DocRob

Nice pit John, these Quinta sets are amazing. You already decided to not use the HGW transfers, but here are my . The process is well documented with Garys description, except, I would press them on properly with a piece of damp kitchen paper after removing the carrier film. Like Gary mentioned, they are hit and miss, I used them on several occasions and never all of them went on properly. Sometimes, there are lifts by the carrier film, even when the surface is prepared properly. For stencils, it mostly works, but I have my doubts with larger ones like the stars and bars. If you like a worn finish, you have immediate chipping with these , but for a newish looking plane . Cheers Rob

Nice haul Carl, have you used the Mr. Color GX 100 clear coat before? I tried it four times and it worked only once satisfactory. The other times it frosted like cotton candy and gooed in the airbrush. I thinned it with Mr. Leveling thinner on all occasions. I went to the Tamiya LP clear last time out of sheer desperation. Cheers Rob

Merry Christmas to all my friends and fellows here on LSM. Stay warm and safe and enjoy some good food and beverages with friends and family. Cheers Rob

Nice printing job, you could also try metal waxes from AK, sometimes they look even better than sprayed on color. Cheers Rob

We are a bit luckier, if you don't insist on a white Christmas, it's about 20 degrees Celsius and sunny and no wind at all since a week. Even the ocean is calm, but there will be rain on sunday. Keep yourself warm with a hot toddy and with your wives and family. Cheers Rob

Some of the color borders look masked Peter, how could you spray them that well? Maybe I haven't understood your process. the sharp lined borders look final, on others, I still see some primer, right? Anyway, the P-40 will look great with the iconic paintjob. Cheers Rob

Again great work Mike. Like Hubert, I like the clear linen over silver color effect a lot. I will keep that in mind, for when time comes. Cheers Rob

Thank you Harv and Peter, I think the worst was peeling off the gooed blue tack for more than two hours with some tiny residues still sitting in the crevices. Never again, I will mix blue tack with lacquers, other than superficial and only for short term coverings. I had some water related house issues too, the last days, but got them solved with the help of a stethoscope and a metal searching device and plumber stuff. Christmas time without having water in our second house wouldn't have been an option, so I had some 1/1 scale re-modeling . I wish you luck with your painting stage looming. This masking-lacquer issue is still nagging, but luckily was resolvable. Cheers Rob

Not a real fan Carl, I like the graphics, his style of painting, the stories, hmm, not so much, but I do own some of his books. Cheers Rob

You are as resourceful as Martin, with a slight bias tough, Gary . Cheers Rob

After a lot of swearing, cleaning up the gooey mess into which the blue tack turned, which I used for masking the cooling fairings, I finally finished with these issues and did something more productive. I added the landing gear, a trouble free affair and the landing gear doors, which still need a bit of weathering to fit in. Then I cleaned the clear parts and refitted them, luckily without any issues. ...and now it starts to look like a Corsair, but still a lot of things to do. Cheers Rob

It is Peter, but with the good results I had using lacquer paints, I'm not willing to give up easily. I will test a bit around with Pledge coatings and maybe, I will have some more ideas. Cheers Rob

After one and a half month in the mail and through customs, I finally received my first full resin plane kit, a racer. The kit is a beauty, the resin cast looks extremely well made. You get brass cast wheel struts and the wheel fairings are made of PE, which has to be bend with supplied resin templates. This is one of my favorite race planes and I was really amazed to see, that S.B.S. model produces it in 1/72 and 1/48. As it took so long to get here, it's my modeling Christmas present. In the same parcel were some masks for my Tamiya P-51D, which I want to try for my planned NMF build. Surface panel masks and masks for the wheel wells. Cheers Rob

Thank you amigos, I still have to re glue the clear parts in place, without destroying the paintjob. To pry off the clear parts for cleaning and polishing was very difficult, as I like my glued parts to stay in place, normally. The main canopy was airbrushed off the plane and it was affected a lot, Phil. Cheers Rob

Hey Gary, I have a Jeep too. Cheers Rob

Nice little birdy, Kevin, I always wanted to do an orange Japanese plane. What's the orange color you used? Cheers Rob

I do, I don't have a large scale Spitfire in my stash, only two MK. 16 in 48 scale with some PE and resin. I never built a Spitfire so I'm considering. Cheers Rob

Again, a beauty John. The sleek lines of your Mustang can only be surpassed with closing the canopy. The near monochrome paintjob enhances the racehorse looks. You inspired me to build a racer too, but it sticks in the not so fast mail / customs since over a month. Cheers Rob

That's what modeling nerds associate with 69 . Cheers Rob

Nice one, I built that MIG some years ago, it's one of the best kits, I ever build. I only found the bang seats too big. Cheers Rob

Sorry amigos, I've overseen the pencil thing, too much things to do in the moment. I use the AK pencils since some time and I do like them. Like Gary said not a lot sticks to the surface, when you use them dry, but you can highlight panel borders with them. On the Corsair, I used them dry for the dotting and there are differences between the pencils, some leave bigger marks than others, means are softer. I then blend them either with a flat brush or my fingertips and if that's not enough, a dampened cotton swab. With other builds, I used them with a dampened tip and that's where they really shine. You can dab them on and blend them with moist brushes or swabs. They work almost like a multi-colored wash then and this is what i really like. You can work with a palette of colors, which keeps it interesting to the eye. One example is the inside of this Skoda RSO drivers door, where I used the dampened pencils and blended them, simulating light and shadow Or again the interior of the Ammo Knight, where I used them dry and dampened. Of course a matte surface helps, on a high gloss polished surface nothing sticks. Cheers Rob

Thanks Harv, let's see how it looks in the end, I don't like unpleasant surprises that late in a build. Thank you Gary, I often use metal pigment onto painted parts. It may not sound right, but it somehow looks so, giving these parts a metallic appearance. mostly I finger rub a tiny bit of Uschi van der Rosten steel pigment carefully onto the surface. With the delicate undercarriage, I use a flat brush. I refined the technique with this build and relly liked the results. Tamiya extra thin has it's ways to creep everywhere if you are not careful. In my case there is no capilar effect. The residues are sometimes in the middle of the panes and in the case of the armored glass, where masked off completely with the windshield. What little bleeding there was on the borders of the masks was color and it was easy taken care off with a toothpick. I think it's lacquer / thinner fumes, because for example the lower fuselage window was masked from the outside and the residues were on the inside and that with the cockpit opening masked but of course not air tight. The Flory wash couldn't be the culprit, as I didn't smear it onto the windshield. Thank you Peter, I remember the discussion we had. I think it was on my KI-61 Hien build, where I first used lacquers for airbrushing. I took very great care with my masking, but somehow the thinner seemed to have gone through. Painting the cockpit glass of the model might help, if you remove the masks quickly. The downside is, it will always look different, if you don't go through all the weathering stages with the canopy. Next time when I have an extra canopy, I will try, if a bath of Pledge will alter the situation. I haven't done it with the Corsair, because the clear parts were absolutely crystal clear and I saw no need. I never had these issues using acrylics. Cheers Rob

An hour ago, I almost binned the Corsair. I hate fails and I hate re-dos and after removing a lot of masking material, I almost reached that point, but told myself to lean back and take a deep breath. What happened, I don't know exactly. I had residues on all the transparent parts, which were masked with the most possible care. No bleedings, but possibly grey misted residues from the lacquer colors and their thinners, which went through the masking material. I also masked the radiator openings around the cowlings with blue tack, that went goo and is very hard to remove. It took about an hour to get rid of half of it. The good thing, I wear a respirator mask. I don't want to know, what these stuff would have made with my brain without it. I tried to clean the canopy with a cotton swab and wooden toothpicks and it worked luckily. The greater problem were the other transparent parts, like windscreen, lower fuselage window, and armor glass with gunsight, which were glued in place. I carefully removed them and cleaned them. Before all these troubles, I matte coated the plane with Tamiya's flat clear lacquer, but it was still too shiny for my taste, maybe semi matte, but not flat. Out with the Pledge after drying, added 30% of Tamiya X Flat clear (never more) and sprayed again. Now the Corsair looks like this. To relax a bit, I continued with the undercarriage, which received some washes, followed by iron pigments rubbed on, to get a painted metal feel and finally, I had to re do the pistons, which were chrome taped. The tape is not made to adhere to small diameter parts, as it loosened itself and I had to remove it. Instead, I used my trusty Uschi chrome pigments to let them shine a bit. The tyres were airbrushed in two different near blacks, one for the flanks and one for the running surface and than pronounced with pigments., which is my usual practice. The wheels are from Eduard and much better than these rubber thingies supplied with the kit. Cheers Rob

Great work Mark, love the soldered frame. Absolutely not my cup of tea, but interesting nontheless. Cheers Rob

Nice Martin, love it. Cheers Rob