karimb Posted March 17, 2018 Author Share Posted March 17, 2018 OK...still finding my way around LSP and glad I have discovered this, Karim. It's great to see the same skills, and brain and sensibilities, at work as I saw in the AEG book and, certainly, no less inspiring. I love what you've done showing the wrinkled plywood on the floats. I started to do so on my Prototype build but ended up losing most of it in the sanding and finishing process. I plan to do an operational W.12 build at some point in the future and will follow your lead. Thanks for the tutorial! I look forward to following along or the duration. Cheers from NYC, Michael Michael! Thank you for the kind words my friend! To be honest the plywood floats was a real shot in the dark in the beginning. The reference photos really show the back and sides of the floats wrinkled and scalloped, but i couldn't really work out how to replicate this in a convincing manner. The trick was to managed to get everything smoothed out during the sanding process and i also got to a point where i was worried i was going to lose all the dings and dents i managed. I think using the dremmel with the bigger conical sander helped out give a smoother transition between the 'ridges' on the floats, and the tamiya extra thin just smoothed everything out... Your prototype W.12 is really a beauty and i can't wait to see you do your magic on the operational W.12 when you get around to building it! It's a pleasure to have you along and thank you again for the kind words! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karimb Posted March 17, 2018 Author Share Posted March 17, 2018 Hey Karim, check out this W29 build also - may give you both some additional ideas for things to try. https://forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com/index.php?topic=8968.0 I may have to steal your float technique for my planes also, niiice. Mike! Thanks for the link, the W29 sure does look good in a derelict state...caught some really interesting techniques, specially the flaked paint one. how cool is that. It was an 'oh' moment for me! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karimb Posted March 17, 2018 Author Share Posted March 17, 2018 Karim My Friend I simply numb: simply blown away by your abilities and brilliant touch. Surely building and weathering to a new height. The bar has been raised. Keep 'em comin Peter Peter my friend it's good to have you here! thanks for the kind words... i am glad to have you following along and thank you for the encouragement! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karimb Posted March 17, 2018 Author Share Posted March 17, 2018 Well guys! Time for a substantial update. It seems as of late that updates are being done outstation as i use my downtown to push forward on the kit when i am in doha and the downtime seems to be less and less frequent specially this month of March. Since our last update i finished my in flight relief pilot/ left seat training and finished my license renewal, also managed to squeeze in three days at home and half a Philadelphia flight, and am posting this update out of there before i head back on the road in a couple of hours to fly back to doha. I will have a day off once i get back so i will get some stuff done on the W12 then on the road again but this time to Europe. Fuselage painting and decaling is done. weathering to follow. In general terms, i believe very much that the weathering with oils and pigments is way to augment the weathering of a kit's base painting. I have seen alot of kits painted in a fresh out of the factory look and then weathered to taste but to me this approach is a bit like slapping a layer of 'weathering' onto a kit and i find that in most cases it doesn't tie in very well. What i try to do with my builds is to get the base painting of the kit to look weathered which then ties up much better with the addition of pigments, filters, washes and oils... I applied that school of thought on the kit and you will notice from the faded and worn look of the paint, as the kit has received no weathering yet with anything other than a simple pinwash on the fuselage. It will be easier now to integrate the whole processes together once i start working on the oils and filters. For the fuselage painting i decided to work on the opacity levels in a different way than priming the whole kit in a solid color, like black (which has become the new thing these days!) and then mottling on the top coat and blending it in. I went the reverse route which was a mottled base coat which was later just covered with successive transparent layers of the top coat. I think Doug's technique is very useful with the black substituted for warmer colors but in my case here you can call it a variation on that. I initially coated the fuselage sides with mottled tan and dark yellow and mottled the top part of the fuselage with dark yellow where the naval hex should be applied. The bottoms was also mottled with dark yellow from tamiya. I also mottled some nato black around the areas of the engine to delineate where the major panels and radiator would butt against the fuselage, and used clear brown for the bottom of the metallic turtle deck and used tape to give it a sharp edge. At that point i had thought the bottom of the horizontal stabiliser was supposed to be linen so i had left it aside for later but then realised sometime down the road that it was a slab of wood so i had to sand part of the top fuselage to blend everything in using CA and mr dissolved putty then continued the dark yellow mottling on the top of the stabiliser and on the bottom. I masked the dark yellow top part where the naval hex is supposed to go and proceeded to paint the fuselage. The sides were painted with tamiya XF83 super thinned down with mr leveling thinner and the bottom was painted using XF19 to give it a lighter gray with less of a blue tint to it. I then vector drew the fuselage markings on the silhouette software and plotted the masks on Oramask 810 which is my preferred vinyl for mask making. I also vectored out some of the cookie cut naval hex decals from the kit to get those plotted from the Aviattic hex sheets that i will be using on the kit, along with vectoring the bottom of the wings and all the areas that will require linen decals which will also be from Aviattic. I airbrushed the squares onto which the markings go on the side of the fuselage then airbrushed the markings with the exception of the two white bands that run down diagonally on the side of the fuselage and used the kit decals for those. Now onto the naval hex issue. Actually it is not an issue it is somewhat a bit of a problem i have caused to myself in not having thought this through back when i got the decals off of Richard at Aviattic. The tail of the W.12 is wooden and isn't actually covered in linen which entails the naval hex was actually painted on that surface. Back when i did my purchases i overlooked the fact i had to buy the painted on version of the naval hex so i ended up using the linen version on the W.12 tail. I thought for a while about making my own masks and painting the naval hex on but at the end decided against it and just used Aviattic's decal. The whole fuselage was gloss coated before applying the decal. I am now thinking wether it is a good idea to find a way to overcoat the decal with a thin coat of buff or beige in order to blur the 'linen' fabric or just to leave it as is although i know, and now everybody does, that this is inaccurate. The decal behaved beautifully as they always do and i used gsi mr setter sparingly on the sides where the decal overlaps the side of the horizontal stabiliser. when all was settled i added an ochre color filter on that area to give it a yellowish tint. I also at that point added a wash and some very basic oil fading on some areas around the engine panels and some pencil chipping around the hatches and high wear areas on the upper part of the fuselage. The metallic material that makes up the upper structure panels and the turtledeck was left with a gloss overcoat while the wooden areas of the fuselage was overcoated with MRP semi matt gloss coat. At that point i decided there was enough time to work on the rudder so i painted the ribs in dark yellow from tamiya and then overcoated everything with a light coat of MRP white. that done i masked and painted on the shading with tamiya smoke and painted the German cross with masks i had done earlier. Not wanting to start the weathering on the fuselage at that point, i thought it was a good idea to start work on the ancillaries like the beaching dollies and the wooden trestle that props the tail up (knowing myself, i either run out of time, or just run out of steam when the build is over and i still have extras to finish!) so better get working on those and getting them out of the way. I airbrushed the trestle with light wood from MRP and did the woodgraining using AKI track rust wash which i find works very well for a fine grain for darker woods. I filled in the holes on the inside of two of the beaching dolly wheels (couldn't find any logical reason to have them there and couldn't find any reference photos that showed those) and painted the wheels with the same light wood from MRP. I then masked the different wood planks and used the RB etch templates to paint the woodgrain by using tamiya linoleum deck brown. Some shading with clear brown from MRP and everything got a quick blend back with tamiya deck tan. Clear orange and red mix coat to finish it all off. I took the new shadow hobbies thinnerline circle cutter for a testdrive and cut the masks for the inside of the wheels and airbrushed gloss black on the rims which when dry were buffed with UVDR metallic pigments iron. I love how the UVDR metallic pigments work and they give a really nice cold sheen of metal once buffed up. I still have to add some salt and airbrush random light gray blotches on the metallic rims to simulate wear of the treads. Alot of weathering remains to be done on the accessories and that will probably fill the short doha stopovers until i have a few days to push further on and start work on painting the wings (i have a few ideas on what i want to do with those!). I also managed a bit of time to simply snip off the float struts and dryfit them and i can say the assembly is super sturdy with the interlocking engineering Wingnut Wings has created! Last thing i managed to do was to give the Spandau jacket a bath in UVDR burnishing fluid after having rolled the etch jacket to shape with a drillbit over a mousepad i use for my rolling needs... The jacket hasn't been glued or anything and is just placed on the gun body for the photo... Happy days with more of those to come hopefully...the river is wide and it flows strong! I'd like to thank everyone for your kind words and support on this thread! Till our next update stay safe and happy modeling as always Karim signing out from Philly! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karimb Posted March 17, 2018 Author Share Posted March 17, 2018 Oh yes and i forgot to add i painted the leather padding around the cockpit. I used different browns, oranges, and highlighted everything with some oils. I have detailed the metallic frame around the leather using a 10/0 brush using mr metal color iron and will start work on weathering the leather with washes at a later stage! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karimb Posted March 17, 2018 Author Share Posted March 17, 2018 Jim Barry, Jan_G, Trak-Tor and 1 other 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karimb Posted March 17, 2018 Author Share Posted March 17, 2018 tucohoward, williamj, Jim Barry and 4 others 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
seiran01 Posted March 17, 2018 Share Posted March 17, 2018 Man Karim, you are really making me want to rush the gotha to completion so that I can build another seaplane. -drool- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karimb Posted March 17, 2018 Author Share Posted March 17, 2018 tucohoward, Jan_G, Jim Barry and 4 others 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karimb Posted March 17, 2018 Author Share Posted March 17, 2018 Man Karim, you are really making me want to rush the gotha to completion so that I can build another seaplane. -drool- Mike no no don't rush lol the Gotha is superb and i am waiting for an update on it. Also taking notes of course! No doubt that seaplanes are cool... have been playing around with the felixstowe idea for a long while but with a twist, it will be partially naked. The only problem i can foresee is the transportation once it is done! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 17, 2018 Share Posted March 17, 2018 Man, what a mouth full ! Made my day a whole lot better seeing this update. Your work is so amazing my good friend ! Carry on sir.....Harv Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monthebiff Posted March 17, 2018 Share Posted March 17, 2018 Lovely progress Karim, Did you consider using the "painted" hex decals supplied in the kit out of interest? Regards. Andy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karimb Posted March 17, 2018 Author Share Posted March 17, 2018 Man, what a mouth full ! Made my day a whole lot better seeing this update. Your work is so amazing my good friend ! Carry on sir.....Harv Harv my friend! It always puts a smile on my face reading your comments! The kindness all of you show keep showing me on my builds is really a boost! Thanks for leaving a word buddy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karimb Posted March 17, 2018 Author Share Posted March 17, 2018 Lovely progress Karim, Did you consider using the "painted" hex decals supplied in the kit out of interest? Regards. Andy Andy yes i did indeed but i suppose now it might be a bit too late... or not. I was just thinking of this now considering i have to remove the Aviattic decal and just recoat with semi matt clear. The only problem i can foresee and can't really find a solution to is the patch on the middle of the wing. The patch is supposed to be the same 'color' as the tail covering in the wingnut wings box decals. I was planning on having the decal on the top wing differentiated by using a different undercoat of paint but since the wings are linen covered the patch would also be linen... What do you guys think. Should i change the tail decal for accuracy or just leave it the way it is? monthebiff 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karimb Posted March 17, 2018 Author Share Posted March 17, 2018 Actually i just took a closer look at the photos i have on my mac. The problem with removing the hex decal on the tail is that part of the diagonal white bands on the side are overlapping the hex decals. So that means i will have to damage those and repaint them. I don't know how much the effort of redoing the area is worth versus the outcome. What i will do is experiment on scrap decals left from the first sheet in order to find what sort of diluted ratio of paint i need in order to blend in the tail 'fabric' texture so i can cover the Aviattic hex decal and make it look more like painted on rather than linen... Will post the results in a couple of days along with some of the progress! K monthebiff 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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