Another Hasegawa FW190. I FIXED IT!

[MikeMaben]

You can do it Woody  

[Nighthawk Calling 1]

Great work so far Woody, I built the D9 along time ago and have this one in the stash too can't wait to see it finished.

[Brett M]

Looking smart, Woody. Looking very smart. 

[mc65]

I used my patented, homemade, spectacular Monkey-Business-Universal-Canopy-Mask and masked the canopy. This got me thinking that I should have a contest to see who can guess the number of individual pieces of mask I used to complete this. Once I think of an appropriate prize for the winner I’ll let y’all know.

 

count me in, please! 

 

[Woody V]

57 minutes ago, mc65 said:

count me in, please! 

 

You win, and I am humbled. 

Edited March 28, 2022 by Archer Fine Transfers

[Woody V]

I think I’m getting my mojo back. Yesssss!

 

I’ve always wanted to achieve a barely perceptible soft edge on adjacent colors and I found this idea here (or somewhere on Facebook) and it actually works, even with hands like mine who seem to have a mind of their own.

 

You need 3 things, 18mm wide Tamiya tape, a roll of servo tape (which is inexpensive and readily available), and a copier paper (just plain paper) mask.

 

STEP 1

Stick about a 2 inch length of Tamiya tape on your cutting board.

 

STEP 2

Stick the servo tape to the Tamiya tape. Servo tape is a thin layer of foam with a VERY aggressive adhesive, and the gap it creates between the mask and the surface to be painted is even all the way through. I’ve tried rolled up tape and low-tac worms and neither can hold a consistent gap. Push it down as firmly as you want and the foam springs right back.

 

STEP 3

Cut a thin strip, peel away the blue paper, and run it about 1/4 inch in from the edge of the mask. The adhesive on the servo tape is very aggressive and will not reposition easily, if at all. The Tamiya tape will wrinkle in the turns, when this happens just slice through the bumps to relieve the stress. Don’t pay too much attention to the fact that tape-to-edge distance in this picture is not even. This photo was taken before I came up with the 1/4 inch suggestion.

 

STEP 4

Stick the mask to the model and proceed with painting with a lowered air pressure holding it perpendicular to the edge. It’s probably my poor technique or something but I always get a slight “ghost” under the mask. I discovered that spraying a wet coat of Mr. Color Leveling thinner over everything eliminates the ghost. Again, excuse the obvious wrinkle and resulting gap. I fixed this later. No, actually I didn’t, I just held it down as I was painting.

 

 

LITTLE VICTORIES!

This shot shows the soft edge you get using the servo tape technique. You can also see the subtle structure affect you get with our control surface upgrades. Excuse the dust.

 

 

CUTTING MASKS

Then, with mojo restored, I got the paint on… another little victory!

 

 

I had tried painting insignias before so I had some idea of what I was getting myself in for so I pushed myself to try a two-color swastika. First I painted the black figuring if I couldn’t get the black mask back in place I’d just settle for a black one and call it done. However it turned out not to be as difficult as I feared and much to my amazement it turned out  kinda’ like perfect!

 

CUTTER SETTINGS

These are the settings I use on my Silhouette Cameo except for the speed which I’ve since bumped up to 6. I also use the OVERCUT feature which I’ve found guarantees the corners are sharp and release cleanly. This setting does exactly what the name implies, it cuts imperceptibly beyond the apex of a corner. I use Oramask and Circuit transfer tape which isn’t tape at all but a perfectly transparent film with a grid printed on the backing which is quite useful.

 

AND THE LITTLE VICTORIES KEEP COMING!

The star of this episode is the two-color swastika, something I never thought I could do.

 

 

I still have the rest of the insignias to paint before moving on to the rivet decals, but in the meantime here’s my man Chris Knight with this installment’s theme song. Enjoy!

 

 

 

Edited April 17, 2022 by Archer Fine Transfers

[LSP_Kevin]

Very nice work, Woody!

 

Kev

[Citadelgrad]

Woody that's AWESOME.  I too have a silhouette and wondered about whether a thin outline is possible.  I will be poring over this.

 

Nice tip on the camo, too, the 190 looks very menacing. Great paintwork.   That's not a little victory.  That's a major campaign. 

[Woody V]

14 hours ago, Citadelgrad said:

I too have a silhouette and wondered about whether a thin outline is possible.  I will be poring over this.

 

Cutting isn't the issue, actually using the mask is.

 

in the case of the swastika, it would be nearly impossible to get the thin outline mask back in place if I had painted the outline first. Plan your painting sequence with the knowledge that parts of your mask will have to be put back in place. 

[Thunnus]

Great stuff Woody!  I really like the results you get from the servo tape masking... have to look into that!

 

7 hours ago, Archer Fine Transfers said:

 

Cutting isn't the issue, actually using the mask is.

 

in the case of the swastika, it would be nearly impossible to get the thin outline mask back in place if I had painted the outline first. Plan your painting sequence with the knowledge that parts of your mask will have to be put back in place. 

 

There are always a couple of ways that you can use mask a multi-color insignia.  I haven't tried this but you may be able to achieve a very fine white border by spraying the white first, removing the mask and placing a slightly smaller mask on top of the white.  It would be tricky, depending on the shape but since Oramask is translucent, you could position the second mask so that a thin white border results.

[Woody V]

27 minutes ago, Thunnus said:

I really like the results you get from the servo tape masking... have to look into that!

 

There are always a couple of ways that you can use mask a multi-color insignia.  I haven't tried this but you may be able to achieve a very fine white border by spraying the white first, removing the mask and placing a slightly smaller mask on top of the white.  It would be tricky, depending on the shape but since Oramask is translucent, you could position the second mask so that a thin white border results.

 

I plan to do something similar (but reversed) with US stars-and-bars on my next build to keep the white from being visible around the perimeter. I think I can pull that off on big stuff but my crappy eyes and fingers probably won't cooperate on things even as "big" as that swastika. I've been lucky so far getting removed masking back exactly in place. 

 

The servo tape idea is genius, I would have never thought of it myself since I don't do RC. 

[Woody V]

Got the rest of the painting and touch up finished.

 

To do the insignias and get them properly aligned, first I printed the cutting artwork onto clear film with my laser printer. I  used a sharpie to mark the height placement in relation to the panel line.

 

Using the edge of the clear print, I took a pencil and drew a line on the fuselage where the edge of the mask should be. I also put one on the access panel but this is not necessary.

 

After the insignia was painted I used a pencil eraser to remove the pencil line. I had trouble getting the mask for the black exactly where it should go so the insignia isn’t perfect, but at actual viewing distance you can’t see it. I also took and extra fine sanding sponge and sanded off the build up seen here on the horizontal areas on the lower left and upper right of the insignia. Not perfect, but good enough.

 

Dodged a bullet here! During the touch up my airbrush was acting up and not getting an even feed of paint. In the process of coaxing it, it blurted out but just by dumb luck it all went on the mask. Came real close to disaster so I decided a deep cleaning of the airbrush was in order. Once that was done, I finished the touch up.

 

Decided to paint the wing walk lines in red and that took forever, but I’m happy with it. Here she is with all the painting finished. Next step is to lay down a wet coat of leveling thinner over everything to flow everything out nice and smooth. Then a gloss coat, sanding over the insignias to hide any high edges, then another coat of extra thinned out clear, then on to the decals. Perhaps my greatest accomplishment during all this painting  is that I didn’t break the antenna post off.

 

My main concern now is removing the canopy masks. Not very happy with leaving tape on this long, but we’ll see.

[MikeMaben]

[John1]

Nice work!

[D.B. Andrus]

On 5/1/2022 at 5:55 AM, Archer Fine Transfers said:

 

Perhaps my greatest accomplishment during all this painting  is that I didn’t break the antenna post off.

 

Don't worry there's still plenty of time to do that.