Hasegawa 1/48 Bf109K-4 Blue 16

[Thunnus]

Here is my recently completed build of Hasegawa's 1/48 scale Bf109K-4.  The only aftermarket addition was a Quickboost Revi 16 gun sight when I lost the kit part to the carpet monster.  I added some stuff on my own like riveting,  inserts to the wheel wells, details on the landing gear and doors and replacing the antennas.  The national markings are painted on using Montex masks and the 16 and some stencil decals were from Eagle Editions.

 

 

[Thunnus]

Here are some in-progress photos of Blue 16...

 

I tried painting the kit instrument panel but I didn't like it so instead, I punched the dials from the instrument panel decal.  Oh.. the seatbelts are aftermarket photoetch (Lion Roar).

 

Rivets were applied using Radu's Rivet-R Mini.

 

Some corrections were made to the K-4 belly.

 

I roughed out some inserts for the wheel wells using plastic sheet.

 

The tail gear doors were cut off and replaced with a piece of sprue to depict the doors closed.

 

Some fuel ports and other hatches near seams were re-scribed.

 

[mustang1989]

Holy Smokes!!!!  This is unreal!! Wow man! You really made this one into a winner!

[LSP_Kevin]

Wow, that is very striking!

 

Kev

[Thunnus]

Thanks guys!  I'm happy with the way it turned out with the exception of the aerial coming too close to the loop antenna.  Some more in-progress pictures...

 

The kit exhaust pipes are very small and difficult to hollow out but it can be done with a sharp x-acto blade.

 

The deflector plates above the exhausts were replaced with brass sheet.

 

The cockpit was not super-detailed due to the limited view into the cockpit and the fact that I was going to button it up with the canopy closed.  I did add a Quickboost Revi 16B gunsight though.

 

I dressed up the landing gear with some lead wire.

[Shaka HI]

Superb modeling!

[Thunnus]

Thanks Shaka!

 

Painting Blue 16 was a time consuming process, which some of you might find interesting.  I started by painting the spinner.  Since I went through the trouble of riveting the spinner, I wanted to do the spiral with paint instead of decals.  Cutting a neat spiral mask proved to be difficult until I broke up the cutting into two sections: a swivel knife for the tightest curves and scissors for the rest.

 

After my normal preshading routine, I covered the lowered surfaces with RLM 76.

 

Blue 16 is noted to be a probable W.Nr. 331xxx batch K-4 which are characterized by the hard edged wave delineation between the upper and lower camo colors.  I decided that a paper mask would be a good way of replicating that hard edge.  The masks were stuck on using bits of Blu Tack.

 

The upper colors are supposed to be RLM83/RLM75 but I didn't like how the green turned out.  I mixed a darker shade and redid the green, which needed lots of re-touching.

 

I cut a mask on a strip of Tamiya tape for the wavy pattern on the wing leading edges.

 

The camo on the tails of K-4's are typically very hard edged, leading me to believe that masks were used.  My first attempt was spraying RLM 75 over RLM 83 using Blu Tack dots to represent the mottling.  I had paint lifting problems on this attempt so I decided on a do-over, this time with RLM 81 over 83.

 

The brown attempt came out cleaner so I kept it.

 

 

 

[Thunnus]

With the tail assembly painting finished, the "base" camoflage for Blue 16 was finished.  But it looks nothing like the single archive picture of the actual machine.  A lot of interesting details in this picture including the apparent light color of the upper cowling just behind the spinner.

It took me a while to muster up enough courage to start spraying over the base camo but it had to be done.  I sprayed the lower rear fuselage with a darker mix of green.  The green ID band was added as well as a dark grey patch which covered the previous tactical number.  The canopy has been painted with the same dark grey.

 

I had an old set of Montex masks for a 1/48 G-10 that I used to paint the fuselage crosses.  I've also added some RLM 75 mottling.

 

The wing crosses were painted using the Montex masks.  I don't like Montex canopy masks as I've found that they are prone to lifting on curved surfaces but I really like their marking masks.

 

I started the weathering process at this stage.  Using a watery mix of blackish brown, I post-shaded some of the panel lines to "dirty" up the plane.  I tried to keep this effect very subtle as it is best to build this type of weathering up slowly than overdo it.  

[Guest Peterpools]

John

Fantastic build and the finish ... simply superb

:thumbsup:

Peter

[Thunnus]

Thank you so much Peter!  

 

After spraying a gloss coat, I thought of the light grey around the nose of Blue 16.  I'm aware of some sources (i.e. MMP Bf 109 Late Version - Camoflage and Markings) that describe a peculiar light grey pattern (RLM 77/75) on some K-4's that would fit what I was seeing the archive photo of Blue 16.  So I thought I'd try and throw that into the mix.

 

The nose was masked...

 

Primered...

 

Preshaded...

 

Camo'd and post-shaded..

 

This is purely speculative but it doesn't look too strange right? 

 

[Thunnus]

I may as well finish what I have started here.  After the painting of the cowling, I proceeded with the application of the decals, which came from EagleCals.

 

After sealing the decals with a thin gloss, coat, I applied some salt chipping to the upper surfaces to give some wear to camo finish.  It was kept subtle... too subtle it turns out as the final flat coat pretty much removed the effect.

 

A brown panel wash is applied to the bottom.  I mix my own washes by scraping pastel chalks into a bit of water.

 

A darker wash is used for the upper surfaces.

 

A flat coat is applied to seal the wash.

 

All that remains it to tack on the remaining bits and pieces... wing control surfaces, prop, landing gear, pitot tube, antennae, etc.

 

And that's how my Blue 16 came to be.  I hope you enjoyed it.  The Hasegawa kit was a pleasure to work on and I'm planning on doing a 1/32 K-4 sometime in the future.

[thefenders]

I'm in awe of your spinner swirl!! Very nice looking bird!

[Thunnus]

Thanks fenders!  What I did was make a photocopy of the spinner on the EagleCal's decal sheet, put on a piece transparent frisket paper over that and cut it out using a swivel knife and scissors.

 

The aerial almost touching the loop antenna was bothering me so I fixed it this afternoon.

 

 

A peek at the next project...

[Martinnfb]

Awesome, Exceptional attention to detail John, I love that! 

[Thunnus]

Thank you Martin!