My poor Spitfire has been put away for almost 2 years and now I brought it back to daylight... To be my praciticing object in:
FOILING !
Yes, seems using aluminium foil in builds is having a sort of a "come back" among model builders... or then I simply just pay attention to this technique. So much, that I ordered some Bare Metal foil and a bottle of Microscales Metal Foil adhesive.
First try-out tests were done on my paintmule, Hobby Crafts 1/48 Do-17Z. Instead of using the pretty expensive Bare-Metal Foil, I used the cheapest possible = thinnest possible kitchen alu foil I could find in my supermarket. Which still is thicker than the Bare-Metal, but as practicing material excellent.
Did a number of tryouts, with smaller pieces and then a big piece in one go and then gently but firmly with a piece of cloth and cotton swabs rub it into place, panel lines were fixed with a tooth stick.
I spend a couple of evenings adding different foil pieces on the Do-17Z
Until I sort of realised that the Do-17Z is really a bad test object, as it does not really have any surface details at all. The aluminium foil looks almost boring.
So I had to find another test object... And that would be, my almost forgotten Revell Mk. IX Spitfire in 1/32 .
Practicing with the Dornier paid off, as I had figured out at least some basic ways of attaching the foil. This resulted that pretty quickly I added foil on the wing. And despite that the foil was pretty thick, I still managed to get some details "shining" true (rivets etc)
To take good pictures of shiny aluminum foil is not easy at all, but in the picture below you should see how the details "shine" through. And as said, here I have been using everyday, normal kitchen foil. Can just imagine the quality when using the real stuff, the very thin Bare-Metal foil in the "real build".
So this is the work so far, will still make some tests before wrapping up the Spitfire back into the box for future testing, with perhaps something else!
Now of course you might ask, what is the goal with this practicing, which project will be the "sharp" one.
Not 100% sure, but I have an idea, need to chew on it a little bit, but here is a clue.. A picture I took of a tombstone while visiting the Faubourg d'Amiens Cemetery in Northen France last September.
Let's see what next!
- Kari