SPA Modeler

This week I decided to get back to some projects I'd been bypassing. I need to get some of these finished up so I can move onto other models I want to get started on.

I'll start with my aircraft.

I'm building two 1/72 scale WWI aircraft for a Canvas Eagles tabletop wargame. The first one; the Fokker E.III needed some white on the tail and fuselage. So, I masked it off and sprayed the white:



This turned out considerably better than my expectations, although I almost ripped the tail surfaces off trying to remove the tape!





I later shot a clearcoat over this to prepare for the decals.

Next, I added the top wing to the Neiuport 11. This was a bit easier than I expected, certainly easier than the Avia B-534:





Finally, I shot a nice light blue color on the bottom of my Madge:



It's not really easy to see in that pic, but I assure you it is there!

After this was dry, I masked the underside of the wings and tail surfaces and then shot the flat black on the de-icing boots. When the flat black was dry, I finished masking the underside of the wings, tail, and fuselage, including the de-icing boots. Then I shot the dark green color over the top of the plane.

Here's Madge sporting her nice new dark green dress:







She was later shot with a few coats of gloss to prepare for decals.



Moving on to my shipyards, I finished masking off the decks for the USS Ingraham, using liquid masking agent since there were so many bits and bobs to mask over:



I also masked off the USS Forrest Sherman using tape this time since it was all straight edges and angles. I only used a little liquid mask on this one:





I then shot grey over both of these and the USS New York which had been masked before:





The USS New York didn't turn out as well as I'd have liked; there were too many imperfections and rough spots that will require a re-spray. I did remove the masking from the USS Ingraham and USS Forrest Sherman though, and they look pretty good. There will be a minimum of touch-up needed here.

USS Ingraham:



USS Forrest Sherman:



Now I can finally move forward on these ships.


Now to my armor.

I did some more detail painting on my Russian Fire Truck, painting the wooden seats and the chassis and touching up the rims of the wheels; as well as the overspray on the tires themselves:



Next I went back to work on my Gigant and V-2 trailer.

The Gigant was finally painted inside and then the windows added to the cab sides and windscreen. Then I assembled everything together:





After this, I masked off the windows in preparation for painting. Speaking of painting, I shot a coat of grey over the lower part of the Mitrailleurwagen:





It was challenging, but I managed to get paint into all the little nooks and crannies without glopping up a whole mess of paint all over. This looks pretty darn good! Now all I have to do is finish some detail parts on the upper part of the trailer before I can paint it.


Well, that's about all for now. Hopefully I'll be further along on some of these; maybe even done with a couple! So, stay tuned for more, comments are always welcome. Thanks for looking in!

Okay, as promised, I have a new update...and it's a long one. My apologies.

I'll start out with my armor this time. I finished up the German A7V so you won't see any pics here; they'll be in the finished armor Forums. Other than that, I got some paint on the Gigant:



That's all I got done on my armor this week.



Moving on to my aircraft, I finally got all the parts onto the Neiuport 11, including the rockets. I then pulled out some red paint to get the rockets painted red. That's when this happened:



Yep, the bottle busted because the top was dried shut too hard. Don't worry, all that red on my hand is paint; I didn't cut myself. I did however, spend the next few days pulling a few tiny glass shards out of my hand!

Once I got all that cleaned up, I finished the Neiuport. You'll see pics of her in the Aircraft Forums.

Next, I pulled out the Eindecker and finished putting the decals on it:





Later on I rigged this bird (not very well!) and I'm calling it done. Finished pics will be with the Neiuport in the Aircraft Forums.

After all that, I decided to do an easy, simple build and started on the Italeri Me-110 someone gave me. I started out with the usual, building and painting the cockpit:



While I was painting, I added the detail inside the wheel wells:



You can see I also added the nacelles to the wings. Which brings me to the next frustrations. Simple, easy build? Riiiighgt! It was until I had to deal with the nacelles:



Here's one thing I did to deal with this gap. I stuck a strip of styrene inside and hit it with Tamiya Extra Thin:



Later I snipped that off and sanded it smooth. The rest of the gaps I was able to fill with Mr. Surfacer 500.

Moving on, I closed up the fuselage with the cockpit inside:



It looks pretty good in there:



After all that, I spent a lot of time doing some more sanding and buffing and filling and sanding and buffing on my C-118. In this pic, you see the result of more than a month of repeated sanding, filling and buffing; and I'm still not done yet:



Since I was going to be shooting a bare metal finish on the C-118, I decided to also pull out another model I'd gotten in a Distressed Kit Auction that also needs a bare metal finish. This is a 1/72 scale B-377 that has been assembled to this point and mostly buffed smooth. All I did here was to add the engine nacelles to it in preparation for paint:



You can see that this is one big beastie! This is why I'm also working on it; I need the space on my workbench!

Speaking of big beasties, I got the decals on Madge, so Madge has Bling now:





Later on, I painted the engine cowling faces and the propellers, along with the beaching gear. I also fixed the nose cannon with a piece of styrene rod. Now I just need to finish up a few details and touch-ups here and there and she'll be done. Here's the last Work in Progress pics for Madge before she's done:






Finally, all I have left to show are the progress on my ships. My shipyards have been humming along these past few weeks, all of it was masking and painting the decks, hulls and superstructures. Here's a few of these ships after the masking has been removed.

USS Ingraham:



USS Arthur Radford:



USS Forrest Sherman:



You can see she needed a bit more work done on the hull, so I did some more masking, then sanded the hull sides smooth and re-shot the grey:



Finally, the USS New York can be shown too, after the masking was removed and some touch-ups done:





Since I had completed all that painting on these ships, I figured it was time to get my Russian aircraft carrier caught up. She needed a lot of masking and painting. So I started out by shooting the brown color on most of the decks of the main hull and island:



Then came the first masking on the Island and the main hull:





Then came the second color:



Third mask came next:



Followed by the third color for the main flight deck:



Finally, I masked off the flight deck section I'd painted last and then shot the grey all over the hull and superstructure. Here's the main hull all masked off:



Finally, after all the painting was done, I pulled off all five miles of tape. I was quite pleased with the results! First, here's the hull and decking:



And finally a shot of the hull and island dry-fit together:



Whew! That's all I have for now. Hopefully soon I'll be able to finish a number of these so I can get to some other models that are calling my name. Tomorrow or Tuesday I'll try to post the pics of my completed models; right now it's quite late and I need to get some sleep. So, thanks for looking in, comments are welcome.

The Madge looks pretty awesome. You've been pretty busy these days.

Thanks Blacksheep! The next pics I post of her will be in the completed aircraft section.

Man you're a machine!! And awesome builds as well.

Thanks Medic! Now to actually finish something....

Great "reports" again of your builds!

Luckily no accidents with the paint-jar "exploding".

Many biggies on your bench, but Madge is looking absolutely astonishing, really a grand lady ! Like the green camo, especially for a seaplane.. one does not automatically associate green on seaplanes..

Annoying the poor quality of the Italeri 110 kit, but you fixed it well.

Looking forward to see the detailing of the aircraft carrier... for example with airplanes ! :-)

- Kari

Thanks Kari! I hope to have Madge done this week. As for the carrier, it'll be quite a while until she's roosting her birds.

Thanks again for the compliments. Stay tuned, more to come.

Well, it's considerably later than I wanted to post, but I finally have some time to post here. First off, I didn't get much done on Hobby Day. I did finish up one model; the Panzer II in 1/35th scale for someone, and I completed the basing of two regiments of Union Infantry and one of Cavalry. You can see the Panzer II in the Completed Armor Forums...

On Tuesday, I finally finished moving an end table into my Hobby Room. This was an end table I got from someone that I was helping to move. He was going to toss it so I decided to take it home. Now it is my new Spray Booth:




I like the fact this has a drawer too. Now I can put away some of my tools:




Now on to the models I was working on.

In aircraft, I focused on my Madge to finally get it done. I was so close so it was time to buckle down and get it finished. Now she's done and can be seen in the Completed Aircraft Forums.

Then I moved on to the Me-110 I'm doing for the Twin Props Group Build on these Forums. I took time to sand and smooth out the nacelles until I was satisfied enough. Then I cemented on the tail and wings to the fuselage:





Now I have a few more gaps to fill and sand now. I'll get it done as far as I can until I can replace the lost nose cone.



Moving on, I went back to the shipyards....

This next one is a kit I found in my stash. It's a Frog kit of the HMS Undine that was a bagged kit. The hull pieces had torn the baggie, leaving all kinds of holes so I figured I'd better build this before all the pieces got lost. I was almost succeeded, the two main guns disappeared. Still, I was able to complete 99% of it:




This next one is an interesting diversion. My wife found this ship set next to the dumpster in our complex and told me about it. I found it and looked it over. The masts had all snapped and the bowsprit had broken, as well as a couple yards. The rigging was all mostly intact. My wife wanted me to fix it so I took it in and started work on it.

Here it is after I started to fix a couple of the masts:



I then tried to fix the bowsprit here. I'm using the lamps to hold the pieces in place against the rigging so they stand straight. The bowsprit didn't take, so I have to try again:




Finally, I felt the USS New York had sat for long enough. I finally got all the little bits and bobs on it:





Now all I have to do is paint these little details and then clearcoat this for decals. I am hoping I can finish this and maybe one or two more ships this coming week.


It's a small update, but with life getting in the way, I actually got a lot more done than I expected. Thanks all for looking in, comments are welcome.

I have a good amount of progress to post today. I was able to get more done this past week than I thought. I also decided to sit and get a final count of all the models I've completed to date. More on that later....



First I want to show the progress I made in the shipyards. The last time I posted, I showed all the detail parts applied to the USS New York, making her ready for decals. This week, I was able to get the rest of the US ships closer to the decal stage. This first one is the USS Ingraham, all finished with assembly:



Next up you'll see the photo etch I added to the USS Forrest Sherman, That was a bit of a challenge! I cemented everything in place with Gator's Grip Glue. I still have a number of detail bits to add to this:



Finally, here's some progress I finally made on the USS Arthur Radford. I cemented in the AEMSS mast and assembled all the stacks and other boxes on the top of the superstructure. I then added some of the fiddly bits that the superstructure is supposed to have:



I then completed the two masts that this ship would normally use. Because of the AEMSS mast, I will only be using the one on the right:



Here's a shot of the whole destroyer all dry-fit together after I added some of the deck fixtures to the ship's hull:



And just for fun, this is a shot of my Task Force New York, showing all the US Navy ships I have in progress now:






Now that's all the progress from my shipyards. Let's check out the armor factory now....


Remember this?



Well, I finally found this bugger after almost a year of not working on it so it was time to get this done. I started out adding the windshield and then painted the interior:



After that, I painted the chassis:



Here is a shot of the whole thing dry-fit together. I should be able to airbrush this pretty soon:





Moving on, I also added the windshield and windows to the Russian Fire Truck. I had to cut out pieces of clear acetate to place them in there:



While that was drying, I painted up the dashboard that you won't see when this is installed in the cab:



Finally, here is the fire truck after I dry-fit the cab and added the headlights and a few other bits to it. This one is nearly finished:



This will be number 683 when it is done.


Moving on, I also got going on a couple models that I've been neglecting for too long. It's time to move these along.

The first one is the Mitraellieurwagen. I had 30 of these tiny little handholds to glue to one side of the lifting cradle:



Here they are all installed on the side of this thing:



Later I added the rest of the final parts to this so I can get the painting completed. Here it is all ready for paint:





Just for fun, I pulled down my completed V-2 Rocket to see how it looks on this trailer:



That's pretty cool, if I do say so myself!

With that part done, I assembled all the final parts on the SS-100 Gigant; all except for the wheels. I now need to finish spraying paint on this now too:



Here's my last shot; a pic of the two together sans rocket, just for fun:




After all this, I later found another truck I'd started but apparently never posted pics of it before. At least if I did, I cannot find any on my PC that I may have uploaded. This is a modern Japanese GSDF fuel truck. I had already completed the chassis before, as well as the main tank. This time, I completed the cab, all except for the clear parts. I plan on adding them after everything is painted:



Next I completed the rest of the tank and support structure on the back of the truck:



Here's a shot of the whole truck dry-fit together and ready for paint:



With all these trucks in progress; it was time to pull out and start a tank. I decided to go beefy with the 1/72 scale Modelcollect Russian T-64BV tank. I started with the turret as per the instructions, getting most of it done. I still have the sides of the turret to do:



After that it was a simple matter to assemble the lower and upper hull. What wasn't simple was adding the suspension and wheels to this model. For the life of me, I could not get them properly lined up! I can only hope they look good enough later on:



Later I wanted to put on the fenders, but they can't go on yet. I'll have to paint the whole thing first and then add the tracks to this before I can install the fenders:



Here is a shot of the whole tank almost ready for paint. A few more detail parts and I'll be able to start flinging some color on this:



That's all I have for now. Hopefully next week I can get a few of these completed. I apologize for the long update, I hope I didn't bore any of you too much. Thanks for looking in, comments are welcome!