Aerotech 1/32 Speed Spitfire

[Azgaron]

Looking good Kev! I hope the masking and painting turns out well.

 

HÃ¥kan

[DonH]

The decals don't look too bad at all. See what you mean about the underside though. Good luck with that, I share your aversion to canopy masking!!!

 

Cheers

Don

[LSP_Kevin]

Thanks Don! I have yet another token update in a bid to keep this thread moving along, and I've finally begun the painting phase in earnest! Well, I'd already painted the silver undersides, but I've been stalling on the blue uppers for some reason, probably due to requiring a bit of masking! Anyway, here it is after one go round with the airbrush:

 

 

As you can probably see, I focussed on the nose, which is close to finished. I'll let the paint cure for a day or so and go over it again to obtain an even, solid coverage. After that's cured nice and hard, I'll polish the surface up and, if required, lay down a couple of thin coats of the blue to even things out again. I'm a bit concerned that my cockpit masks aren't as secure as they should be though, so I might find some nasty surprises when they come off!

 

Kev

[Azgaron]

Looking good Kev! Think it's gonna turn out great!

 

HÃ¥kan

[LSP_Kevin]

Thanks HÃ¥kan! I'm still chipping away at it, but struggling at the moment to get an even finish for the blue:

 

 

I polished out all the rough spots and then touched up all the blotchy areas with a 50/50 mix, but the wings are still noticeably patchy. To make matters worse, my airbrush is back to constantly spitting water, so I've had to give up for the moment. It's really frustrating! Especially since the model is sitting ready for some thin blue coats to even things out, and for the first time in ages I have the time to do it!

 

I've also done some work on painting the inside frames of the sliding canopy:

 

 

There's a bit of peek-a-boo there unfortunately, but I don't think it'll be noticeable once it's mounted on the model in the open position. I'll touch up the squared-off corners in due course. I'm afraid I'm going to have to do the outside too, as a quick test fit has revealed that the decal colour is too different from the paint colour to get away with it. Bummer!

 

Kev

[Azgaron]

Looking a lot better Kev! Not very fun with a water spitting airbrush. Hope you get that sorted soon.

 

HÃ¥kan

[LSP_Kevin]

Looking a lot better Kev! Not very fun with a water spitting airbrush. Hope you get that sorted soon.

 

HÃ¥kan

 

Thanks mate. As it happens I've just finished another painting session, and couldn't pull the trigger back more than a couple of millimetres on the airbrush before I got water spitting out. And if I stopped spraying for a few seconds, the next pull on the trigger would result in a huge spray of water jetting out. I managed to avoid creating any further issues with the finish by being very light on the trigger, but this prevents me from giving the model the nice, thin, relatively wet coat it needs now. I've improved the finish on the wings slightly, but at the moment airbrushing is just too painful to continue with. All reports suggest I need a compressor with an air tank.

 

Kev

[Azgaron]

Do you have water separator? Check if it needs to be emptied. Otherwise run compressor without ab and blow out water from hose.

 

HÃ¥kan

[Guest Peterpools]

Kev

Nice, steady approach to achieving the gloss blue finish. Just take your time and she is going to look to spectacular.

Keep 'em coming

:popcorn:

[LSP_Kevin]

Do you have water separator? Check if it needs to be emptied. Otherwise run compressor without ab and blow out water from hose.

 

HÃ¥kan

 

It's just a simple oil-less piston compressor. No air tank, but it does have a water trap. The problem, as I understand it now having done some research, is that the water trap is attached to the compressor, but some of the air coming out of it doesn't cool enough for the moisture to condense until it's well into the air hose. The easy (and cheap!) solution is to put a second moisture trap at the end of air hose. I'll look to doing that as soon as I can organise it.

 

Kev

[Azgaron]

Sounds pretty much like what I have, except I have no water trap at all. Haven't sorted that yet.

Really want to have one of those expensive refrigerator compressors, but atm I just have to do with what I have.

Need to have pressure regulator as well.

Hope you can sort it soon Kev

 

HÃ¥kan

[LSP_Kevin]

Well, painting might be stalled, but that hasn't stopped me from still trying to get a duplicate exhaust stack cast. When I left off from this, I had more-or-less run out of silicone and patience. Having bought some more of the former and regained a little of the latter, I thought I'd better give it another go. I had already decided from the previous attempts with a two-part mould that a one-piece mould was the way to go, and set about making it happen. Here's the result:

 

 

The main issue with the two-part mould was that the parts were coming out too fat (not to mention some mould slippage as well). Well, so did this one! It's noticeably thicker than the original, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. Any of you casting gurus care to offer some suggestions?

 

I will admit to mixing about 3x more resin that I needed (poor judgement), and overfilling the mould (poor technique). I spread the mould open by flexing it, and the 'squished' the whole thing about between my fingers in an effort to work the resin fully into every cavity. I wouldn't have thought that the weight or mass of the resin would be enough to cause the mould to bulge though, so I'm a bit stumped.

 

I'm going to give it another go, but before I do I might await some sage advice from our gurus here. I did test fit into the model, and managed to crush the end of the front pipe while doing so:

 

 

At least it fits (tightly!), which is a first.

 

Kev

[Out2gtcha]

Well Im probably not the guy to give advice ( never stopped me before though  ) since I wouldn't even need all the fingers on 1 hand to replicate the times I have pulled any kind of resin/silicone molds.  However......................

 

If the S hits the F and it comes down to the wire, and you dont have a solution for the "fat" issue of your resin pulls, could you not just pull two more examples instead of 1?

 

That way, at the very least you would have even symmetrical stacks...............

 

 

[LSP_Kevin]

I just realised that I forgot to explain something that I suspect might be the cause of the issue - I would love some confirmation! As I noted in the previous post, I bought some new silicone a while back. However, I reckoned there was enough of the old stuff left to do the job, so I mixed it up and used it. But! It wasn't quite enough, only just covering that part with no headroom (I could still see the part in the silicone, and the recommendation is at least 1cm of coverage). So I let it cure and then mixed some more from the new stuff and poured it over the top.

 

Now, I don't think mixing old and new is the problem, as this silicone stuff sticks to itself like nobody's business, and it as formed a nicely solid lump. What I'm concerned about though is that perhaps the old stuff, which forms the bulk of the mould and certainly the segment that contains the cavity, is too old, and has cured a little soft or spongy. This would explain why it is producing parts that bulge in the middle, but I'd love some expert feedback about that idea. If I'm right, it's probably pointless trying to turn out any more parts using this mould, and I'll be needing a new one.

 

Kev

[LSP_Kevin]

Well Im probably not the guy to give advice ( never stopped me before though  ) since I wouldn't even need all the fingers on 1 hand to replicate the times I have pulled any kind of resin/silicone molds.  However......................

 

If the S hits the F and it comes down to the wire, and you dont have a solution for the "fat" issue of your resin pulls, could you not just pull two more examples instead of 1?

 

That way, at the very least you would have even symmetrical stacks...............

 

I did consider that Brian, but I've yet to pull out one useable example, so two is probably pushing it! I managed to crush the pipe on this one because not enough resin had flowed into its end, and it was just a wafer, waiting for my clumsy mitt to com along...

 

Kev