SPA Modeler

That’s looking very nice, John.

Thanks guys! This will no longer be a black-base build. I've done and sprayed the whole thing silver. Decanted Tamiya AS-12, thinned with Tamiya Lacquer thinner and some Mr Leveling thinner to help even out the coat.










The plan now is to establish the putty lines and then apply hairspray over the wing roots to facilitate chipping afterwards. Not sure if I'll add some mottling to give the camo some tonal variation... maybe some color other than black.

This is just off the charts in all ways, John! What incredible seam filling, rivet tooling, assembly and finishing excellence! I love the frontal shots, and the subtle shifting of tones around the curvilinear forms! Way to go! Also, don’t throw me in a lava pit, but—



And I know you will take this finish and layer on the layers and layers of filler, camo, unit markings, in order to make this complete, but right now, WOW!

John,

still about those wheels...

I (or I believe we all) would really appreciate if you could just briefly tell us, how you did the paint work ? I am still stunned of them, they look really really good!
(and agree with Carlos, those break lines are also so real)

- Kari

Seeing the basic 262 design in just pure bare metal with no markings whatsoever does give a 30’s/40’s sci fi look. Straight from a Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon matinee serial.

KSaarni wrote:John,

still about those wheels...

I (or I believe we all) would really appreciate if you could just briefly tell us, how you did the paint work ? I am still stunned of them, they look really really good!
(and agree with Carlos, those break lines are also so real)

- Kari

Plus 10 on this one They are magnificent. Mine look like I did them with a wall paper paste brush.

Thanks guys! I guess I'm still not over the jet lag. I woke up at 1:00 a.m. and had a hard time getting back to sleep. My head was buzzing... how proceed with the 262 now that it is metallic silver instead of black?? I think this was the right choice. I just couldn't get the three components (the hairspray chipping, the underlying putty/paint and tonal variation) to mesh with black-basing. In my head, anyway. The silver establishes a base that replicates the 262 prior to painting. Grey paint will be applied to mimic the putty/primer using the well known W.Nr111711 as a guide.




Hair spray will be applied to the wing root and other areas where I want the putty/primer to show through. The only thing that is unaccounted for is the tonal variation. But I have some thoughts on that and possible new techniques that I may try to achieve this.

The wheels aren't quite done but I can describe what I did so far. I was just trying different things at the time and didn't document the process step by step as I didn't know where I was going.

The first step was using a circle cutter to cut masks for the wheels. Late war Luftwaffe wheels are all dark grey/black so I wanted to try and establish some contrast if I could. So the plan was to have the tires to be a dark grey/brown to replicate rubber. The outer portion of the wheel discs were to be straight black and the inner portion of the wheel discs were to be very dark grey. The masks would allow me to spray three distinct shades onto the wheels.

The wheel discs were sprayed first, dark grey inners and then the black outer rim. The whole wheel discs were then covered with a circular disc mask. The tires were then spray with a dark/grey brown which was an eyeball mixture of Tamiya paints (German Grey, Red Brown and Black). The mixture was lightened with a Tan color, which was sprayed onto the tread portion of the wheels in progressively lighter tones.

Instead of using a light pastel wash in the tread pattern to contrast with a dark tire as I've seen on many models, I wanted to have the tread pattern darker than the tread surface. I think this makes more sense for most situations. So the lightening of the rubber color on the tread portion of the wheels sets me up for a dark wash in the tread pattern. I mixed my own batch of black wash for this. The tread surface wasn't light enough so I used a light buff-colored dry pastel to further lighten the tread surfaces.

The contrast between tires, outer wheels and inner wheels didn't quite work out. Not enough contrast between the colors. Oh well. I am planning to add some radial streaking on the sidewalls of the tires using either pastels or oils. And maybe a bit of wash on the wheel portion to pop some details out.

jkim wrote:Thanks guys! This will no longer be a black-base build. I've done and sprayed the whole thing silver. Decanted Tamiya AS-12, thinned with Tamiya Lacquer thinner and some Mr Leveling thinner to help even out the coat.


(...)
The plan now is to establish the putty lines and then apply hairspray over the wing roots to facilitate chipping afterwards. Not sure if I'll add some mottling to give the camo some tonal variation... maybe some color other than black.

That’s beautiful.

And like you, I’ve been considering the idea of a metal base and not black. I have a Zero on the way in the mail, a 1:48 which I wish to tackle after my current 1:48 Emil and Corsair are complete, before tackling my 1:32 Zoukei-Mura Raiden.

Of particular interest to me is how you decanted the rattlecan stuff and thinned it yourself for use on this model. I really, really enjoyed looking at this photos. The silver looks very nice. You made the correct call, and pulled it off. Very good.

That's a great recommendation, Bruce! I'll have to check out the Holbein's Oil. But probably on another project. I'm not yet comfortable working with oils. And since the putty lines will serve as a base for hair spray chipping and also some scuffing using Micromesh, I hesitate on using a paint that I'm not familiar with. Most likely, I will use an acrylic (Tamiya or Mr Hobby) for this. But your recommendation to hand brush these lines is being seriously considered.