ChuckD

Hi, everyone.  If you've followed my ridiculously slow "Messerschmitts of North Africa" WIP thread, you already know that my Bf-109 was getting close to done.  Today, I was able to put the finishing touches on it and call it complete.  I'm happy with the way it turned out for sure.  It's not perfect, but it's probably the best 1/32 aircraft I've ever done - out of a total of like 4.  Definitely learned a lot along the way as this was my first attempt at masking and painting the inside of a canopy.  Turned out pretty well, I think.
 
This is Hasegawa kit 08881/ST31, Bf-109F-4 Trop and was finished out of the box with the exception of some HGW seatbelts.  Paints were a mix of Mr. Paint, Mr. Color, Tamiya, Vallejo, and a partridge in a pear tree.  Weathered with oils and pastels.
 
If you followed my thread at all, you'll know that I'm a bit of a numbers geek, and so I've kept a fairly detailed build log of both this and the Bf-110 I've been working on in parallel.  Here are the final statistics:
 
Started: 11/10/2017
Finished: 12/28/2017
Days on bench: 48
Total materials cost: $60.66
Planning and preparation time: 7.6 hrs
Build time: 13.35 hrs
Painting time: 11.9 hrs
Weathering time: 5.3 hrs
Number of sessions at the bench: 26
Average time per session: 1.47 hrs
Average time per day: .79 hrs
Number of favorite sweatshirts ruined: 1
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Hi, everyone.  If you've followed my ridiculously slow "Messerschmitts of North Africa" WIP thread, you already know that my Bf-109 was getting close to done.  Today, I was able to put the finishing touches on it and call it complete.  I'm happy with the way it turned out for sure.  It's not perfect, but it's probably the best 1/32 aircraft I've ever done - out of a total of like 4.  Definitely learned a lot along the way as this was my first attempt at masking and painting the inside of a canopy.  Turned out pretty well, I think.
 
This is Hasegawa kit 08881/ST31, Bf-109F-4 Trop and was finished out of the box with the exception of some HGW seatbelts.  Paints were a mix of Mr. Paint, Mr. Color, Tamiya, Vallejo, and a partridge in a pear tree.  Weathered with oils and pastels.
 
If you followed my thread at all, you'll know that I'm a bit of a numbers geek, and so I've kept a fairly detailed build log of both this and the Bf-110 I've been working on in parallel.  Here are the final statistics:
 
Started: 11/10/2017
Finished: 12/28/2017
Days on bench: 48
Total materials cost: $60.66
Planning and preparation time: 7.6 hrs
Build time: 13.35 hrs
Painting time: 11.9 hrs
Weathering time: 5.3 hrs
Number of sessions at the bench: 26
Average time per session: 1.47 hrs
Average time per day: .79 hrs
Number of favorite sweatshirts ruined: 1
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Good evening, everyone.  Hope you all had a wonderful holiday in whatever corner of the world you call home.  I'm back with a quick update.  The Bf-109 is done.  I'll be posting an RFI thread shortly and linking it here once it's done.  It turned out pretty well.  Probably my best aircraft kit so far, but I still have lots of room for improvement.
 
Here's a teaser till I get the RFI posted:
 
Edit: Here is the RFI thread.
 

 
Anyway, for the -110, I finished the chipping process.  I'm waffling on whether or not to do a clear gloss.  The base coat is so smooth, I bet I can get away without it.  I had a real problem with microscopic hairs and dust getting in the clear on the 109, so I'm wary of the same thing happening to the 110.  I'll probably do a clear coat, but I'm not looking forward to battling the dust bunnies.
 
So, after a grand total of 71.2 hours, here's where I'm at with the 110.  I hope to knock out a bit more before the holiday ends.  Having started it in September, I'm hoping to have it done before the 4 month mark.  Ugh.
 

 

 

This shot helps show off the color modulation pretty well.
 

 

 

 

Good evening, everyone.  Hope you all had a wonderful holiday in whatever corner of the world you call home.  I'm back with a quick update.  The Bf-109 is done.  I'll be posting an RFI thread shortly and linking it here once it's done.  It turned out pretty well.  Probably my best aircraft kit so far, but I still have lots of room for improvement.
 
Here's a teaser till I get the RFI posted:
 
Edit: Here is the RFI thread.
 

 
Anyway, for the -110, I finished the chipping process.  I'm waffling on whether or not to do a clear gloss.  The base coat is so smooth, I bet I can get away without it.  I had a real problem with microscopic hairs and dust getting in the clear on the 109, so I'm wary of the same thing happening to the 110.  I'll probably do a clear coat, but I'm not looking forward to battling the dust bunnies.
 
So, after a grand total of 71.2 hours, here's where I'm at with the 110.  I hope to knock out a bit more before the holiday ends.  Having started it in September, I'm hoping to have it done before the 4 month mark.  Ugh.
 

 

 

This shot helps show off the color modulation pretty well.
 

 

 

 

I will remain cautiously optimistic on the arrival of a large scale B-24. I'd love to see one and would buy it quick if the reviews were halfway decent. Come on, Trumpeter. Don't let me down!

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Good lord, dude.  
 
Simply stunning.  This thread just keeps on delivering.

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Progress!
 
Back again with another slow update.  Since I've now ended up running both my 109 and 110 builds in parallel, I'm going to just update the WIP for both of them here and have changed the thread title to denote that.  I never created a dedicated thread for the 109, but I figure who wouldn't want to see more pictures of plastic.  That's why we're here, right? 
 
Anyway, after 66.7 hours (total, to date) base coating is nearly done on the 110.  I still have a couple detail things to do, like painting the air filters and MGs, but those will only take a little bit.  I decided to go with the one Italian scheme primarily because my six year old said he liked the look of the yellow cowlings.  So, here we are.  Paints on the 110 are Tamiya XF-59 (Desert Yellow) and XF-64 (Red Brown) in a 3:1 mix for the RLM79.  I did a little color modulation/fading by adding some white to that mix.  The RLM78 on the lower fuse is MRP's RLM78.  Yellow is Tamiya and the white band is MRP's Insignia White.  All in all, painting went fairly smoothly.  I was able to lay down both colors at around 14 PSI, so masking was kept to a (thankful) minimum.  I had to stick the gear legs on because without them, the beast rested on the air scoops and the yellow paint was scuffing.  Chipping will be next.  Going to go with the tried and true sponge method.  Hope it translates to aircraft as well as it has treated me with armor.  As an aside, these two builds remind me just how miserable it is to paint white and yellow in general.
 
The 109 is a little further along.  It has been decaled, washed, faded, and had an oil dot filter applied.  Next will be final weathering for oil streaking, exhaust staining, dirt, grime, etc, then it'll be done.  This is the Hasagawa Bf-109F4 Trop kit and it's a dandy.  I forgot to look, but I believe I have about 35 hours into it so far.  For this one I used Mr. Color 119 RLM79 for the upper fuselage.  Both this and the custom Tamiya mix above came out pretty well and I don't see a significant different in appearance or performance for either of them.  I did not do any airbrush fading with the Mr. Color, so any fading you see was achieved with oil paints.  Anyway, on to pics.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi, everyone.  Back with another update.  I asked my wife earlier this week if I could have a modeling day this weekend, since I hadn't had much in the way of bench time.  Happily, she was cool with it, so I started around 8am this morning and worked on and off - mostly on - throughout the day today until now.  That said, I was able to make quite a bit of progress.  
 
After a grand total of 31.3 labor hours, here is the current state of affairs:
 

Cockpit is lightly weathered and dusted, fuse is together, HGW seatbelts are done, canopies are masked (not pictured), and I've gotten the landing gear together.  I've just started dabbling in the cowlings and I'm pretty sure I see now why they're the widely regarded as weak spot of this kit.  The directions essentially show you just putting them around the engine and being good to go... but there's no way to locate them that way, so I'm going to have to cobble them together very very slowly and carefully to ensure they fit correctly.  If I come up with a good way, I'll be sure to share for posterity's sake.
 
Anyway, here are a few in progress pics from today:

This is after the cockpit had been weathered and shaded w/oils and the seatbelts completed.  When I bought the HGW seatbelts, I had no idea that building them would entail you actually building little seatbelts.  They're pretty awesome.  I got a little heavy with the wash on the pilot's belts, so there's that.
 
Side panels

 
IP w/reflector glass.  This makes the whole thing look glossy, but it's not.  I did drop some future in the gauges just to give them some gloss effect.

 
Seatbelts!  Pedal straps are tamiya tape painted brown.

 

 

 

 
Fuse closed up.  These two shots show the pigment dusting I used to put some dust inside the beast.  It is in Africa after all.  I'm going to model it with the pilot's canopy open and the gunner's canopy closed, so a lot of this should still be pretty visible once it's all said and done.

 

 
I'm going to let the fuselage joins harden for a day, then go at cleaning them.  I may have to rescribe a few things, but overall the fit has been great.  I've decided to just close the cowls and abandon my idea of leaving one open.  
 
That's all for today.  Hopefully I'll have another update or two this week as I plug through the cowls and clean up join lines.  Thanks for following along.

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Incidentally, I used future to secure the gunsight reflector glass to the IP. It has decent adhesive properties.

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In spraying a test aircraft last week, I found that Mr Color tended to splatter more than MRP.  The Mr. Color was thinned 2:1 and later 3:1 with Mr Leveling Thinner, and shot with an HP-CS with a .3mm nozzle at ~12psi.  I could lay down the MRP paint with ease and the pattern was nice & tight.  The Mr Color splattered and while the center of the spray cone was smooth, the fringes of the cone were much less consistent.
 
In short, I too, am an MRP convert.  I'll still spray some Tamiyas and the occasional Vallejo product, but they will never behave like the MRP stuff.

Hey, as a quick heads up, the kit I'm using for this build is on sale today (12/14/17) at Dragon. http://dragonusaonline.com/item_detail.aspx?ItemCode=CHC3209
 
It's a pretty solid deal on a very nice kit.

Hey, as a quick heads up, the kit I'm using for this build is on sale today (12/14/17) at Dragon. http://dragonusaonline.com/item_detail.aspx?ItemCode=CHC3209
 
It's a pretty solid deal on a very nice kit.

Yep, I agree but it is very difficult to find photographic proof.
Just makes sense that they would paint that area with the underside
of the horizontals.

Well, it's been nearly a month, but progress hasn't stopped on ye olde Bf-110.  The construction is complete and I've managed to get it primed with Mr. Surfacer 1500 black (great stuff).  The reason why it took me a bit is because I wanted to build a Hasegawa Bf-109F4 Trop as an experimentation piece for painting RLM 79 and 78.  The Hasegawa kit is just a simple dream, by the way.  Practically falls together and looks great out of the box.  
 
Anyway, I'm glad I did start painting with the 109, quite honestly.  A few months ago, I bought a bottle of Mr. Paint's RLM79 sand yellow and had planned on using it for this build.  I started shooting it on the 109's upper surfaces and it quickly became apparent that it was *way* too yellow.  I'm not an expert on German paint schemes, but apparently their color match is RLM79 "(variant 1)."  Maybe it's old news to others, but apparently there's a pretty vast difference between "variant 1" and what I came to believe was RLM79.  Live and learn.  
 
So, in looking around a bit, I found a couple other color equivalents.  I have a pretty decent stock of Tamiyas and Vallejo Model Colors, but lacked XF-59 that all the color mixes call for with respect to Tamiya paints.  I have the "RLM79" in Vallejo, but it was straight up pink.  Even adding in some flat brown didn't do the trick.  So, back to the drawing board.  I found RLM79 in Mr. Color at Sprue Brothers, so I've got a jar of that and XF-59 coming and I'll try either of those to get these birds painted. 
 
I cleaned up late last night after getting the base RLM 78 on the bottom of the 109 and the "marble coat" on the bottom of the 110, so no pics of paint progress just yet.  I guess I didn't have an appreciation for just how much real estate there is on this beast when it comes to painting. 
 
Question: Would the inboard sides of the vertical stabilizers below the horizontal stabilizer be painted RLM78 or 79?  I'm guessing 78, but (shockingly) Dragon's instructions are lacking.
 

 

 

 

 
Now that I'm done building the 109, I hope to make more frequent updates to this.  More to come soon.  
 
p.s. I don't have hours totals at hand, but I can tell you that getting to the same point on both aircraft required 1/3rd the time for the 109 as it did for the 110.  I'm 60+ hours into the 110 and only about 22 into the 109. 

Well, it's been nearly a month, but progress hasn't stopped on ye olde Bf-110.  The construction is complete and I've managed to get it primed with Mr. Surfacer 1500 black (great stuff).  The reason why it took me a bit is because I wanted to build a Hasegawa Bf-109F4 Trop as an experimentation piece for painting RLM 79 and 78.  The Hasegawa kit is just a simple dream, by the way.  Practically falls together and looks great out of the box.  
 
Anyway, I'm glad I did start painting with the 109, quite honestly.  A few months ago, I bought a bottle of Mr. Paint's RLM79 sand yellow and had planned on using it for this build.  I started shooting it on the 109's upper surfaces and it quickly became apparent that it was *way* too yellow.  I'm not an expert on German paint schemes, but apparently their color match is RLM79 "(variant 1)."  Maybe it's old news to others, but apparently there's a pretty vast difference between "variant 1" and what I came to believe was RLM79.  Live and learn.  
 
So, in looking around a bit, I found a couple other color equivalents.  I have a pretty decent stock of Tamiyas and Vallejo Model Colors, but lacked XF-59 that all the color mixes call for with respect to Tamiya paints.  I have the "RLM79" in Vallejo, but it was straight up pink.  Even adding in some flat brown didn't do the trick.  So, back to the drawing board.  I found RLM79 in Mr. Color at Sprue Brothers, so I've got a jar of that and XF-59 coming and I'll try either of those to get these birds painted. 
 
I cleaned up late last night after getting the base RLM 78 on the bottom of the 109 and the "marble coat" on the bottom of the 110, so no pics of paint progress just yet.  I guess I didn't have an appreciation for just how much real estate there is on this beast when it comes to painting. 
 
Question: Would the inboard sides of the vertical stabilizers below the horizontal stabilizer be painted RLM78 or 79?  I'm guessing 78, but (shockingly) Dragon's instructions are lacking.
 

 

 

 

 
Now that I'm done building the 109, I hope to make more frequent updates to this.  More to come soon.  
 
p.s. I don't have hours totals at hand, but I can tell you that getting to the same point on both aircraft required 1/3rd the time for the 109 as it did for the 110.  I'm 60+ hours into the 110 and only about 22 into the 109.