Alex

Leading edges are Alclad ALC-001 Aluminum, for the record. Wish Mr Color made KLM Blue... Nervous about this enamel thing.

Now for the most difficult part - I need to mask and paint the KLM blue on the fuselage so that it perfectly matches up with the grey accent color decal that the decal set provides. This picture illustrates the challenge - the light grey is a decal; I need to paint the blue: What I'm going to do is carefully cut the decal out right to its edge (it is a laser-printed continuous film decal set, so I have to do that anyways) and use it as a template to cut a masking tape mask. I had considered applying the decal first, gloss-coating it, and then masking to the edge, but I think (hope) this way will be easier. This will also be my first crack at airbrushing enamel paint (being the lacquer guy that I am). I am going to practice a bit to be sure I'm thinning it correctly.

Shiny.

Masked off to paint the leading edges.

Mr Color #156 "Super White". By tonight it will be more than hard enough to mask and shoot the next color - Mr Color #338. It's advertised as FS36495, but it also makes a pretty fair "Boeing Gray".

Thanks! 1:144 is really the only scale you can get most commercial airliners at. There are a few propliners available at 1:72, but I try to stick to one scale for a given kind of subject so all the models look "right" when placed together. One of these days I'll tackle a 1:144 B747 - that's a BIG model even at this scale!

The way they've built the engines is positively elegant. The pylon and the inner high-speed turbine are one assembly, while the outer bypass duct is a separate one, and they can be built separately and then slipped together to join seamlessly after painting. How cool is that? The leading edge of the outer housing is also a separate piece, so you can paint it separately and not have to try and mask it off to paint it aluminum. Overall these are better engineered that the much larger Rolls Royce turbofans on the Zvezda B787 kit I did a while ago. The engine pylons also mate perfectly with the wings. I am going to be able to paint and decal separately the fuselage, main wing assembly, horizontal stabilizers, landing gear, and engines, then assemble all these finished parts with CA. Nice!

The engineering on this Zvezda kit is really quite good. Easy main landing gear assembly is 7 parts, not counting wheels/tires.

Compare this: With this: That's enough more realism for me to be willing to spend 4-5 hours doing it. Which may say something about my level of modeling OCD. There are people who get similar effects just by airbrushing a lot of very subtle different color effects, but I'm just not that good at airbrushing. Gotta keep practicing.

Troy, the difference is subtle but in person maybe a bit more visible. The straight-up coat of paint is very uniform - to my eye it looks like a toy plane. With the dot filter applied it has subtle variation that looks at least a bit more like the beat-up surface of the real thing: Looking at this photo, I might even want to go in and apply a bit more scratching/staining. I do plan to apply a dusting of pastel over the final flat coat and then scratch that up to simulate soot on the airframe being rubbed off in places by people climbing around on the plane (this is very obvious in other photos).

Finished (I think) the oil dot filter step. I will look again in a day and see if I want to blend a little more. But now it needs to sit for a week or two (I will wait until there's not even a slightly "greasy" feeling to the surface) before I can shoot I final matte coat. In the meantime I'm going to try and finish up my B737 project and think about what the next WW2 plane is. It's definitely Japanese - you can help me pick: I have 1/32 kits from Special Hobby for both the Ki-27 "Nate" and the A5M "Claude". If I do the former it will be an IJA 77th Sentai plane providing air support for the invasion of Burma in early 1942. This would be the counterpoint to the current AVG P-40. If the latter, a 12th or 13th Kokutai plane - IJNAF aircraft originally assigned to aircraft carrier Kaga but based at airfields in Shanghai in 1937. It will eventually be paired with an I-16 in CAF colors, piloted by a Soviet volunteer supporting the ultimately doomed Chinese defence of Nanking. But for now, this is the AVG Warhawk until I come back to it:

This is looking great. There's one of these in my stash, so really thankful for the inspiration you are providing.

Used book store find. Giving me all sorts of ideas for future projects.

it definitely does tone down the shine. Based on past experience, not all of shine would return if I completely removed the oil paint. It may be that just blending it around with a Q-tip cuts the gloss of the Future layer by abrading it a bit. It definitely does not impart any color to the Future - mineral spirits will take all of the color off.

Beautifully done - was the green painted freehand? I also really like you workstand. I need to build something like that.

Here's an example of the oil paint dots before blending. I just dab it on with a toothpick. And after. It really starts to cut into the "toy" look of those uniform colors. The gloss of the Future shining through is still distracting. I will end up waiting a couple weeks for the oils to fully dry before adding a final acrylic matte coat. Still need to clean up those rivets some. This is fidgety work that needs focus - I'm going to stop for today and do more tomorrow.

Starting to work on adding some depth to the topside finish. I'm using a method that the AFV guys introduced - the oil paint "dot filter". One thing that's clear from in-theater photos of these planes, especially the rare color ones (the Osprey P-40 Aces of the AVG has good ones, and there are more on the web), is that the paint was super-blotchy and variegated. Part of that is doubtless just wear, but some of them really look like they were painted (or re-painted) with a paintbrush. Given the technology available in Burma in 1941, that may not be far from the truth. So I'm trying to get a bit of that look here. One thing you don't see in those photos is a lot of bare metal, even in the places like wing roots that WW2 modelers love to swab down with aluminum-paint "chipping". So we won't be doing that here. [But wait until I do my IJA Ki-43 - there are some spectacularly worn examples of those due to green paint being swabbed over factory bare metal finishes in the field and then just abrading away in flight. I'm going to have some fun with that.] This is one side of the tail done to check the color mix. The photo makes it look a lot more yellow than it actually is. After my experience with the oil wash on the underside, I'm doing this right on top of the Future gloss coat that sealed the decals (which I KNOW is thinner-proof). One nice thing about this method is that if you decide you don't like it, you can take it all off with mineral spirits and try over. I will probably go back and blend this a bit more before calling it done. One thing that's annoying is getting the accumulated paint out of rivets. I use a sharpened toothpick dipped in thinner.

Glad you are enjoying it! Go get the trumpeter kit and make yourself one! I have a P-40F kit in my pile for later that I may do as a Commonwealth bird - RAAF or RNZAF.

The PE cowl flaps were easier to install than I had thought they might be. While trying to add some engine oil stains aft of them, I ran into a problem that I have never seen before - the coat of matte acrylic varnish I had put down began to peel in spots. I'm using a new (AK) white spirit to thin my oils, so maybe that's it. Anyway, need to rethink what I'm doing to the upper surfaces. I think I'm going to call the lower side done, except for some pastel smoke stains aft of the shell ejection chutes after everything else is done. If I try to do more I fear I'm going to make it worse rather than better... A view of the nice cowl flap control struts that Eduard provides with their kit. Next Warhawk I may try to scratch-build the ducts that should extend from the back of the radiators to near the cowl.

Also, for anyone who is thinking about building this kit, it's notable that the surface detail molding is uneven - the rivet detail on the horizontal stabilizers is way too pronounced, while it fades out to almost nothing in places on the fuselage. You could go over the fuselage parts ahead of time and deepen them selectively. It would be harder to fill and re-do the tailplane surfaces; maybe CA glue would be the best filler for this purpose.

I've now finished touching up the underside, and gotten most of the way there on the upper surfaces, at least as far as panel line/rivet wash in concerned. I still need to do one more touch-up and cleaning pass on the upper surface. I ended up deciding to use black PLW on the top after all, as Tamiya's brown is too light a brown to standout against these colors. It might only really be useful for something like a desert camo scheme. I still need to clean up the wheelwells a little bit, too. This will look much better once it is flat-coated. As soon as the PLW is really done, I'll shoot a coat of flat with a bit of sand yellow in it over the top, and flat with light gray on the bottom. That will hopefully tone down the decals and blend the colors a bit. Gotta tone down those decals still. The flat coat will the the base for some work with oil paints and then pastels to finish the surface effects.

Great to know that they work for this. I suppose that an immediate question is what material do you cut the masks out of? I bet I will end up having a lot of questions, so maybe best would be if you could point me at the best online resources you can think of for me to read and learn from. Thanks a bunch!

I just read about these - Silhouette Cameo is one brand (carried by Micro Mark). Has anyone tried using these to cut painting masks from adhesive backed paper or vinyl?

+1 on solder. You can get very small diameter stuff that is used for circuit boards, all the way up to the thick stuff that you may already have for copper pipe if you are a DIY sort.

I’ve had good luck with Vallejo Model Air. Comes thin enough to spray, although I often still cut it a bit more with their proprietary thinner. I like their primer quite a bit too. I have now mostly switched to using Mr. Color lacquers, but still like Vallejo for specific purposes. Still use their matte clear as a final top coat on most all models. Their acrylic colors are good if you want a fairly fragile color coat over aluminum to chip or abrade away.