Thunnus

Thanks guys! I just left the back tips unpainted... no hairspray and just slight micromeshing to get rid of the overspray. Ideally, I wanted to have some randomly hard edges to this transition but couldn't quite achieve without fear of rubbing away the wood finish down to the plastic so I left it as is. Work on the prop blades continues. Next up is salt fading. This is method that is sometimes used for chipping effects but I like it to get a weathered effect on exposed surfaces. After the blades have been given a flat coat, a thin coat of water is brushed on and then salt crystals are sprinkled onto the wetted surfaces. As this dries, the salt crystals will temporarily fuse onto the model surface creating a random patterned mask. I use a very diluted mix of a light color (grey or beige) and spray it over the dried salt. This is the tricky part. It's REALLY difficult to tell, upon application, what you've just done so you have to spray and pray and check the results afterwards. As you can see, I tried to streak the light color across the blades, creating a very noticeable and unrealistic effect. Because of the inherent uncertainty, salt fading has become an iterative process for me. I use Micromesh to tone down any overdone effect and repeat the salt process until I get the desired result. Here are the prop blades after two rounds of salt. I think we are pretty close to finish on the fronts. The prop hub has been painted as well. It was given a base coat of Alclad Steel, hairsprayed and covered with RLM 70 Black Green (My Hobby Aqueous). The RLM 70 was scrubbed away significantly but since the Steel is very dark, the low contrast lessens the effect. The attachment rings were brush painted in a lighter metallic color and then the hub was given a pastel wash and flat coat. Getting closer to the painting stage... after attachment of the central wing bottom part, I check the position of the Eagle Editions resin drop tank, making sure that the fuel lines connect to the openings in the wing bottom. I stumbled onto these foam paint masks that I cut from a previous Dora build and pressed them back into service. You can tell that these were for a JV44 build. I can't say enough good things about Eduard paint masks. They are usually spot-on in terms of fit and the yellow tape material has that perfect ability to hold a straight line and also be coaxed off that line ever so slightly if necessary and still lay down flat. A test of the fit of the clear parts. The windscreen still have a minute overhang above the sliding canopy and I think I've experienced this every time I use the Eagle Editions resin cockpit. Since I'm planning to pose the canopy open, this is not an issue for me.

Thanks Jim! Photos revealed some cleanup work on the wing roots was still required! The primer revealed some ghost seams along the wing root that needed to be addressed with finer grit sandpaper. Hairspray was applied only on the front of the blades before they were painted RLM 70 Black Green (Mr Hobby Aqueous). Some minor chipping was created on the leading edges. The data stencils were from an EagleCal D-9 sheet. The tips of the back of the prop blades are worn to show the wood beneath. Grain is subtle but it's there. These blades are going to be even further weathered so they are not finished. As I start to approach the paint phase, I've cleaned up the clear parts and gave them a dip in Future for that extra bit of clarity. The always excellent Eduard masks were applied to the windscreen Since I'm planning on leaving the canopy open on this Dora, I'm going to paint the interior of the rear edge of the windscreen so it has been masked off as well. The small bottom part between the two wheel wells has been glued into place. A good portion of the wiring work is still visible so the effort to spruce up this area is not wasted.

Great project, Andy! Watching with interest!

Great progress on the cockpit Woody! I don't like the Tamiya instrument panel either and elected to apply the decal on top of the clear plastic instead of behind it. No worries on those lightening holes... you'll never be able to see them anyway!

It looks like you've got the hang of the airbrush already Jay! But those cowling flaps... amazing!!!

Wow Hoss... your are moving quickly on this one! Paint job looks great as usual and I like how you've pieced together your paint choices with research! The HGW rivets are nice too!

Thanks guys! I'm rocking an outdated version of AutoCAD Lite. Don't know anything about Rhino but if you can draw lines and arcs, it should work! Slowly addressing the wing root gaps. After the White Milliput, I applied and sanded progressively thinner coats of Mr Surfacer 1000 (three applications total). I'm restricting my primer coats to the joints only because the primer tends to clog the rivet holes. Here is my stab as establishing the wood base for the prop blades. Reddish brown base streaked with darker oils to simulate wood grain. The wood grain is applied to the backs only as the tips will be weathered enough to make out the grain (hopefully). The fronts will feature very light spot chipping only.

Yes, my normal homemade mix of pastel chalks and water.

Hi Woody! Of course there are different ways to use the HGW belts. I like to crumple my belts first, before attaching the hardware. I then cut the buckles off the PE sprue using an x-acto blade and trim the stubs with a coarse sanding stick. The hardware is attached. During this stage, I use Roket Card Glue to glued down the folded ends of the fabric material. I then attach the belts to the seats using CA glue. The seats are given a gloss coat (Alclad Aqua Gloss). I then use a pastel wash over the belts to bring out some of the stitching detail. Because the HGW belt material is porous, there may be some staining that occurs with the wash. You can reduce that with a thicker coat of gloss but you also run the risk of filling in the stitching detail.

No, Jay... the white was straight Tamiya X-2.

Thank you Jay! Unlike your builds, where you actually keep track of the plumbing, I'm just winging it, basically. So no, it is not accurate. But hopefully it looks somewhat realistic and authentic, which is my goal. Thank you Spyros! Enjoying this group build of Doras! I used Tamiya Extra Thin on the wing joints. I thought there was enough plastic-to-plastic contact to give me a sufficiently strong bond. Thank you Antonio! Yes, it's great having multiple Dora builds at once. Both Duke and Hoss FL are superlative builders and it's a challenge to keep up with the quality that they are presenting! Here is the wing join after an initial going over with the a rotary tool to reduce the lip. White Milliput is used for the initial putty application. Instead of smoothing it out with water like I normally do, I elected to use the tip of a toothpick like a spatula to apply. Smoothing it out with water tends to push the putty down into the gap even below the surface level of the plastic and I didn't want to push the putty that deep here. Milliput takes a long time to do dry so I futzed around with the Henri Daehne prop in the meantime. I've decided to glue together the hub components first for painting and then attach the prop blades last. Here is the hub all glued together. Remember... there is a small magnet hiding under the front tip of the hub to hold the spinner cap in place. I wanted to mask off the glue contact area on the backplate. The donut-shaped mask can be fashioned in a number of ways but I chose to use the Silhouette Portrait cutter for this. I scanned the backplate part and imported the photo into AutoCAD. I've found that scanned photos import into AutoCAD at a 1:1 scale. So I don't have to measure the part and scale it accordingly in CAD... one less scaling exercise to deal with. Once it is imported, it's very easy to draw shapes onto the photo. The red circles represent the mask that I want to produce. A box is drawn around the mask using 1" or 0.5" increments. You need to do this because the mask will need to be re-sized correctly after it is imported into the Silhouette Software. The scanned photo is removed and the drawing is saved as a DXF file and then opened in the Silhouette software. I drew a 0.5" x 0.5" box around the mask so it is re-sized to that dimension in the Silhouette software. Now you just put a piece of masking material onto the cutting board and send the job to the Portrait cutter. I used a sheet of yellow Tamiya masking material for this particular mask. There are different ways to produce masks using a craft cutter like the Portrait and this is just one of them. I know that not everyone has access or is familiar with a CAD program but since I am, producing custom cut masks is relatively easy. I thought showing this might de-mystify some of ambiguities of using craft cutters.

Thank you Kevin! Glue is now applied to the starboard wing root and tape is used to tilt the wing and compress the glue joint until it dries. One more view of the exposed wheel well. At this time, I've added small pieces of wiring to the open end of the small sections of brass tubing that I previously placed in the wheel well.

Thanks guys! Lots of real life interfering with my modeling mojo but at least it is positive stuff (fishing and mission trip to Tijuana). But I was able to squeeze in a bit of work on Brown 4 recently. The painted Revi16B gun sight will not be glued into place until it can be protected by the windscreen but here's what it looks like in place. The same applies for the painted tail wheel. The wings are completed. I've chosen to keep the flap bays unpainted until later on in the build. The fuselage is also finished. A few last bits of wiring have been added to busy up the rear engine as much as possible. Pre-fitting the wings to the fuselage highlighted a few minor issues. First, there is a slight step at the wing root. I'll shave this area down prior to gluing the wings on. A gap on the fuselage bottom will be addressed with a shim of thin sheet plastic. Now it is time to glue the wings onto the fuselage. To ensure a solid glue joint at the wing root, I am going to secure one side at a time using masking tape. After the cement along the port wing root is cured, I'll apply glue and tape to the starboard wing root. The wing spar assembly should ensure the proper dihedral. A look at the completed wheel well and rear engine area. This will get covered up significantly when the central wing bottom part is attached.

Wow, Hoss... that finish on the wing root is commendable! That's what I'm going to try and achieve! Looking forward to the paint! I was curious about the resin gun cowlings and thought maybe I was just unlucky. Apparently not!

Awesome work Roger! The cockpit looks amazing!

Beautiful work Spyros! It's so fun to be at approximately same stage of my Dora build as you and Hoss. Very inspirational.

Thank you Bob! I appreciate it!

Woohoo! Another Dora build! Really looking forward to seeing your work on these two kits, Spyros. You and Hoss are such talented modelers and yet different so I'm eager to see these builds happen side by side! I don't know if you saw the comment on Hoss' build about the seat back being made of dark steel and would not chip as a bright metallic. Mr. Crandall (Rest in Peace) pointed that out to me on my D-13 build. He also pointed out that the Dora, for the most part, did not carry any data stencils on the landing gear legs. The painting of the cockpit components is A-1, especially the weathering on the rear deck! You'll be sad when the cockpit gets boxed in later!

I honestly can't remember anything particular about this process as it happened over two years ago. I want to say that there were small holes in the decals for some of the switches but I can't say for sure. Sorry!!!

No tenting issues on my F4U-1a build. I remember being very dubious about how they would work over the raised details on the side consoles but the decal solution (Micro Sol) sucked them down into place without much effort on my part.

Keep us updated on the cowl part, Michael! I'd love to see this build continue.

I'm not a jet guy but there is something about a Phantom in Vietnam camo that stirs my interest. I'm loving this scheme!

Thanks for the comments guys! Tijuana orphanage visit last weekend and bass fishing this weekend so I won't be able to provide an update for a few days! Will be back soon!

Wonderful progress and the engine plug looks great! I painted the false bulkheads on my first D-9 build RLM02 per the instructions and then I figured out, as you did, that they don't exist and simply serve to accommodate the rear engine detail. Thank you for the compliment! There are so many different ways to build the same model and I make no claim that my way is better than any other but I'm glad that you've found my past builds useful! And I'm sure that you'll have your own unique take on how to approach things so I'm looking forward to Hoss's version of this iconic Dora!

That fuselage front section looks incredible Jay! Just incredible... hats off!!!