Citadelgrad

I tried dish soap, dish soap and water, a brush, q tip, paper towel, that staining is not coming off. I even tried a fine mesh pad. No joy. The only effect is i was able to get tiny streaks of brighter white that looks bad. so now the question is, which way do i go? Repair with some base coat and white and start over, or try to even it out with more weathering?

Im at a crossroads. The frontmost white invasion stripe is not letting go of the chalk wash. Its not terrible, but it doesnt match the rear stripes. i was going to, and still plan on some oil streaking, there are two prominent vents right ahead of this area, and ive spent enough time around planes to see that any protrusion tends to leave a mark where the air flows. I know its a warbird, and would get dirty. my issue is this discoloration is confined to the front stripe. I took some photos. Its definitely not over weathered, and i am going to add to this which might tone this down. heres a shot of the whole bottom, its grimier than i wanted at this stage, as i was trying to just do a panel line enhancement. This part of the paint just grabbed the wash and doesnt want to release it. so as i see it i have a few options. Frequent visitors to this thread know i am not at all above just repainting this, or i could lightly go over this with some of the base coat and white. That seems overboard, though. I dont want it WHITE!!. It was probably bright white for about a week. This paint was a month old or more at the time the plane is depicted. i could also grime up the aft white areas to try to cut down on the contrast between the dingy first stripe and the very clean rear stripes. or I could just proceed. But its hard for me to judge this. I have never weathered a plane before. Ever. Is it going to end up just a mudbucket? Col Gabreski’s plane was kept pretty clean, but it was flown hard and at least the parking area was just dirt and grass. The bottom was dirty. Is this too much? ive spent so much time trying to get this just so, i could use some advice from the massive experience and knowledge here. for information, i plan to seal this whenever i decide its done with this stage, then do some light streaking from the various ports, exhausts, gates, likely leak areas. Nothing like a war weary 24 mission B 17, but not like it just rolled out of the paint shop, either. LSP, what do you all think? sorry to ask, but the great advantage of this forum is, there is about a thousand years worth of experience and knowledge lookimg at this at any given time.

Right, but should there be a gloss to seal this weathering first, or finish weathering and hit it with matte?

That brings up a question. Should i seal this with a clear, then a matte, or just proceed straight to matte?

Wow, that looks AMAZING. Very cool, and thanks for the tips on what is, to me at least, a pretty new option.

Thanks for the heads up, Alex. I have a nice big decal on my mule that I used the exact same primer, paint, clear, and decal solutions. It will tell me if I need to worry.

Working away, its suddenly not sweltering on the west coast, so i dont need to wait for sundown to use the garage. spotted a thumb print on the bottom of the cowl, its on the list to fix A lot of the pastel is still hiding in areas i havent cleaned up yet. No rush here. This is los stress for me, anything i dislike can be erased.

Oh, nothing really. I just realized that when I use oils to simulate gunfire soot at the chutes, this version of the pastel in the area behind the stains will probably wipe off and need to be redone. A minor issue of order of work, a mental note for next time.

Thanks, Paramedic! working my way around with the pastels. I foolishly did the underwing white stripes, this will likely be obliterated when i do some oil treatment of the ejection chutes, but whatever…. looks pretty messy at this point.

Looking very sharp. The detail is pretty incredible.

Thanks, Mike! i snuck out and snapped a few photos as i checked it, it looks good so far. i also took a few of my progress on the cowl Im really happy with the pastel results, and cant wait to do the rest of the airframe.

Fingers crossed, Woody! Thanks for following along. Thanks, Mike, i laid in a supply of newspaper and will try that out as soon as i get the decals set. Thanks so much, Jay, as you know your build are basically my reference. Thank you for sharing this, i will try it out on my mule. Thanks so much, me, too. The Mustang gets all the girls but T Bolts have always held my attention. so i put it off long enough, after screwing up the first decal attempt, i had to give it another go. I did dutifully apply an unneeded tail number to the paint mule, both to see how they go down generally, and to check for a propensity to silver. pleased to report that despite some reports that some Techmod decals seem impervious to solutions, at least this sheet seems to like micro set and sol. I dont really want the kill markings to necessarily conform to every panel line, as they were just stickers and wouod not have conformed like that. With that box checked, i got some fresh warm water and carefully cut out the kill markings. They seem to have gone down fine, so well that i decided to go with the other decal, wasnt sure what it was but its prominent on every photo of this part of the plane. its a crew placard, and its fully legible. and so are the model types over each kill marker. Any issue with legibility is my poor photography. Should i hit these with a bit of clear to protect them while i am weathering? I dont expect that either will be directly weathered, amd i am using lacquer clear, if that matters. weathering will be a pastel panel line treatment, and some oil washes. Probably very minor pencil chipping. one last beauty shot! if the decals were both flat and good when i left it, do i need to check it continuously, or should it be fine?

So having screwed up decalling one time already, meaning 100% of my adult builds features a pretty major flub and redo, ive got a mental block about committing to that kill flag decal. This weekend at the latest i will take one of the Techmod decals and apply it to my paint mule, just to see how it goes down. but i cant just stare at it, so i decided to play around with some pastel washes, stolen without shame from others, with above and beyond assistance from our own Thunnus, who guided me to some good assortments, color selection for various base coats, and the importance of a drop of dish soap. i decided the still unattached cowl would be a decent place to start. I used the sort of sharp edge of a scribing tool to powder some dark brown and black for the red and mostly upper camo areas of the cowl. I plan to use a lighter shade for the undersides, and of course a light grey for the blacks. i am still playing with this, but i like it so far. The key, for me, is to get an ever so almost damp wiping tool, so far q tips work very well but rapidly become saturated with color and need to be changed for a new one very frequently, and paper towel works well too. Too much water and you just wash away all of the pastel, not enough and there is some residue where you dont want it. Its not quite wiping off with a perfectly dry towel, but the slightest but of moisture is almost too much. photos, please note that this is a bit messy, i was mid session when i took these, but didnt realize i had a lot more to do. There is quite a bit of extraneous pastel where it shouldnt be in the first photos these really are bad, it doesnt look this messy any more any way, i liked this so much, and i made too much pastel up, so i did the horizontal tail uppers and the left wing. I was a half hour more experienced at this point, so these photos, although not perfect, show a much more finished result contrast this with the right, unpasteled (?) wing Really pops the great Hasegawa surface detail. the “blooming” ahead of the flaps has been corrected, i saw it in this photo as i was uploading. the absolute best part of this process is, if you hate it, a moist paper towel and its like it never happened. i will admit my OCD is starting to ping at that molding defect ahead of the flap area. Both wings. How did i not see that before clear coat?

I blew through two coats of lacquer and primer, all the way to bare plastic, using a q tip moistened in Mr Color self levelling thinner. I am not kidding, that stuff is hot and it was effortless.

Not too much progress this weekend. I was going to put the kill markings on, but i decided i should invert and make sure the bottom has a good clear coat. Pretty happy with how the clear is going down now that i have a better technique down. i also want to play with some spare Techmod decals from this sheet to see how they behave. After the prior debacle, i want as few surprises as i can manage.