Tamiya Mosquito FB VI - 3/22 - Figure painting completed

[Wolf Buddee]

Boy oh boy, you keep this up and I'm going to have to pull mine out again...........after I finish the Corsair of course. I trust you're going to paint the fuel bladder well in white still? I was a little unsure of Tamiya's colour call out on that but it's definitely been confirmed that the well was white. Keep up the fantastic work Sir!

 

Cheers,

Wolf

[Bstarr3]

No worries, I am happy to do so, and the bulkhead that holds the engine bearers, on our bird are silver as they are metal and not any kind of green,,,,, I totally agree with you regarding the fabulous detail right out of the box, I thought they got the wheel wells pretty much spot on............... glad to have been a little bit of help.... now I just have to get going on mine...... I am sure loving what you are doing with this kit, Brian...

Thanks again, Jeff. I'll get around to working on this kit again eventually.  Sadly, the last thing I did was lay down some thick CA to fill gaps on the leading edge of the wing.  Since it's been a couple of days for it to harden up, it's going to be a lot of sanding to smooth that out.  Oh well. 

 

 

Boy oh boy, you keep this up and I'm going to have to pull mine out again...........after I finish the Corsair of course. I trust you're going to paint the fuel bladder well in white still? I was a little unsure of Tamiya's colour call out on that but it's definitely been confirmed that the well was white. Keep up the fantastic work Sir!

 

Cheers,

Wolf

Thanks, Wolf.  I am planning to paint that whole middle section in white, which should be an interesting challenge/opportunity for weathering.  I'd love to see you get back to your Mossie sometime - it was a beautiful start. 

[BloorwestSiR]

Try going over the CA with some debonder. Put the debonder on a brush and maybe wipe down / smooth out the hardened CA so you have less sanding.

 

Carl

[Bstarr3]

Thanks, Carl. I haven't had a chance to go back to it so I'm not sure what it's going to look like. I try to lay on a very thin layer of CA so as to minimize sanding. I don't have any CA debonder though. Will acetone work?

[BloorwestSiR]

I haven't tried acetone on CA so I don't know if it would work. That being said, acetone might attack the plastic so I'd test it first.

 

Carl

[Bstarr3]

Thanks again, Carl. Can anyone else weigh in on this point?

[Bstarr3]

Finally some more updates! Everytime I move on to a new part of this kit, I'm amazed again at the intricacy and Brilliance of Tamiya's engineering. There are so many pieces that are just press fit to each other.

 

So anyway,I begin with repainting the inside of the nacelles around the landing gear bay. I need to repair a little bit of overspray, but overall I'm happy with how it looks.

 

 

Next I finished installing the wing tips. I didn't get a picture of it, but I painted the inside of the navigation lights silver, and dabbed the bulbs with clear green and clear red. Getting the clear part on was a little bit fiddly, and I ended up with quite a bit of glue to clean up around the joint as you can see here. I do have a question about this part. I dry fit several times and sanded the part smooth, but I still ended up with a gap between the wing tip and the wing. I'm sure that this is not all meant to be one piece or else Tamiya would not have modeled it as separate pieces, but how big of a gap is acceptable here?

 

 

Also painted up the fuel bladders. First, sprayed the straps and interior green, then mask them and gave an overall coat of British crimson. Heavily weathered with AK Engine Wash, Tamiya panel line wash, and dust pigment, followed by some dry brushing with flat red. Frustratingly, the decal on the left was moved a little bit off center while dabbing the microsol away. Further attempts to bring it back to its original position, including refloating it with water and micro set just resulted in the tear in the corner. I'm very happy with the end results.

 

 

 

Also got main gear struts put together along with one of the tires. Talk about a 3D puzzle - the engineering on these multipart tires is very cool.

 

 

And one more question: part J48, the jig for holding the struts in line when attaching the tires, is missing from both of my J sprues. I checked the box, I looked around on my desk - they are not here. Am I missing something? I think my solution is to try and make my own jig. If someone who has the kit can give me the dimensions on that part I will scratch one of my own. I mostly just need the distance between the two struts. Thanks again, and as always, comments and criticisms are always welcome.

[karimb]

Superb progress!

I think the wingtips are supposed to be like this I'll have to dig to see why and take notes for the time i start work on my mossie. Don't worry about the decal on the fuel bladder goinf astray, it gives it more of a real life abused and used look!

Super!

Model on buddy

[BloorwestSiR]

I think the jig is part of the sprue so you might not be seeing it for that reason. I'll double check in the morning for you.

 

To help get the flat spot on the tires level with the ground, sand the outer edges of the wheel hubs slightly so that the tires can rotate on them. I did this on my build uld and it allowed me to set them up correctly. The hubs themselves are keyed to the gear legs so they can't rotate which is why you need to make it the tires can. Hope that makes sense.

 

Carl

Edited February 4, 2018 by BloorwestSiR

[Bstarr3]

Superb progress!

I think the wingtips are supposed to be like this I'll have to dig to see why and take notes for the time i start work on my mossie. Don't worry about the decal on the fuel bladder goinf astray, it gives it more of a real life abused and used look!

Super!

Model on buddy

Thanks Karim! Yeah I can always write-off a torn decal to wear and tear, but it irksme when things are obviously off center. Oh well. Thanks for the opinion on the wing tips too. I'll have to review some build photos and reference photos.

[Bstarr3]

I think the jig is part of the sprue so you might not be seeing it for that reason. I'll double check in the morning for you.

 

To help get the flat spot on the tires level with the ground, sand the outer edges of the wheel hubs slightly so that the tires can rotate on them. I did this on my build uld and it allowed me to set them up correctly. The hubs themselves are keyed to the gear legs so they can't rotate which is why you need to make it the tires can. Hope that makes sense.

 

Carl

Thanks, Carl. I knew it was part of the sprues, and I looked at it from all angles but it just isn't there. The only thing I can think of is that I cut it off at some other time not realizing I'd need it.

 

Thanks for the heads up on the tires. I saw that they were keyed and assumed they're keyed to the flat part resting flat on the ground, but I guess not. Fortunately I haven't installed the hubs yet.

[BloorwestSiR]

I had to take out my copy of the kit and look at the J sprue for a good 5 minutes before I found it. It's between the legs of J5 near the top left of the sprue.

 

Hopefully you still have it.

 

Carl

[Bstarr3]

Yeah thanks Carl. I did manage to find it. I had just moved on and was looking at the retraction arms for the gear struts, and there staring me in the face clear as day was J48! I'm thinking that I will deviate from the instructions here and just out the gear all together and leave it uninstalled until I finish painting.

[BloorwestSiR]

Glad to hear you found them. I left my gear off until closer to the end as well so it shouldn't be a problem.

 

Carl

[Bstarr3]

Pretty big updates today!  Weeks ago, someone said they couldn't wait to see the engines installed on the wings (scrolled back through the thread but couldn't find the comment).  Well, how about this: 

 

 

 

The fit, as expected, is beautiful.  No seam gap, no filler.  The thing I like about Tamiya's kits (well, one of the things) is how positive the fit is on everything.  If something isn't quite going together right, go back to the instructions, because you're doing something wrong.  As opposed to, say, Eduard kits, which though nicely detailed, are a bit vague as far as fitting items together. Fortunately, it looks like the full wingspan will fit easily in my spray booth, although it may be a little awkward to move around a lot. 

 

Beginnings of the rear cockpit radio shelf:

 

 

Dirtied up the inside of the gear bays a bit. 

 

 

Final attachments on the engine - radiator plumbing.  

 

 

 

Also hit the engines with a satin varnish - took that last little bit of gloss out of the finish and smoothed out some of the weathering. I used Golden artist's satin varnish, which comes in a much bigger bottle than the hobby specific stuff, for the same price.  Sprayed nicely out of the airbrush mixed with a little water. 

 

And finally for today, the main gear.  I'm very satisfied with how these turned out.  Sprayed with metal color aluminum, weathered with Tamiya and AK washes.  I used Abeitulung's latex masking solution to cover the oleo jackets while spraying the aluminum.  It's my first time using a masking solution, but I love the stuff! The tires were painted with MMP tire black, which was then postshaded with lightened and darkened versions of the same color.  I sprayed those at a low pressure to get some spattering of the paint and make the post shading effect more random.  Then dusted with light dust pigment all over for a general fading effect.  I applied dark earth pigment all over the tread area, and then wiped with a damp paper towel to leave it only between the treads.  Finally, I mixed up some mud from dark earth pigment and enamel thinner. The thick stuff I sort of troweled on to the treads and sidewalls of the tires with a coffee stirrer.  Then I thinned it up some more, loaded it on an old brush, and flicked it onto the mudguards.  I'm very happy with the result.  I think I'm going to apply some gloss to it as well to give a wet look. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A note about the construction of the tires: on the first one, I placed the sidewalls on the main hub and glued them without much pressure.  This left a slight gap as I was putting the tread pieces on, but I was able to squeeze it all together.  This is the correct way to do it.  On the second tire, I tried putting a clamp on to eliminate that gap on the sidewalls. This ended up making it slightly too tight, and the tread sections didn't want to sit right.  There were gaps galore.  I filled them with Mr Surfacer and moved on with my life, but if you're looking at them closely, the profile is not right, with lots of steps and gaps.  Painted up it's not that big a deal, but it was definitely frustrating to deal with. 

 

My wife is out of town this weekend, so I expect to get a lot of work done once I put the kids to bed every night.  Next steps are finishing up that radio deck, attaching fuselage to wings (!), and then on to the cannons.