DocRob

Done so far, phew. I have to continue to paint the figures and to clean up my bench, which I guess will take longer than the build itself . Cheers Rob

Final steps ahead, luckily. The huge airframe and the delicate details make working on the big bat more and more difficult. The issues fixed to parts torn loose ratio turns worse . I assembled the elevators and the rudder and added steering cables for the rudder. the fittings were made from split brass rod to add some more detail. Finally, I reassembled the guns, the worst part of the build and installed them into the gun mounts onto the gun rings. There will be a lot of final touch ups and then the big bat is finished. Cheers Rob

Muchas gracias amigos and thanks for the being well wishes for my back. The pain is almost gone and tomorrow I may will be body surfing if the waves permit. The most frustrating part of the build were indeed the Parabellum MG´s. The one which fell out of the fuselage was a pain to reinstall and it took me a lot of time and cursing to get the magazines to glue in position. Sounds easy, but wasn´t, I don´t know why. If you´re not sure, how to align the guns, this calls for trouble. The gun rings sport a gun holding bow, movable of course, which holds the also movable gun posts . Today, I fixed all these issues, but as you say Mike, with a large delicate build like this, I felt more and more clumsy and thought twice about every movement. Luckily the airframe itself is sturdy due to great WNW engineering. I masked and airbrushed lamination on earlier builds and the pencil method proved much easier and more flexible. Cheers Rob

Nice choice Peter and glad to hear the decals seem to be of good quality. Mine are on the way too, but like always, it takes a while. Cheers Rob

Meanwhile, I finished the propellers, painting the hubs with gun metal, later pointing out the screws in silver and last adding black panel line wash for accentuation. When dried, I added the propeller brand logos and on they went. This was followed by two very frustrating hours, where all the guns fell apart, which were only temporarily fitted. The two in the gun rings while adjusting and worse ,the one in the fuselage fell out. After said two hours, I somehow managed to get the one in the fuselage back in place, using different tweezers and a torch, to reach into that now hard to access area. The other guns fixing is for tomorrow, but I used the chance and varnished their stock and grip with transparent orange. Cheers Rob

Muchas gracias Amigos, my back is starting to get better slowly and I can move almost normal again, not that geriatric type of slo-mo break dance anymore . Cheers Rob

Looking already good Peter, even without paint or primer. I guess, you use AM barrels, right? Cheers Rob

Thank you Peter, it was an experiment and I´m not sure, which I like better. When dry, I will finally evaluate and then apply decals and paint the bosses. I guess, I strained my back while working in the garden last week. Now it´s getting worse every day. It´s especially painful, as there are some surfable waves, first since some weeks. Cheers Rob

I´m closing in on the finish line. Due to some back spasms, bench time is somewhat limited lately, but I started painting the figures and props. These were primed and sprayed with Tamiya Buff then. I wanted to try a new technique for the laminated wood and graining with pencils. My AEG has two different propellers, a good opportunity to finish the props a little different. Number one was ´laminated´ with AK weathering pencils Dark Chipping for Wood and Dark Rust by hand following the logical ´flow´ of the lamination. Number two was ´laminated´ with Sand and Sepia for a bit more contrast The props were varnished differently, Number one got Tamiya Clear Orange applied by brush, which removed a lot of the laminating effect. Not all propellers of the time had a verry apparent lamination effect, so I let it be. Number two was varnished with the airbrush using Tamiya Clear Red, which lead the wood layers show through much more. Cheers Rob

Thank you Peter, the kit 14/17 are not bad, but as they are very prominent on the finished model, the Gaspatch MG´s are a good invest. I like brass barrels even more, they look even better than Gaspatch with paint, when chemically blackened. The difficulty is only to match colors with the MG´s body. Cheers Rob

A weird looking vehicle. looking good in color. This one is crying for heavy weathering. Cheers Rob

Well, now you need the car for the plate, Martin . I like the movie and others from that period. Had a certain timeless coolness. Cheers Rob

You can get them for about 150 Euro with free shipping, but it depends where you live. I found a vendor, who ships it for 30 Euros to my place. Others claimed they do, but then refused. Fingers crossed with the actual one, it´s not on it´s way now. Cheers Rob

Yesterday, I tried to earn some experiences, working with white metal. I took the exhaust parts, which will be finished in a chrome look from my Model Factory Hiro kit of the 1/9 scale Crocker and first got rid off the the parting lines with sanding sticks and drilled out the connecting holes.. The parts looked like this, then; Then I used a rotary tumbler to refine the surfaces and clean the parts. In the hexagonal plexiglass cylinder are steel balls of 1 mm diameter, some drops of detergent and water. After about half an hour the parts looked like this. The good, the parts are clean, shiny and evenly refined The treatment ´hardens´ the surface a bit. The bad, you can see spots, where the balls couldn´t reach the surface in crevices or narrow angles and around details. Very fine details like heads of screws got rounded a bit. I guess that´s the reason, many cast metal builder use magnetic polishing tumblers, where tiny steel pins rotate in the water bath cleaning the parts. I hope, I can lay my hand on one of these soon. Finally, I wanted to try some polish on the parts, using the famous (at least in Germany) Autosol polish on the exhausts. I didn´t want to go all the way to a mirror sheen finish, as this will need some better preparation, I just wanted to get a feeling. Verdict, it seems possible to polish white metal parts to look like chrome. The rotating tumbler should only be used with not too detailed parts. My guess is, a magnetic tumbler polisher is best to prepare the white metal parts for painting or polishing. Cheers Rob

You captured the unique shape of the Heinkel beautifully, Scott. The paintjob is crisp and the troubles with the kit are nowhere to spot. Cheers Rob

Thank you Martin, these WNW bombers are an invitation for detailing and they are not bad oob, but like everything can be optimized. Cheers Rob

Thank you Mike, you can go overboard with rigging, using turnbuckles everywhere, which multiples the fiddly joining points, but I like it as described, using the small tubes as turnbuckles. I feel confident enough about rigging German planes, but still have to tackle a British one. Flat rigging and completely different anchoring methods give me the creeps and are waiting to be demystified in a not too far future, maybe with a Sopwith Camel build. Cheers Rob

The AEG got it´s teeth - hmmh, well - besides the painted on jaws I mean. The LMG 17/17 Parabellum are from Gaspatch, airbrushed satin black and then I rubbed on steel pigments with a cotton swab. Stock and grip are painted with oil colors and after seeing the pictures, I decided to put on some varnish for a more realistic look. The kit guns are not bad and I used one inside the fuselage, but detail of the Gaspatch ones is absolutely fantastic. Positioning of the guns is not final. I also made some touch ups and detail painting and added the artificial horizon. Gun mounts and other details got sprayed aluminum, then covered with hairspray with the dark sea blue on top and finally weathered with a toothpick. Cheers Rob

@Peterpools: This is for you, Peter, the rudder with the light tinted varnish on top. Cheers Rob

Thank you Peter, like I said before, rigging the wings was relatively easy and trouble free. Good preparation and a logical sequence is the key. The rudder seems to be a victim of light metering. The whole bat is dark as is the background and I had to tick the exposure up a bit. The rudder was sprayed white, than I applied 1mm wide Kabuki tape onto the spars and used a green tinted varnish over the whole plane, including the rudder, leaving the ´spars´ lighter than the rest. Cheers Rob

This is absolutely fantastic, Gus. The camo looks great, but what about the tail? Cheers Rob

I saw that info at their web site too, Peter. I will order my set soon and leave no chance for the scalpers. Cheers Rob

I haven´t used many of the special car paints, but have bought from Zero Paints, StreetBlister, Gravity and Number Five, like in this case. I hope they work fine. My car model supplier claims, Number Five is very good and normally they are available. Zero Paints, which are very good are on demand, which means some weeks of waiting along with the other ordered goods. Cheers Rob

Your cockpit looks nice and you blended the Quinta bits in very well, Peter. I plan to do a Razorback soon as well and already have the kit, but still have to purchase decals. This is what I am planning: Cheers Rob

Today, I received a packet full of car goodies. Carbon decals for the innards of my Tamiya Sauber Mercedes C9 from Studio 27 along with full body carbon decals for the same car from Scale Motorsport. I can´t get cured from the ´decal it completely´ plague. There is an antenna for my paused McLaren MP4/6 and colors from Number Five for different projects. Pink primer and GTO red for my MFH Ferrari, three jars of Cobra Blue for my MFH LM Cobra, WRC Dark Blue for my Crocker motorcycle and finally Spiderman red and blue metallic for my Yamaha superbike, also completely decaled with spider web. The cute Fiat 500 will serve for a conversion... ... for this tiny hill climber, which will be soon released by KMP Cheers Rob