karimb Posted October 21, 2016 Author Share Posted October 21, 2016 Guys hi! sorry no updates in a long time. i just managed to get all the photos sorted out and prepared. Lesson for next time is to do this in installments and not keep everything as a bulk... The Albatros is complete ! I still need to update all the in progress shots and texts and then when i get some time off tomorrow when i come back from my flight i will take the RFI photos proper... ALOT to tell you guys and i am SUPER excited about how the albie turned out. It all went smooth like a dream! On the other hand i am going to have to trawl through the forum here to try to find any other alternative to PB because the bucket has been acting up since yesterday i havent been able to create new albums or upload anything and i am looking for an alternative, be it paying alternative i dont really mind as long as the hosting site is stable and you dont have all those bugs and hickups to handle everytime you want to access the site Any suggestions guys out of your own experiences? Well, i gotta get this sorted out and then its going to be on with the update anytime i get a viable alternative i guess And yes, i still have free space remaining lol i did check Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karimb Posted October 22, 2016 Author Share Posted October 22, 2016 Well, managed to get the photo gremlins under control finally. going to stick with PB now for the image hosting. i dont know what happened yesterday but it seems to all be working now oh well! The Albatros is finito! I unfortunately didnt have enough time to do any updates between the last one and today, as i said, lesson learned. There is so much i need to put down and i still need to get the RFI photos done today i still havent figured wether to use a white or dark gray background! Anyways, between the last update and today i managed to finish my biannual simulator checks, fly like a maniac, and go home to spend 5 days with Zoe! Now i am back in the saddle i have 10 days of active flying with one day off in the middle... Well since last update, in continuation with the timeline, i closed up the fuselage halves. No real issues there to be honest the whole thing fit like a glove. i needed a touch of CA and microballoons to fill hairline gaps in the spine and bottom of the fuselage. i noticed something very very faint in the moulding of the fuselage halves. There seems to be some slightly outward tabs on the mating surfaces. I sanded those down but i think the reason why i had some little hairline gaps was because i might have not sanded them down as good as i should! after that i rescribed the panel lines top and bottom and made sure the tiny holes on the bottom were open (i think those are drainage holes but i couldnt really work it out)... Got the wings cleaned up, drilled little holes and inserted copper rods to be able to hold the ailerons, elevator and rudder as i found the way those attach to the parts to be very fragile... At that point i assembled the landing gear and preshaded with black and then oversprayed with a dark gray. The sequence is a bit hazy now but what i did was preshade the fuselage with red brown. The wings got a mix of preshaded ribs on the top and the bottom part the ribs were covered with Oracal vinyl cut with the silhouette plotter to get the shading around the ribs instead of on the ribs. I then masked and airbrushed the rudder and the horizontal tailplane in a mix of white with a couple of drips of tan then masked the white areas and painted the black stripes on the elevator and hztl tail. I started off with the painting of the wings top and bottom by using the WNW color callouts. I couldnt figure out if the camo had a soft or hard edge so what i did was use rolled bluetack worms to get the feathered camo delineation. Paint was thinned and i kept going layer over layer until i got the opacity i wanted. Same for the bottom with the light blue. That done i again used the silhouette plotter to do my own custom masks for the insignias to have those painted on as i feel i can get them to blend in much better that way... Once i had those painted on i lightened the middle areas between the ribs, added some dust and grime with very thin mixes of paint and blended in the painted on markings. Gloss coat Intermediate Gauzy Agent by AK...very pleased with this glosscoat and its some sort of acrylic. I havent really figured out what it is to be honest. It doesnt smell like lacquer but dries fast like lacquer, it doesnt smell like an acrylic and dries much faster. With alcohol to thin it it turns into paste, water works just fine, straight out of the bottle at 20psi sprays very well and levels very well too...anybody has any clue as to what it is? it doesnt say on the bottle... Some photos in random order tucohoward, 109 and Jan_G 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karimb Posted October 22, 2016 Author Share Posted October 22, 2016 (edited) The prpeller: An enjoyable part of the build... After priming, i airbrushed a light wooden tone. I used Tamiya's wooden deck tan i forgot the exact name of the paint but its in the XF80 range... When that was dry i used RB photoetch woodgrain templates to impart woodgraining to the prop. i used a slightly darker tone for the woodgraining but nothing very stark. I also used Radu's RB production laminated propeller painting etch set. This painting jig is just fantastic. Its made up of laminated pieces of PE separated by washers. you can set as many laminations as you need to get the desired effect. The paint jig is not easy to use though as you must really get the settings on your compressor and paint thinning ratios correct in order to get hard edged delimitations on the second colour. Hard as i tried i just couldnt really get the hard edge between the two colours. I expected this as the jig has a bit of a learning curve but i am happy with the result. When the second colour was dry, i blended everything together and then used watercolour pencils to add some colour variation to the individual wood colours and added some handmade grain and hue variation. When the prop all around looked pleasing i airbrushed tamiya clear yellow with very few drops of clear orange in the mix... Later down the road i clear coated the prop and added the Wolff decals! Edited October 22, 2016 by karimb 109, tucohoward, Pfuf and 4 others 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Squito2340 Posted October 22, 2016 Share Posted October 22, 2016 Very nice work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karimb Posted October 22, 2016 Author Share Posted October 22, 2016 The Woodwork: First snag of the build lol... Actually one of the most enjoyable aspect of the albatros build I started off by masking the panels and cutting off their shapes in kabuki tape. Same technique i used for the woodgraining on the mig3 build. The woodgraining would be decals on this build, and initially the item i was going to use was HGW transparent woodgrain decals, more on that later though. I started by airbrushing a lightened tan on the top spine of the aircraft slowly building up the opacity, followed by a darker tan on the sides and then an even darker shade of tan on the bottom to break up the monotony and colour shades under the decals. When that was all dry i lay down a gloss coat in preparation for the decals. Tragedy struck!! While applying my usual technique of laying down the kabuki tape on the decal sheet and then cutting off the shapes of each panel in the decal sheet, the HGW decals just completely ripped off their backing. I was quite disappointed to be honest. i have often used the Uschi VDRosten woodgrain decal sheets and they NEVER ripped off their backing, even with full tack tamiya tape, same for the Aviattic decals. This is the first time this happened. I ditched the HGW decal sheet and reverted to the UVDR knotless pale and rich woodgrain decals to do the fuselage woodgraining. It might have been me not heeding the warnings on the decal sheet of HGW but to be honest i find myself much more comfortable using the UVDR woodgrain decals so i am going to stick to those and i will keep whats left of the HGW sheet for other uses... I used microsol and microset for the UVDR decals and they snuggled down a treat and conformed to the nooks and crannies of the albatros fuselage. Once the decals were dry i used a fresh scalpel blade to trim the sides that were a bit extending beyond the individual panel lines. The top decal around the cockpit gave me a couple of additional white hairs in the beard which just adds up to the portfolio lol ! Once all was dry i coated the fuselage with a 50/50 mix of clear yellow and clear orange varying the ratio on different panels to give different tones of warmth to the fuselage panels. once all was dry i glosscoated the fuselage for what was coming lol ! The pictures below are also in random order and you can see the landing gear dry fit on. everything clicks in place i'm really impressed. for the landing gear i used AK's light chipping fluid to get the chipping on the bottom horizontal plane... on with the photos! 109, tucohoward, Pfuf and 3 others 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karimb Posted October 22, 2016 Author Share Posted October 22, 2016 Riveting and decaling: The purists out there are going to have a field day with me! The albatros had flush nails to keep down the wood panels. I do have the HGW flush nail decal set for the albatros but i decided not to use them on this build (from previous experience with the HGW rivet decals, those are so toned down they barely show through). Instead i cheated a bit and used the HGW guide for the placement and used MicroMark free line resin rivets. They are more pronounced and basically would be "inaccurate" on a real albatros but i loved the way it ended up looking. The riveting took me two full days of work on the kit. I cant thank enough Walther's Solvaset for helping me in making the carrier film disappear completely under those rivets. its amazing what solvaset can do to stubborn decals or thick carriered decals, but be careful this stuff is lethal, ive already had decals just shrivel up and disintegrate when solvaset was used on them! Riveting done it was decal time. I initially used microset to help the decals conform. Managed to coax most of the bubbles out and managed to help the decals snuggle down. The wnw decals reacted superbly to microsol. The decals that gave me a headache snuggling down onto the rivet lines got the solvaset treatment and i am happy to say the wnw decals took to solvaset very well and snuggled down superbly over the rivets. The photos below are again in no special order The panel lines got an AK brown wash and the bottom of the fuselage once dry got a Flory dark dirt wash that was later slightly streaked back to simulate grime on the bottom of the fuselage Pfuf, tucohoward, Jan_G and 2 others 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karimb Posted October 22, 2016 Author Share Posted October 22, 2016 The exhaust stack: Also an enjoyable part of the build...well to be honest the whole build has been a bundle of joy lol! I first primed the exhaust with mr surfacer after having removed best i could the seamlines. I then airbrushed nato black on the joints and the end of the exhaust. Oh yes, i used my dremmel rotary with a pointy carving tool to drill out the end of the exhaust. I then airbrushed thin layers of red brown very thinned building up the opacity to get a majority of reddish brown coverage on the whole exhaust just letting the darker preshaded areas show through. now the fun beggins I used the AK rust effect acrylic set to build up the colour of the exhaust. I love those colours and they thin very well with water. once really well thinned you can used them to do "glazes" same as you would when you are painting busts or figures to blend all colours together and do a smooth transition. I did some staining, some chipping with a very fine brush and heat areas. when all was dry i airbrushed very thinned tamiya clear green to pick up the exhaust stack joints to the main body... Ultra Matte coat on top of it all to seal it in. Couple of pictures below in a random order too Jan_G, Whitey, Pfuf and 1 other 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karimb Posted October 22, 2016 Author Share Posted October 22, 2016 Putting it all together (minus the top wings and the rigging!): At that point it was time to get everything together. Alot of photos so probably i will have this post split into two to fit the photos... I finished the MGs painted the main bodies with tamiya's gun metal and used a black wash to bring out the details. Drybrushed the guns with mr metal color steel from gunze. I painted the cabane struts and gave them a wash to get the details out at the cabane joints. The propeller hub i had painted in the green gray and then realised it was white so i redid the prop hub and used again AK light chipping fluid to get the light paint chipping done. I then glued up the throttle cable to the throttle body and snipped the excess of the cable off. Installed the landing gear after having painted the tires in nato black, then washed and added various earth pigments that i sealed in with pigment fixer. At that point i started making the eyelets for the landing gear rigging. I used thin copper wire wrapped around a small needle body to get the eyelet shape. Snipped the main body off and glued the eyelets in... for the rigging i used EZline and cut albion tubing to get the thread in around and back out. CAed then the end of the thread snipped off... I also had painted and added the PE gunshield and the windscreen into which i had drilled two small holes with a micro drillbit as i had seen reference photos of the windscreens in which the pilots had drilled holes to better look at the crosshairs when aiming the guns! For the elevator i also used EZline that i inserted into micro holes into the elevator control horns and with albion tubing. I added general weathering to the fuselage as a whole unit... darn i cant remember all the little juicy details but thats most of it i reckon... More photo below TorbenD, Pfuf, Sparzanza and 4 others 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karimb Posted October 22, 2016 Author Share Posted October 22, 2016 (edited) Going to grab lunch and back to continue the saga... Rigging time! PS: i forgot to mention i had seen in a couple of reference photo a line that runs from the top of the radiator 'tower' and down to the side. i simulated this with lead wire of .4mm thickness and painted it black! Edited October 22, 2016 by karimb Starfighter, tucohoward, Sparzanza and 5 others 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
karimb Posted October 22, 2016 Author Share Posted October 22, 2016 (edited) The pleasure of rigging! Indeed it is, in a weird way. Rigging just managed to calm me down and give me time to get my mind off of things during the process... I started off by gluing in the eyelets to the top wing bottom and added two GP buckles to the ailerons and the point forward of the aileron as i saw in the reference photos i had at hand. To those eyelets i looped EZline fine charcoal colour by threading it through cut albion tubing of 0.5mm OD and 0.3 ID...once the line was threaded through the tube then the eyelet you thread it back to the tubing portion tighten up the line, a drop of CA and nip the extra thread off...done. once all the top wing had been rigged it was time to install it. i spot glued the cabane struts with CA and then worked slowly on the outer struts and held everything in place on the bipe jig overnight. next day i foudn the assembly to be pretty solid and alignment between both wings was perfect. I dont know how wnw does it but everything clicks in place and its just a joy to build their kits...kudos! On the bottom wings i have used the Gaspatch turnbuckles type C if i am not mistaken. The type that has the eyelet attached to the turnbuckle. The predrilled holes molded by wnw were deepened with a 0.3mm drillbit and the turnbuckles installed. Once i got to the rigging point, the turnbuckles were slowly bent to be in line with the rigging lines. The same technique was used to get the line rigged to the turnbuckles. I first run the line into the tubing, then into the turnbuckle eye then back into the tubing and then get the line taught and CAed then snip off the extra line...et voila! One thing i realized is that EZline doesnt impart any sort of structural integrity to the rigging. something i am going to have to think about on the felixstowe build in the future... yes there is one in the pipeline... its sitting there in the stash! I painted the turnbuckle middles with Mr metal colour gold...at that point the rigging was complete, but not without having to redo 3 rigging lines as they didnt really look the part! To add some weathering to the underside of the wings i use a brush dipped in AK's dry mud enamel wash (i cant really recall the exact name of the product but i know i have one called fresh mud and another called something something mud which is supposed to be the dry flat coloured type of mud) And that's pretty much it for this build my friends.... My first wnw build, my first biplane build, my first real rigging job... many firsts. To be honest this was one of the MOST ENJOYABLE builds i have completed in a very very long while. I am glad the wingnut wings stash is growing fatter by the month... I sure do hope you guys have enjoyed the build, again i am sorry about not having been able to do the updates everytime i had done some work on the kit, sometimes work got in the way of doing proper updates... I am sure i did forget to mention some things about the build in progress sequence or details so please feel free to ask me anything you like and as always your comments and critiques will help me improve ! Now ill leave you guys to go take proper RFI photos and start editing them to be able to do the RFI post either tomorrow or tonight depending on how much time i have before alarm goes off to remind me its time to sleep... got to be up at 3am for a redeye flight tonight... Now, i wonder, which of the two kits i have on the bench should i start? The HPH Macchi M5 ,or a Fisher Pitts S2B I've flown aerobatics in a couple of times?? Standby to get a new WIP thread in a couple of days or so lol Thanks for being along for the ride guys Stay safe as always and happy modeling! Karim Below the homemade jig for cutting same size tubing for the rigging. i got the idea off of the internet but i cant quite recall where. it helps you cut the tubing in consistent sizes with clean and not get crimped edges! Above, the rigging utensils And some silly doodle i did on the ipad pro with procreate software lol....rock on crosseyed boy! Edited October 22, 2016 by karimb tucohoward, 109, Pfuf and 3 others 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jasta 14 addict Posted October 22, 2016 Share Posted October 22, 2016 Oooohhhh boy that last photo Karim.......hahahahahaha great. It's very intresting to see what kind of effect rigging has on people hihihi........ Ok serieus now..........this one hell of a superbly model you have there my friend. I have just one point to make, i hope you don't mind me saying that......the Micro Mark rivets, for me they are on the heavy side. But on the other hand, it don't disturb me. The whole model look's just gorgeous. You've done a great work on this one my friend, congrtas with this result. Greetz Danny Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted October 22, 2016 Share Posted October 22, 2016 My friend, just beautiful! I am so inspired by your work, I have one coming. Its a trade with Erni. Just love your work.....Harv Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lothar Posted October 22, 2016 Share Posted October 22, 2016 Let me put it this way: You and a few others here should be banned from posting WIP pictures. I tell you why: I simply can't justify steadily increasing doses of Prozac to fight my depressions after looking at threads like yours But let me tell you this: One day, yes, one day I will........., or maybe not Absolutely stunning progress, I do enjoy work like yours Lothar Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
X15 Posted October 22, 2016 Share Posted October 22, 2016 Amazing work !!! X15 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TorbenD Posted October 22, 2016 Share Posted October 22, 2016 Truly inspiring stuff Karim Torben Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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