12:26:00.009+10:30

It’s been the proverbial age since I last posted, what with completing my PhD, working, and a recent trip to the UK for a conference, but I’m at last back on the bench and have something work talking about.

Tank tracks are an area I’ve discussed on a few occasions, mainly to grumble about link & length and how I detest them. This time I’d like to talk about the finishing techniques that are applicable to all sorts of track approaches.

Building Tamiya’s 1:35 M1A1 (ODS) is a straightforward experience and I superdetailed with 17 corrected or missing detail items (it seems I can’t build an Abrams without adding as many missing details as I can, though I’m nowhere near a full amplification, according to the experts…) The vinyl T-156 tracks are the most accurate of kit offerings but still not correct (the guide horns are centred on the links, when they should straddle the gap between links), but I did not feel like spending the $$ for an AM set, especially as they would be L&L, which I loathe.

Never mind, I can live with the discrepancy. What about making that grey vinyl look like steel that’s been run across a desert?

It turned out to be a six-step process, starting with a base colour (above). I looked at photos of M1s in service and noted the general colour of their tracks, which of course reflects the terrain. I mixed Tamiya Acrylics Buff (XF-57) with NATO Brown (XF-68) and Dark Sea Grey (XF-54) at a ratio of 20:3:3, and coated both sides of the tracks. I tape or pin the tracks to a length of card to control them as I’m doing this.

Step 2 (also above) was the really boring one – paint the track pads and blocks into flat black (XF-1) individually. I used a small, flat sable brush and for once the Tamiya paints behaved themselves reasonably well coming off a brush. The effect does not have to be precise by any means, real tracks are so coated with filth that the point where rubber meets steel is rarely obvious to the naked eye, so I used a near-drybrushing technique across the raised areas, then blocked them in.

An oil wash was the third phase, van Dyke brown suspended in enamel thinner run into all detail areas on both sides, a fairly quick process that created some depth. It’s subtle, but it’s visible above.

The fourth step, also above, was to overspray the tracks with well-thinned Buff (one part paint to three parts thinner, which is 600% over-spec for Tamiya) to simulate dust ground into everything, and which toned down the starkness of the fresh black to a grey-beige which looks pretty good against many service photos.

The job was nearly done by this point. Drybrushing with silver to create bare metal wear on the guidehorns and some external link ends came next, and a light wash here and there of bright rust to add visual interest. Step 6 was MiG Gulf War Sand pigment powder, but that technically would go on overall when everything else on the beast was done, and in the shot above is added to just one part of the right-hand track to demonstrate how it settles into declivities. I called it done at this point and set the tracks aside for later.

Tracks are not difficult to make look good, but it does take a little thought beforehand, and the patience to work through the process when it gets a bit tedious!

Product Review: Model Master Acryl Paints

2011-10-03T22:03:00.004+10:30

The quest for less-obnoxious spray painting is never over, and while I have had great pleasure with the Tamiya acrylics range they just don’t have matches for many of the standard shades in use, whether German RLM shades or modern US Federal Standard colours. What few they do purport to match are actually very wide of the mark (for instance, their equivalents to RLM 02 grey, RLM 70 schwartzgrun, or British Sky are not satisfactory and require mixing to improve.)

The Pollyscale acrylic range is hard to find in Australia, and Humbrol acrylics are not imported, nor are Revell Aqueus. But recently, distributors have begun to bring in the Model Master Acryl range, and these are definitely worth a look. Colours are matched by precise industrial techniques, same as for the old standard MM enamels range, and the paints are supplied in the same old fashioned bottle. Some people have criticised the bottle design as hard to stir, favouring the Tamiya broad-neck type, but I have never had an issue, perhaps because I cut my teeth stirring paint in Humbrol tinlets, after which, it’s fair to say, anything is an improvement.

Obviously, my base for comparison is the Tamiya range, and on that footing, I can make the following observations:

Model Master Acryls are a virtually odourless formulation, there is no ester-smell on opening the jars. Though it seems they separate into phases when standing, a shake seems to do most of the work, they need very little stirring and recombine fully. I have sprayed light and dark shades and they seem to have equivalent covering ability. Thinning is an issue in point, these paints seem to demand 25%, compared to 50% for Tamiya, meaning you use proportionally more paint from each bottle in any given job. Any more than 25% and spatter begins to develop, which if controlled through flow rates and brush motion sets down in a somewhat pebbly fashion, drying with excess gloss. The finish seems to be somewhat harder, more durable, than that of Tamiya paints, and it can be said that the paints go on and lie down differently, though I would be hard pressed to actually describe how. They certainly dry quickly, from a wet, almost pebbly application to a dry, satiny coat in a few minutes.

Random gloss patches have been reported by others but I have yet to encounter this phenomenon with these paints; in any case, if using topcoats, it’s neither here nor there. Another general criticism is their tendency to tip-dry, blocking the airbrush, which I have encountered when spraying a fairly large amount of paint in one session (doing the template technique on a set of tank wheels, for instance), however under normal circumstances this does not seem to be a bother (nor is it affected by increasing the thinning ratio). I image it will become more of an issue in warmer weather.

One last point, these paints are entirely appropriate for applying with a brush, something Tamiya paints really do not like to do. After many years of struggling with touch-ups in the Japanese range, I can now dip a brush and have the paints go on the way enamels do, rather than the frustrating wipe-on, wipe-off effect of the others.

At this point I have used only four paints from this range. I am thinning with Tamiya thinner which is completely compatible, and cleaning up with water, between airbrush strip-and-clean sessions using Tamiya thinner and a Paasche brush set (invaluable, the best buy I ever made for ensuring the airbrush remains fully serviceable at all times.) I will be expanding my range and applications, and expect to be trying their gull, ghost and compass greys in due course.

I would recommend Model Master Acryls to anyone painting indoors and who is interested in their health. The range is very large (it takes three pages at the Testor website to present them all), and as acrylics they can be mail-ordered by air from the US or elsewhere. See the range at:

http://www.testors.com/category/136648/Acrylic_Paints
I’m happy with their performance so far, and will continue to acquire shades, but I will be using them in concert with the Tamiya range which, though it may be just familiarity with these paints over so many years, seem to be a tiny bit more user-friendly in the way they go on when sprayed.

Simplifying Soft Masking

2011-10-01T22:56:00.002+09:30

Back when I started this blog, one of my most-viewed early posts was about detailing Hasegawa’s Bf 109 K-4, and one of the techniques I explored was soft-masking, cutting card masks for the camouflage and applying them clear of the surface by an eighth of an inch to hopefully create soft-edged demarcations.

I have been putting together Hasegawa’s Bf 109 F-2 in markings for Operation Barbarossa, and when coming to soft-mask the camo this time an interesting twist struck me.

I had not particularly thought about the masking until I got to the relevant stage, then I compared the pattern on the K-4 to the one on Werner Molders’ aircraft to see if the same masks would serve, at least for the wings and tail, but the pattern, being hand-applied on the original aircraft, was different enough to warrant a new set of masks being cut.

Rather than a process of trial and error, holding pieces of card to the model and trimming them until they looked about right, and in the absence of a 1:48th scale reference drawing, I pulled another unbuilt 109 from my stash and laid the wing, tail and fuselage parts onto a sheet of light card, ran a pencil around them and abruptly had my profile plans. From that point it was an easy matter to copy the camouflage from the kit plans onto the sketch and outline the segments to be cut out. It doesn’t even have to be very exact.

The virtue is that you can pre-design cutaways to fit around the wings or to run under the tail surfaces, or long tapers to shield the sides of the fuselage, helping reduce tape usage. And, if you’re careful with the cutting out, you’ll have a negative mask as well, which you can lay over the opposite tonal area to touch up overspray if needed.

On this model I’m using Model Master Acryl paints (well, on three models simultaneously, in fact), so look for a review of these paints in the near future.

My too-full schedule has been cleared somewhat lately, so look for new posts rather more often.

Not Retiring Enamels After All

2011-07-22T22:58:00.004+09:30

Real life has been in the way bigtime, it’s been three months, to the day, since I had a chance to post, but finally I have the time and something important to look at.

Last year I posted a speculative point that acrylic paint technology had almost reached the point that it was worth retiring enamels altogether, for their toxicity and stink. How many of us spray outside to keep the fumes from offending the family? And mortgage our health in any case, as unless we can afford a proper industrial respirator, we’re going to breathe in at least something of the atomised hydrocarbons or whatever other noxious fumes our airbrushes emit.

I have spent most of the last year studiously avoiding enamels, my last enamel job is awaiting completion, and that last camo shade will probably go on with acrylic anyway, just like the topcoat. But where metallics are concerned, acrylics are just not up to snuff yet.

Reviews of the original Tamiya range many years ago reported a granular effect from their silver, and though their paints are now better made, more finely ground or whatever, that granularity is still with us. Add in difficult conditions of temperature and humidity and you can have a mess.

I recently set out to do the natural metal parts of a whole line of Phantoms, and Tamiya acrylics only wanted to spatter and dry like pebbledash paving. Next I gave the Talon brand another go, but I don’t think I’ve encountered a more unfriendly and delicate formulation. I ended up with five sets of tail fins to sand clean for the second time, as the ‘gradual build up of mist coats’ technique was gradually building up little more than … pebbledash pavements.

In frustration (and as I had an hour with the family out) I pulled out an ancient bottle of Model Master Chrome Silver. There was a tiny bit of sludge at the bottom and I was about to bin it, but decided to give it a go anyway. Tamiya X-20 enamel thinner reconstituted it perfectly and it went onto the engine areas of five Phantoms without a hitch, and without the spatter effect that has had me convinced lately my airbrush’s #3 needle needs replacing.

I should have just sprayed everything in enamel and given the Talon a miss, then the whole job would be done. After masking I can do the darker shade in acrylic, Tamiya Aluminium and Gunmetal are far less temperamental than their Chrome Silver, but for the bright base it turns out there really was no alternative. I’m not saying the Talon paints aren’t excellent, but they’re a technique that takes practice, and a patient hand, and I hope one day to have the chance to find my feet with it.

For now, I find myself thinking again about that fumehood setup and respirator for the hobby workshop ("mancave," is a common term for it, but that's sexist, there are plenty of great female talents in the hobby) that's out there on the horizon. Enamels really do flow on so beautifully… It’s a pity they’re poison.

Balancing Time

2011-04-22T12:11:00.003+09:30

How often do you hear the phrase “real life got in the way?” The plastic modelling hobby can be a time consuming one, you’ll usually read in FSM’s Workbench Reviews how many hours building a particular kit consumed, and those numbers are sometimes quite high. Then there are competition builders who are known to invest thousands of hours in a single project.

Where do they get them? We all have “real” lives (as if the hobby that brings us satisfaction and bolsters us against the trials and pitfalls of “real” life is any less real) and we need to share our time among our commitments. So much for work, so much for family (plus commuting, eating, sleeping…) All of these come before the hobby. I strongly suspect many of us use hobby hours as “get your head straight” time -- way to shut out the clamour and put things back in perspective.

But there’s a balance at work there as well. You can become so involved in a particular train of thought or endeavour that it’s hard to switch tracks to the hobby more, so when you find you have some time available you can’t mentally make the switch and use it productively. I currently have a grand total of 29 models in various stages of completion, some of which have been shelf-queens for many years, but can I find the ability to jump tracks, now Australia’s five-day long weekend has arrived? It isn’t easy. My brain is stuck on my PhD, and while that’s a good thing, I would really like to complete one or maybe two models over this national holiday, as well as re-tally field data and tabulate results. It goes a way to explaining why it’s been three weeks since I posted here…

I was once chatting with a friend about the long list of scratchbuild subjects I would like to do, and he asked “how long do you plan on living?” Meaning, it can take years to finish a single ambitious project, as I well know. My answer was “several hundred years,” which fits my cosmological outlook, certainly at this point in life, and tends to validate still collecting kits when the stash is on its way toward 1100. This year will see my largest completion output ever … but it’s not easy getting my head out of professional space and back into hobby-land.

Maybe you just have to have priorities!

I’m Stunned

2011-03-31T11:33:00.006+10:30

I could say I’m disgusted, bemused or distressed, just the same. Even naïve… I read on a net forum last night that there was never a business agreement between Tamiya and Academy…

I flipped through an Academy catalogue in the early 90s and nodded with a certain boredom at the time as I recognised item after item as being Tamiya, 1:350 battleships, tanks I’d already built… I assumed, and of course that’s always a bad thing. It may be something to do with the Western mindset that can’t comprehend thieving on this scale, that twenty years later it comes as an amazement.

The discrepancy I noticed and wrote up last time but one is symptomatic, perhaps. Was it a change instituted to get around some aspect of copyright? Or some mysterious feature added in? Who knows, the only thing for certain is that copyright in Asia, certainly in the late 1980s, was so nebulous a thing that one major company could establish itself by stealing the product line from another. That’s cut-throat…

My respect for Academy just went down a notch, but hopefully their business practice had more integrity once they were up and running. Mr Tamiya must have had some deep discussions with his legal team at the time, but I doubt he ever stooped to stealing back from Academy. (Personally I’m amazed he ever reboxed Italeri and Monogram, the Tamiya name is associated with another class of product.)

The knock-off product certainly was not pantographed, there is none of the characteristic softness. My guess is that laser inferometery was up to the job, and Tamiya sprues were scanned into a 3D model and output through a CAD/CAM process to cut new moulds. This process was in use in the early 90s in film-making, to translate a sculpted miniature into a 3D model, so in industrial terms it might have been around as early as ’87… Switching out the part numbers and rearranging the plan drawings might have instituted just enough difference for them to call it a new kit.

I guess the collector can only shrug and accept a good deal when it comes along. The Academy knock-offs were not much cheaper than their identical cousins, but you can pick them up on eBay for a decent price these days, a fair few dollars less than originals. That StuG is ready for paint, but it will always carry a mental tang, for me, that the Tamiya original does not, and it’s all about the notion of legitimacy.

Close to Home

2011-03-29T23:03:00.003+10:30

Last week the news could talk about little else than the disaster in Japan but the novelty seems to have worn off, they’re back to the staples of politics, crime and celebrity hijinx. Now you need to dig online to find that the radiation levels in Miyagi are now 100, 000 times the normal background levels, and that fallout has been detected in the environment as far away as Michigan. But it seems an impending British royal wedding is far more important than keeping people informed as to how bad the situation is – or constitutes a diversion from it.

Okay, off the soapbox and back to regular programming – but it was brought home to me sharply today when I dropped by my LHS for some Tamiya paint. I had used up my NATO Black and needed another coat on the tires for three tanks, including the StuG IV featured in my last post, and am down to a drop of German Dark Yellow also, but could only source the black. The chap on the counter checked the chain’s other store to see if they could have the yellow sent down for me, but it was sold out there also. Why? Japan…

One doesn’t normally think of the hobby supply chain being as time-sensitive as this. One imagines a container-load of stuff comes from a particular ‘industry of origin’ in to a particular distributor and is shared out around the country maybe two or three times a year, but a fortnight after a disaster in the country of origin supply is in a serious pinch here in Australia, and that makes you do a double-take.

Where would we be without our plastics-derived materials science? Quite apart from the health concerns, that microscopic particles of plastic migrate through our bodies and come to rest within our very living cells (and we plastic modellers must be more at risk of this than other parts of the community that have less intimate relationships with plastic than ours, which include solvent chemistry and sanding and other means of breaking it down into ever finer parts…), we seem to be highly dependent on plastic for our amusement. How many of us willingly grab a piece of natural wood and get to work building a replica? Well, that’s another stream of the hobby, isn’t it…? How many of us set up our lathe and milling machine and start knocking out working steam locomotives? That’s another part of the hobby. too. How many would tackle a wooden ship kit that costs a year’s savings? I’m not saying that any of these things is outside the hobby, I’m saying our stream is plastic modelling and as such is plastics-dependent. Interrupt the supply and we’ll feel it.

Back at the time of Desert Storm (“Gulf War I” for those who don’t remember that Iran and Iraq had been at war for ten years previously, referred to in the international media for that entire period as “the Gulf War”) it was discussed in the pages of FineScale Modeler and elsewhere that an international oil crisis would impact the hobby by changing the cost structures of manufacturing plastic. As it happens, this did not trickle down into any serious impediment to the hobby, but it illustrates the same sort of dependency.

But where can we go without plastics or resins? Could any of us seriously set about building, say, a tank model, from wood? It’s not impossible, and would be a most interesting challenge… It would certainly foster one’s carpentry skills, and oblige one to be a craftsman in the old sense of the word, a machinist and tradesman. Building intricate, working models was something tradesmen used to do, and many of them are still found in museums. Engineers’ models for ship yards are a perfect example of precision scale modelling of a sort the world sees too little of today.

I wonder… A wooden Sherman or Tiger…? Lathed wheels, carved turret, lathed barrel, and so forth, and a hull planed from timber (the welded-hull M3A4 Sherman would be a prime candidate, or either main variant of the Tiger, with its milled slab armour). Fill the wood grain with woodstop or some homebrew filler of dope and a fine powder medium. Detail would be difficult, that’s for sure. Metal, probably... And those tracks would be rather obliged to be cast link by link, probably in whitemetal, pinned together and end up workable... And paint? Even our non-toxic mainstays are derived from plastic! (Which is worse for us, plastic or solvent fumes?) It’s all an interesting idea but is it really possible to obtain the realism and ease we expect in any other medium? Perhaps not.

I'm sure every one of us hopes and prays that Japan will get solidly on top of its shocking problems in the near future, and this will be wonderful for every imaginable human reason; certainly the road back for them will be neither swift nor simple. But, we may acknowledge with a certain chagrin, there are also the entirely unique needs of the hobby community, which has come to depend on Japan’s prolific engineering and commercial output to a considerable degree. In subtle ways, we’re already missing them.

Kits That Build Themselves (Almost)

2011-03-28T10:46:00.007+10:30

Late in 2009 I built Tamiya’s old StuG IV kit (35087) and was delighted with the easy-build characteristics of the 1970s approach to kit engineering. Dragon sophistication had not come into the world, but Dragon over-complexity had also yet to appear, and notions like slide moulding were a technical phantasm. As I’ve mentioned on occasion, while the armour kits of the 70s leave a lot to be desired by modern standards, they also had the virtue of buildability, and before the advent of Dragon, Tamiya’s only real competitiors were Esci/ERTL and odd offerings from Heller, plus the 1:32nd scale range from Monogram and the 1:40th scale series from Revell.

I recently found the urge to build another Tamiya StuG IV, this time the Academy issue of 1987 (from the period when a batch of older Tamiya kits fleshed out their range for market impact before their own product really got rolling). The factory example photographed for the box shows a very attractive fall ’44 ‘Ambush’ scheme complete with blowing leaves, but the markings (for what appears to be the Grossdeutschland Division, going by the helmet motif) are not included. Academy scanned Tamiya’s plans, rearranged the drawings and renumbered the parts, rather a pointless exercise if it was meant to disguise the origins of the kit, all of which rendered the plans confusing in places. I built from Tamiya plans, and referred to the Academy plans merely for part numbers on the rare occasions I couldn’t recognise them instantly.

This is a very simple kit, but its 217 components would have been an impressive total in the 70s. What strikes me about it is how easy the build is. This example fell together in about four sittings, even wasting time I doubt I spent more than five hours from go before I was encountering the need for paint. The moulds were showing their age, some parts needed extra filing and fiddling to get them to line up, some separation lines were pretty heavy, especially in the suspension, but these issues were par for the course in the 70s anyway, and compared to the Dragon StuG III F/8 I’ve had underway since last year, this one built in a blink. The indie-link Ostketten on that one put me off every time I think about them.

One unusual thing, there is a gap about .060” wide between the idler axle components. The rooting of the parts, moulded onto the transom, is supposed to fit against the outer axle parts which are cast with the main tub, but the parts sit back, with a pronounced cutaway. This element does not appear on the original Tamiya kit, I just checked the one in my display case and it’s not there. So did Academy retool and introduce this change for some bizarre reason? The parts do not look soft and ‘blobby’ as they would if they had been three-dimensionally traced with a pantograph. I have Academy’s issue of the Panzer IV H with stand-off armour, originally Tamiya 35057, and this difference does not appear in the transom plate of this essentially identical kit (identical as far as these components are concerned, certainly). Whatever, that left me with gaps where none should be and axle roots that don’t look convincing.

Given that it’s not the easiest part of the vehicle to see, I decided a perfect fix was not required, and sufficed to shim the gap with a sliver of 4.8mm tubing to create a mechanical illusion of completeness. A proper fix would have been to shim it with sheet plastic and carve the plastic to match the structures adjoining, and this would have been possible before assembly, but that much knife and file work when there are finished structures in close proximity seemed like asking for trouble. This is a simple build, I want it finished, not living on my bench. Filling in the slots behind the axle mounts with strip plastic was also a simple enough process, and created the impression once again of mechanical detail, barely-seen.

Modelling is meant to be about fun, and the simplicity of the engineering lends itself to prompt assembly while the age of the moulds inescapably exercises the skill muscles to compensate. In that much, it’s a good mix. The artistic muscles come next: I’ve never done an ‘Ambush’ scheme before, and have not dialled the airbrush down for tight soft-edge freehand spraying in two or three years. Maybe it’s time to give that technique a whirl again.

Lust for Lustre

2011-03-05T22:00:00.012+10:30

I’ve had Hasegawa’s 1:72 N1K1 Kyofu “Rex” fighter seaplane (AP 35/#51335) in my stash for over ten years, and looked at it many times, thinking how great it would be to do something clever with that two-tone finish. The last time I ever finished anything in hinomarus, it was an Airfix Zero and I was a kid, so this is functionally the first Japanese aircraft for my collection. It certainly won’t be the last. But what convinced me to have a go at it at this time (I began it back in January) was the chance to try out the Microscale Satin clear topcoat again.

This is my third build with it and my technique seems to be holding good. The photo on the side of the box shows a very clean, glossy finish, which compliments Koike Shigeo’s always-superb box art, if contradicting it in a few places, and I felt it was a great candidate for a satin finish. The paints used by the Imperial Japanese forces weathered very fast, Japanese subjects are the holy grail of aircraft weathering techniques for many, but this one was going to be clean and tidy. I just wanted to see how the whole clear coating business worked one more time.

The kit has only 37 parts (nine more build the handling trolley and there’s an optional boarding ladder), the fit is great, there were very few fiddles. Eduard make a canopy mask set for this subject in 1:48th scale, for Tamiya’s kit, but not for this one, so I masked the one-piece canopy with multiple tiny strips of tape, the old-fashioned way. There are several thin struts in the canopy and I masked these out completely, to be done with strips of painted decal, another technique I’ve not used in probably 15 or 20 years. (It worked so-so, I wasn’t terribly impressed with the willingness of the painted strips to part from their backing, or adhere to the plastic…)

Hasegawa paint callouts use the Gunze range, so I pulled out the plans for the Tamiya version and used their paint recommendations instead, a mixed green for the cockpit plus XF-11 JN Green and XF-12 JN Grey for the overall scheme. The box side pic shows a soft demarcation but at 1:72 that might be pushing things, and I hard-masked with tape. It’s worth noting, the red warning band on the float was supplied as a decal but I sprayed it in XF-7, slightly warmed with XF-3, as before coming to the decals I was sure the result would be much better that way. Would it? On reflection I’m not sure, but I am glad I didn’t fight with a decal that large, all the same. The paints went on smoothly, with no arguments, but very dull indeed, and I was really looking forward to how the lustre would bring the paints alive.

Alive is the word! I know the sheen may be a bit bright for authenticity, assuming the box photo was also way too bright, but the model has depth and dimension instead of a dull green that almost soaks up light. Perhaps that was the point of camouflage, but a model must also be decorative, and the lustre creates visual interest.

It’s also a wonderful base for decaling, Hasegawa’s decals went down very well indeed, the Microscale system pulled them tightly into the engraved lines with only a single application of setting solution, I don’t think I could have asked for better. The white-rimmed insignia for the fuselage were supplied in two forms, a single image or a nested white and red disc, and I used the latter as the single-image type were out of register. Even two nested decals still pulled into the detail with enough room for panel wash to partially catch. The whites were cream yellow on the sheet, though, which translated over dark green to a shade closely matching the JN Grey, but against the JN Green they “look” white enough to do. The decals cured overnight and were then gently washed in plain water to lift away the residue of decal adhesive.

I used Promodeller Dark Dirt weathering wash to accent the panel lines on grey areas only, as it became invisible against the green, and the panel lines, once the lustre comes up, are very distinct on the dark surface without augmentation anyway. With the panel wash done, I applied another coat of satin to seal it all, and was at liberty to unmask the engine and canopy, pending prop and struts.

A little rust on the handling trolley, paint and mount the exhausts, add some carbon staining with MiG pigments and an antenna wire from EZ-Line, paint the pitot in metallic silver, and I could call this one done. It doesn’t sit up square in the ‘dockwagen,’ it might take a shim or two, and although a solid plastic counterweight is supplied to nest inside the front part of the float the centre of gravity is still far enough back for the model to be unstable if the vertical guide marks of the float are aligned with the structural guides of the trolley.

This was a quick, fun build with which to get a bit more experience with the suite of techniques I’m using on aircraft these days, especially clearcoating, something I have only recently been feeling my way with. I’m reasonably happy with the result, it’s not perfect but then I’ve not often worked in this scale in many years either, and look forward very much to building it’s bigger brother from Tamiya: perhaps my weathering techniques will be up to making her look worn and weary by then!

Doing It (Not So) Tough

2011-02-18T18:25:00.010+10:30

I had thought that I would be calling this “Doing It Tough,” but in the end it wasn’t that hard. I bought Italeri’s M110 SP Howitzer (#291) on sale from Squadron probably 12 years ago, certainly not less than ten, and had a go at a few parts many years ago. It ended up back in the stash because I had nowhere to store a finished model at that time.

I seem to be enjoying a run of completions on old projects lately, and there are a few more to come. This one took a fair bit of effort but nothing out of the ordinary, and a few concessions to the kit’s failings as well as acknowledging my own skills and where they were either not adequate or where I was unwilling to invest the time, eyesight and elbow-grease to achieve that extra standard of realism that is the grail of the hobby.

Italeri comes in for some flak, and not without reason, but that doesn’t mean all their kits can be pigeonholed easily. In recent years their packaging and breadth of subject matter have been impressive, as have their claims to realism and accuracy. Older kits suffer the same maladies no matter what company one considers, and, as with Hobbycraft and early Dragon, Italeri’s kits are best assessed on a one by one basis. Verlinden produced a conversion set (#423) to build the early (short barrel) A1 or late (long barrel) A2, plus stowage boxes, to be mounted on the recoil spade, that Italeri did not include.

The M110 is dated 1996, but the molds may perhaps be older. Certainly the chassis is in common with the M107 which appeared in a couple of editions from the same firm in the 90s. The parts breakdown is fairly normal, though the large number of small parts can be off-putting for some. Here and there were structures that were never going to work, such as the shell trays on the recoil spade bearers: there is insufficient room between their swivel points and the rear of the hull to fit them in their standard orientation.

Construction was generally straight forward, the dark green plastic reacted well to glue and worked well when I dressed the long seams of the barrel with adzed superglue and filler. There were many small, fiddly parts around the gun cradle and tail end, and the instructions were not terribly clear, the illustrations drawn rather small and difficult to see, so that things that should have been obvious were mysteries almost to the finish.

That said, the model went together in an entirely normal fashion. The gun swivel dropped in the same way as a tank turret but the tolerances were very close, even with the surfaces masked to preserve plastic-to-plastic sliding contact they needed filing a bit to get them to seat properly after painting. The small parts, handles and projections, were quite fragile, one had to be repaired twice.

The installation of the drive wheels was not engineered in a foolproof way and I ended up with one frozen in position. That’s no biggie, it’s not as if the tracks are ever going to roll, but having them mobile during track installation eases things. The tracks themselves were well-detailed both sides and took paint well. Italeri tracks are often criticised for lacking detail and being too stiff, but these were quite acceptable, though of course, like any vinyls, are never going to lie down along the top of the roadwheels like the tracks on the real thing. Perhaps someone makes a replacement set for this chassis, but buying tracks that cost more than the kit tends to stick in my craw.

The paintjob was all acrylic, Tamiya XF-62 Olive Drab, with shade and fade coats as per standard, then black and brown oil pinwash and enamel drybrushing in lightened olive and bare metal silver. Orange enamel was pinwashed here and there for bright rust, and MiG Europe Dust pigment was liberally applied last of all.

Italeri made a number of concessions to simplicity, such as molding in the hydraulic and electrical cables around the gun cradle as solid, raised detail, and not all of them are there either. I had considered using fine wire to replace the kit details, but after reviewing every reference picture I could find on the web, as well as some taken for me at a US exhibit, I decided not to. I either would not know where to begin, or where to stop, and in the absence of a Dremmel the idea of carving away all that raised detail added up to (probably) just sore fingers and a mess.

Decals are another area of contention. The Italeri decals are quite matt, and provide markings for four countries, all over standard Olive Drab, but the stern plate of the vehicle is a very cramped place to put markings. Either the model crowds the details too much or the decals are too big, because there was no way the German markings would ever fit into the space available. I used the US marking option and even they barely fitted.

But on the whole, the model had few surprises and was well within my capabilities to produce a decent, if simplified here and there, rendition of this important piece of Western allied artillery from the Cold War to recent times. Examples change hands on eBay for sometimes steeper prices these days, less perhaps because it’s a particularly great kit than because it may be the only kit. I would love to see Tamiya, Dragon or Trumpeter tackle this subject matter!

It’s Good To Finish

2011-02-03T22:34:00.010+10:30

The Italeri Corsair is done, which unless I am mistaken constitutes my first finished Italeri kit ever. In some ways it was excellent, in some ways a PITA. The wing alignment defeated me long ago, but now it was nothing to break a sweat about. All the same, this kit had a way of fighting me right to the finish.

Such as… Why are the holes for the drop tank pegs too small, so you have to file them out after the paintjob has been so carefully applied? The pitot tube was moulded with the wing, and there was no way it was going to survive the years. .020” microrod to the rescue, and a little superglue. Same with that row of antennas around the fuselage, it might make sense to fit them before painting but the handling that comes from that point onward is still enough to do for them. They were finagled back into place with CA at the finish, and one which disintegrated before it could even be installed with replaced with 7mm of .020” rod. The original was a blade antenna, this one is rod. Tough.

The canopy masked nicely, but I could have wished it unmasked a bit cleaner. What is it with clear plastic and its ability to gather scratches?

The gear bays were masked after main painting and sprayed with a homebrew interior green (Tamiya XF3 and XF5 at 3:2, works every time), then overspray was touched up on the hull (yes, there was overspray no matter how much masking I used… Like this: )

The tires were brush painted in NATO black, the rim is moulded high enough to guide the brush and inconsistencies are invisible against Dark Sea Blue. Another problem, the main gear seemed to want to sit a bit knock-kneed, so I cut a 50mm spacer bar from styrene strip and braced them apart while the gel CA set up overnight. Now they stand straight...

The gear bays were given a quick black oil wash, then I added a little MiG dust in them, and did the exhaust streaking with their Black Smoke and Vietnam Earth pigments; only the red earth shows up, as you might expect. Hmph – and why is it that you discover when you’re finished that you could use MiG pigments to take fingerprints, because they certainly only show up on the model as you’re putting the finishing touches to it!

One day I might get around to chipping paint with silver but for now I’m just happy to have the project somewhere I’m willing to call the finish line. It’s great to call a completion, file the unused decals and plans, bin the empty sprues and bags, and wipe down the bench ready for the next kit, it brings a sense of progress which few other moments do. This is my first completed Corsair in many years, but I’m sure it won’t be the last, the bent-wing bird is way too much fun to leave alone for long!

Old Decals Still Work

2011-01-30T14:28:00.004+10:30

They do say there’s a finite lifespan to decals, and anyone who has opened a vintage kit can attest to how fragile, faded and yellowed they can become. But decal technology has come a long way and when firms like Microscale came along they used only the best. I have had aftermarket decals perish, but not the good stuff.

The latest milestone on the Italeri Corsair was getting the markings on. I had meant to do Guy Bordelon’s plane but Italeri got the famous blue (substituting for white to ‘tone down’ the visibility for a nightfighter unit during the Korean war) too vivid. I have Superscale’s better version but before I was able to locate them I decided to go with the standard marking option in the kit, VMF(N)-513. I had applied Microscale Satin over the Tamiya XF-17 paintwork, resulting in a nice, smooth lustre, and I began on the underside for caution’s sake. The kit decals were very thin, very fragile, and the whites were translucent… Not the best, but there are always options.

Out came the big box which stores decals, most of them Superscale. The “Marines” title under the wing was sourced from sheet 72-20, and the non-backgrounded national insignia, with their separately printed red bars, from 72-12. These days, the range is way above a thousand sheets and still counting, and it must be over a decade since Krasel Industries announced they would no longer be reprinting their old releases. These two sheets date from the early 1970s and may have been printed no later than the mid-90s, so I had to wonder at first how they might perform.

They have been stored away from light and pressed firmly in their packets away from air, reasonably cool and always completely dry, and these conditions seem to be acceptable, because they worked fine. Superscales are incredibly thin and that makes them inherently fragile, these tore two or three times, but were coaxed into place with the standard Microscale system chemistry. The model was given a careful wash with a brush dipped in clean water and swabbed with a tissue to remove dried chemistry, which will otherwise show up instantly and indelibly as dull tidemarks under clear coats, then another coat of satin was applied to seal everything up.

Keep a thing twenty years and you’ll find a use, they say, and these decals replaced the kit items perfectly, reducing the somewhat translucent items to codes and serials. They do look slightly different, but not so much the casual glance would pick up the problem.

I’m glad these decals work so well after such a long time ‘on standby,’ as it were. My decal collection is considerable and I look forward to finally having the chance to use it properly, building many colourful and spectacular subjects in future.

Raiders of the Lost Paint Stand

2011-01-27T22:35:00.004+10:30

Many years ago, about 2002 I think, I published a small article in FineScale Modeler about how to make your own painting stands. They have those fancy ones you can buy, with clamps and a rotating base, they adapt to any model, and sure, they’re great, but they cost mucho dollars. I proposed a simple solution, a purpose-made painting jig that will support a model while you’re spraying it. With aircraft, the idea is you paint the underside, then turn it over with the stand locating into the wheel wells, and go hands-off to paint the top.

Car modellers have long used the old standby of a bent coat hanger to support a car body while it’s being sprayed, the single most critical phase in car models. The finish on the paint is everything and getting that coat on just right means treating the job like the real thing. Armour is less demanding in this sense, as flat paints are much more forgiving: no matter how complex the scheme, the paints will be touch-dry in no time and you can adjust and move on.

Aircraft of multiple colours offer the chance to spray one shade, let it dry, then support the model by those areas while painting the next, but what about models which are largely or completely mono-tone? The axiom of “keeping a wet edge” to the spray coat becomes difficult to say the least, and that’s where a stand really comes in.

We probably all have ideas and solutions to this problem, and no particular approach is any righter (or wronger) than another. I have found that a handy way to do it is to glue together a few bits of styrene rod, strip and sheet to make a stand that supports the plane on three points, and it really couldn’t be easier.

The stand I made for the article all those years ago was designed for a 1:72 Corsair, and, working on the kit that has appeared in my last two posts, I had a need for it. Unfortunately I couldn’t find it, so had to make up another. Rather than duplicate the original design, I used the even simpler design for the 1:72 Phantom painting stand that I made in 2003 for another FSM feature project, and which I do still have to hand.

Two pieces of sheet plastic are tenon-jointed together to make a cruciform shape with the short axis equal to the track of the main gear wells, and the long arm reaching to the tail gear well. They are braced together with some 3.2mm angle stock, then three uprights are installed, the main well supports from 2mm square stock, braced with small angle, and the tail support made from strip stock laid onto each side of the sheet and another piece between them to create a solid column above the sheet. I cut the pieces in ten minutes and assembled them with liquid cement in less.

The great thing is, you can adapt this formula for any aircraft type in any scale, and if you know you’ll be building many of a particular type they can solve the hassle of how to hold a monocoloured bird while the paint is going on. For US Navy types between 1944 and 1958, with that iconic overall Dark Sea Blue scheme, it really simplifies things.

Oh, and yes, if you remember that article in FSM, it was the very same Corsair model appearing in it as I am just now coming to grips with!

Attitude: Resisting the Fiddly

2011-01-26T11:20:00.004+10:30

Perhaps it’s the same phenomenon I was discussing last time, a mental blockage that keeps you from either seeing a solution or, just as importantly, implementing it.

I began building a Hasegawa Kyofu Rex seaplane a week or two back, a project I’ve wanted to do for ages and finally found an excuse to as another test subject for trying out those acrylic topcoats. The model fell together like a dream, there are only 37 parts in the plane and a few more in the handling trolly (the German would be dockwagon). The acrylics are all lined up and ready to go, the only obstacle was masking the canopy. Eduard make a set for this kit’s bigger brother, Tamiya’s 1:48 scale equivalent, but for the one-piece canopy of the little guy I was on my own.

Well, slivers of tape must be coaxed into place with fine tools, obviously. But it took me a week or so to commit to the task. I felt like Sgt. Pinback being told it was time to feed the alien, in Dark Star… “Ohhhhh, I don’t wanna do that… I have to do everything ‘round here…” Maybe it’s my deteriorating eyesight, or persistent memories of being frustrated by such tasks before, but it took resurrecting that Corsair a few days ago to get me to the job. Eduard makes Corsair masks but it would be weeks before I could get hold of them and they cost money, a few slivers of tape are immediate and essentially cost nothing.

So, the mind sees the necessity, the heart deals with the angst, and the hands and eyes do the job. A couple of hours work spread out through the whole day so there’s no chance to go stale on the task, and I had both canopies outlined. From there it’s easy enough to backfill the areas with tape. One concession to the approach is that it’s obliged to be a two-part finishing process: main struts will be painted, fine secondaries, simply too small or intersecting in complex ways with the others, will be slivers of decal, which will be made from clear sheet at the painting stage.

The pre-cut masks are so convenient you forget grass-roots techniques like these. I’ve not made slivers of decal for canopy struts in 15 years, so it’ll be an interesting experiment to see how they work – or don’t. If they don’t, I’ll figure out some other solution.

Attitude: Another Skill That Evolves

2011-01-23T10:34:00.003+10:30

Back in the 90s I considered myself a pretty good modeller. Well over 20 years in the hobby, airbrushing for a decade and a half, I knew my way around kits pretty good; but when a kit company fell down on the job my ability to think around a problem really extended no further than filler putty and hope.

Italeri has been described as one of those companies, like Hobbycraft, that perennially spoils the ship for a hap’eth o’ tar. Near enough is good enough, it has been said, and there are plenty of examples that bear out the worth of this observation. Even in later years, with the adoption of technologies for engraved detail, better decal production and attention to the wants of modellers, Italeri could still make mysterious blunders.

I read the review in FSM of their 1:72 F4U-5N (#044, dated 1994), and Paul Boyer made a marvellous job of it. I would have expected nothing less from a modeller of his abilities! I bought the kit off the shelf and was quite impressed with it, and had it almost complete when a problem I had not expected reared its head. The wings appeared to be out of alignment. I puzzled over it for a long time, held it to the light, compared it to drawing tools and graph sheets, and sure enough my eye was telling me true. My set of the tail surfaces was correct to within a degree or two, but the wings were off. It may have been my fault, but the whole wing structure sloped up to the right by some degrees. I had fitted the wing first, believed I had it right, and did not notice the problem until I installed the tails.

I tussled with the problem for ages. It had taken a lot of work to get the wing seated properly and the joints sealed up neatly, what could I do about that mismatch on the angle? Maybe I should just accept the error and finish the model, nobody but me would ever know the problem was there… But that seemed like either cheating or admitting defeat.

Eventually I forgot about that unfinished Corsair among the kits on my shelves as I went on to new and better projects, learned many new skills, got into scratchbuilding, honed my techniques on armour, amassed an impressive stash, and so forth. Fast-forward a number of years…

My great gloss finish dilemma and the accompanying clearcoat debarkal have taken many twists and turns but eventually they seem to have sorted themselves out. On a recent trip to the LHS I spotted Tamiya’s XF-17, which appears to be a close match to FS 35042, Flat Sea Blue, and therefore the right shade for late war Corsairs. My present experimental approach is one suggested long ago by Paul Boyer in a review of Future Floor Polish (unavailable in Australia to this day): paint the model in flat paints, they’re easier to apply and dry much quicker, then bring up the lustre with a coat of clear gloss. I have the flat blue, the gloss will be arriving next week by air, all I need is a subject to test it on.

I searched my log for Corsairs, Hellcats and Avengers and was about to go stash-diving when I noticed the Italeri box on the shelf… I pulled it out and looked at that wonky wing, frowned and reassured myself with the grid on my cutting mat that my eyes were telling me true – and of course they are, they always were.

Experience counts for much. Without a qualm, I flexed the wing, sprung it away from the old glue and filler, rubbed down the filler to clean up the joints, filed the mating surfaces clean, and corrected the angle. How? .020” plastic strip a few millimetres long shimmed inside the joint on the starboard side ahead of the wing, plus about half that much filed away from the portside joint, was just enough to push the wing down and into proper alignment, while leaving the mismatch at fore and after on the underside within the ability of a lick of filler and some sanding to hide.

Back in the mid-90s that would never have occurred to me, and looking back I don’t know why. Perhaps it was still a mindset that looked on the engineering of the model company as being so far in excess of anything an enthusiast could bring to bear that it must, perforce, be correct, which leaves the mismatch of parts that has always dogged the industry as a conundrum. Perhaps the real difference between me then and now is that today I will re-engineer as required, and in those days I had not yet grasped how, or indeed how simple it can be.

I’ll post pics when this Corsair is done. Better late than never…

Product Review: Aeromaster Decals

2011-01-16T13:42:00.004+10:30

On my recent Avia S-199 build I didn’t fancy the looks of the Hobbycraft decals and substituted Aeromasters for the first time, sheet 48-119, which is of course one of their quite old releases. I’m always interested to compare performance and took this opportunity to evaluate the brand – certainly insofar as the quality of their product whenever this sheet was printed, and there’s no knowing that. However, quality is fairly consistent at a technical level and some brands have a certain expectation attached to their name.

Research-wise, the company made some choices which I was not able to substantiate after considerable online checking, and given that their nickname in the hobby is Errormaster, I decided to go with my own research on those points.

At a quality level, the decals were very thin and in register, and freed off from their backing after 30-60 seconds immersion, depending on area. They settled into place well but did not react very enthusiastically to setting solutions. I use Micro Set and Micro Sol, which are not the strongest chemically, but even so the decals developed wrinkles which in some cases took a long time to settle down. The setting solution was applied four times, and while it seemed to draw the decals tightly into the paint, it did not induce them to draw into recessed detail.

The large national insignia were quite strong enough to be repositioned several times, including being moved with a wet finger because a brush was simply not getting them there. For the most part the decals did their job, their carrier film virtually vanishing under clear coats, but persistent tiny air bubbles were a pain. While pricking the decals and rewetting cured the worst (notably on the wing walk stripes), there were rather too many to apply this treatment overall, and close inspection still finds some bright spots here and there.

If I had one major beef it was with the fuselage band. It was not long enough to meet and the underside of the plane has a notable gap in its ID colours. The decal was designed to wrap around the curves but the fact it did not meet up suggested to me I had it on upside down, so I coaxed it away and applied it the other way up … which was even worse, so I removed it a second time and reapplied it the first way. It is a black mark that firstly it didn’t fit quite properly and secondly that the instructions were not clear about orientation, but a tribute that the decal was strong enough and the glue resilient enough, for it to be handled so much and still end up looking right. Yes it broke, but the small part was nudged into place with the rest and the eye barely sees the joint, especially under clear coating.

It's worth noting that the striped rudder decals were not used, the hobbyist was obliged to cut the curvature of the rudder into them with scissors, the same way Hobbycraft wanted you to. I'm not that clever, I'm afraid, so I masked and airbrushed them.

In the end, the fact the model looks good must be the judgement call, and I will certainly be using the brand again, delving into the dozens of sheets I have in my collection without hesitation.

Advanced Modeller Syndrome

2011-01-15T18:53:00.002+10:30

If you live long enough you realise you’re suffering from AMS. It creeps up on you, takes you unawares, and what seemed like enviable thoroughness when you were younger, and became a matter of what you get out of it for what you put into it when you were all grown up, has been skewed toward superdetailing because it’s the thing to do.

I try to avoid giving in to AMS. On the one hand I will make the best of a kit cockpit rather than getting deep pockets and dropping in some resin beauty, but on the other, there are times that extra detail is well within my grasp and costs nothing but patience and skill.

Having studied the M1 tank for many years from a detailing standpoint, I am still learning about it and discovering where the kit companies simplified things. Many of those details are not difficult to add, such as missing lift lugs on the rear end made from wire, drilling out the towing points, that sort of thing. Due to the limitations of moulding technology in decades gone by, you’ll often find missing bolt heads, and they’re easy to replace with slivers of rod of the appropriate thickness.

Twenty thou rod replaces missing bolts easily, but when I started doing the same with .040” rod I had to ask myself if there wasn’t a good reason Tamiya ignored them. Shaving them from the end of the rod, many would simply vanish into the dust on my cutting mat. I placed them on the tank turret to be able to see them against the tan plastic. To place them, I wiped all the liquid glue off the bottle brush I could, then put the tiniest remaining spot of glue over a pencil mark. The sliver of plastic was manipulated by breathing gently on the curved point of my scribing tool and using that to ‘catch’ it so it could be deposited in the glue and nudged into place.

About that time I asked myself what I was doing, and besides the usual wry responses one always silently generates, I did feel a certain flush of satisfaction that I could accomplish this at all. Skills develop all through our days, and I have the strongest impression I have a great deal more to learn.

Product Review: Microscale Satin

2011-01-01T23:32:00.007+10:30

Sometimes a product is under your nose and you don’t realise just how good it is.

The Microscale finishing system has been around since the 1970s and it’s hard to think where the hobby would be without the products churned out by Microscale and Superscale. But the clear coats they make, water-based acrylics in those no-nonsense plastic bottles, are something of a minor miracle. I’ve experimented with clears before and been largely disappointed: orangepeel finish, flats that are anything but flat, uncooperative airbrushing, not to mention the spectre of a terrific build being spoiled by a clearcoat crazing or going misty, which really renders the clear a dubious case of gilding the lily. But this was something else...

From time to time you have to experiment and working with Hobbycraft’s Avia S-199 kit was just such a build (article forthcoming). One major innovation of this project was the decision to clearcoat over flat paints rather than mixing gloss into the paint as I have previously. While this worked perfectly in enamels, in acrylics I found bright spots in the paint as if specks of clear gloss had failed to disperse evenly into the mixture. Thus the next step, try clear again.

Microscale’s clears are a joy to use. I have yet to give their flat and gloss a whirl (I have heard their flat will never generate a true flat), and in a sense satin was the friendliest possible experiment: I was trying for neither a dead flat nor a high gloss, but the perfect compromise between them, and this product delivered beautifully.

The liquid is milky in the bottle but dries crystal clear. Cleanup is with water, and I thinned the fluid for spraying with the same, by 50% or maybe a little more. It was extremely forgiving to work with, drying so quickly on the model that you can literally blow it dry with your breath as you watch. At the same time there is absolutely no tendency to tip-dry in the airbrush, which is amazing. You can slightly lift the sheen with successive coats, but not by much, the integrity of the lustre holds good.

Above, the Avia is seen after the sealant coat. The paint was sealed with an initial two coats, applied lightly, before the decals went on. Then the panel lines were accented with Promodeller wash, and the whole was sealed with another coat of Micro Satin. The sheen is even and attractive over the decals, and the panel wash, while not very contrasty the moment it was dry, jumped out into sharp relief with the wetting effect of the clear.

Decal carrier film largely disappears, indeed this is what these finishes were developed for, and combined with the Micro Set and Micro Sol decal solutions, is a straightforward means to quality decal work that should last a long, long time.

I have used a lot of this product previously in professional art, working with brushes to apply heavy protective coats to collectibles; put on in those quantities the finish is brighter, closer to gloss but not yet there.

The handy 1oz bottles hold enough for a dozen models or more, and at US$3.00 each are excellent value. I bought this one in Australia, but as a non-solvent based product it can be shipped by air along with most Microscale products – see them all at:

Microscale Industries

War Stories

2010-11-28T10:22:00.004+10:30

The modelling hobby loves militaria. Planes, tanks, ships, artillery, it's like the modern day hand down of toy soldiers in the days when war games were played on back lawns. Okay, that's an oversimplification, and we build our chosen thematic material for many different reasons. A love of aviation, memories of service life, tribute to those who have served, a fascination with a time or place... I tend to look on the military equipment I model as elements of history, both the social and political history of the world and the history of technology itself. Also, the subjects we model, if they are true to life and have any accuracy at all, have stories behind them, or real human lives and dangers, not just of glue and paint.

During a recent group build on the FineScale Modeler forums, three aircraft were presented by one builder, including a brief backstory for each – the historical reality of the subject matter. That crystalised the concept for me, that each and every model we build has its story. Every time someone completes a model of the Bismark or Hood, they are retelling the terrible hours in the Davis Strait when those ships duelled. When we put the finishing touches to a favourite aircraft type in the markings of an ace, we are remembering the exploits of that pilot. The same with tanks, whatever markings you settle on, for whatever reason, whether aesthetic or due to historical research beforehand, we are recalling the actions of that vehicle and its crew, valorous, victorious or otherwise.

I was struck by the degree to which the vast range of subject matter presented to modellers today is a catalogue of the ephemeral: the markings this aircraft wore for that six week period, the equipment fit that tank carried during that particular action, the camouflage scheme experimented with on ships during those months of that year... And there is the personal record.

I'm a big fan of the Bf 109 and have collected a great many decal sheets detailing the history of the type in the various theatres of World War II, and while there are markings for victorious aces who survived the war (Galland, Hartmann, etc.) there are many schemes belonging to aircraft that went down and pilots who did not survive. This became very clear when I read through the notes accompanying Eagle Strike sheet #48078, Jagdwaffe over the Sahara, a collection of Bf 109 F-4 decals. Every one of the five aircraft depicted on the sheet was lost (that in itself is not ultimately surprising), and at least three of the pilots died, possibly all five, it was not absolutely clear from the information given. It's this latter that strikes a chord. The lives that were bound up with the machines, invested in the necessity of the moment, the imperatives of the politics of the age, and which went the way of millions.

If one builds a model of the Arizona, one is remembering the dreadful death-toll in her torpedoed hull. The same with the Yamato, as well as the courageous actions that preceded the coming of the end. Tiger tanks are ever-popular, but by 1944 they were not the invincible rolling fortresses they had been, and crews died by the bushel. To build a diorama of vehicles marked for units at the Battle of Kursk, whether German or Russian, is to recall, with hopefully a due sombreness, what is by many criteria the largest and perhaps the most terrible set-piece battle in human history.

So when critics of the hobby point with a certain negativity to its fascination with military subjects, rather than with the branches that build, cars, trucks, trains and airliners, I reply thoughtfully that the hobby celebrates courage and maps the course of technological development, while also serving as a reminder of the past, which is, of course, one of the best ways to escape reliving it.

Breaking Your Dragon Virginity

2010-11-24T09:17:00.003+10:30

Over the years I have noticed a certain progression in armour modellers, from easy scales to more challenging ones, and from easier builds to the more difficult. Dragon is a case in point, a company which from its inception some twenty years ago set out to find unprecedented detail levels through complex plastic engineering.

Many modellers call building your first Dragon kit 'breaking your Dragon virginity,' and it seems to be a somewhat accurate notion, but to be fair there is Dragon, and there is Dragon.

I have in fact already built two early Dragons, both Russian armour reboxed by Zvezda, and I was frustrated by a trend toward too many small parts and too few positive location devices. I did not really count these as they were from the company's first five years or so, and any firm goes through an evolution in approach and engineering.

I'm rating Dragons's StuG III Ausf. F/8, in the old Imperial Series, as my first genuine Dragon, and this is perhaps a less than perfect first choice as the Imperials are known for being both complex and, by many standards, over-thought. The object was to create the maximum number of variants from the same set of moulds, resulting in a huge number of parts in any box, with many sprues in common between kits and scores of parts unused on any particular project. For instance, though this is a Sturmgeschuts, there are enough parts to construct a Panzer III turret in the box, along with many other elements. My impression is that if I was to carefully inventory what unused parts I have and buy a batch of bits through Dragoncare (if they're available), I could more than likely build a Panzer III as well.

To look at the plethora of individually bagged sprues in the box is an impressive experience, then you start to build and inevitably compare the engineering with other firms and eras. The large number of parts is derived at least in part from tiny details being molded individually rather than as part of larger units, but as some variants have such details and some do not, you find either holes to open as locators (if you're lucky) or merely raised lines to indicate where the parts go. In any other context I would have rated the latter as very amateurish indeed, especially in view of the very high shelf price Dragon has always commanded. If you're paying the big bucks you expect less of a fight and better fit.

The superstructure is a case in point. Individual panels in the roof cater to the evolution of the StuG's fighting compartment so that a common core casting can be detailed for a number of marks, but the fit of those parts is far from great. While cast detail provides tight panel lines and rivet runs in some places, separate parts conjure gaps only an inch or two away which would have been fatal flaws in the real machine. Likewise, the engineering of the canon mount is weak, a multi-part structure to which the gun will glue at the end of assembly but which depends totally on the strength of your adhesive to hold the pivots in place in a friction-fit. I reinforced the assembly with strip styrene and superglue to be a bit more confident of the canon not simply falling out one day.

And what do you do when two parts are trying to occupy the same space? The instructions are not sufficiently explicit on assembly order, the way that details crowd around the superstructure and relate to the hull top, and a strip on the glacis (bullet splashguard?) which is supplied with a locator tab and slot was around 1mm too close to the superstructure for the frontal armour to fit. After filing and fiddling for a while I shrugged and ground away the strip's locating tab. It can lie 1mm forward of where it's supposed to be: no one will ever know the difference.

The Imperials did not necessarily venture into photoetch and I'll need to source engine grills for this one. Despite an inevitable negative comparison of Dragon in the 90s to Tamiya (of almost any era) when it comes to simple building pleasure, I would have to say this is going to be a good looking model on the shelf. Assuming I can conquer the individual track links... I've never tried before! I have a few other Imperials in my stash and now know what to expect, and look forward to building more recent Dragon engineering too.

I'll post a full review when this kit is finished. For now, I have some plastic to wrestle with...

Kit Review: Tamiya 1:48 Fw 190 F-8

2010-10-05T13:31:00.006+10:30

This kit is 15 years old, #39 in Tamiya's expanding 1:48th scale aircraft range, and while there would be many reviewers quick to point out that the kit is "showing it's age" in ways, I would sooner concentrate on the ways in which this kit is still a very good one, and a very pleasing build. Some might point to Dragon's and Eduard's offerings as being far more detailed, with hatches that display engines and guns, but I would point to the sheer unfriendliness of those kits to build, their susceptibility to misalignment of the major components if key elements of their multitudinous internal fittings are not mounted with exact precision, something many builders only discover retrospectively after doing it wrong the first time.

In contrast, Tamiya offers a basic cockpit and engine, the latter of which is pretty much invisible behind the prop and fan (as is going to be the case with any closed-cowl 190), and the cockpit looks just fine through a closed canopy. Add some harness hardware, that would be about all you'd need to up-detail the cockpit, unless opening the hood.

The cockpit features raised instrument detail which responds very well to drybrushing, and a gunsight which is clearly visible through the windscreen. A choice of standard or Galland Haube (blown) canopies is provided, both crystal clear. The prop mounts on a poly cap, a Tamiya trademark, which allows it to be slipped into place at the very end, easing not only painting and decaling, as the spiralschnauze really needs to be applied to the spinner cone before the prop is built up.

There are some stores options for this, the dedicated ground attack variant of the 190. Twin underwing pallets for R4 unguided rockets are optional vs a quartet of well-molded SC50 bombs and their pylons, while a 300L droptank and rack are provided for the centreline station.

The Tamiya kit builds beautifully. Buildability is a dependable trait for Tamiya and even so early in their series, only a few kits after switching to recessed panel lines as standard, the parts fall together very neatly indeed. The main fuselage and wing parts are super-accurate and align correctly on their pins; the tail surfaces literally snap into place and their tabs and slots are size-coded so you can't get the surfaces on upside down. The engine cowling is a single moulding into which the completed engine sits before the unit fits back onto the fuselage and the gunbay cover drops into place.

A separate insert for the wheelwell brings up the possible detail level, while separate parts for the retraction struts, locking to the legs at fixed pivot pins, assures the main gear will almost fall into correct alignment, a boon when one considers the forward rake and toe-in on the Focke-Wulf undercarriage that can be a challenge on some kits. This is standard engineering that will be found throughout Tamiya's 190 range.

Similarly, the single-piece lower wing surface assures the correct dihedral and a gentle flexed fit for the wing to fuselage joint, often the major issue with joint dressing but here requiring no attention at all. Overall, the joints were dressed with a little adzing and wet sanding over superglue assembly, while some joints were closed with liquid cement on natural panel lines,. Filler was used in only a couple of places, such as behind the engine cowl, down by the wing roots, and to eliminate discontinuities where sprue attachment points fell.

The decals provide for four aircraft, all interesting choices, including the famous Black 10 of 2/SG4 in tropical camouflage for the Italian campaign of 1944, Green Double Chevron of SG2 in March '45, White 7 of I/SG2, in Hungary during the winter of '44 to '45, and Red 2 of I/SG2 in a zebra-pattern winter camo over standard RLM 74/75/76, in early '45. In 1995 Tamiya was recommending mixing rations to reach RLM equivalents from their acrylics range, while later kits offer matches from the Tamiya enamels range.

Their formula for RLM 76 (XF-2 Flat White plus XF-23 Pale Blue plus XF-66 Light Grey ata ratio of 7:1:2, provides a virtually perfect match for the original, lacking only lustre, and an addition of 25 to 30% X-22 Clear Gloss approximates the sheen of the original RLM colours. Unfortunately, their suggested formulas for the 74 and 75 are miles off, and I experimented to find a decent fit. For 74 they recommend XF-24 Dark Grey and XF-27 Schwartzgrun at 3:2, but this was too dark and too green, especially compared to the Model Master enamel equivalent. I reduced the ratio to 3:1 and added 1 part Flat White as well, then brought up the lustre with 30% Clear Gloss. For the 75, Tamiya suggests XF-51 Khaki should be a component, but as 75 has no green hue at all this mystifies me. I mixed it from scratch, starting with XF-24 Dark Grey and adding Flat White at a ratio of 2:1, then adding 30% Clear Gloss. On reflection this was too much gloss, as darker shades reflect more strongly than lighter ones, and 20% would have been ample. The final shades were acceptably similar to the Model Master enamel equivalents, though I have to say the acrylics are both more delicate and lack a certain 'gutsiness' that the solvent-based paints have. I mixed the RLM 04 Yellow also, warming and lightening XF-3 Yellow slightly (it could have gone still lighter...)

The camouflage was soft-masked using light card, while hard edges were acheved with Tamiya tape. This was my first time doing an all-acrylic multi-tone paintjob and I was quite pleased with the result, not pleased enough to say I'll retire enamels, but pleased that I can pursue a build like this in weather which forbids taking the hobby outside to spray solvent-based paints.

If there was any particular shortcoming to the kit, it was the decals. Two sheets are provided, one large, one small, with all the stencil data on the small sheet along with a few squadron markings. The small sheet was glossy and the glue was both slow to release from the backing paper and quick to dissolve thereafter, resulting in decals that were not predisposed to lying down invisibly. Even when gauging the soaking time correctly, some of the decals were prone to wrinkling, calling for considerable skill with solvent and setting solutions to get them to even out and pull into surface detail. I'm very glad I painted the block colour areas of the scheme I chose, as the decal version of those areas I am certain would have been unnecessarily difficult to apply and not looked half as good. There are, of course, aftermarket decal sets for the Fw 190 almost beyond reckoning, many of them probably being released with this very kit in mind, so this is perhaps the least of concerns.

Finishing tricks included carbon staining and dust applied with MiG Productions powder pigments, and an antenna wire made from Berkshire Junction EZLine.

I'm sorry this kit is out of production. Hopefully it will be reissued at some point, and until then one must haunt eBay with a watchful eye to catch it when it changes hands from time to time. My verdict on the Tamiya Fw 190 F-8 is that it is a very pleasant build with few challenges, which can be both tackled by a beginner and enjoyed by a master, and which certainly captures the stance and look of Kurt Tank's masterpiece fighter.

Smart Save on a Dodgy Decal

2010-10-02T23:48:00.004+09:30

I was decalling along nicely on my new Focke-Wulf when I had a rare faux pas on one item, the green dash for the port side. I left it to soak too long and the glue, fairly resilient in the first minute or two, pretty much dissolved away so that when the decal was applied, it barely stuck and would rather curl up as it dried out.

What to do? I could paint it, maybe, but I didn't fancy another foray into paint at this stage. I remembered a few saves involving white glue, I did something with a decal many years ago, but I had no white glue to hand. The decal was drying, crisping on the model as I watched, so what did I have close by that would do the job?

I quickly rummaged in my drawers and found Micro Krystal Klear, a PVA derivative meant for attaching canopies without crazing the plastic, or making windows by exploiting the glue's surface tension. The bottle was new, rarely, if ever, opened...

I dipped a fine brush in the stuff and laid in a bead under the up-curled edges of the decal. Then I smoothed it down with the brush rinsed and wetted with water, which squeezed out excess glue and washed it away. Wallah... Couldn't be easier. The decal laid down at once and never moved again, and the glue was invisible against the surface, whatever residue was left.

The moral of this story (besides remembering your decals when they're soaking) is always have a well-stocked supply drawer, and even if it takes years to find a use for a product, rest assured it'll turn up eventually.

Now, on with those decals...

Product Review: Tamiya Masking Tape

2010-09-30T21:59:00.002+09:30

I remember building Revell's prototype F-16 when I was a kid, in the early 1970s, the one painted up in red, white and blue. The kit was molded in white so I let the white areas be raw plastic, and masked the hard-edge red and blue. I used cellotape, which over raw plastic had nothing to pull up and gave razor-sharp demarcations. I was very impressed with the edge work, less so with the finish of flat enamels slathered on thickly with a brush, and which somehow managed to migrate under the tape where it crossed detail.

Not long afterward I tackled Monogram's B-52D, painting the whole thing with a brush in Humbrol enamels. The white underside took coat after coat and must have looked like it had been done with a roller... Due to the size I used automotive masking tape and of course discovered the necessity of de-gluing the back. Even over well-cured, thick enamel the tape had a de-surfacing effect that was not attractive. I had planned to mask and paint the walkway stripes over the NMF but after early experiments abandoned the idea. Somehow paint would always migrate under, no matter how well-burnished the tape edge seemed to be...

I used to think joint dressing was the biggest drag in the hobby, but since the advent of both cyanoacrylate glue and better-engineered kits joints have become simply a part of the process, not the disfiguring headache they once were, and the necessity of masking the paintjob has rather moved to the fore as the most time-consuming task in reaching a really good result.

Household/automotive paper tape is not designed for delicate paints and you need to seriously de-glue it to stand a chance. Scotch brand invisible mending tape is not very sticky and produces a very sharp edge. The problem with these two is they are not very flexible, they don't deform easily around corners. In the US there is the blue 'painters' tape,' but I'm not aware of it (or an equivalent) in Australia. To be fair, I've not checked out hardware stores for the item, but there's not much point when you have an item like Tamiya tape in the tool draw.

If there was a perfect product for this application, I'd have to say Tamiya have nailed it. Their tape is low-tack, burnishes down tight, deforms readily, and peels off clean. I have yet to have it pull up sprayed acrylics or enamels over any properly prepared surface (the only time I had it take paint off right through to the plastic was attributable to a deposit left on the surface of the model by the cleaning agent I had used to degrease it). The tape is also essentially re-usable, I have used the same pieces of tape on multiple projects, simply by transferring them to another plastic surface where they can stick for weeks or months and again peel off cleanly.

The tape comes in a variety of widths from narrow to broad so you have the option of curving lines or bulk coverage. I usually put a strip down on my cutting mat and slice it up with a razor knife and steel rule into ultra-narrow pieces or shapes as the job calls for. The dispenser rolls are a good idea, too.

The FW 190 I have on the bench at the moment was masked in both hard and soft contexts. The unit markings featured yellow rudder, cowl and fuselage bands, and rather than go with the kit decals for these items I sprayed them at the same time as the rudder. After overnight curing I masked them with strips of Tamiya tape and carried on with the rest of the paintjob. Several days went by, then I removed the hard masks and discovered perfectly sharp edges, and perfect protection of the underlying paint from later applications.

The big resin Beta-1 bomber featured in the last couple of posts was also fully masked with Tamiya tape, a long and complex operation, but one which went off essentially without a hitch. The colour demarcations are as tight and sharp as you could possibly wish for, with absolutely no paint bleed-under or de-surfacing on removal.

Tamiya tape is an indispensable tool in my kit, and I recommend it without reservation.

Giving Up Enamels: Just Around the Corner?

2010-09-25T17:26:00.002+09:30

I've posted a fair few times on the contrasting merits of enamels and acrylics, and despite being a lifetime enamel user I find I'm drifting toward acrylics more and more.

They don't go on as silky-smooth, they dry quicker in the airbrush tip, and for sure you need to get used to them, but the benefits really do weigh heavily in their favour. They're far less toxic, they come in larger bottles that have phenomenal shelf-life, there are enough shades around that you can either get a decent match right off the shelf or mix one without much bother, and they're durable enough to survive gentle handling. Their non-toxic nature means they're probably the only option for indoor spraying if you're health-conscious at all (brain cells, we don't need no stinkin' brain cells!), so you can paint through the winter without being well-enough heeled to have a spray booth/ fume hood in your workshop, and that's the majority of us. Also, enamel paint chemically attacks vinyl so if you fancy anything from anime subjects to dinosaurs via movie tie-in figures, acrylics will be your medium of choice.

They've come a long way in the last twenty years, and modern acrylics are seriously competing with traditional enamels. I've done mostly-acrylic paintjobs on my last eight armour kits, with oil-wash weathering over the top, and it's become my standard armour technique, so it may only have been a matter of time before the medium encroached on aircraft.

The Convair XAB-1 that I reviewed in the box in my last post, rather longer ago than I had imagined (apologies for the long delay in posting!) is now finished and submitted to the commissioning magazine, and it turned out to be an all-acrylic paintjob. I had intended to do the natural metal parts in enamel, but fate took a hand: I discovered I had no enamel thinner in stock other than the dirty thinner in the bottom of an old bottle I use to suspend oils for wash detailing, and as I was on a deadline I realised the metallic would have to be acrylic too. Fortunately I had the shades in hand, so I mixed Tamiya X-11 Chrome Silver with XF-16 Flat Aluminium (9:1) and laid it on in several decent coats. The underside white of the bomber was four coats of satin white mixed from X-2 Gloss White and XF-2 Flat White, while the red of the engine inlets, the chromate green of the wheel wells, satin black of the antiglare panel, dark metallic of the flaps and gunmetal of the exhausts were all previously mixed and sprayed in the same acrylic range.

I was impressed by the covering ability (with the exception of the white, and that's the nature of the beast where white is concerned), and the rapid drying which made multiple coats a practical proposition in a modest timeframe. The job became practical and the finish was entirely acceptable. Yes, the natural metal had a certain grain to it that an enamel job probably would not, and in future I will still work in enamels when the environmental conditions are right; but when they are not and there is a model to be finished, the less-toxic medium is now fully up to the job.

I have a Tamiya Fw 190 F-8 underway with an all-acrylic finish. I'll write a review of this excellent kit when she's done, and talk about mixing the RLM paint shades from the basic Tamiya range, an operation which, at time of writing this article, looks both simple and highly accurate (sometimes...).

Cheers, Mike

In-Box Review: Fantastic Plastic's Retooled “Beta-1”

2010-07-31T16:59:00.006+09:30

Resin is an almost ubiquitous medium these days, used by professionals and enthusiasts alike, and often the line between them blurs away to nothing as skills grow and shoestring operations are replaced by full-on limited-production model firms. They're not just 'garage kits' now, they have in fact become a force to be reckoned with.

Fantastic Plastic is one of the success stories of the modern limited-run marketplace, specialising in science fiction, 'realspace' and 'paper' aeroplanes, with high quality kits patterned by master craftsmen and featuring the highest quality resin moulding and casting technology. These kits aren't cheap but they certainly deliver unusual subject matter.

It's not only Moebius and Polar Lights that resurrect classic subjects and recreate lost lines. Fantastic Plastic has had dozens of subjects through its catalogue in the last few years, and they recently released an eagerly awaited kit that brings to life an old 'what if' subject, a mid-Cold War design by the old Hawk company based on theoretical studies by Convair for a nuclear-propulsion bomber, presumably to replace the B-52 sometime around the end of the 1960s. Little could military planners have dreamed in those days that the B-52 would still be in service well into the 21st century.

Nuclear propulsion was a 1950s technological darling, something which worked on paper and was kicked around by 'backroom boys' but never saw the prototyping shop to the best of aviation historians' knowledge. The idea was that nuclear energy created heat which was passed to ingested air to create a ramjet effect without consuming liquid fuel, thus allowing an aircraft to remain in flight for long periods, indeed for as long as crew fatigue parameters would allow, and a whole slew of designs came along from major aircraft firms in the late 1950s.

Kit company Hawk cashed in on the public fascination with this extremely sci-fi concept and designed their “XAB-1,” the B-1 of an earlier era, as the flagship guardian of the West, intended to cruise for long periods on nuclear deterrent patrol, ready to head for targets in Russia if the world ever tipped into DEFCON-1... It's interesting to look back on how this nightmare scenario generated business for lots of people, and the kit industry's perpetual association with militaria is a prime example.

Hawk's original kit was injection moulded at 1:188th scale, and has become a collector's item. Rare unbuilt examples change hands at fabulous prices, a 1964 example is going at auction as I write this, they have become investment properties that one could never afford to build. Fantastic Plastic comes to the rescue with a fully retooled kit in pressure-cast resin, mastered by Scott Lowther and cast by Masterpiece Models, enlarged to 1:144th scale and featuring finely recessed panel lines in the modern style. The kits has a pencil-slim fuselage 17” long, landing gear which may be built deployed or retracted, waterslide decals by Jbot, and features photographic instructions. There is no cockpit detail, no detail in the wheelwells, and a few inconsistencies and flash in the resin to be cleaned up, but these are minor considerations. The original featured red plastic exhaust flames, a juvenile gimmick which has been dropped in this entirely serious 'take' on the subject, while the original's two 'parasite fighters' are also included as superb single-piece resin castings.

The kit comes packaged in a sturdy white card box, whose lid is decorated with a printed colour label featuring digital artwork combing the model with a realistic sky and CGI exhaust efflux, something of a Fantastic Plastic trademark. Inside, the largest castings, such as the one-piece wing and the right and left halves of the fore and aft fuselage sections, are loose in the box, the rest of the 45 parts being collected in a ziplock bag. Many parts are supplied with their pour-stubs already cleaned up.

The hollow-cast parts have alignment pegs and holes, allowing them to be snapped together exactly the same way as injection moulded parts, but curiously some of the pegs and holes don't match up, such as instances of opposing pegs. One needs to do some trimming of pegs and drilling of holes as part of the clean-up phase, but the good news is that the resin, while completely rigid, is soft to cut and works very readily. Go gently and adjustments should take almost no time at all.

There is no clear part for the cockpit canopy, and in so small a scale the model gets away with this. I have long harboured an interest in scratchbuilding this beast in 1:72nd scale, she would be a monster 34” long and 22” in span, and would definitely have a cockpit interior and clear parts. The interesting thing is that the layout of the super-streamlined nose virtually forbids a side-by-side pilot crew configuration, which is widely known (now) to be the only workable one for long duration flight.

I will be building this kit shortly as a review for a major magazine, so look for retrospective comments on Fantastic Plastic's Beta-1 in about a month's time. For now, the kit can be purchased for US$105 from Fantastic Plastic's online store, check it out at:

http://www.fantastic-plastic.com/ConvairXAB-1CatalogPage.htm

Fascination With “Type”

2010-07-25T18:04:00.003+09:30

Sometimes, without consciously meaning to, we find ourselves on a single-type production line. It can happen for a variety of reasons, and plain fascination with a particular subject matter is probably the single most significant. The hobby is about entertainment, education and general knowledge come decidedly second, so when a hobbyist finds him or herself focussing on a particular subject it's probably because there's an abiding interest.

It might be that you're a fan of MOPAR muscle, and you're on your tenth 1:25th scale Chrysler Corp F-body pro-streeter in a row. Maybe you're an armour fan who belongs to the "panzers only" club because they're colourful. Maybe your thing is vintage biplanes and between them Roden and classic Aurora have occupied your bench time for the last two years.

Of course, it can creep up on you. I recently found myself building four Fw 190 fighters at the same time sort of. One was started four years ago, brought to the painting stage and almost forgotten, back in its box. One was a quick build to work with some AM decals, another was a long-delayed foray into building a leading manufacturer's offering with all the bells and whistles. The last was a chance to work in 1:32nd scale for the first time in twenty years, and only the fourth time ever, on the assumption that there will shortly be somewhere to store and display a model that size.

However it worked out, there are four German WWII fighters on my bench at the same time, which will mostly be in the same RLM 74/75/76 scheme, and that's a plus to production-line building. You can get at least two of them ready for the paintshop at the same time and do both from the same mixing and cleaning cycle, which reduces work and economises on air if you're not using a compressor.

Does it risk boredom? Seeing a long line of the same subject ahead of you can either whet your appetite for completion, as each finished build fuels the next, or dull it completely when some other fascinating body shape and colour scheme comes along to compete with the same-old same-old. I think I'll stagger things, do a 1:72 and the 1:48 together, tackle the 1:32 on its own due to sheer volume, and the last 1:72 separately by default as it has a slightly different scheme. It'll take months to work through them, but I have every expectation that each finished plane will more than inspire me to press on with the next.

I suppose the three Phantoms I have underway also count as a fascination with type. Look for posts in future picking up the theme of the great Hasegawa/Fujimi Phantom Showdown, as both these brands are on the bench and will be reviewed together.

PS: I'm now using Picassa for my image loads, click them and you'll get a larger version from now on.

Recently Completed: Trumpeter SA-2 -- Finishing That Shelf-Sitter

2010-07-24T22:04:00.010+09:30

After a long and particularly busy hiatus (involving submission of a PhD thesis, beginning a new job and continuing with past endeavours), I find the itch to resume blogging about my favourite pass-time, and going by the traffic World in Miniature has been generating, fresh posts will probably be most welcome!

In the last few months I've been very busy on the hobby bench, working on a round dozen projects. The trouble with spreading yourself so thin is that no particular project moves along very quickly even though you seem to be working as many hours. The great thing about having some older, unfinished projects is that you can get them off the bench with comparatively minimal work, and that was the case with Trumpeter's SA-2 Guideline missile kit.

I began this item probably two years ago, and did almost all the construction at the time. I was very happy with the fit, the cylindrical missile parts lined up very nicely and joints were dressed with the old superglue and adzing technique, always the best and quickest way. The alignment of the sixteen fins were more problematical, a right-angle jig would be a great help, as I doubt I got any of them at exactly 90 degrees. Still, 89 is close enough to satisfy the eye from most angles.

The thing that stopped me at the time was “Russian Green.” What shade is it? I have an old tin of Humbrol Russian Armour Green, which is no longer in the range, and I'm hoarding it. Besides, these days I try to paint in acrylics whenever I can, especially for armour subjects as it's not only far less toxic (and fairer to the family where the stink is concerned), it also lends itself perfectly to oil wash weathering afterward.

I did some research online, found my way to chat boards and such, and found that there were actually several shades of camouflage green in simultaneous use in the Soviet military, and any of them would be used in any particular context on the basis of what supplies were available. One common shade has been calculated to a Federal Standard value of 34098, and given that 34097 is a standard US shade, available in model paint ranges, I decided this was close enough for me. Tamiya XF-58 matches FS 34097, so that became my launcher shade.

Still, that alone was not enough to get me to pull the box off the shelf and get to it. As I'm sure I've mentioned in some previous post, I use a commercial compressed gas cylinder to power my airbrush, and I recently had a negative experience: for the first time in 15 years, I had a defective cylinder. I picked it up and seemingly overnight the fill had dropped from 15 bars to 10. I thought I had maybe failed to safety the main tap correctly, and heaved a sigh of frustration, but the next time I came to it the reading was 8, and I knew I'd safetied it properly that time. I talked to the company and they agreed to exchange it (they checked it and my gauges and the tank was definitely leaking). There was a weekend in the way, however, so I did some spraying and tried to use up whatever air I had available. The SA-2 was one of the kits that got some long-overdue attention.

I sprayed the launcher's six subassemblies with a good coat of XF-58, then I could do the standard armour weathering techniques I've developed. The big idea with this kit is that the launcher and missile are, literally, two different kits. In Soviet markings the installation is typical of the air defence settup found in North Vietnam, and this offers interesting finishing possibilities. The launcher stood in the tropical heat, dust and rain of Vietnam for years, and despite maintenance it would suffer the extremes of climate. Naturally, it would display rust and dust, and general dirt, just like any piece of heavy equipment. The missile, however, would not, being transported to the launcher site, loaded and fired long before weathering could set in. Also, the missiles themselves probably received more protection from the elements than the launchers.

So, I pursued them as separate projects. The missile was a painting experiment also. The pale grey shade used on the missiles seems to have no Western equivalent, so I mixed it. It was not the flat camo of the launcher, but either gloss or semigloss. I've had problems spraying gloss, and was not convinced the missiles were full gloss anyway, so I mixed 50% X-2 Gloss White with 30% XF-2 Flat White and 20% XF-66 Flat Light Grey. On reflection the finish is not quite bright enough and the shade not quite light enough, next time I build one I'll raise the gloss white to 60% and drop the grey to 10%, which should be a better mix. Nevertheless, I'm happy with this one, the grey certainly looks pale against the launcher green. Weathering was kept to a minimum, a thin black oil pinwash around raised details and recessed panel lines simply to make the structures visually 'pop.'

The missile is covered with stencil decals, more than forty of them. Many of them group adjacent Russian data placards, and they can be fiddly: I mangled only one decal in the process, and decided for ease to separate out elements from one or two others, which both extended the time involved and simplified getting a correct positioning. I was still decalling as I wrote the first draft of this post.

Speaking of decals, Trumpeter's printer, Cartograf, in Italy, have done a remarkable job on them. I don't think I have ever seen kit decals snug down into the surface so tight, and with carrier film that literally vanished against the lustre of my paint mix. The dried decal transparent areas are faintly lighter than the background, that's the only thing that gives them away. Placement instructions could have been more explicit, though. There is one interesting gaff, one of the red stripe markings that circles the body, just back of the juncture to the nose, is incorrect. Under a magnifying glass you can see that, instead of Russian stencil data, it says in English “NO PHOTO SORRY” – presumably a notation from the research team during creation of the decal sheet which, as it was not in Chinese, accidentally made its way through quality checking all the way to manufacture. Having omitted this one, I used a few bits of stripping from it to help repair the mid-body wrap-around decal that I mangled somewhat.

Final details involved spraying a grey-black mix to simulate the scorching of the rocket efflux on the blast deflector, brush-painting inside the rocket motor with a dark metallic enamel, fitting a few tiny parts on the launcher, including a few that fell/broke off during handling, then I could get some MiG “Vietnam Earth” pigment onto the launcher. This is good stuff! I can't wait to apply it to some Vietnam-era US armour.

Mating the two stages was an interesting job. A snug fit to start with, the paint on the alignment runners made it extra-snug, so I worked the boost stage carefully onto its guide, then slipped the upper stage onto its own guide and glued them together actually on the ramp.

It's the only kit I've built in many years which uses every last part and decal: there are no alternatives provided. However, three small decals, 8, 9 and 15, don't appear in the instructions: 8 and 9 are the starboard side counterparts of 7 and 10 and go at the base of the small aft fins on the second stage. 15 I haven't spotted anywhere.

All in all, this was a very pleasing model that built well and looks sharp on the shelf. I'm not sure if it's still in production but examples change hands on eBay for reasonably attractive prices these days. As a companion to Revell's re-released Nike Hercules missile, a similar vintage and role of weapon, and in fairly close scales too, it makes a most interesting display of Cold War technology.

PS: Yes, a part fell off the launcher and was not reattached before I did the photos, a sharp eye will spot the absence in the photos above. So, sue me...

A Thousand Appologies...

2010-04-05T17:58:00.002+09:30

... for the month that's gone by since I last posted. I honestly expected to see a post about my recent experiences working with ProCast resin at a lab at my local university, and was amazed to discover that with all the flap in the last couple of weeks over getting my PhD thesis completed and submitted that I hadn't actually uploaded the darn thing. I wrote it, I took the photos, but...

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible! And there's plenty happening on the modeling bench for the foreseeable future!

Cheers, TB379

Monochrome, Pt 2

2010-03-01T16:58:00.003+10:30

As promised, here’s another look at “triple value monochrome,” with the Trumpeter 1:35 M1126 Stryker as the subject. I started this one along with the Strv 103B as back to back projects, and both have built well (review posts coming up in due course), and both are now at the same stage, they’ve been through the paintshop and are waiting on the weathering process, decals, hull tools and antennas.

The first thing that strikes you about the NATO Green is just how grey it really makes the Swedish scheme look. When I mixed the Swedish shade it seemed particularly green to me, now it seems quite grey. Nevertheless, both shades were given the same treatment, and by the same ratios.

The fade coat, applied to the middle of panels and hatches, was NATO Green (Tamiya XF-67) lightened with 20% flat white (XF-2) and thinned by the standard 50%, or maybe a tad more. Likewise, the shadow coat, applied to the underside, under overhanging structures and in a subtle post-shade effect around the line of hatches and divisions in the armour, was mixed the same way, using 20% flat black (XF-1). The photos were taken at this stage.

The gradient from lightened to darkened across the base colour value seems quite steep at this point, and the temptation is to think maybe only 10% tinting should have been used. But the washes to follow have the effect of darkening the cumulative value of the model, as well as drawing all the tonalities together, so I’m not concerned at this point. If the values turn out to be too contrasting I can always slap on some more wash over the highlights to pull them back.

Drybrushing will be a slightly different operation, as it’ll take place in enamels (I’ve not learned the trick of brush painting Tamiya acrylics yet… Unlike the Citadel range for Warcraft miniatures, they’re not formulated specifically for brush painting, and while they airbrush like a dream I’ve learned to switch to enamels when it’s time to break out the sables.) So I’ll be mixing an equivalent tinted shade, perhaps starting with FS 34127 Forest Green or FS 34102 Medium Green, then lightening with white to profile edges.

I had hoped to have this batch of models finished at this time, but real life has a way of intruding… I better stop writing and get back to the bench!

Taming Brass

2010-02-17T23:58:00.005+10:30

I had something of a pleasant surprise today: my latest AFV is decked out with photoetched brass, something I would never have expected. Brass has never behaved for me and I didn’t expect it to this time. But… That Trumpeter M1126 Stryker came with a beautiful fret in the box, and I thought I might as well give it a shot, as there were alternate plastic parts if the brass wasn’t cooperative.

I’ve used PE before, of course, I’ve added screens and grills on three previous models, but folding brass has so far defied me. Maybe I started out on the wrong foot… The Airwaves set I picked up for my Academy Merkava II was simply too hard to fold with the old standby, two single-edge razor blades, and I had not heard of the annealing trick at the time, so the PE more or less ended up back in the packet with a big question mark hanging over it.

With those memories, I approached the Trumpeter brass with trepidation, worked on basic theory and gave it a go, open to the possibilities but expecting nothing in particular.

Well… It cut where it was meant to cut, filed where filing was necessary, and folded where folding was called for. In moments, it seemed, some very tidy brass structures were on my bench. The only pain was the pedestal for the forward wire cutter which did not match the size of the recess in the hull, which needed filing out to accept it, and that may have been my fault for folding into the guides in the brass, instead of away from them. No matter, the fit was quickly adjusted with files. The only brass part for which I opted to use the plastic instead was the small shield part that goes behind the weapon station on the commander’s cupola, and that’s because the component is simply the wrong size. The plastic part fits (and was moulded remarkably thinly), the brass part never will. Similarly, the support under the starboard jerry can holder will also simply not fit: the locator slot is set too far back, the fold points result in a structure that would hold the rack away from the hull if located there. I filed the tab away and tried again but the support structure interfered with the plastic components directly below. The plastic equivalent was moulded as part of the plastic version of the rack, and I considered cutting it away… Another option would be to scratch the support from some light stock, which may be the easiest route.

I found something of a lesson in this; one automatically assumes that hi-tech metal parts must be “better” than the plastic ones, but their accuracy can only be as great as the information on which they are based, and if they are the wrong size or shape they will never fit properly, no matter how sophisticated their manufacture.

The cya bond between brass parts is surprisingly quick and strong, but the bond between brass and plastic seems lamentably weak: this model must be handled with the greatest care. If the brass parts, with the exception of the securely-snugged-down engine grills, end up falling off, I may retro to the plastic parts in the end, but the experiment has been very much worthwhile.

All told, I feel more charitable toward photoetch today than before. It’s a learning curve, for sure, to fold and trim tiny pieces of brass and steel, and I don’t see myself ever using much of what’s out there, especially when it crosses that line between adding necessary detail and “gilding the lily,” or what’s worse, overcomplication for the sake of it, but I can certainly see myself using etch at this level, to reproduce scale thickness and make from fine sheet metal those structures which are made from light sheet metal on the real deal.

I don’t for a moment consider myself a brass-tamer yet, another few successful metal detailing outings and I might start to think of myself as one, but I’ve made a start… I find myself thinking about that Lion Roar set of turret armour for late Panzer IVs I picked up last year, and can actually see me getting my clumsy fingers around the job after all!

More on the Stryker when the paint goes on.

Monochrome, and When It Isn’t

2010-02-15T23:28:00.002+10:30

There are some techniques that “take a bit of getting comfortable with,” and some that take a bit of nerve to try out. Pre- and post-shading I’ve not yet given a whirl. The idea of blacking the panel lines of an aircraft to show through the actual colour coats as a subtle shadow around the lines, like a dark halo to each side of the final line accent, is a great one, but it takes a surprising degree of guts to try it out, when models already come out pretty good on less drastic techniques. And as for post-shading, even after 31 years of air painting, I don’t trust my airbrush not to make a mess at the last minute…

I started fading paint on the top surfaces of tanks about two years ago, and I’ve faded seven models so far. Mostly disruptive schemes with dirt and rust on top, the fading is subtle and delivers a pleasing effect. For only the second time I’m doing a single colour vehicle, and the fade-and-shade routine seems to be becoming more natural, just a part of the process.

The shot above is an overview of Trumpeter’s 1:35 Strv 103B, Sweden’s famous “S-tank,” the only fixed-gun MBT to see service. I’ll review this very good kit fully when it’s finished, for now I’d like to talk about the process of fooling the eye with the paintwork.

I mixed the base colour from Tamiya acrylics and got a good solid coat on, then mixed a batch lightened with a 20% addition of white. It took this much to get a visible result, the green was a powerful pigment. I laid this mixture on, well thinned, with subtle spotting and stroking in the centre of panels and areas, the typical pattern for sun-fading and general wearing away of paint. Then I mixed some more and darkened it with a 20% addition of black, and applied that to the undersides, the hull behind the running gear, under the bow, tail and stowage bins, and under the topmost portion of the dozer blade, the idea being to encourage the eye to see shadow where shadows would most naturally fall.

The photo is taken at this point, and the variation in tonality is actually more visible in the image than it is to the naked eye. The next round of work will be oil pinwashing followed by enamel drybrushing, my standard armour finishing process, and I expect the overall effect to blur together into a pleasing optical illusion.

Do real tanks display fading this way? Peacetime tanks that get regularly serviced? Maybe not, but the eye tends to expect these tricks, and when you get used to them, a model finished in parade-clean condition has the disturbing quality of a toy. Tanks should be dirty, they should be rusty and their paint should be faded by the elements in which they serve, and this logic has created a suite of visual queues without which armour models don’t seem quite right. This is not really true, certainly not all the time, but that’s maybe the theme for another post entirely. The question is whether you can paint a model one colour overall and have it look convincing to the naked eye.

I would say probably not. So long as it is subtly done, the fade-and-shade routine automatically imparts a tonal gradient between highlight and shadow which are close but perceptible, and provide a narrow “reference range” against which the much starker contrast of the dark pinwash in corners and angles around details, and the light drybrushing that profiles the sharp edges of structures, become part of an overall spectrum of tonality that tie the model visually together.

That’s the theory, it seemed to work on the Japanese Type 74 I featured back in the early days of this blog, and I’ll know pretty soon if it works on the Strv 103B. My next project up is Trumpeter’s M1126 Stryker, another monochrome subject, and I’ll do it the same way, with one extension: I’ll use the darkened version of the base colour to generate a soft post-shade effect around all the divisions in the Stryker’s external plating. Combined with the fade coat applied to the middle of all the panels, this effect will either look great or like a patchwork quilt (in which case I’ll zap on another coat of NATO Green and start again…)

I’ll sequel this post with another look at the “triple-value monochrome” trick when I do that job, and there’ll probably be something soon about natural metal finishes for aircraft, if the approach I’m trying on a Tamiya F-84 works like it should…

Now That’s What I Call Shelf-Life

2010-02-05T18:25:00.004+10:30

I have rarely had cause to need gold paint. I have always fancied doing that gold-painted F-16, Sioux City Special I believe she was called, I even have a kit and decals lined up for the day I have the time... The chance... Somewhere to put it... But the odd gold detail might call for having gold in stock.

I have a tinlet of Humbrol #16, Gold. I recently needed to open it for a few dabs of gold to visually blend in some gold foil I was applying, and sure enough, there it was, in the box at the back of the drawer. I really don’t remember if it was ever opened to do a job, but I am sure it was bought to do the gold detail work (engine accents, IIRC) on a small kit of the Honda CB 1100R motorcycle, by a firm called Crown.

I bought that kit around Christmas 1982, it may be the oldest single article in my stash (still unbuilt). And by default, that means the paint is now around 27 years old. (The pic above is a new tin, I can’t seem to lay my hands on the old classic…)

It wasn’t even thick in the tin. I gave it a shake, opened it and stirred it for thirty seconds, and it was good to go. When that paint was manufactured, that expression wasn’t even in use, nor were in the pipeline, 24/7, on track or my bad. That’s what you call shelf-life! Maybe the pigments weren’t as finely ground in those days, and the available ranges were smaller, but the chemical balance of the paint in the tin makes for a virtual time-capsule: so long as the balance remains within certain margins the mixture should remain viable forever.

Of course, there are other tins that go hard while you look at them, and I had a bottle of MM enamel whose contents turned into a strange, rubbery substance without ever being opened, or maybe only for a tinting dab, but this is where chemistry meets philosophy. The same thing happened recently to another bottle, much newer, something to do with failure of the foiled card seal in the cap, I think. Folks have been complaining on other forums about this and other shortcomings of the Model Master range, lately, which is a pity as it’s really good paint, just let down at times by packaging issues (and accuracy issues, like the identification numbers of the RLM 82 and RLM 83 shades somehow getting reversed when the labels were printed… Or their Dunkelgelb being a bit on the dark side…)

For the moment, I’m very impressed with Humbrol. Of course, the delicate balance of chemistry in the tin has been disturbed now, and the next time I look at it, it may have congealed, disintegrating like a vampyre whose coffin was opened before dusk. I guess we’ll see when it comes time to build that F-16 (unless I’ve graduated to Talon Acrylics by then...)

Product Review: MicroScale Trimfilm (and how I don’t seem to have the knack…)

2010-01-30T11:23:00.002+10:30

I’ve used MicroScale Industries products for many years and have the greatest respect for the firm. Established in 1933, they’ve been serving the modelling community even longer than Kalmbach Publishing, and their decals are legendary. In the days before everyone and his uncle was churning out decals through computerised imaging systems, Krasel Industries was the big guy on the block, and when they split into MicroScale and SuperScale, many years ago, it was double the bang for your buck, one firm catering to railroaders and others, the other to the burgeoning military enthusiast marketplace.

First of all, I would like to say that I have over 400 sheets of SuperScale decals in my collection, and know their quality, plus seven of MicroScale’s finishing products which I use with confidence. So why am I complaining about Trimfilm?

Trimfilm was a great idea. Solid colour sheets, and sheets of generic designs, stripes, checkerboards, in a variety of colours and gauges, a mix-and-match solution for a thousand different graphical challenges. Add to these a wide range of typestyle sheets, fonts, sizes and colours, and you have a resource to rustle up detailing at the drop of a hat.

That’s the theory: what about practise?

Maybe practice is what I need, because I can’t get the stuff to cooperate. I tried using Trimfilm on an SF scratchbuild or two, e.g., the bold red stripes around the rear fuselage of the MEV from Thunderbirds Are Go, and found to my frustration that the half-inch red stripe material had no intention of cooperating. The thinness, so valuable in getting small decals to conform to surface contours, made the material so fragile that it shattered if I breathed on it. It tended to break up while merely detaching from the backing paper, was quite impossible to move effectively once it was on the surface, and grabbed almost at once in any case, drying decidedly lumpy over a surface wet-polished smooth. I tried several times to get the material to do what I wanted it to, then gave up and sprayed the stripes instead. Perhaps I had hold of a defective sheet, I thought, and tried other sheets and other gauges.

The red stripe around the MEV is flanked by two finer black stripes and I did these with eighth-inch Trimfilm. The story was the same, and I pieced the lines together from multiple fragments of broken decal, not enjoying the process. When I came to do the wing walkway lines on my scratchbuilt F-116 fighter from Joe-90 I found myself using the same material by necessity, but having no more rewarding an experience. For black lines around the engine nacelles I had far better luck spraying flat black and masking with Tamiya tape, and for some lines circling the nacelles I actually sprayed the tape black and applied it permanently, because the tape will stretch symmetrically across a two-dimensional curve, and decal film essentially will not.

This is unfortunate. Perhaps my technique is off, maybe I don’t have a sufficiently gentle touch to use this material: if it behaved like most decals usually do for me it would be great, but it didn’t (which is odd, as I’ve used SuperScale aircraft decals before and had no trouble with them). Maybe I should have reinforced them with Liquid Decal Film to keep them from shattering.

I’m still drawn to the range, though, a sort of love-hate relationship. All those pre-made items are creative candy! And the typestyles suggest custom lettering on home-designed projects (though to be fair, custom made decals have made a very effective challenge to the idea of piecing logos together a letter at a time.) For now I’ll say that my Trimfilm collection lies in its box, forlorn and neglected, awaiting either a renewed sense of adventure on my part or the wisdom of those who know how to make it behave.

Check out the enormous range at: http://www.microscale.com/

Product Review: Cavalier Zimmerit

2010-01-21T18:12:00.007+10:30

Australian firm Cavalier Model Productions has been around for quite a few years now, and besides their resin car kits and other esoteric goodies, they are perhaps most famous for their Zimmerit. Zimmerit was an antimagnetic paste applied like cement to the hulls of German armoured vehicles in the middle years of World War II (discontinued around November 1944) in response to the Russian tactic of magnetic mines which could be attached by infantrymen. Many choice modelling subjects are properly depicted with a coat of this rough, rippled stuff, and while there are many techniques for creating the effect, and some manufacturers, notably Dragon, have made forays into producing it as a moulded detail, Cavalier’s solution has been very successful and very popular.

Basically, Cavalier zimmerit is a wafer-thin sheet of moulded grey resin, as thin as paper and highly flexible. It’s delicate but captures the texture perfectly, including damage and defects in application for an amazingly realistic effect. Some 35 sets are presently available, including a batch for the new 1:48th scale armour, though most are for traditional 1:35th scale, with specific sets designed for particular kits. Fiddly parts are reproduced from kit parts with zimmerit added, so you have a complete replacement part. All sheets are cast in a uniform pale grey resin.

High utility can be found with their generic sheets too. If your vehicle is not covered by their sets of pre-formed parts, you can buy a generic sheet (there are four different patterns available) and you’ll more than likely have all you need for your project.

That’s what I did, working on Tamiya’s old (but still excellent) StuG IV kit (35087), as mentioned in the last post. No specific set has been produced for this kit, so I ordered up set CV-118, generic standard pattern zimmerit, and basically cut the parts as required. The set is very generous, containing two 15.5cm x 21cm sheets, and the whole project took me around half a sheet: that’s great value, panning out at about Aus$5 to zim each of potentially four models.

Starting from one symmetrical corner of the sheet, I began by measuring up needed panels and cutting them out with knife and straightedge. I cut them a fraction large, especially allowing the inclined edges of panels to lie inside the edges of the pieces I was cutting (photo, below). The method in this madness will soon become apparent. One needs to remember the orientation of the pattern, check references and see which way the pattern runs on which surfaces, and cut components accordingly.

There are several suitable adhesives to use with this resin, five-minute epoxy, for instance. I used regular superglue as, given the fact I would be trimming the edges afterward, absolute precision was not called for. If using one of the pre-formed sets, I would use slow-cure gel superglue, for its strength and because it allows time to both spread the glue completely over the back of the sheet (as in the next photo) and to slip, or remove and replace, the piece once in place to refine the fit. As each piece was secured, simply by pressing carefully into place (second next photo), the slight excess left at the edges was trimmed with a sharp blade, creating an essentially perfect fit (third next photo). Any points on the edges that were not fully secured were glued down with thin CA, brushed on sparingly, then the edges were lightly filed to virtually blend the resin sheets together.

It is worth doctoring the zimmerit as well, you can score and chip the edges in high-wear areas, the likely contact zones, to create damage, chunks of the cement-like matter either chipped away by contact with branches or obstructions, or shattered free by the impact of shot. It’s as easy as cutting in with a knife or the edge of a file.

The sets come with a zimmerit tool, a cast resin ‘rake’ for custom work using one of the standard techniques. Basically, in areas where the zimmerit doesn’t quite fit, or edges where the juncture of sheets did not come out as perfectly as you might have wished, you can paint on some thinned putty, wait until it’s firming up, then score the pattern into it to match the resin sheets around about.

The complete zim job on this model took several hours to do, and it was my first outing with the product -- I’ll probably be quicker in future. Here she is with some paint on, late in the finishing stage:

I couldn’t be happier with the result, and look forward to more Cavalier zimmerit-enhanced German armour models to come.

You can find some sheets at better hobby stores, but for the full range go to:

http://www.cavaliermodels.com/Zimmerit.html

Here you’ll find an historic article on the stuff, including reference photos, plus a listing of all available sets. At Aus$19.99 each they are a good buy, and domestic postage of $3.95 is no blow to the wallet.

This is a first-rate product, highly recommended, and proudly Australian!

Recently Completed: Tamiya StuG IV

2010-01-14T13:46:00.004+10:30

This kit (#35087) has been around for a very long time, thirty years or more, and in general one expects toolings of that age to fall down on the job by comparison to the new stuff. In recent years it was widely speculated that Tamiya were backing out of the 1:35th scale armour game, leaving it to the prolific releases of Dragon and Trumpeter that were making such an onslaught in the marketplace, but among Tamiya’s updatings to get new life from old moulds there have been a series of gems, their T-55, JS-3, Char B-1, Leclerc, and the brand new ISU-152. Tamiya has always been characterised by “buildability first,” catering to the younger or less experienced modeller by engineering their models to build well, something Dragon started to do with their “Smart Kit” range about thirty years after Mr. Tamiya made it policy. So just how do older kits build?

I wanted to do this one for many years. I was inspired by Glen Phillips’ build-up and detailing techniques in the May 1991 FineScale Modeler, and hunted out a StuG IV which I bought from a second hand dealer in Japan, but it was many years before I could get around to it. For one thing, I had to figure out how to make an airbrush spray fine lines, as the rotbraun mottle was far finer than anything I had ever sprayed before, and these skills did not come easily. And there was the matter of Zimmerit, a prepossessing task when it involves plastering putty all over a model and scraping it to make that characteristic ridged pattern.

The second problem was the easier to solve. Cavalier Model Products to the rescue – see my upcoming review of the brilliant Cavalier product for the low down on how to get a superb rippled finish on your German armour, if you’ve not already used this terrific texturing medium.

The first was solved about a year ago when I did some experiments to spray a more convincing, true-to-the-research, disruptive scheme on my Academy Tiger I Early, and I found that I had a formula for getting tight edges and fine demarcations (at last) from my Paasche VL.

Armed with these and other tools (such as the Alliance Model Works photoetched mask set for tank wheel rims, reviewed last time), I built the old StuG and was very pleasantly surprised. The parts fit was excellent throughout, there were no dramas, no fights, except for one track which would not couple. I shaved away the pins and superglued the ends together, problem solved; I’m not sure I even class that as a problem.

The kit has lots of options: two lengths of spare track to mount in a couple of possible locations; schkurtzen standoff armour and mounting rails, none, one or two radio antennas, moulded concrete frontal slabs for late-serving vehicles, open or closed hatches, a figure, deployed or stowed MG shield, posable scissors-sighting gear, plus a suite of divisional insignia and several sets of vehicle numbers, allowing you to either follow the kit suggestions for final subject vehicles or do your own research and paint it however you like. There’s plenty you can do with this kit to build several and never have two look even substantially similar.

Another thing I like is the fact that all the wheels rotate, with the exception of the return rollers. Some later kits don’t do this, and while link-and-length tracks are of course rigid, and Tamiya engineered their early-era kits in the days when motorisation for “toy appeal” was in, it’s always somewhat cool to see your model’s running gear actually work on a rough surface.

In terms of accuracy, there were a few details that Tamiya missed out, probably due to the limitations of moulding. The kit belongs to the era of open sponsons, and if you’re having any open hatches it’s a good idea to do a bit of scratchbuilding and close the hull to avoid a see-through effect if viewing from above. The standoff plates and rails are overscale, of course, they were in reality 5mm armour plate but if you multiply the kit parts by their stated scale you find they would be more like 30mm or more. There are photoetched replacements for many vehicles out there, plates and racks alike, but I simply sanded mine down on wet’n’dry paper to thin them a little. The plates are cast as single units but they were in reality separate plates along the hull. You can cut the plates from their neighbours to get this effect as an irregularity in the way they hang from the mounts.

The age of some of the components is probably close to forty years, as the lower hull is shared in common with their other Panzer IV kits and Pz. IV-derived subjects (Brumbar, FlakPanzer, Jagdpanzer etc.), the earliest of which were definitely early 1970s releases.

I would have to say this kit, while simple by today’s standards, is remarkably good. It builds a sturdy, appealing product, is a project which early-career modellers can tackle adequately due to the builder-friendly design, and there are quite enough options and room for scratchbuilding to keep experts happy also. There are uncountable numbers of Pz. IV accessories on the market, and many would be appropriate for the StuG, such as damaged roadwheels, better-quality external tools, photoetched fittings, replacement tracks, and decal sets for a wider choice of markings and schemes.

It took quite a lot of methodical work to get it finished, but I can’t say there was a particularly difficult bit anywhere in the project, and I will certainly be building others. My next StuG IV will be minus zimmerit and skirts, and be wearing three-tone ambush camo. In conclusion, I recommend this kit to any modeller: beginners should find it a bit of a challenge but by no means impossible, while styrene experten may find it a refreshing simplification compared to Dragon’s policy of ‘never use one part where five will do.’ As an older kit it’s also cheaper by far than the new-tool products, around half the shelf price, though they change hands often enough on eBay for a fraction of that.

Product Review: Alliance Model Works Painting Masks

2010-01-10T18:34:00.005+10:30

Now here is a truly good idea! The template painting method for wheels has been around for quite a while and it makes a slow, tedious, “iffy” job into a quick, accurate one, but one painful truth is that models are a scale depiction of reality and as such it’s always a lottery as to whether artists’ circle templates, which are produced on whole millimetre increments (they don’t seem to make half-mil sizes) ever match closely the size of the wheels. After you’re done spraying you always need to take a fine brush and clean up those edges by hand, hoping the ridge of the rim will guide the brush adequately to fool the eye.

For a Panzer IV, with 36 wheels (counting the spares), all of which should correctly be rimmed both sides because you can see the hub area of the rearmost of each wheel pair from oblique angles, that’s a formidable task. But Alliance Model Works have come to the rescue with photoetched painting masks, circle templates designed to fit the rims of specific kits from specific manufacturers.

I ordered their set for WWII Wermacht tanks and other vehicles on eBay. #Lw3574, “German Vehicle Wheel Mask Set” comes attractively packaged in a conventional plastic and card sleeve, containing a sheet of instructions on the use of the product and no less than three frets of etched stainless steel, plus one ‘loose’ mask for a total of 54 templates for roadwheels, return rollers, and the steering wheels of halftracks, plus even the wheels of some towed fieldguns. These are precision-made items designed to fit exactly over the rims of kits by Tamiya, Dragon and others, which means no more touch-ups: once spraying is done, you should be finished the job. As soon as I saw these gleaming, individually-plastic wrapped frets I smiled and said to myself, “if these work as advertised, a hard job just became easy.”

I tested them on the Tamiya StuG IV crossing my bench at the time. I had delayed doing the wheels til last, and I was very glad I had. The first step was to paint all the tyres black, for which I mixed Tamiya XF-63 Panzer Grey with X-18 Satin Black for a low-lustre tyre black (1:1) and sprayed the wheels on the sprue for ease of handling, with their mating faces masked with Humbrol Maskol and some wet tissue.

So far so good. Then I cut the protective plastic over the appropriate PE sheet and test fit a wheel hub into the “Tamiya Panzer IV” template. Well, I certainly hope it fits the new-tool Tamiya IVs, because it sure doesn’t fit the old ones! Why can’t anything ever be easy? Would it have been too difficult to have the new and old-tool kits (which are still widely available under more than one label) catered to, side by side?

I had a choice: use the specified template, biased to slip around the rim on one side only, then come back for a second pass to get the other side of the rim with the template biased the opposite way, or find another template which was large enough and fit close enough to do. Compromise is not what you expect from a precision product, and not what was advertised, but I guess the company is playing to the high end of the market, and nobody said anything about the vintage of the kits catered to by this specific set: there may be another set with the older Tamiya Panzer IVs among it’s many template sizes. I don’t know, I haven’t checked – yet.

The good news is the template for Dragon’s Panzer III is quite close enough to do. I stripped the protective plastic away and test fit a hub, finding the clearance quite snug enough for my purposes. The rear wheel of the old Tamiya IV seems to be a smaller rim diameter, but the backs of the wheels are not going to be seen much, so some overspray won’t make any difference.

I could have taken the template from the PE sheet but for ease of handling and storage I decided to leave them all of a piece. This is how I’m used to handling plastic circle templates to do the job in the past. I masked close round the hole with tape to keep the product clean overall, then trimmed the wheels from the sprue, leaving the attachment points to be dabbed into the mixed black at a later point (before weathering).

I mixed Tamiya XF-60 at 1:0.5 and shot at my usual pressure for the Paasche #3 tip and needle, and did two mixings, one for the fronts, one for the backs, and had enough to double coat a fair few hubs in each batch. The metal sure collects overspray, moreso perhaps than plastic templates seemed to, I had to keep wiping the paint away with a moistened tissue, but that’s to be expected and no problem to deal with.

The best news is they work great. Any remaining degree of “wiggle room” is due to the fact I’m using them on a kit they were not designed for, but they’re a lot closer to right than standard template sizes, so the job was right in the end. I know how well they’ll perform when I build a Dragon IV, or III, or whatever else actually on the sheets comes up for building.

They were on special but not cheap: still, as a precision tool that will serve me for many years, I consider it one of my better investments. Now when I build German armour, I will reach for these masks as a reflex, and the prospect of the running gear will not be a detraction from the fun of the project. Look at the finished job (mains and spare wheels, prior to fitting the stand-off skirts) and there was no hair-tearing involved in getting there:

Very highly recommended – I suddenly find myself considering collecting any other mask sets they offer, American armour, Russian armour, they all have rims to paint!

Check out the product at http://alliancemodelworks.com/

There’s a retrospective look at the old Tamiya Sturmgeschutz coming next time, watch this space…

Production-Lining Your Art

2010-01-04T23:14:00.004+10:30

Most of us build more than we can finish in the short term, we all have a variety of projects on the boil at once and many of us move among them at whim, building or painting as the fancy takes us. That’s the marvellous flexibility of the hobby, really. Of course some end up back in their boxes on the shelf because we’ve lost patience with them for some reason – obstinate fit, inaccuracy, waiting for parts or decals, whatever. The only kit I’ve put aside in recent times was a Hobbycraft Corsair, and it’s rather put me off the brand.

But eventually you need to clear that bench, get projects to completion, on display, and move on to new territory, though sometimes models have been in play for years. I found myself doing this recently, with a Zvezda (ex-Dragon) BTR-70 that had been unfinished in the box for about three years after being started as a ‘need-to-build-something’ project that I had thought would be a quick build, only to find the tiny Dragon parts tended to snap on the sprue, and the need to replace some with shaped wire rather consigned the beast to the shelf for a long time. Recently I got around to building a Tamiya StuG IV which has been in my stash for at least ten years, I got it from a second hand dealer in Japan, it’s the edition with all Japanese instructions (not that that’s a problem, Tamiyas really only go together one way and the diagrams are obvious.) Add to the mix the Testor edition of Italeri’s Sd.Kfz 234/2 Puma recon vehicle and I had a trio of 1:35th scale armour all clamouring to be finished more or less together. (You might have spotted them in the previous post, if sharp-eyed.)

So the solution was to do them production-line fashion. Henry Ford knew what he was doing, and while it depersonalised a craftsman into a repetitive technician, the hobby can withstand that at a small scale. Given that all three models were finally into their full paint jobs, I could tackle the finishing phases all of a piece. Each model received its fade coat, highly thinned paint misted onto the horizontal surfaces to create the impression the paintwork is faded by the elements. Then I did the oil filter weathering on them all, which was a process of washing the acrylic paints over with enamel thinner carrying dissolved artists’ oils to create tonal variety and the characteristic patterns of rust streaking. Then the pinwash to bring out details by capillary action, and tiny amounts of thicker paint to establish areas of open old rust; and finally brighter rust shades where rust is newer. The next phase is drybrushing in enamels (I can’t do it in acrylics, they simply dry too fast for me to keep up with the job and the task of endlessly cleaning and refreshing the brush) to profile edges and raised detail, making them ‘pop’ from the darker background of the paint and washing.

Then onto external fittings: tools and jerrycans on both the German subjects, all of which need to be painted and weathered before mounting, and a couple of fittings for the BTR. Next step decals – all three models could cross the bench together. Then onto the dust phase, Mig pigments brushed on in strategic locations for that touch of environment adhering to the beast. Final fittings, delicate radio antennas are often the last thing I mount, and of course the tedious process of painting a sharp division between wheel rims and tires, though that was eased somewhat with a new tool I’ll be reviewing here before long.

So there you have it – the same finishing techniques applied across the spectrum of three models in widely varying schemes, two wheeled vehicles, one on treads, different eras, three different manufacturers, but all responding to the same techniques for a satisfyingly dirty, beat-up appearance that whispers to the viewer’s subconscious that these vehicles have seen plenty of hard service. And all walked through the process from overall painting to completion side by side over the space of about a fortnight.

Now, I wonder if I should production-line build from the beginning in future? It certainly speeds up a heavy build schedule…

Look for retrospective reviews of these kits right here in the near future!

I Know Where Everything Is… Really!

2010-01-02T00:29:00.001+10:30

Quick! How many unfinished models can you spot in the picture above? No, it’s not easy, is it?

Finishing a couple of projects calls for clearing the bench to set up proper lighting and get the gallery photos, and it’s only then that you realise what a pigstye you’ve been working among. I mean, some people have clean, neat, tidy work benches – but so far I’ve not been one of them, and in fairness to myself I can’t say my hobby has really suffered. It’s odd the way the brain maps your bench, you seem to know which quadrant you put any particular tool down in last, and whereabouts in what chronological order down which stack you’ll probably find things sandwiched together.

Then comes the phase where you clean the bench, tidy everything up and then you’ve had it because you can’t find a thing!

Acrylic paints in that box, enamels in that box, tools back in the tool drawer, scratchbuilding supplies back in their drawer, sort bits from three open kits back into the boxes they belong in… Take stock of which project(s) to finish next.

Do you ever loose things completely? Other than into the jaws of the carpet monster? I don’t think I ever have, unless you count the pairs of scissors that keep vanishing, but that’s natural enough. Scissors always vanish, always have and always will. When it comes to kit bits, it’s a rare one that’s flown the coup, and sometimes due to plain bad luck – thinking that tiny part that fell off and was put carefully aside is actually a mote of dust and blowing it casually who-knows-where a split second before remembering it was a part to be reattached. That’s dumb, but probably not the dumbest thing one can do on a modeller’s bench…

With New Year’s Day it’s fitting to clean the bench. When I have a proper workshop I’ll be able to keep it neater (I say, smiling hopefully), but for now, I’ll make the best of the considerable space and resources I’ve managed to assemble, and allow myself an uncluttered workspace slightly larger than the A4-size cutting mat that forms my centrepiece at this time.

So Happy New Year, and let’s hope for some bench time as the world swings back into the working week as of Monday!

I Feel Like Building A Model… NOT Painting It!

2009-12-29T22:33:00.006+10:30

Have you ever had the feeling that one part of your artistic creativity is in conflict with another? There have been occasions when I had a spare hour or two and found myself staring at the projects underway and realising that every single one was at some point which obliged me to set up my airbrush and start pushing various colours through to spot-paint detail parts, which means far more cleaning of the airbrush and its jars, and far more mixing of paint, than actual painting.

There are times when you just want to build. One problem with aircraft, much as I love them, is that you’re pretty much obliged to paint that wretched cockpit first. Struggle with tiny details, drybrush the controls, put on decals perhaps, create instrument lenses with blobs of Clear Parts Cement, and suchlike. And frankly, there are times you don’t want to be bothered with all that, but just get to the engineering of the piece, tidying up the parts and bringing them together just so, then perhaps doctoring the joint lines with whatever technique you prefer.

Perhaps that’s one of the drawcards of armour modelling. Unless you have a perverse desire to open hatches all the time, the inside of a tank is a mystery to the viewer and can be conveniently ignored, which means most of a tank can be built before you need to start painting, and that’s attractive. Building the barrel and turret, mounting suspension swing arms and other lower hull details, dressing the upper hull with hatches, grills, any number of parts that can go on before you need to paint anything… Then join the hull, do some joint work if needed, and you’re into masking the locators for tools and such, masking the mating ring of the turret and all the axles. Oh yes, there’s lots to do before you need put down the first colour. The Academy M981 above falls into this category: I just wanted to enjoy building, and a relatively complex, multi-part armoured vehicle fit the bill to a T. I put it together months ago, and when a slot comes up in my painting schedule it'll finally see it's three-colour camouflage.

Right now I have 20 models in progress, at some stage or other. I could be mottling the camo of that Tamiya Me 262, or I could be prepping for the natural metal finish of that F-84 Thunderjet. But over the last week or so I’ve been wash-and-drybrush detailing three armour kits. The time comes when you have to paint what you’ve built and production line modelling is a way of getting through them. Base colour, camo pattern, fade coat, oil filter weathering, pinwash, drybrush profiling, decals, dust coat…

I’ll get back to aircraft shortly, I have at least seven to finish in the next two months or so, but you know, when the fiddly details have got me at my wits’ end, I’ll take a break from being an artist, and be an engineer again for a few relaxing sessions. One thing I’m certain of: whatever I build on that day, the odds are it’ll have tracks under it!

Hoping you all had a wonderful festive season and that the New Year brings everything you could hope for!

Cheers, Mike/Thunderbolt379

What’s in a Stash...?

2009-12-20T13:12:00.004+10:30

The Immortal Bard certainly did not have plastic modelling in mind when he coined the line so freely paraphrased for the title above, but it makes for an interesting question.

The modeller’s stash... The “styrene ceiling” that has been collecting dust in the attic since you moved into that house not long after you were married (out of sight, out of mind, at least for one’s other half if said half is less than tolerant of the hobby), or the pile of boxes jammed onto the top shelf in the hall closet, or the packing case in the basement. Or the tea chests in the shed. A shed can be a good thing, for more than powertools and a place for sawing timber.

A modeller’s kit stash however represents changing interests and availability over time -- I mean, how long has that collection been amassing for? We buy kits at a far faster rate than we can build them, and many of us pride ourselves on the stature of our collection. The oldest kits in my stash (meaning the date of my acquiring them, not their date of manufacture or reissue) probably date from the late 80s/early 90s, I had quite a few older Hasegawas from the 1980s that I traded off to a dealer about that time, along with an unfinished Revell Cutty Sark dating from about 1975. But even the oldest parts of my stash have probably spent no more than 20 years in my care. So in 20 years, where have trends in the market and variations of interest taken me? A burgeoning interest in armour, the odd ship here and there, a major emphasis on larger scales, dinosaurs when they were in vogue, even a few space and SF subjects. (A few? I’ll build all those AMT Star Trek kits eventually...)

What about the role of eBay? I recently passed the 5th anniversary of my first tremulous venture into online bargain-hunting, and in those five years my stash has grown faster than ever before, with kits I never imagined I would snag for reasons of cost alone. But good quality kits at genuine savings are a daily event on eBay, and gradually many gaps in my collection were filled in. All of what you see here are eBay transactions.

I imagine most modellers go through a ‘flesh-out-the-stash’ phase, when the allure of bargains allays the fear of unwarranted luxury expense coming back to bite one when there are bills to be met. But, sometime down the track, there are indeed those whose tastes and interests change so drastically over the years that they realise the investment their stash represents by offering them for sale, either piecemeal through eBay as a seller, or by moving the whole lot to a trader. Trading in collections was a brisk business before the current economic downturn, and resulted in more great bargains for buyers further down the line, as individual kits moved from Stash A to Stash B and profit accrued for the facilitator. Hopefully things will recover and this system will become profitable again. That’s business, and everybody comes out of it happy. I would certainly never have afforded a great many kits in my stash any other way.

One day I’ll have a dedicated modelling room, like you see in the pages of FSM, with a properly-lit workbench, bookcases for reference materials, drawers and cabinets for every last tool and accessory supply I could need, paint racks for the hundreds of shades I have in stock, and of course a spraybooth and silent compressor, and a permanent photographic area for recording my work in progress. Display cases for the finished product, of course, go without saying. And I would hope that an entire wall in this room would be shelving for my stash, from floor to ceiling, the whole thing brought together in one place rather than in the cardboard cartons it presently occupies: it would look like a well-stocked hobby shop and the great thing is, it’s all already paid for! Here’s one of two small rooms my packaged stash occupies: have I mentioned lately how much I appreciate the support and interest of my better half?

I’m not preening here, I know there are modellers out there with much more extensive stashes than mine, in size, in quality, by any reasonable form of measurement, and the stash is what it’s all about. What interests the modeller, how your interests change over time, and how you dip into that stash as the years go by to build that special item at long last -- these questions are the mystique of having the collection. Some folks ask me why I don’t sell the lot at once if they’re worth money, and ‘do something with it.’ I answer them that I am doing something with it: I’m enjoying being a collector!

The Great Phantom Showdown

2009-12-14T17:28:00.004+10:30

I love Phantoms. I’ve always loved them, ever since I was a kid and the F-4 was the real-life big kid on the block. I remember a McDonnell-Douglas add on the back cover of an aviation magazine from the late 1970s that praised the Phantom as “The Warbird of the Free World.” That magazine is still somewhere in my collection, if I ever get a chance to look through the old stash I’ll probably find infinite anecdotes. I also remember reading an article on the development of the F-4, it was probably in an old Aeroplane Monthly or Aviation News, that said the military brass thought the plane they were being offered in 1958 was downright ugly, “a great jagged juggernaut, massive as a WWII bomber, clumsy as a goose with its downswept tails…” That’s a verbatim quote, the words stuck in my memory thirty years ago. I shook my head as a young teen to read that: to me the F-4 was a beautiful aircraft, and I still think so today. Heck, my sister in law was a USAF crew chief and the F-4E was her plane.

Modellers tend to agree that the F-4 is, or was, a special plane. 5257 of them, in 13 major variants, not counting recon subtypes, and the markings of at least 15 services, gives enormous scope for variety, and model companies were not slow to recognise this. Early Phantoms were like any early kits, they left a lot to be desired, but by the late 1980s moulding technology was up to the challenge of creating really well-fitting kits, and the firms had recognised that modellers wanted models that not only looked good, they were as close to accurate as possible. At that point the challenge was on.

Hasegawa and Fujimi, two of the Shizuoka City giants, went at it head to head in the late 1980s and into the 1990s, a direct challenge for the market dollar on the subjects the model building public most wanted. They each delivered F-14 Tomcats by the bushel, they both fielded squadrons of A-4 Skyhawks, and Fujimi offered up all the major marks of A-7 Corsair as well. But it was in the area of the F-4 Phantom II that perhaps their greatest race occurred.

By the early 1990s Hasegawa had released all the major variants in 1:72nd scale, and most of them in 1:48th as well, while Fujimi concentrated mostly on 1:72, with a few forays into larger material. Historically, Hasegawa won the battle, their product was more accurate, their packaging slicker, their decals better quality, and the market was willing to wear the fact their product was also correspondingly more expensive. But that’s not to say Fujimi’s product doesn’t have a lot going for it.

Consider the most basic comparison: both Hasegawa and Fujimi standardised on recessed panel lines in the late 1980s, and all their quality late-tool Phantoms have fine engraved detail throughout. Hasegawa had better cockpits, and arguably better selections of subject matter, with their multitudinous releases of common parts wrapped in different boxes, decals and painting instructions for every one-off special commemorative scheme that came along, as well as a wide range of standard schemes and squadron markings from around the world. But Hasegawa’s philosophy was to break down the parts in a way that yielded maximum utility between variants, which forced decisions such as separate fin cap parts, and a break in the fuselage just behind the intakes to facilitate different nose sections, the area in which most variety between marks was found. Fujimi tooled the fuselage and tail for each major variation complete and provided a varying tray-like part for the underside of the nose, plus separate scabbed-on parts for scanners, intakes and antennas. This means a Fujimi is a simpler build with fewer seams, and that’s attractive.

Hasegawa never got around to retooling the British Phantoms with wider engine bays to accommodate their Rolls-Royce Spey turbofans, but Fujimi did: their F-4K, F-4M, FG.1, FGR.2 and F.3 kits feature generally proper proportions and dimension for the British fleet, and in 1:72nd scale they’re the only game in town if you discount Hasegawa’s old-tool F-4K and M (which featured raised detail throughout), and Matchbox’s old FGR.2, which most serious modellers today will do on account of its way overscale recessed detail.

Various options are included in each brand’s product, deployed flaps, positionable surfaces, openable canopies, and different degrees of detail in wheelwells and afterburners, but the averagely-sighted person would have to look twice to decide which kit a model was built from. Given Fujimi’s essentially complete range of variants and their slightly lower shelf price (often much lower today on eBay, though in the early 1990s Fujimi was a notoriously expensive brand, certainly here in Australia), Hasegawa’s top spot is not universally secure and Fujimi have a great many fans for their late-tool product.

It is said that Fujimi have not released a genuinely new military aircraft product since their “war on Hasegawa” ran out of steam in the 90s, but there are a great many kits out there in circulation that are fun to build and for which there are oceans of aftermarket accessories, certainly piles of great decals, and unless one is peering into cockpits and wheel wells with a magnifying glass the differences cease to be apparent about 18 inches back, so it stands to reason both brands will continue to compete in the marketplace for the Phantom Phanatic’s modelling buck. Given Hasegawa’s agreement with Revell/Revell-Germany, and the lower price for which Revell can rebox Hasegawa’s toolings (hence the Revell items in the pics above), quality Phantoms are probably easier to get hold of than ever before.

I’ll be building 1:72nd scale F-4s from both stables during 2010, and will be retrospectively reviewing and comparing them right here at World in Miniature, so stay tuned.

Product Review: Eduard Masks

2009-12-09T10:25:00.005+10:30

There are all sorts of tools and supplies in the modelling hobby, and it’s a fair criticism to ask if the modern hobbyist is well-served or merely gadget-dependent. When we need to mask something we use tape, like any tradesman, plus cut paper and card sections for big areas, and we may also use a liquid latex masking medium, an aid brought over from the graphic arts.

I always masked my canopies with tiny slivers of tape, but there are some curved that just don’t want to be masked around. A three dimensional shape needs to be expressed in two dimensions, and that’s a hit or miss proposition unless you’re a spatial dynamics expert. Another trick is to spray the hull color on some clear decal film, cut fine strips and apply the canopy struts as decals, and there’s a lot to be said for that technique. There have been a few ideas over the years, including precut vinyl negative masks which are to be sprayed in the final colour and applied, but Eduard might have hit the best formula with their masking technology.

Eduard Masks are die-cut adhesive shapes matched to the intended kit at very fine resolution, and the principle of their use is dead easy: peel them off their waxed backing paper, stick them on, spray, peel off when done. If engineering firms go by the old “KISS principle,” (which stands for Keep It Simple, Stupid!), then they’ve probably hit the money. If the hundreds of sets in their range are anything to go by, modellers agree.

I’ve used four sets so far and have several more in hand. Though the principle is simple, it takes a fine hand and a keen eye to get them into place precisely. Without magnifying specs I’d have no hope, though that’s more a comment on my vision than the product. The masks seem to be a vinyl or paper material, and their adhesive is quite strong, they won’t move until you want them to, and then they come away without leaving a residue. They can be repositioned, though with care as they will crease and denature if handled roughly. They fully cover smaller panels and outline larger areas, which are then filled in with liquid or tape.

Once located to your satisfaction, spray the cockpit interior colour, then overcoat with the camo or framing colours, and when fully dry tease up a corner with the point of a knife and draw the masks away with tweezers. You might also want to hold the canopy down with a finger as you do so. The adhesive is strong enough to pull a clear part off if attached only with clear parts cement.

Masks are also supplied for other parts of the model, such as wheel rims and formation lights, and some armour sets have been produced to help with the fiendish job of painting the tires of tank wheels. Hopefully we will see this range continue to grow, as their utility is considerable. Can you re-use a set? I’ve not tried yet, but if you peel them off carefully and return them to their original positions on the backing sheet, it might be possible. Two uses would be good, as they do cost a few dollars, a nonreimbursable expense on the cost of doing a model which is far greater than that of the paint one uses, and often comparable to that of a selection of AM decals.

Probably the best tribute I can pay to the product is that when I decide a particular model is on my schedule, I check if Eduard have masks for it and order them up in plenty of time, just as I would order AM decals or resin bits or whatever, and that makes them a tool of choice for this particular finishing operation. I recommend them to any hobbyist with a steady hand and a magnifying glass.

Eduard Masks are available in hobby shops and through many online outlets, I always order mine from Squadron Mailorder, Carolton, Texas.

Acrylics or Enamels?

2009-12-05T22:35:00.001+10:30

It has to be the biggest question in model painting today, beyond choice of brushes or airbrushes, beyond colour selection: which type of paint is best for your project?

There are modellers who have switched entirely to water-based acrylics for all spray work, for the health benefits: nontoxic paints are a major factor and not to be taken lightly. When you’re used to the light, sweet smell of acrylics and their water cleanup, to start spraying solvent-based paints and their spirit cleanup is a rude reminder of just how frequently and casually we poison ourselves with the things we invite into our environment. Got a spray booth with a ducted exhaust fan? Good for you, but most of us make do with an open window and sometimes it’s just not enough.

Like many modellers, I have both types of paint in stock. I first bought acrylics when tackling vinyl subjects in the early 90s, and I must say the Tamiya paints I bought have been extraordinarily long-lived. They’re still good over 15 years later, all they need is a stir. They haven’t made the old, large bottles in many years, possibly because people discovered the paint lasted remarkably well, and for the rate of usage a smaller quantity was just fine.

I have scores of Tamiya shades, plenty of useful colours, and my collection grows gradually. But I also have hundreds of enamels, the ubiquitous Humbrol range and Testor Model Master (which despite being superb quality, with an easy-stir jar and an enormous selection of specialty-matched shades, is getting hard to find in Australia, as Humbrol and Tamiya have grabbed the popularity). I have not brush painted a model in 30 years, but today when I spray enamels I do so outside, which is a nuisance. Acrylics I can use indoors with simple ventilation, which makes them easy and convenient. But what about detail painting by brush?

This is where the real applicability of the paints comes to the fore. Acrylics spray superbly but they don’t brush worth a damn. You can thin them a little and that helps, but the drying rate is like lightning and in one minute a brush is unusable -- clean it and start over. This may be a characteristic of the Tamiya range in particular, they are by far the most available here and I have sampled no others at this time (but I’ve heard others dry even faster…) By comparison, dipping a fine brush in enamel paint provides familiar flow and control, and one can concentrate on the finesse of the task rather than fighting the characteristics of the medium.

The same thing applies when airbrushing, though on a longer timescale. When used to the tip-drying characteristics of enamel, acrylics can bite you: you must keep the job moving when you’re working with the nontoxic paints, and when it’s done be sure you’re finished and clean the AB at once. This tends to lead to wasted paint, as when forgotten bits are noticed you need to mix more, and if using a syphon-bottle AB there is a minimum amount the airbrush will actually pick up from the jar. If working in enamels you have the extra working time to consider the job from all angles, turn the thing around again, look at it in different light, go 30 seconds or more and be sure the paint will still flow normally when you press the trigger.

My own impression is that enamels and acrylics will continue to share the marketplace. Enamals flow on so smoothly they are a joy to use, they are a ‘friendlier’ medium than acrylics, you can polish their finish just like automotive paints (which ironically have all been acrylics for the last 25 years at least), and the range of precision-matched shades is enormous. The major manufacturers must have churned out over a billion bottles and tinlets in the last 40 years, in fact probably far more, Humbrol alone used to produce 25 million tinlets a year in the 1980s, if I remember correctly, and that’s an awful lot of paint in collections out there. I personally have tins that date from that era and the contents still slosh.

But if acrylics were friendlier, dried slower, brushed better, and were available in hundreds more shades, precision-matched to historic sources, I would be using them more often. I have no wish to poison myself, and while the chemistry involved with acrylics is almost certainly not 100% harmless, it’s a significant improvement.

To Detail or Not to Detail, That is the Question...

2009-11-29T14:38:00.005+10:30

I have long fancied scratchbuilding the mighty MBT-70 Main Battle Tank under development as a joint US/German project in the late 1960s. The pre-production prototype batch demonstrated great potential, and a number of its innovations appeared in other tanks on both sides of the Atlantic, but the vehicle itself was too ambitious, too costly and too unreliable. It is a long, low, mean-looking tank with unusual features, such as a driver in a stabilised cockpit in the turret, and a secondary cannon which could be operated from within. I have long pursued research, trying to untangle the differing running gear details of the US and West German versions, and one way I tried to do this was to find Aurora’s old 1:48th scale kit on eBay, to see in three dimensions how the repetitive detailing of the unique hydropneumatic suspension system was handled.

I was somewhere between surprised and disgusted when I discovered that Aurora’s solution to all that complex detail was to ignore it. No suspension detail was offered at all, which makes the kit a somewhat expensive and rather pointless addition to my stash (joining the eBay sell-on pile…) Back to the drawing board on the MBT-70 project, but that absence of detail set me thinking.

What constitutes a necessary detail for a kit?

Knowledgeable folk will tell you that not a single truly accurate and representative F/A-18 model exists in 1:72nd scale, and that is more than likely true of just about every subject, but it must be a matter of degree. Detail appropriate to the scale is a major consideration, as the resolution of detail reproduction will make it clumsy to try to include some details when they become too small. Go to the other end of the spectrum and consider the older kits in which detail in the wheel wells, even the cockpit was considered unnecessary. In the 1970s Airfix’s 1:24th scale ‘superkits’ were something of a benchmark, but while they featured significant cockpit detail (not actually complete, it should be noted), they featured no wheel well detail at all, simply the open interior of the wing with a mechanical pivot for the gimmicky retractable landing gear.

Then there’s the odd notion of including things in the kit that aren’t there on the real thing, in the name of marketability, or having to add a detail and making a genuine mess in the process. I’m thinking of the tile pattern grid Revell added to their 1:72nd scale Space Shuttle back in the 1980s… A truly overscale raised grid to represent the actually recessed micro-fine division between the ceramic tiles of the craft’s hull… I'm sure the 1:72nd scale raised representation was actually larger than the 1:1 scale recessed reality, which goes to show whaqt accuracy counts for compared to the young buyer's expectation that something as important as the thermal tiles must be there, whether it's visible or not. The company engraved the moulds, the same approach as raised panel lines, and just as inaccurate, though compounded by the regularity of the grid over the craft’s surface.

I had that kit, bought it for a great price, but a few years later I sold it on, unopened. Why? I just could not bring myself to build a hypersonic flying machine with a rugose hull texture that would shame a rhinoceros, any more than I could see my way to laboriously removing the entire grid and rescribing it. Had Revell left well alone I might have got up the chutzpah to try scribing the grid (though I’d probably have made a mess and ended up refilling it and trying some sort of paint trick, spraying through a mesh perhaps, which I once saw done to great effect on the 1:144th scale orbiter.) As it stands, though I would love a large scale shuttle, there’s no way I’d tackle the Revell offering, even with my current skill level.

I’m not entirely sure but this beast may have been retooled to switch the grid to recessed, but it would still have been way overscale. Decal company Cutting Edge went a long way to rectifying the whole accuracy problem for Orbiters with decal versions of the heat shield areas, and accurised engines and window painting masks were also produced, way back on 2003. Check them out:

http://decals.kitreview.com/decals/ced44001decaplreviewbg_1.htm

So where should a kit company draw the line between what needs to be there and what needs to not be there? My gut feeling is that if the detail is recessed, recess it, and if the detail is visible at the equivalent scale viewing distance, it should be on the model. That’s a fair yardstick, with plenty of wiggle-room, and I think the best companies are probably working around just such philosophies now. Perhaps that’s called learning from the past, standing on the shoulders of yesterday’s industry and building on not just their experiences but the consequences of their choices. Models certainly look better, right out of the box, now than they ever have before, even if they are not ‘accurate’ in the sense that purists use the term. And yes, the gentle art of ‘rivet-counting’ will be another topic!

Product Look: Skullduggery interactive kits

2009-10-20T12:38:00.003+10:30

These are amazing: imagine a kit in which you need to cast the parts before assembling them!

The Skullduggery firm has perfected a system of non-toxic casting media in which kids can learn about a subject while building a display model more or less from scratch: they have fish, butterflies and of course the ever-popular dinosaurs.

When one associates injection plastic and rotation-moulded vinyl with dinosaurs as the medium of choice, or solid-cast resin as the third option, to find open-moulded plaster in use is at first an odd selection, but plaster can copy extremely fine detail and it’s non-toxic for junior use.

The idea is that kids pour pre-mixed casting medium into provided plastic moulds, demould the plaster parts, paint them and assemble them, a somewhat greater involvement than conventional kits offer, prolonging the educational experience without the intricacies of a conventional build-up. The kits even include paint, brushes, glue and mounting magnets, so the finished object is all ready for display.

In a way, this is kit building which incorporates scratchbuilding, and the basic principles of casting are made available to young builders at an age when it’ll become second nature and very probably serve them well in more ambitious projects in the years to come.

There’s only one drawback from the standpoint of the adult builder: though the boxes are beautifully illustrated with photographs of perfectly reassembled museum-display skeletons, the kit actually builds a two-dimensional dinosaur, a ‘panel mount’ in museum terms, in which the bones are seen in profile against a rock matrix. There’s nothing wrong with this and it certainly simplifies things for the younger builder, but it’s not quite the stand-up-and-roar display the box seems to promise.

The products are sold in the livery of the old Collins Eyewitness Guide books, a wonderful range of teaching volumes which assembled information on a plethora of subjects, illustrated with photographs of actual objects and artefacts. I remember their dinosaurs volume being the first I ever read, so it’s rather fitting that I encounter the range through their T. rex.

Here are some useful links – check them out, if you have kids these will provide fun, insight, education and practice for building! You’ll probably find them in Museum shops far and wide, and here in Aus at the Australian Geographic shops

http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/dinosaurtoys/tp/skulldugtoys.htm

http://www.amazon.com/Skullduggery-Inc-Eyewitness-Dinoworks-Triceratops/dp/B00000IS5W

Product Review: Experts’ Choice Custom Decal Papers

2009-10-05T13:47:00.003+10:30

Custom decals: there was a time the thought used to turn modellers green with envy, or shuddering with foreboding at the thousand things that might go wrong, but in the age of the digital revolution it’s no longer a big deal. All you need to be is computer savvy, and a bit adventurous.

Unless you have very deep pockets, you will not be making decals equivalent to the silkscreened commercial product, but you can finagle things to get close. The Alps printers that deliver an opaque white ink make commercial image quality possible, and are used by the ‘garage’ firms, but for those of us with shallower bank accounts there are clear and white decal paper stocks from a variety of manufacturers.

I first began experimenting with custom decals for my F-116 SF scratchbuild project a few years ago, and refined the techniques at the electronic level. Basically, designing the decals is as simple – or as complex – as driving the software, so that’s the first hurdle. If you can drive your graphics package well enough to make the designs you need, half the battle is won. The fictional F-116 needed stencil data and I had intended to raid a SuperScale sheet for black data from the F-15E, but it didn’t seem to fit. I needed stencils which told a technical story all over the hull, Caution - APU Exhaust, Do Not Operate if Vent Port Obstructed, Ensure Grounding Provisions, Jacking Point, and so forth, dozens of them, all over the aircraft where maintenance placards would logically be located. I did some experiments in Page Plus Professional V.10 and found that 1- to 2-point lettering was still distinctly legible and a reasonable approximation of the lettering of an aircraft 72 times larger.

The aircraft required colour decals as well, organizational flashes and the triangular national insignia of a service which does not exist. My sister made them in about ten minutes flat, in the same program, and we were ready to rock.

The media I chose was the decal papers from the Experts’ Choice range (a name which tends to engender trust!). I mail ordered their clear decal film for laser printers, item #123 (for the all black data) and their white film for inkjet printers, item #120, for the insignia which featured a white area. Luckily the insignia’s straight-edge shape lent itself to cutting free of the sheet with a razor knife.

The clear film worked remarkably well. I did a number of test shots on paper and when I was happy with the design work I rolled a sheet of decal material. The stencil data was made as easily as that, and was brushed over with MicroScale Liquid Decal Film to seal the toner down. I cut the designs close using small scissors and they went on readily, reacting well to MicroScale DecalSet and DecalSol. Here is a photo of another decal sheet with all-black markings on clear film for a variety of SF scratchbuild projects: the WASP Arrowhead received the top set, which is why they’re missing from the sheet!

The F-116 had a long white text legend down each side of the cockpit and to do this I changed tactics slightly. I had looked at the possibility of using MicroScale white lettering but did not trust my ability to line them up and space them correctly. I settled for a sheet of small white rubdown decals by Letraset, and applied them to the clear decal film. I brushed liquid film over them, cut them out and applied the legends as single units.

If the colour decals had behaved as well as these, my job would have been a lot easier. I was building the model on a deadline at the finish and I did a number of ‘ghosters,’ modelling sessions which run right through the night, at least partially because the colour decals simply would not behave. They would not free off their backing without a very long time soaking in very hot water and a lot of coaxing with soft brushes and solvent. This meant that the majority disintegrated before they were willing to move: it was a good job I made up several sets of decals on the one sheet, I certainly worked through a lot of them to get four insignia and two flashes to take. I spoke to the company and the only suggestion they could come up with was that it was a freak incompatibility between the paper and (both) of my colour printers.

Here’s the finished F-116, showing the black stencil data, white rubdown decals, plus colour insignia and ‘danger’ flashes. The white stripes were done with Microscale Trimfilm.

To be fair, I have seen ‘garage’ decal firms with a high profile and a good reputation put a caveat on their work, drawing the user’s attention to the fact they are not commercially manufactured decals and don’t behave the same way, so it may be more common than many might prefer to admit that custom decals are a hit-or-miss proposal.

The Experts’ Choice packs contain three sheets each of US letter-size paper and, at less than $2 per sheet, are excellent value. If your printers and their inks are fully compatible then you can have all kinds of decaling adventures, creating the markings of your dreams: clear sheets for solid printing to overlie a painted backing of the necessary colour, white sheets where white is a necessary element of a complex design and you are confident you can cleanly cut away every scrap of white surrounding the graphic. You can fudge this by being clever, such as by edging the design with a digital equivalent of the background colour so the trim doesn’t need to be exact for the decal edges to essentially vanish into the surface.

Custom decals are fun and open a new world of marking options, limited only by your graphics package and your skills (and the luck of the draw when it comes to compatibility, and that’s the only real downside). Otherwise, these are excellent products and highly recommended. You can find them at:

http://www.Bare-Metal.com/

The Immortal Classics: Polar Lights’ Seaview

2009-09-30T14:43:00.004+09:30

There are always kits we remember from childhood, or kits we never knew when they were available but heard about long after. Aurora’s Seaview, from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, is one of those for me.

I only heard about it 15 years after the moulds were lost in the neo-legendary Amtrak wreck that destroyed so many of the old classics, when it was featured as the very first instalment in the “Classic Kits” series in FineScale Modeler. I checked around to see if anyone had one and located one at Hobby Bounties in Singapore: if I remember correctly, the price was equivalent to $1000 Australian dollars in the early 1990s, the highest price I personally have ever seen on a classic kit. Needless to say, I didn’t buy it! My memory may be playing tricks, but I remember it being a three-figure sum of some sort.

Imagine my excitement when I heard several years later that Aurora-retool firm Polar Lights, in the course of recreating many of the lost classics, were resurrecting the Seaview!

I determined to have one at once, but it never happened. The kit was ‘new stock’ and thus ‘around’ and there was no urgency to buying it if dollars were tight for other reasons. In the odd way things happen, the retool has itself become a traded commodity and I recently picked one up on eBay for a good price. The precise recreation of the original is amazing, the actual box art and design from 1967, the identical plans with a few extras to denote the 2002 issue.

Here’s a piece of history brought back to life and itself now a thoroughgoing legend in its genre, something few would have ever expected to happen, the remanufacture of a classic. Of course, there are many who would point out that in regenerating a classic product one regenerates all the shortcomings of that product. It’s the 1961 movie version of the sub, not the configuration of the series (which itself varied in detail between the 110 episodes), the detail level is sparse, and at around 13” long she’s not very big. A resin update set was made for it to build the series window configuration and the Flying Sub hangar: the AM guys will always ride to the rescue! There have of course been plenty of much larger versions produced in resin in the last decade and a half, and we now have Moebius’s ultimate kit, injection moulded and nearly 40” long, for which a plethora of after market add-ons have been produced – even including complete radio control and power system to build a sea-going Seaview that will dive in your swimming pool!

Next to that, the old classic pales to insignificance, but you know what? Nobody will build the operational boat, or even the 40-inch display masterpiece, in a weekend, and have at on shelf or desk, beautifully airbrushed and weathered, by Sunday night. And there’s the fun part: there are many small scale submarine kits and this one falls right in to that range as a science fiction classic that has sailed on in the hearts of it’s fans for all 45 years since the series premiered (on September 14, 1964, at 7:30 PM, EDT, on the ABC Network, for those who like their facts - with thanks to those who keep track of such things!) So there’s room for all the versions and all the kits.

I have only one criticism: Polar Lights moulded it in black plastic. Maybe they were being true to the original, but black is very difficult to work with, and I find it rather depressing. It’s a good job she’ll be a quick build, I can get her into some nice grey primer, and relax into painting and weathering thereafter.

I finally have that Seaview I always wanted! The companion piece to the Aurora 1:64th scale Flying Sub that was reissued by Monogram in the late 1990s and which has been part of my stash ever since. And … I guess it’ll tide me over until I can assemble the big bucks to tackle the Moebius masterpiece. So keep watch and I’ll post a review when I build her.

Persnickety on the Details

2009-09-26T12:35:00.004+09:30

Should we build in details we can’t see?

When I was a junior I used to take a strange pride in adding details to the interior of models, so that I could say the seats and radios inside that bomber fuselage were present, and maybe even painted some colour which more than likely was not correct. But they were there, as if the model came ever closer to depicting the real thing with such additions. Maybe it does, but surely that principle has been taken a bit far these days.

I’m thinking of the engines in Trumpeter’s jet kits, in which considerable time and effort has been invested, serving to jack up their already high prices that yard further. Not only that, the fuselage does not assemble properly if the engine is not inside, meaning you can’t invest time in finishing the engine and then displaying it alongside the aircraft: finish it realistically or not, it must disappear inside if the model is to be assembled complete, the most-usual state for the aircraft, and that seems a perverse logic.

The built-in option is to display the engine with the tail of the aircraft separated, in maintenance mode, but not every modeller wants to do this, and certainly not with every entry into his or her big-scale jets collection, any more than every modeller wants to fold the wings of carrier planes merely because that feature is engineered into some kits (which don’t build cleanly if you don’t take that option, which is at least as perverse as the engine business…)

But we’re all guilty of this to some degree. I religiously fill and smooth off the holes in the bottom of tank models for the controls of motorized versions, so popular long ago and still made by Trumpeter (I have quite a few of their motor/battery packs in my stash now, and am not quite sure what to do with them!) But there are other details that sometimes get by.

Having a hard time finding a few bench hours, I was recently stalled by the painting stage of various projects and just wanted to do some gluing, so I broached a subject I’d been looking at for a while, Academy’s M981 FISTV, a laser designator vehicle for guided munitions that fought in Desert Storm, based on the M113 A3 chassis. The model assembles from multiple subassemblies which can be tackled as small projects evening by evening, but the first thing I spotted was the raised company logo on the bottom of the hull. I usually scrape and sand this away so I’m comfortable in the knowledge that my tanks don’t say Tamiya on the bottom, or whatever, but it occurred to me that in all my years I’ve never actually picked up one of my tanks and looked under it.

So who cares? Am I enough of a bean counter to be bothered if the logo is there? This time, no. But, perversely, I blanked and filled the holes as well, done carefully with two rounds of filler for a good job. If I can be motivated to do one, why not both?

It seems to be a question of steam – how much enthusiasm is there on the night? I just wanted to get to the swing arm assembly, I would need to carve away the logo with a blade parallel to the belly plates first, and the bone in my head rebelled at that … so this one has an Academy logo on the bottom. But no motor holes – they I could tackle later!

Academy produced a complete engine for their 1:48th scale Sabre which disappears when the fuselage is closed, and there are many tank interior kits which are visible only through hatches, so where should the line be drawn? It’s a very individual thing, I think, and a question we can only answer for ourselves. For myself I have begun to buck at the thought of investing hours and eyesight in cockpit details that are obscured by a canopy which is distortive or simply not clear enough, or trying for details that are at the edges of my own visual resolution, but that’s just me. There are plenty of modellers who set up their vision aids and go to work on minute photoetched bits which will barely be visible, a scale realism they want, to bring their work closer to an accurate replica of the real thing, and this is a skill and a dedication to be applauded.

Where does that leave the modeller’s own sense of persnicketiness? That is probably the ultimate personal aesthetic, and what drives us, in many ways. How we face the challenges of the kit, what compromises we make and how much work we’re willing, or able, to invest in a project in return for what we learn from it and the pleasure of both the build and displaying the model ever after. So long as that equation balances up for each of us, relative to our skills and resources at any particular time, then we’ve been true to our hobby and done our best.

“Rivet-counters,” however, are a whole other matter, and a whole other post!

Kit Review: Tamiya F-51D Korean War #61044

2009-09-05T12:46:00.004+09:30

It may seem odd to review a kit released nearly 13 years ago, but there’s always room for a retrospective. For many years Hasegawa’s P-51D was the standard, and it remains a very good and entirely competitive kit, but Tamiya’s builds somewhat easier and is superbly detailed. The Hasegawa cockpit is slightly better, but unless you have the canopy open you really can’t tell what’s in the pit anyway.

The 81-part kit features optional parts for the Inglewood or Dallas canopies, Hamilton-Standard or Aeroproducts propellers (blades and spinner cones), and features 6 5” HVARs and a choice of 2 500lb bombs or 2 75-US gallon droptanks for the wing racks. The kit comes with decals for three aircraft of Korean vintage, the famous FF-943 (“Was that too fast?”) of the 12th FBS, 18th FBG; the CO’s aircraft of the 18th FBG; and “Buckeye Blitz” of the 36th FBS, 8th FBW.

The clear parts are crystal clear and barely-distorting, while the overall fit of the model is outstanding. I needed only a little filler on the underside seam where the fuselage halves trap the cockpit/radiator assembly. The cockpit is quite adequately detailed for the scale, and while no harness is included, not even as a decal (as with Tamiya’s Corsair), there is a gunsight glass and the canopy frame brace. The propeller seats back onto a stub which engages a poly cap trapped between the hub parts, which means the prop can be mounted in the final assembly round, after all major handling is done, minimising the chances of breakage.

Tamiya must use very high-pressure injection moulding, as the sprue attachment points are as small as technically possible. They are also located in carefully-considered locations where the inevitable inconsistencies where the sprue is cut and filed back show as little as possible.

Alignment and fit are of a very high standard and the kit pretty much builds itself, certainly for any experienced modeller it should be a breeze. There were no problem areas to speak of. The decals were thin and opaque and reacted well to setting solutions, but were not particularly ‘sticky’: three small stencils simply disappeared during subsequent handling, underlining the desirability of clearcoats.

I finished the model in Humbrol enamels, mixing #11 Silver Fox 7:3 with #56 Flat Aluminium to create a weathered metal look evocative of the beating the aircraft took from the severe weather conditions in Korea. The yellow accents were sprayed in a mix of Tamiya Acrylics (XF-3 Yellow, warmed with XF-7 Red and brightened with X-22 Clear Gloss). The prop blades, anti-glare panel and rudder trim tab were sprayed XF-1 Flat Black. The cockpit and gear bay interiors were sprayed Interior Green, mixed 1:1 from Tamiya XF-3 and XF-5 Green. The overall recessed panel lines were accented with ProModeller Dark Dirt panel wash, and the natural metal finish was varied with graphite, burnished into the paint with a stiff brush, and masked (with the greatest care!) with Tamiya tape. MiG pigments were used to add dust to the gear bays and underside, plus gun carbon and exhaust staining.

This was a very enjoyable build, the model looks proud in the display case, and I’m sure I’ll be building many more, working through my decal stash to collect the elegant Mustang in many of her historically famous schemes.

Big Models for the Big Boys

2009-08-28T10:44:00.004+09:30

No, I don’t mean radio control. I don’t mean those two-stroke motors that seem to be revving at ear-splitting volume in hobby shops every time you go in to find that bottle of paint you need, and I don’t mean the endless shock absorbers, steering gear and offroad tyres that seem to take forever for shop staff to sort out for the people permanently in line ahead, hogging the counter... I’ve nothing against RC, really -- but that’s another post!

No, I mean BIG MODELS. That Dragon or Trumpeter 1:35 Leopold railway gun. Italeri’s new 1:35th scale German Schenllboot. Andrea’s gigantic 1:32nd scale U-boat. Revell’s old B-1 bomber in 1:48th scale. Monogram’s classic 1:72nd scale B-36. Airfix’s 1:24th scale Harrier. Heller’s 1:100th scale sailing ships. And so on...

Is it the mystique of the very large that attracts us? Is it the possibility of acres of minute detail? Is it the childlike thought of having a bigger one than the next modeller? Or is it that some subjects just can’t be done justice to any smaller? The state of modern tooling suggests 1:48th scale is a good benchmark for realism, incorporating a fair detail resolution against the real thing and a general simplicity of construction, so demanding bigger is not necessarily the answer (though consider the detail found on Tamiya’s F-4s in 1:32nd scale... Bigger sometimes is just plain better).

There’s the status aspect. Bigger models are more expensive, and modellers at both an advanced skill level and approaching the rollover time of life are a major part of the target demograph that can actually afford them. (“Do we have to go on that cruise next winter, Martha? I had a hankering for Trumpeter’s 1:16th scale King Tiger...” After which the hobbyist probably slept on the couch.)

But what about really big: those limited-edition monsters that sometimes appear. Of course, I’m thinking about the 80cm K(E), the Dora, the biggest gun ever fired in anger. It first appeared at European toy fairs about four years ago, a 1:35th scale kit initially researched and designed by Heller IIRC, but after the demise of the company it was taken over (if I’m understanding correctly) by an independent firm, and moulded in a limited edition of 1000 copies, in China. As a $1000 kit, that’s a million dollars turnover in one property, though it has been permanently discounted to US$700 for the last two years or so. At the present exchange rate, that’s nearly a grand in Australian money. It would take a seriously dedicated hobbyist to square away the funds for that (though to be fair, the cost is still significantly lower than Tamiya’s RC tanks and trucks. In England there is a hobby finance company that loans out funds against them as if you were buying basic transport to get to work.) That brings to mind Tamiya’s RC Tiger 1 and the costs involved, over $1500 Australian some years ago. I remember casting an eye on it longingly and my sister saying “you’ll look ridiculous driving to work in that on Monday.” The implication being you could buy a car for that price.

But does larger scale really mean more detail? It means a different feel, that’s for sure. Compare tanks in 1:72nd, 1:35th and 1:16th scales. Between the first two scales there is a wealth of difference, and it takes a surgeon’s hands to make a 72 -- they don’t call it Braille Scale for nothing -- really look the part. It can be done, there are brilliant mini-masterpieces out there, and better kits than ever before to work with. But 35 seems to be the charm, the perfect balance point at which the techniques that come naturally to hand find their best and simplest expression. Academy have those big 25th scale Panthers and Jagdpanthers, and Tamiya have just reissued their 1:25th scale Tiger and Chieftain, for the first time in something like thirty years (SF modellers will be rubbing their hands as the latter has been fetching US$60 on eBay and is needed for some studio replicas). The AM guys must have thrown prayers of thanks skyward when these kits were re-released, the accessory sets are already hitting the market… 1:16th scale is a new situation completely, in which the delicacy of touch one evolves for 35th generates effects that are almost invisible at a normal viewing distance: one must learn to weather with a broader brush, a heavier hand.

In the end, perhaps it is personal choice, as with every aspect of the hobby. The lifetime 1:72nd scale aircraft builder will fit a lot more of them into a display case than the ship modeller who builds at 1:96th, the armour modeller who prefers Braille Scale will have far more space and funds than the 1:35th scale builder, but these are practical matters, and the aesthetic of the thing probably ultimately commands the decision. We like what we like, and that’s the end of it. There’s a certain undeniable fascination to palm-top Panzers, but part of me has a hard time taking them seriously.

Of course, it could be simpler... It could be that we start out affording small models and fill shelves with them, and they gradually get bigger as we get older, in proportion to the thickness of our glasses. By the time we retire our eyesight is so shot we have to build the big ones: we have no choice, we just can’t see the teensy ones anymore!

Okay, extracting tongue from cheek... Normal service resumes next post!

Have some links:

Dora ref: http://www.anticsonline.co.uk/673_1_2515675.html

Airfix Harrier: http://www.cybermodeler.com/hobby/kits/airfix/kit_airfix_18003.shtml

I have the Harrier in my stash and would have photographed those huge parts but it's in a carton on the bottom and I didn't fancy excavating down to find it...

Where would we be without superglue?

2009-08-22T10:48:00.003+09:30

When I was a kid the standard household tube glue in England was called Bostik, and if I remember correctly my earliest Airfix kits (bagged, Series 1, chosen from the front window of the newsagent at the end of the street -- ah, what a memory!) were assembled with this stuff. It was stinky, it was stringy, and it blobbed, but it was all there was!

When I came to Australia with my family in 1971 the model glue of choice here was Britfix, I think there was a ‘77’ on that name but it’s too long ago to be sure. It was stinky, it was stringy, and it blobbed, in fact in every meaningful way it was Bostik in a different tube, so while it left something to be desired, it was familiar. These were the days when parts had to be left for ages to dry, clamped and rubber-banded, even overnight, and one would cautiously remove the bands to see if things had actually set or if the model would fall apart when moved. This, despite Britfix actually being rated a ‘welding’ glue, i.e., solvent-based. Landing gear was fragile beyond words and the glues available took a mature touch to get them to cooperate ... little wonder all my fighter planes as a kid were built gear-up.

I was 12 when I first encountered Testors Liquid Cement, and I thought Christmas had come. A strong cement (note, the word ‘glue’ had abruptly become old-fashioned), which applied neatly with that handy brush built into the bottle cap (praise be to the engineer who thought of something truly practical!), and which dried essentially invisible. And it had grip! The first model I tackled with it was Monogram’s 1:72 B-52, ambitious for an early teen if I say so myself.

Things remained static for many years, then. ‘Superglue’ was a mysterious and dangerous substance around which the words ‘skin graft’ floated. I remember being with my dad when he bought a tube one day (mid-70s, I guess) and the retailer cautioning him about it sticking fingers together, that it was indestructible and a skin graft would be required if this dreaded accident occurred. The truth was a closely guarded secret in marketing terms, I only heard the facts recently. I thought it was miraculous back in the 90s when I bought some PicApart, a simple water-based solvent that dissolves cyanoacrylate, but of course the chemists who invented the stuff (in the 1960s, I heard, as a battlefield surgical tool for sticking wounds together when there was no time for stitches!) had always known its strengths and weaknesses. Acetone is the principle solvent, which is why it’s a fair bet so many macho hobby guys who build powerful, filthy tanks, rusted to perfection and draped with the battle flags of fascists and communists, have a bottle of nail polish remover hidden somewhere in their workshops. Probably behind the bottle of brake fluid they use to strip old paint, but that’s another post!

At first I resisted using superglue, it seemed too strong, liable to melt plastic or lock up parts in the wrong order. Meah... It you want severe, try Revell Contacta Professional, in the precision applicator, I’ve never seen plastic disintegrate like it before or since. (Except that fine component in a Hobbycraft kit that dissolved before my eyes under the assault of old fashioned Testors Liquid Cement, but that’s another post too...) I think I began to use superglue after reading Paul Boyer’s Basic Techniques/Advanced Results series of articles in FSM in the early 90s, and realised that a precise parts-fit coupled with superglue in the seam created a rock-solid joint which could be dressed with a knife blade and sand paper and -- wallah! -- the seam was invisible.

This was the holy grail of finishing skills at the time, how to defeat the appearance of the model being a model. I developed that skill in the decade following until it was easy as breathing. When my brother in law came down from the States many years ago he looked at my models and the first thing he said was ‘I can’t see how it went together... How did you do that?’ (I rarely preen, but that was an occasion.) The model I think was Horizon’s 1:30th scale vinyl T. rex, a model which took ingenuity and a swag of different techniques as I had never built a vinyl before … and never seen gaps like those either. Superglue to the rescue (and shims, putty and plasticine). Another kudo...

What would we do without superglue? Joints would all need putty again, unless the fit was precise enough to be closed up firm with liquid cement alone (old kits and limited-run subjects would be a lot less popular). Rubber bands and clamps would be in demand. “Allow to dry overnight” would reappear in instructions, and kitchen tables would be commandeered with stacks of books and paint bottles carefully balancing models in the dark hours while landing gear dried (shhh, tiptoe past in case it moves!), then there would be a giddy experimental moment the next day when the set was tried out and the hobbyist held his or her breath to see if that carefully finished fighter’s landing gear would collapse under it.

Nostalgia, with a certain jaundiced outlook -- and maybe superglue isn’t solely responsible for remedying these ills, I’m sure a competent builder could put a quality modern kit together with the tube glue still rated safe for junior modellers, and come up with a perfectly good result. But a touch of the cya sure makes things easier!

Shopping Smart/Modelling on a Budget

2009-08-14T11:29:00.003+09:30

Back at the time of Desert Storm there was speculation that the rocketing price of crude would drive up the base price of styrene and make the hobby more expensive, but those fears did not seem to emerge, at least not clearly from the background chatter of multiple other variables all conspiring to make it more expensive to build models. After all, everything is more expensive, that’s inflation, why should the hobby be any different? Hobbies are luxury pass-times for those with disposable income, after all.

But how many of us are in a position to dispose of the kind of chunks of income the hobby field seems to have no qualms about asking these days? There are companies that play shamelessly to the highest end of the market -- Trumpeter, for instance, by the ambitiousness of their projects and their catering to big-scale enthusiasts, not for their detail and research accuracy, and after 15 years in the game they still come second to the engineering quality and design acumen of Tamiya, Hasegawa and Revell Germany. There are less-ambitious companies working in more traditional scales, though, and their prices remain stingers: Airfix’s new Hawker Nimrod, long-awaited and eagerly-anticipated, hit the shelves in Australia at $99.99. That’s a big no-can-do, pard, for a lot of builders. That’s possibly why the new fancy releases are sitting there on the shelf at my LHS, and the bulk of the stock has barely changed in three years. Also possibly a big reason the shop changed hands and is now concentrating on R/C and railroading instead.

Plastic kits are too expensive. If they were half the price I’d buy a lot more. If they were half the price the shop would sell a lot more, which would be better than selling hardly any, but here we see the distributor-mechanism. Kits have an infinite shelf-life. They’re not date-sensitive, they have no use-by, they don’t get sent back and pulped... They sometimes gain value with age. If the distributor owns the stock, it never will go out on special. Mark-downs are virtually unknown here. The price is the price and if the customer can’t afford it, the stock gathers dust until the shop closes -- but the kits go back to the distributor. Last year a local toystore chain gave up carrying kits for the same reasons, and held a distributors’ sale at the warehouse. I looked in but the mark-downs were simply not enough to tempt me to buy, but I noticed a retiree leaving with a Tamiya 1:350th scale Enterprise he’d paid about $200 for. Ah, rollover…

So where do I find the kits to keep my stash ever-expanding?

Simple. eBay.

I joined eBay about five years ago and in that time 95% of all my kit purchases have been through that medium. In the header pic (some ready-use items, not the actual stash) of the 69 items on those shelves, 57 came via eBay. The other 12 are through Squadron Mailorder in Carolton, Texas, who had my order every month in the years before eBay was born. I cleared a huge collection of Superscale decals in the days they regularly cycled through the range at 99c. But the days of specials like that are always numbered, and eBay gives you the chance to wander amongst the wares of the world, almost like an ancient marketplace. You can find retailers in places like Hong Kong, Beijing and Seoul that offer the big brands at serious savings (though lately they are almost all hiking their profits by cheating the purchaser on the postage -- there’s no diplomatic way to say it, it’s cheating pure and simple, and to be fair there are plenty in the West who do the same).

The best bargains are most often at auction: resellers who buy up old collections and kick off the bidding at just a couple of dollars. It takes a modicum of skill to play the auction game, but you can learn it easily enough, and you need to be aware of only two things.

1) If the kit is on general release then you’re trying to beat the price at which you could buy it locally: be aware of that price and know what you’re willing to spend, all-up, for the item in the condition offered. If the bidding runs beyond that point, don’t be pig-headed, just let it go. If it’s an old classic then be guided by your instincts, only you know what you’re willing to pay for a collectable.

2) Postage -- it’s no use getting a great bargain on the item and finding out the postage takes all the cream away from the deal. You might as well have bought it locally, paid the extra and taken it home with you rather than waiting weeks (months even) and hoping at doesn’t go missing.

The US really messed things up when they did away with surface mail a few years back, it must have hurt US trade at many levels. It took the greatest bargain and made it ho-hum, what else can you call it when the postage to mail a kit to Australia is double what you won it for? And it’s a cynical act of big government in any case, to support an airline system failing due to fuel price increases. Well, when airmail is the only option, we learn to optimise that too.

You do that by having a friend in the country of origin who will accept eBay purchases for you, then will combine them in the most compact shipping carton possible (remember, it’s not just by weight that they charge, it’s by linear dimensions too). A friend -- who will charge you actual shipping costs, not mark up the postage by many dollars to shore up his or her own fortunes as a seller. That way you lose on the domestic postage to get the item to reception point, and save on the international shipping of several items in one unit.

You have to ‘box clever’ as my late Dad used to say. The hobby, though better-served and bigger than ever before, has suffered from the global recession, runaway inflation and national debt, and more than ever it’s a rich man’s pass-time. I could spend thousands setting up the workshop of my dreams, but until that many dollars are both earned and not required for other things, I’ll make do with the one I have, which is not bad: it has most of the tools I want, most of the paints, and is supported by a healthy stash of subject matter assembled by careful collecting. We may not ‘haggle’ in today’s Western marketplace, but you can still find a way to get what you want without paying top whack.

Final Review: 1:48 Hasegawa Bf 109 K-4

2009-08-10T23:12:00.005+09:30

With the K-4 finally done (okay, maybe there are one or two details I missed – I blush, I forgot the wingtip formation lights, so she’ll be coming out of the display case for a quick spot of red and green…) I can finish my work in progress articles with a roundup of this kit’s qualities.

Hasegawa’s kit #09063 (JT63) is quite the gem. It has many unused parts from other variants, different cockpit sidewalls, the droptanks and underwing gunpods of G-series bomber-destroyers, three different tail wheel struts, three different instrument panels. You need to keep a careful eye on the instructions to make sure you select the right parts for the variant you’re building.

Marking options are supplied for two aircraft, Yellow 4, “Ingeborg,” of II/JG 3, March 1945, and a second contemporary airframe. Markings include a full suite of stencil data, even including the Werk numbers which may or may not have been carried on the tail of Yellow 4, depending on the sources you consult.

I was originally a little put out with the engineering of the cockpit, but from that point onward the model literally fell together. The propeller attachment could have been smarter, trying to accurately align the fuselage halves while trapping an un-glued rotation piece in a channel at the front end was quite impossible for my dexterity and I settled for gluing it in place as a fixed stub, thus creating a non-turning finished prop. Parts alignment was superb for the most part, my only criticism is a tiny fore-and-aft mismatch on fuselage right and left detailing, which is only really visible where the aft fuselage segments are delineated on the underside. The flaps were marred by a long sink mark on the upper surfaces, which was only visible in certain lighting, virtually guaranteeing the parts were mounted before the problem was noticed. Similarly, the leading edge slats can be mounted open or closed, and while the deployed configuration adds visual interest the separate parts come with the usual penalty for assembling them closed: they don’t fit as well into their bays as the slats of the real plane would.

But these are minor quibbles, really. The surface detailing is accurate for a K-4, the hatches and access panels are in the right places, the Erla Haube looks convincing, and with a few extra details scratched together (the radiator pitch rods, battery bay hatch and flap ribs which I covered in my first post on this kit) it builds into a visually convincing model. I could have added hydraulic lines from fine wire but I was out of time and application on the project, that’s something for future builds.

Another detail which I had meant to use was Quickboost’s exhausts, beautifully cast with open throats and midline weld seams, however they did not provide the locator slot for the glare shields of the late-series 109s, moulded as separate kit parts, and I didn’t fancy scratching this detail at so late a stage. The resin AMs ended up in the drawer against a future build.

The decals went down actually quite nicely, reacting well with Microscale chemistry, though the spiralschnauze tried to curl up on the paper and was broken into pieces to be applied, and the big open crosses silvered somewhat. The 60 or so decals make a visually ‘busy’ aircraft, even if the real “Ingeborg” may not have carried a full suite of stencils (references and reconstructions do not, as you would expect, always agree.)

Promodeller panel wash and MiG pigments created the worn appearance, the carbon stains and dust that denote a service aircraft being hard-flown, and EZ Line provided the radio antenna. Without going to the extent of AM cockpit and wheels, opening the canopy etc, this model makes a sweet display piece that really captures, the gutsy, brutish yet still graceful lines of the ever-more powerful ultimate Messerschmitt 109. I would recommend this kit to anyone with a few builds under his or her belt: while the multi-tone camouflage will be a challenge and the many decals will certainly occupy more than a couple of evenings, the basic soundness of the kit engineering will foster an attractive finished product if approached with care, forethought, and above all, patience.

Product Review: Berkshire Junction's EZ Line

2009-08-08T14:23:00.005+09:30

Model railroading firm Berkshire Junction came up with a winner when they developed EZ Line. It was meant for adding in-scale power and communication lines, even wire fences, to railroad layouts, but this product has many uses.

As the product blurb explains, it is an elastic polymer with 700% stretch, and given that the spool comes with 100 feet of line, that’s a lot of finished product! It comes in five stock colours, white, charcoal, green, rust and rope, but the thread takes acrylic paint perfectly so if you can’t get the colour you need for a particular job it’s no disaster. When I ordered I could only get rust, so I use Tamiya XF-1, diluted with thinner, to create black antenna cables on aircraft.

The thread is very thin! When stretched it seems hair-thin, and that’s almost scary. Obviously, the tighter you draw it, the thinner it becomes, and that’s something to keep in mind. The extreme elasticity means there is very little ‘pull’ to it, which places it within the grabbing strength of superglue, and even my first fumbling attempt was pretty successful.

I rigged the antenna wire on my 1:48th scale Hasegawa Bf 109 K-4 (see the final roundup on that project, coming next post), and found the line worked very well, though you need patience and dexterity, and a decent pair of tweezers. I located the forward end into a tiny hole drilled in the fuselage top, simply fixing it with a drop of CA in the hole, and when it was dry I threaded it through the loop antenna and drew it (mildly) tight across the stub mast on the tailplane, dabbed it with CA and held it in place for a couple of minutes until I dared release it. It held no bother, and I trimmed the loose end with small scissors. The cross-cable was done the same way, seated into a fine drilling in the fuselage and, when dry, drawn very mildly up against a spot of glue placed on the first cable, and held. When dry I trimmed the end, and it was done. The cross-cable inevitably deflects the main cable down, which is not technically accurate: I’ll need to play with this product a bit more to figure out how to use it best.

Apparently it is very popular with biplane enthusiasts for rigging, and that’s a job I look forward to with some trepidation, though also interest, as I’m sure a well-rigged biplane will look great on the shelf! Shipbuilders have been encountering great success using this product for elements of rigging. Another project that comes to mind is a PBY Catalina, using EZ Line for those enormously long radio antennas between the tailplane and the wingtips.

The elastic thinning of the line also means it is equally appropriate for 1:72nd scale, simply draw the thread a little tighter to get greater scale thinness.

All in all, though comparatively expensive, this is a very versatile product, and the name tells all, it really is easy to use. I don’t think my tools draw will ever be without EZ Line from now on.

See EZ Line and many other products at:

http://www.berkshirejunction.com

I ordered mine in Australia online through Red Roo:

http://www.redroomodels.com/

where the price is currently Aus$26 per spool, plus shipping.

Hasegawa Bf 109 K-4: Soft-Masking the Camouflage

2009-07-31T12:35:00.004+09:30

The Hasegawa K-4 has certainly been gestating a long time, what with professional commitments and a month’s jury service, but she’s on the last lap now. I just completed the paintwork and for the first time I’ve tried the technique of soft-masking.

The late-war German camouflage patterns were a simplified, time-saving exercise. Gone were the masked, hard-edge patterns from the early war years, replaced with free-handed patterns on the horizontal surfaces and ever more complex freehand disruptive schemes on the fuselage sides. The challenge here is to reproduce that scheme with smooth graduations between the colours at a resolution which is a fair scale representation of the feather of the original sprayguns. There are many approaches, and while you can change down to a fineline tip and needle on your airbrush, and adjust the thinning ratio of the paint and the pressure delivery to the AB, these techniques take a lot of mastering. Soft-masking leaves the paint operation alone and addresses the problem directly on the model.

The idea is to mask the camo but support the masks clear of the surface by around an eighth of an inch, so that the cloud of paint passing the edge lands on the surface in a tight but still diffuse edge, creating a resolution often difficult by regular means. The first step is to prepare the paint scheme:

I sprayed the underside LM 76 first, and when that was thoroughly dry I masked the edges of the flying surfaces, including the wavy-edge demarcation at the leading edge, using Tamiya tape. The card masks are photographed with the model at this stage.

I masked the sides of the fuselage to protect the 76 and the RLM 75 grey topside colour was then sprayed on the horizontal surfaces and left to harden. Then I cut rectangles from white 120-gsm cardstock large enough to cover each area of the grey to be protected. The card pieces were laid onto the wings and tail, fuselage and nose, and the shape was roughly drawn on in pencil, then cut out with small scissors. At this point it's worth noting that Hasegawa "kicked" the grey/green pattern on the left wing: reverse them, grey areas for green areas, to get the historically correct pattern. I kept the positive and negative area masks for the fuselage sides as I was pretty sure I would need both.

Above: The card masks were attached loosely to the model with rolled out strips of blu-tac (the same stuff as you use to put up posters) and then extra bits of tape were used to link them together where necessary. With the fuselage sides masked I went on to spray the 75 on the upper parts:

The three masks crossing the fuselage crest were made on the fly, matching with the horizontal masks already in place:

Lastly the RLM 83 green was sprayed overall, and when dry the masks were carefully removed.

The blu-tac develops considerable grab, so it’s important to remove it carefully. The mask crossing the canopy was so firmly attached that it pulled the canopy right off, so it will be reattached in the final round of work. A soft eraser removes some slight residue remaining on the paint. From this point I touched up as necessary, including applying the negative masks to protect the camo on the upper parts of the fuselage, so I could touch up over some overspray darkening the 76,

then I removed those masks once more, revealing the virtually complete paintjob:

The definition between the colours could have been softer, I thought, to be more clearly soft-masked rather than hard-masked, but overall I’m very pleased with the result. While labour-intensive, it was a lot less traumatic than trying for fineline airbrush effects can often be.

Now, onto the small details and the decals!

Warning — Rant: After-Market Parts and the Cynicism of Gilding the Lilly

2009-07-23T13:20:00.005+09:30

I have Revell’s classic 1:48th scale Grumman Cougar on the shelf. It’s the only time that this subject has been done in this scale. The copyright of the edition is 1985 but the kit engineering is a good twenty years earlier. It has raised surface detail, including the so-popular rivets of the time, not much going on inside the intakes, and a single piece cockpit insert combining pilot, seat, floor, panel and detail behind the seat (which, to be fair, is more than many got in those days). It ohh-soo needs a resin cockpit, and resin wheel well inserts, and some of those Seamless Suckers to back the intakes, not to mention weighted tires and maybe a crystal clear vacform hood that can be posed open, a set of vinyl masks, and of course a wide selection of marking options released by the decal guys.

Where are they?

There’s an echoing void. I can sand back the detail and rescribe the bird, sure, and I could use Panther accessories (assuming they’ve been produced for the newer Trumpeter Panther), and piece together my markings from generic sheets, masks and careful paintwork. Yes, that’s a valid approach, and nothing a modeller wouldn’t have to do if the AM industry was less active than it is. My point is just that: the AM industry is volatile in its ability to churn out product, but the choice of product and how it is marketed seem to play -- cynically -- only to certain parts of the hobby.

The pics above are the collection of AMs I put together for a single project. I know what you’re thinking – for a bloke who complains about AMs, I seem to have a lot of them. And I’m not really complaining, just having a bit of a whinge… I mean, where would we be without companies like Eduard, Legends, Verlinden, Mig Productions, Coree and the like? It could be said Francios Verlinden started the AM industry thirty years ago, giving modellers things they really wanted (to make up for the shortfalls in commercial kits between affordable practicality and actual accuracy). That was a great thing, and transformed the hobby, allowing more modellers to build truly spectacular models without needing to evolve the skills of a master machinist with infinite time and resources to do so.

The market proved to be an accommodating one, and the quality race was on: the kit companies raised their own game, in one generation injection molded plastic has gone from often clunky to often breathtaking, and the resin and photoetch guys have kept pace, not simply providing alternatives but striving to correct and outdo their plastic counterparts.

Yet there comes a point when this process becomes cynical.

Tasca burst on the injection mold scene in 2003 with a Panzer II in 1:35th scale, and reviewers ran out of superlatives... Not just accuracy of outline and a high parts count, with individual molding of detail parts for maximum accuracy and realism, but a fineness of detail resolution never seen before (and probably nowhere else even now), such as butterfly bolts (wingnuts) rendered in actual, crisp detail though the parts were less than 1mm in size. The model featured working plastic torsion bar suspension, something done elsewhere since (AFV Club’s Tiger I, IIRC, featured the same), but which at the time was a jaw-dropper. Surely no finer or more ambitious plastic engineering had ever been attempted, and what more could a modeller ask for? Especially at the comparably high price the kit commanded (and still does).

Well, after-markets. You have to have a photoetched detail set to make it better... Or so say the guys who make them, and have the gall to offer an expensive fret of etched metal because the reviewers who raved about the kit were obviously wrong to praise it so highly. Hey, scrape away that incredible styrene molding, stick on some of our metal, then it’ll really be accurate!

You see the same thing with aircraft. The finest kits are the ones for which ‘updates’ are offered, or corrections, kits which already feature some of the best components on the market and build into pretty darn good models just as they are, while older, or more affordable, kits that could really do with a helping hand, are pretty much ignored. True Details produced a host of fine parts for a wide variety of subjects many years ago, but their productivity has been much lower in recent times, and that could be symptomatic of the same thing: the marketplace that must have its AMs doesn’t buy cheapy kits and oldies to start with, and we can expect the AM companies to have done painstaking market research to properly target their products.

It is as it is. If you want to make an expensive kit even more expensive then they’re ready and willing to take your money -- that’s the nature of a commercial enterprise. And it’s true that there are modern kits which do indeed fall down on the job: Trumpeter’s new 1:32nd scale Grumman Bearcat faired pretty well in it’s review in the pages of FineScale Modeler, but others were not so kind to it, one English magazine’s build-up feature laid bare the bones of that particular skeleton and after that I lost my enthusiasm for scraping together the asking price. Maybe with a comprehensive AM set to fix the problems it might be worth the effort, if such a set could correct the engineering deficiencies of, for instance, the wingfolds (perfect if depicting them folded, but the fit is hopeless for the extended configuration, which is, after all, the most likely form in which most buyers would choose to depict the aircraft).

I guess the point I’m making is simply this: while I acknowledge that the top end of the market is a legitimate place to play to, it would be nice if the AM guys aimed a bit lower at times too. Not necessarily that old Cougar, she’s a rarity these days, of course she is (to tell the truth it’s an awful kit by modern standards, and in the cold light of day I don’t think it’s actually worth saving!), and any product must have a big enough potential market to justify its existence. But bits and pieces to trick out kits that actually need it would be nice. (And yes, Eduard and others have gone round and dilligently produced PE sets for, e.g., thirty-year old Tamiya armour, which blunts my argument somewhat, even if the sets are often more expensive than prices at which you can pick up the kits!)

But I like the Quickboost approach best: replacement parts for an ever-growing range of items, with superior detail at an affordable price, and so light-weight they mail for free from many companies... Yeah, now there’s my idea of an AM outfit!

Rant over, normal services will be resumed as of the next post!

Why do so many companies have trouble with tracks?

2009-07-14T09:25:00.004+09:30

Tracks... All armoured vehicles over a certain weight have them. They come in endless styles, narrow ones, broad ones, cleated tracks, padded tracks, live track, dead track... Amtracks with ‘swimming grousers,’ Shermans with ‘snow grousers,’ Panzers with Ostketten. The fascination with modelling tanks brought with it the challenge of companies producing realistic tracks, and most modellers would say they’ve never really acheived 100% accuracy no matter what approach they’ve taken.

There are traditional flexible vinyl tracks, single-piece, to be joined around the running gear, and they do a generally good job. In the early 1970s they tended to be poorly detailed and possibly undetailed on one side, though today molding technology and computerised machining of the molds means they can be highly detailed both sides. The ones above are from Tamiya’s 1:35th scale King Tiger, Ardennes. The drawback is that the relative stiffness of the vinyl means the tracks don’t develop a sag between the return rollers, or lie along the top of large diameter wheels, like real tracks do.

Then there are individual-link or link-and-length tracks, which call for cleanup and assembly. For some modellers these are the best, though for others they are a nightmare whose tedious nature more than forgives the lack of sag in the vinyls. Above are the indie links made by Academy to compliment their issue of the early Tamiya Panzer IV-derived tanks (all the models on the box are of Tamiya origin). And below are ModelKasten’s set for the above-mentioned King Tiger.

If sag is your thing, Trumpeter got ambitious a few years ago and produced superbly machined link-and-length tracks for their KV-1 series of kits in which the sag over the return rollers was molded right in, and even the most die-hard anti-L&L builder must feel tempted by these amazing pieces of injection work:

Then come the workable tracks from AM companies, whitemetal, plastic or resin with wire pivots taking the place of the real track bolts, and which will hang, sag and roll like real (dead) track -- for a price.

Dragon came up with Magic Tracks, a soft styrene type in which the links click-fit and will hold their shape until you can hit them with liquid cement, lending themselvs to being shaped to any configuration of suspension. This is a neat idea and probably the most innovative.

Vehicles with skirts tend to make that perfect hang and sag of the return length superfluous though: you can’t see it, so why sweat blood on it? And tight tracks don’t sag anyway. But tightness raises the question of why some companies don’t seem to be able to get it right in the most profound sense.

I’m talking about early Trumpeter. I was really attracted to the Chinese Type 89 tank Destroyer, and was building along quite satisfactorily -- until I came to the tracks. They were half an inch too short (below) to link up around the running gear, and no amount of coaxing was going to change that: snapping off the portside idler wheel convinced me to give up. I tried heat treatment, stretching them by heating them with a hair drier, and hanging them with weights, but after half a dozen exhaustive treatments, using all the heat my hands could tolerate, one track had grown about one link’s worth, as the vinyl shrank again upon cooling. I was fed up and shelved the project. That late-mold Tamiya StuG III I reviewed last time was both a pleasure and a relief to build instead.

Of course I didn’t give up entirely. The Type 89 shares the same chassis with the 122mm MBRL and the Type 83 SP artillery, I have them all, and all I would need is a single extra length of track to complete them. Cut out a few links and splice them in with superglue and thread as necessary, and suddenly the tracks will go round the running gear and meet as they should. I emailed Trumpeter, seeking to buy a spare length of track, got a reply asking me to forward photographs of the parts involved ... Then nothing. Hey, I tried, but their aftermarket support at this point is as dodgy as their English, which is curious given their truly ambitious products and their dedicated assault on the affluent end of the Western marketplace. Their more modern products are of higher quality, I would certainly hope the tracks are the right length given the price they charge for their new armour.

And what about Dragon? That other Chinese company often considered to have eclipsed Tamiya as king of 1:35th scale? Early Dragon is beset by far too many microscopic parts which vanish into the carpet, and by the sort of over-thought engineering that has Dragon airplane models glide into waist bins beside the benches of grown modellers sobbing with frustration at their sheer unfriendliness and inaccuracy of fit. This is the antithesis of Tamiya’s philosophy, and while Tamiya’s earlier products may not be acceptably accurate or sufficiently detailed for today’s more mature taste, you can mostly rely on them to build well. “Buildability” was Mr. Tamiya’s watchword, and is sure to have contributed to the company’s historic success.

My only experience with early Dragon is in the reboxing of their classic Russian armour models when the molds were obtained by Zvezda. Their BTR-70 built fine, only a few grab handles needed to be replaced with brass because they broke before I could remove them from the sprue (because the parts were finer than their sprue attachments!) But their T-72 is another matter. It may be Zvezda’s plastic: the link and length tracks are brittle and the plastic really does not like to react with superglue (a bit like Chinese plastic in that respect). Thus trying to piece those tracks together promised to be an exercise in frustration. The Zvezda T-72B with Explosive Reactive Armour is easily the most detailed tank model I have ever built, and it sits unfinished in its box because there is no way I’ll mess around with that job, and the only AM T-72 tracks I can locate are far more expensive than the kit was. My prayer, thrown to the gods of styrene, is that AFV Club will finally produce high quality vinyl replacements in their expanding range of sell-alone tracks.

Which brings me back to my lament, why can’t companies with all the expertise and the million-dollar computer-assisted design and manufacture, get the tracks right? Properly detailed, that fit the sprockets exactly, articulate with eachother, and take a realistic paintjob? If it has to be link-and-length, then the plastic had better respond well to glue, you certainly can’t stitch them together. And if they’re vinyl then is it too much to ask that they be the right length?

These criticisms don’t apply to modern Tamiya products, modern Dragon, or, as far as I know, current Trumpeter or Revell-Germany. But they can all be criticised for their sometimes exorbitant prices. I know, I know -- I want it all ways, tracks that fit and an affordable price. I’m just out of touch with reality...

Kit Review: Tamiya StuG III/G

2009-07-11T16:51:00.005+09:30

Tamiya’s retool program began in the 90s with their reworking of the Tiger I Ausf E (35146), rectifying many of the criticisms of their old version (35055). The new generation tooling was more precise, there was better engineering, more options, and greater accuracy and detail fidelity. Many of their early kits were withdrawn by that time, one of which was their Sturmgeschutz III Ausf G. I had no idea there was such a kit until finding a diorama built around it in an early-90s issue of FineScale Modeler. This vehicle is a significant one, at the end of the Second World War it was by far the most numerous armoured vehicle available to the Germans, as the turretless self-propelled assault guns were much quicker and easier to build than actual tanks.

The retool of the StuG (35197) is an excellent piece of plastic engineering. It pretty much fell together, it was possible to finish the suspension and lower hull details in one evening session, build up the gun and mantlet at the same time, and in no time be moving on to the wheels.

There are plenty of options in this kit. It is supplied with brackets and rails to mount a suite of stand-off armour (included); there are triple smoke grenade launchers for the forward hull to model an Ausf G early production type (they were deleted at the end of 1943 as unneeded); twin radio antenna mounts in case you want to build a command version, which featured extra radio equipment in the starboard side superstructure; the loader’s and commander’s hatches can be posed open, though there is no interior detail and the sponsons are open, a throwback to earlier generations of tooling; the MG-34 shield can be assembled folded down or raised with the gun mounted; an alternate barrel is provided for the 105mm howitzer to build the Sturmhaubitzer 42 variant; and two figures are included, plus a small dog, creating a vignette of a crew in an off-duty moment which is a pleasant reminder of the humanity of the crews who manned these machines of war. The kit provides markings for three vehicles, the 303rd StuG Brigade, Wermacht, Norway, 1943, in overall dark yellow; the 237th StuG Brigade, Wermacht, Russia, 1943, in dark yellow with red-brown disruptive stripes; and a StuH 42, “55” of an unknown unit in Italy, 1944, in overall dark yellow. I used a set of Echelons on mine as I fancied a green mottle camo job.

Tamiya produces a photoetched fret, sold separately, for the engine intakes and exhaust assembly, though a cheaper one is made by Eduard (seen here) and does admirable service, even including a few extra parts.

There are very few fiddly bits on this model. Locating the ventilator, spare track retainer and radio mast mounts on the rear wall of the superstructure calls for use of a template part, you simply draw around a set of indents to create locator marks, then glue the pieces directly on without guides or pegs: that would have required slide-molding. You need to be aware that the main gun mounts to a pedestal inside the hull with a push-fit, so dry-fitting this part invites a permanent fit before you’re ready.

Beyond this, there is really very little to comment on, other than ease of assembly and alignment, the overall pleasing sit of the vehicle on its tracks (which are vinyl, with full double-sided detailing.) There are plenty of aftermarket options for this kit, from photoetched details, including a general PE set by Eduard, gun parts by CzechMaster, probably full PE stand-off protection by one of the AM companies to replace the too-thick and too-regular plastic parts, a zimmerit set made by Cavalier, decals by Bison, Echelon and others, Panzer III indie tracks by Dragon and replacement tracks for Panzer III series vehicles by ModelKasten and Friulmodelismo. You can indulge your taste for AMs as far as you like, but the basic kit builds a very nice, realistic model. There are tiny details you may wish to change depending on how much of a stickler you are, or how much you want to depict a specific point in the production run, such as fender brackets, and fasteners for the removable armour of the superstructure roof.

I finished mine in Tamiya acrylics, with oil wash weathering and Echelon decals as a StuG III early, with smoke grenade launchers but without stand-off armour, single antenna mast, and with hatches closed. There are endless other ways to build this kit, and I have two more in my stash. One day I hope to do one in zimmerit, with winter camo and stand-offs.

As a longtime fan of Tamiya I am delighted with their products new and old, and the sheer ease of construction and precision of engineering one encounters is always worth the price of opening the box. Yes, Dragon’s Ausf. III/G is that bit more accurate and consistent in its fine details; it’s that bit more expensive too, and you pay for what you get, as ever. This little kit is easily one of my favourites, and teamed with the Squadron Signal Sturmgeschutz III in Action and Sturmgeschutz III Walk Around volumes, I rapidly became knowledgeable of this historically important vehicle as I was building it.

Here are some online references for this vehicle:

http://www.primeportal.net/the_battlefield_armor.htm

http://svsm.org/gallery/Self-Propelled-Guns?page=2

http://cs.finescale.com/forums/990681/ShowPost.aspx

The Very First Kit

2009-07-01T10:36:00.003+09:30

Can you remember your first kit? Can you remember where and when it came to you, and what it was that drew you to the hobby in the first place?

I was five years old the first time I saw plastic kits and understood them for what they were. Airfix Series 1 bagged kits, in a window display at the newsagent at the end of my street. I remember my dad taking me to the shop on a Sunday morning and buying me an Airfix Tiger Moth. He built it for me as I watched, wrapt, and by the end of the day there was a bright yellow (it was molded in trainer yellow in those days) biplane for me. I was fascinated, and wanted more!

The following week was the same pattern, and the Airfix Bristol Fighter joined the Tiger Moth. And in the weeks after, each Sunday morning brought a new shape in plastic: the Westland Whirlwind was one, the Gloster Gladiator another, and the F-5A was the first jet in the collection, as well as the first kit where I was sufficiently inspired to try my own hand and help out on the building. I think the Me 262 was one of them also.

A child’s nimble brain is way ahead of his or her dexterity in relating the shapes and how they go together, and there is always a lot of frustration in getting from A to B -- A being the fresh kit and an idea in mind of what the product should look like, and B being the actual result. But I do remember my family never stinting their praise for my efforts, no matter how far I had to go to perfect the skills involved. As a child I was more interested in quantity than quality, and production-lined models through at an amazing speed, without giving a thought to accuracy or moving beyond the limitations of the kit, but these things developed automatically as the years went by.

I still have a fondness for that so-simple Airfix Tiger Moth, and Roy Cross’s classic box art. I have it in my stash (that's the box top of the current issue above), and one day I’ll do the best job on it I possibly can, including rigging and maybe score out the control surfaces and reposition them. There’s only so much you can do with 25 parts, but as with the generation of RAF pilots who began their flying career in De Havilland’s classic trainer, this aircraft, and this particular kit, will always mean the beginning of the road to me.

Product Review: Microscale Micro Metal Foil Adhesive

2009-06-22T11:35:00.005+09:30

South Australia is slightly over the edge of the world. You can’t get stuff here... I inquired at the biggest hobby shop in town about a polishing kit to develop a glass-like shine on gloss enamels and was told that, while they had heard of them, there was no point stocking them, as nobody (presumably besides myself) would ever buy one in this town. Just the same, Model Master Enamels are going out of stock here at mainstream stores, they’re just not popular enough compared with Humbrol Enamels or Tamiya Acrylics, so the biggest shop in town is not going to restock, and they never had the full range anyway. If you need precise matches to historic colours, you’re off to a specialist stockist...

So I actually had a bit of luck lately when I needed Microscale’s Micro Metal Foil Adhesive. It was the right product for the job, and this time it turned out the shop actually did have in stock what I needed. I call it blind luck, as of all Microscale’s wide range of great finishing products, this was the only one they actually stocked (and no, their nearest competitor has never heard of the range...)

Rant aside, this is a good product! It smells like PVA white glue, looks like it, albeit water-thin, but it grips like PVA never did. And it seems to be water-based, as you can clean up with water until it’s cured, and with paint thinner afterward. It dries pretty quickly, a minute or two and it’s off provided you’re only using a small amount.

It’s easy to use. Cut a piece of foil, brush the glue onto the back and wait until the ‘milky’ appearance has gone, then apply it to your model. There’s some slippage time, but if you time it just right it’ll grab pretty quick. Applying it firmly over a smooth surface, you can then burnish the foil to a smooth, gleaming finish. In my case, I was applying crumpled gold foil to a Lunar Module to replicate the gold Mylar thermal insulation of the Descent Stage, so a burnished final appearance was not involved. This was just as well, as I found the glue did not hold very well on the small sticking area of tiny, curved surfaces, so my application did not wrap tightly to the struts. In context it created a suitably bulky, ‘packed’ appearance just like the original, but I found you need to work with larger diameters of tubing to get a firm, tight contact between foil and plastic.

Nevertheless, I was impressed. As with every Microscale product I’ve tried (with the exception of Trimfilm, but that’s another story), it works as advertised, is very economical and non-messy. This is a recommended product.

Find it at:

http://www.microscale.com

As a water-based formula it’s okay to send through the post (like Talon Acrylics), as US airmail won’t touch so many hobby products any more. That’s another post too...

Accuracy, Out of Inaccuracy

2009-06-19T14:42:00.003+09:30

Aurora -- the name brings back rosey-eyed memories of many an afternoon spent with glue and paint as a child, not that I could afford many Auroras. I remember a shop that stocked them in the early 1970s, the square-box edition with those imposing paintings, their movie monsters series in particular. I bought their King Kong and was very impressed by that powerful figure. I’ve often wondered what I could do with that kit with my current techniques.

But the Aurora I’m thinking of is somewhat different. It was said by a reviewer that Aurora’s aircraft were always suspect, and the older the kits the more likely they were to be suspicious as to their accuracy and fit. Aurora’s B-58 Bomber (#375) was tooled in 1958, I managed to find an unmade 1958 example (long box) on eBay, for a reasonable price (some parts had been assembled, several were painted, and they were detached from their sprues). I needed it to mold off some parts to build some SF studio replicas -- TV FX miniatures built in the 60s which used B-58 parts from this kit -- and in that much it will suit its purpose perfectly. But the kit itself is a ... disaster!

It’s the wrong shape. Not one single part of it is accurate. Not the proportional sizes, not the contours. The engines are way too fat, the tailplane is all over the map, the wings are the wrong size. There are raised decal guides on the surface... How this model could have remained in production for so long is a total amazement. Revell’s and Monogram’s early offerings may not have been up to scratch by modern standards but they were rather better than this. Italeri’s #1142 is by far the best B-58 in the scale, no wonder it fetches the prices it does on eBay these days: maybe Italeri will take notice of this and reissue the kit again, as they did about five (?) years ago.

Here’s a comparison, the Aurora (top) and Italeri (bottom) engines, the latter being accurate and in fact the larger scale!

And here are the fuselages and tails, Aurora at the top, then Lindberg and Italeri at the bottom. They seem like three different aircraft.

And on the subject of scale -- the classic Aurora is always reputed to be 1:64th, but the stated scale is ‘5/32nd” (to the foot)’, which goes through the calculator thus: 12” x 1/32nd” = 384/32nds, divided by 5 = 76.8th scale. This is almost the same as Lindberg’s (somewhat better) kit, which compared to the real aircraft scales out at 1/78th, and accounts for why the parts are smaller than Italeri’s (which is a -- more accurate -- 1:72). Unless Aurora tooled a larger B-58 (as they tooled a much smaller one at 1:180th, released these days by Addar), I’m mystified at the general air of confusion surrounding this kit.

Incidentally, Lindberg’s has also been deemed 1:64, which it isn’t. The stated scale is 3/16th”=1’, which calculates out at 1/64th okay, but when you measure the components and compare them to the real aircraft, it’s noticeably the smallest of the three.

Will I ever assemble the Aurora Hustler? No. But I’ll use plenty of castings from those components to build entirely accurate replicas of the science fiction craft which used its parts: therein lies actual accuracy, which, ironically, stems from inaccuracy as its basis!

WIP: Hasegawa Bf 109 K-4: Tweaking the Details

2009-06-15T14:18:00.004+09:30

I recently blogged about my disgruntlement with the cockpit design and fit of Hasegawa’s Bf 109s, and I might have given something of a negative view of the K-4 kit at that time. The fact is it’s a very good model, with almost all of it’s bits in the right place, and there are very few things to correct. It’s more a case of adding what the company left out, either for reasons of economy or the limitations of molding.

For instance, the jacks that actuate the flaps of the three radiator scoops are missing, and are always visible on the real aircraft, so deserve to be added. A few milimeters of .020” micro-rod fixes the problem. The wing rads simply had slivers of rod glued in before the wing was closed, while the chin scoop and the target point on the midline were drilled through and a small piece of rod superglued in after the scoop was attached. The end was then trimmed and filed smooth, and the job was done.

And there’s the area behind the headrest. This is the only area where detail is explicitly incorrect for the K-4, as a square bulge molded into the fuselage halves represents the battery cover of the G-10 version, while in the later mark the battery was relocated so as not to intrude into the cockpit. Ideally this area should have been a separate detail part with simply a locator hole on the fuselage midline joint, then the differing detail could have been accurately captured with alternate parts to peg into it. No attempt was made to depict the battery access hatch and canopy locking bar found in this area, and the kit is without a seat harness. I scratchbuilt the missing details from .010” sheet, .020” x .040” strip and .020” rod, below:

Does this count as correcting the kit, or simply beefing up the detail? The latter, I feel, as the kit is almost entirely correct in everything it offers, it just doesn’t offer everything, and in this scale few companies do. I’m certainly not a detailaholic, I’m not creating a pilot’s oxygen hose from guitar string, or installing a resin cockpit with film-and-PE instruments. I get my biggest thrill from the painting and decal stage, and want to get to it sooner rather than later.

Here’s the extra detail painted and weathered with oil wash and enamel drybrushing to dirty it up enough to look used through the clear parts:

What else is there to do for this one? Many would go to town on the gear bays, they are a bit spartan, but I think I’ll restrict myself to taking a crack at hydraulic lines made from thin detailing wire. Next step – research, if this plane had them, what did they look like?

I’ve no doubt this kit will be spectacular when finished, and that I’ll add another (or two) to my stash one day. Maybe I should complain less and enjoy the process of building more!

Minute Details: Resin Replacements or Go With the Kit Bits?

2009-06-12T10:23:00.005+09:30

I was working on the Hasegawa 1:48 F-104C and found myself thinking what great engineering it features. So many options, so much detail! The recessed surface detail is incredible, and the five-part wings boggle the mind when you’re used to those thin, thin Starfighter wings having been single-part castings in (probably) every kit before.

What really made me stop and think was when I was assembling the 13-part ejector seat. The seat itself fits back against the fixed guide assembly, and until you add glue, it actually slides on the very rails which in the real thing constitute the ramp to guide the rocket projectile (the seat) out of the cockpit. I find myself asking, why would I bother going to the expense of replacing this seat with a single block of molded resin?

Sure, I have the Black Box conversion set to modify the kit to Canadian standard, and the resin cockpit is fantastic, with molded in seat and harness and such. The proportions do look rather different when you compare the tubs, and the knee-jerk is to say the resin one must be the accurate one, because, well, it’s an aftermarket resin! (Ever tried stuffing a Verlinden transmission and final drives into a Panzer IV hull? I’ve heard it can reduce a seasoned pro to tears, which suggests either the hull or the AMs are inaccurate: they can’t both be right, or they’d fit.) But unless you’re building an open cockpit to show off all that detail, it does tend to get lost in the gloom. There’s satisfaction in knowing all the details are there, but frustration in spending a long time creating it, only to have it disappear when the project is finished. For a closed cockpit I would most definitely go with the kit parts, and for open ones too under most circumstances. I will certainly be building more Hasegawa Starfighters in the years ahead, the subject is just too appealing to ignore!

The kit itself has such a wealth of detail that sometimes resin is ‘gilding the lilley,’ as it were, while older (and more affordable kits) which cry out for a resin helping hand, are almost universally ignored, which doesn’t seem fair... This is a theme for another post.

Product Review: Echelon Decals

2009-06-08T17:37:00.004+09:30

Echelon is one of those small (not so small anymore!) manufacturers with both skill and a real enthusiasm on their side. Based in Singapore, Echelon specialises in armour decals, mining World War II for rare and interesting Allied and Axis schemes, as well as investing considerable effort in documenting the US armour formations of Desert Storm and OIF. They have also created a unique range of reflective adhesive-foil die-cut parts to represent the driving mirrors of peace-time armoured vehicles, a more realistic option than the old silver paint can ever be.

Releases range from small, single-subject sheets, to large sheets with multiple subjects, accompanied by excellent full-colour instructions generated off computer printers. The great news is Echelon is one of those lines that some Asian dealers sell postage-free anywhere in the world, for instance Spearheads Frontier in Singapore (the originating source) and Lucky Model in Hong Kong, who stock the full range.

Featured above are a couple of their more compact offerings: one of their Desert Storm sheets, #356025, an M1A1 named ‘Atlas,’ a typical beast with chevrons and Tact Board, and the classic wolf’s head insignia (slightly puzzling to the casual glance, given that this vehicle belonged to ‘Tiger’ regiment). This is one of their small sheets, about 2” square, with a computer-generated 14 x 8 cm instruction sheet. The other, slightly smaller sheet, is a German WWII subject, a small collection of crosses and insignia for StuG IIIs on the Russian front, #356033, and you’ll note some decals are used.

I used them last year on a Tamiya StuG III/G (35197) seen above, using markings for the StuG brigade of “Das Reich” at the Kursk Salient in summer 1943. I painted with Tamiya acrylics and the very thin, very strong decals went down perfectly without glosscoating, and with no silvering at all. They are a little glossy, some clear flat before application would help with this. I have a late Panzer IV on my build list for this year and I’ll certainly be using Echelons as their quality of manufacture and depth of research make them an obvious solution.

If you’re after unusual subject choices, manufactured to full professional quality, at competitive prices and even postage-free anywhere in the world, Echelon is fast becoming a range of choice. I certainly have them in my stash!