Bf109 E-4 Sortie Prep

[Greif8]

5 hours ago, Alain Gadbois said:

I have the same problem with my kit. It was in the stash for a few years until I opened the box to check it out and the lining had become so brittle it broke as I exerted the slightest pressure. I bought another kit and the soft parts are fine (for now!). I was thinking of making a mold and cast a spare set for my first kit and another if the new parts go bad also.

 

Alain

 

Hi Alain, this is the only time I have seen this sort of thing with what Dragon calls, "DS", type parts.  I have built several of their armor kits as well as the 109s I referred to earlier and all of those had zero parts issues.  Out of curiosity I looked a a couple of the armor kits in my stash and the DS parts are just fine, perhaps a batch of 109 kits got rubber parts that had a manufacturing defect.

 

Ernest  

[Greif8]

2 hours ago, MikeMaben said:

No problems with mine, the flexibility made it easy to install even after the wing halves

were together.  

 

Hi Mike, it looks like I had some bad luck here.  As I told Alain above it may be that I got part of a bad batch of rubber parts.  I have contacted Dragon and will see what they have to say when they answer my query.  In the meantime I am exploring ways to overcome the problem and move forward with the build.

 

Ernest 

[nmayhew]

I had the same problem with these 109 wells: parts where still sealed in clear plastic bag, but had ‘sweated out’ all their moisture - an oily condensation visible on the inside of the bag - and so were left very brittle.

 

Still waaay better than the Eduard kit in my view.

 

one thing if you care about accuracy: DML missed a vertical panel line on one side of the fuselage under the cockpit -should be simple to rescribe though.

 

cheers

Nick

[Greif8]

1 hour ago, nmayhew said:

I had the same problem with these 109 wells: parts where still sealed in clear plastic bag, but had ‘sweated out’ all their moisture - an oily condensation visible on the inside of the bag - and so were left very brittle.

 

Still waaay better than the Eduard kit in my view.

 

one thing if you care about accuracy: DML missed a vertical panel line on one side of the fuselage under the cockpit -should be simple to rescribe though.

 

cheers

Nick

 

Hi Nick, thank you for the information and the tip concerning the panel line, which I will research and scribe.  I am still sitting on the fence whether to add rivets, either with a rivet wheel, or buy the HGW set.  To be honest I don't think the kit looks bad without them and I am not sure if I want to do the work to add rivets.  I agree that the Dragon kit is better than the Eduard one, though I would build the Eduard one without gritting my teeth at it!  

 

Ernest

[thierry laurent]

That problem with Dragon DS plastic is alas not so uncommon. It is known for many years by AFV modellers since the company decided to use that souple plastic for tracks. By the way this can be glued with standard polystyrene glue. 

[Greif8]

2 hours ago, thierry laurent said:

That problem with Dragon DS plastic is alas not so uncommon. It is known for many years by AFV modellers since the company decided to use that souple plastic for tracks. By the way this can be glued with standard polystyrene glue. 

 

Thank you for the heads up Thierry.  Unfortunately the part that broke into pieces was also badly warped so there is no way I can use it for anything.  The other part hardened while still in the right shape so I was able to use it.  I took several photos of my progress but I a bit tired tonight to post them.  I will get them up tomorrow.

 

Cheers,

Ernest

[RLWP]

4 minutes ago, Greif8 said:

 

Thank you for the heads up Thierry.  Unfortunately the part that broke into pieces was also badly warped so there is no way I can use it for anything.  The other part hardened while still in the right shape so I was able to use it.  I took several photos of my progress but I a bit tired tonight to post them.  I will get them up tomorrow.

 

Cheers,

Ernest

 

Awww.... 

[MikeMaben]

9 hours ago, nmayhew said:

one thing if you care about accuracy: DML missed a vertical panel line on one side of the fuselage under the cockpit -should be simple to rescribe though.

 

Yep, I think I posted this somewhere before ...

 

 

 

[Greif8]

7 hours ago, MikeMaben said:

 

Yep, I think I posted this somewhere before ...

 

 

 

 

Thank you for the information and photo Mike.  I will try to scribe the line competently.  Scribing is definitely the weakest of my modelling skills; though I did manage to re-scribe the upper and lower fuselage joins correctly the first time so maybe I am getting better.

 

Ernest 

[Greif8]

I bit more progress on the build.  As I mentioned above one of the wheel well canvas cover parts hardened in an (almost) perfect shape, so I decided to move forward and assemble the wing while waiting for an answer from Dragon on replacement parts.  The photos with the comments are below.

 

Ernest

 

 

The canvas cover part ended up fitting pretty well with only the small area at the 7 O'clock position that did not match up.  I will likely leave it as it is as it is nearly unnoticeable when being viewed with normal vision.

 

 

A poorly composed photo of the part from the side. One can see the join of the canvas part and the landing gear leg channel is pretty good.

 

 

The cannon cover has some gaps that need to be dealt with.  I braced the inside of the part so the upper and lower joins towards the wing's trailing edge mate without a step.  I plan to fill the large gap on the right side with some Evergreen strip and fill the rest with putty.  I have already shaped the machine gun cover to the right using a combination of putty and super glue.  What looks like a gap is actually sanded super glue.  This took some careful work to avoid obliterating detail.  Finally the seam at the leading edge of the wing has been eliminated and smoothed.

 

 

Another shot taken lengthwise along the wing.  This shows the join between the wing and cover better.  As I said above, the cannon cover has to be spread slightly so that there is no step.  I used two 4mm lengths of wooden toothpick for the bracing.  The black cannon barrels will be painted gunmetal towards the end of the build.

 

 

The cannon cover after filling.  I still need to give everything a final buffing, but it turned out pretty well.  Though I did not take any detailed photos of it, the leading edge slat to the left fit very well with some careful positioning and gluing I managed to avoid have to do any filling and only a minimum amount of sanding a a couple of spots.  This can be a tough area on Dragon builds to get positioned right and it was taken me four kits to finally hit the sweet spot!

 

 

 

This final shot shows the cannon barrel centered in the opening; which was my goal during initial positioning and gluing.  Sometimes the moon and stars align for me.  I drilled out the barrels but due to the dark color you can't see the results.  I will get some better shots of that later - probably after I complete the build.   

[Greif8]

I got a lot of rather mundane stuff done over the past day or so.  Most of it was just basic assembly and sanding/buffing work, but there are few photo worthy things to post.  I decided to fit the starboard wing to the fuselage while waiting for a reply from Dragon on the broken part.  The fit was pretty good and I only had to add a bit of putty to the lower half of the join.  I also installed the upper cowling and machine gun cover to their respective locations.  Those who have built this kit know those are two areas that can prove a challenge to get installed.  The upper cowling turned out to be pretty accurate right out the door and the photos show the initial fit to be surprisingly good.  I had to sand a small step on the starboard side and add a little putty to some areas and in the end it turned out pretty nice.   The pictures show the sequence.  The machine gun cover required more work to get right but in the end it too turned out pretty decent.  Finally, I prepped the Henri Dähne prop kit that I will be replacing the kit one with.  Henri's props and hubs are real masterpieces and a joy to work with.

 

Ernest 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

Wing join pretty decent without any work.

 

After a bit of putty and some buffing it looks very good.  Hopefully the port wing will fit as well.

 

Starboard side of the initial upper cowling fit.  Not too shabby but some sanding of the slight step and filling is required.

 

The port side fits better and only some putty needs to be applied.

 

 

Port side filled and waiting for final buffing.  

 

The starboard side nearly done.  It took more work but turned out nice.

 

The starboard side of the machine gun fit pretty well and won't need a lot of work to blend.

 

The port side not so much.

 

Done after fairly minimal sanding, filling sanding and buffing.

 

Work on the port side underway.  This is taking some time to get right, or at least as right as I can make it, so I'll post another photo when it is finished.

 

Forgot to show the front of the wing join.  It was a pleasant surprise that it assembled so well and I only needed a tiny amount of putty to blend it.

 

I forgot the bottom join as well.  It to only required a bit of putty and work.

 

Henri Dähne's beautiful prop set. 

 

The hub is very nice indeed!

 

Edited June 9, 2020 by Greif8

[Greif8]

I forgot to point out that thanks to Mike Maben who told me about the missing panel line on the port side of the fuselage running vertically below the forward cockpit area, I was able to scribe the line.  You can see the line in the photo below.  Scribing is not a strong suit of mine but this line turned out ok. 

 

Thank you very much for the info Mike! 

 

The scribed line runs down from the red handle to the reinforcing strip on the fuselage.

[Greif8]

While waiting to see what Dragon is going to do about replacing the two rubber parts I decided to work on the figures.  Below are a few shots of them finished.  Unfortunately the harsh direct lighting at my bench washes out a lot of the subtle transitions between highlights can shadows.  When the build is complete I will take better photos with my photo setup and macro lens.  I painted the faces with Winsor and Newton oils, nothing new there.  The faces were fairly challenging to paint as they are both looking downwards and getting the highlights and shadows laid in so they blended naturally took a couple of tries - three times for the pilot's face- but in the end they turned out pretty good.  I used a technique called layering to paint the uniforms and hands.  This involves the use of acrylics and begins with a dark base color.  From there successively lighter coats are layered using highly thinned paint.  The paint should be translucent and built up slowly.  I don't normally use this technique but thought it would be fun to practice a bit.  Though the final result was not perfect, my transitions were a bit stark in spots, it looks presentable.  Really good figure painters can use this technique to paint faces, but I am not nearly that good so will stick to oils for face painting.  Again, I apologize for the less than stellar photos.

 

Ernest

 

The ground crewman.  Black is the easiest color to paint as only highlights are necessary.   The uniform is actually more "tire black" then black.  The white collar stripe and cockade took a lot of focus to paint and some touching up, something I always seem to have to do a lot of!

 

Side on shot.  The direct lighting makes the figure look more glossy than it is.

 

Lots of colors and shades on the pilot figure.  The yellow life vest took a bit of effort to get the right balance and look between highlights and shadows - yellow is a bear to paint in general.  Again the lighting washes out some of the nice details and shading transitions.  Unfortunately it takes some effort and space to setup my photo tent, lights and filters so I don't normally do so until after a build is complete.  Even more unfortunately I did not see the two specks of dust on the figure in order of remove them before a shot the picture, bummer. 

 

A not very good shot from the side.  It does bring out the variety of colors on this figure though.

[MikeMaben]

They look fine Ernie  ,  much better than most I've seen 

 

[nmayhew]

nice progress!

 

the starboard gun cowl issue

i seem to remember that whilst everything round the engine and oil cooler fit fine, the little MG mounts just didn't want to fit under that gun cowling, so I sanded their arses into oblivion! 

 

the figures looks stunning front on - nice!