Make war! Not Mozzarella! Completed 9/Jan/18

[GazzaS]

Hi everyone,

    My first and most likely last attempt at smoke ring camo.

I used acrylic paints and had to fight dry tip the whole way.

 

And no matter what I tried I couldn't find the sweet spot, so there is very little uniformity in the rings.

 

At least the fuselage band came out alright.  I masked that. 

Hopefully, weathering, effects, and markings will make the smoke rings look a little better.

 

Cheers!

 

Gaz

 

[DocRob]

Holy smoke, thankfully no Italian birds in my collection. I will sit on my terrace now and do some real smoke rings with a little cigar  and some wine, thinking about my next mottling job or the NMF of my P-47.

Cin cin Rob

[Bomber_County]

Gaz that looks quite tricky to do.........congrats 

[Clunkmeister]

You're a braver man than I am.   Looks good, though

[GazzaS]

2 hours ago, Bomber_County said:

Gaz that looks quite tricky to do.........congrats 

Thank you Phil!  I was surprised it came out as well as it did.

 

2 minutes ago, Clunkmeister said:

You're a braver man than I am.   Looks good, though

Thank you, Ernie.  Surely an airbrush master like yourself could do it.  I think it would have gone nicer with enamel...  But since I weather with oils, everything below has to be acrylic.

 

Gaz

[Clunkmeister]

Gaz, is that 48 scale?  Never miond painting it, I probably couldn't even SEE it.

 

[harv]

Looks good !!. I know there is smoke ring decals. Keep it coming .....harv

[Ivan Ivanovich]

Applying smoke ring camo IS challenging. And sometimes, it can be a real PITA.
Even with a perfectly balanced setup this type of camouflage requires lots of patience.

The spray pattern clearly reveals you were consistently struggling with paint drying too quickly. It also reveals an overall imbalance between pressure and paint consistency.

What's your setup? 

• Airbrush - single/double action? Any provision to control/regulate the paint flow? 
• Airbrush handling?
  How close? Did you use your other hand as a support? (better control while spraying) Did you try to remove the needle cap?
• Paint brand?
• Thinner brand?/Thinning ratio?
• Retarder?
• Pressure?
   

This is how I solved the problem on one of my 48th scale Veltros - different camo.    
I eventually binned the whole model in the heat of passion after I found out (after a few clear coats, washing and weathering) I had flipped the stbd wing insignia horizontally. I still have got two 32nd scale PCM Veltros in my stash and I'm planning to adorn both of them with smoke rings...

[Wumm]

3 hours ago, harv said:

Looks good !!. I know there is smoke ring decals. Keep it coming .....harv

Mike Grant did some about a decade ago, they seem to be universally unavailable by now though. 

A shame to bin that one Ivan.

My smoke ring technique is to hand brush a 50% custom mix of Tamiya acrylic and watercolour pencil, and feather the edges with very fine grit wet & dry sandpaper or an eyeshadow applicator... not for everyone though!

[GazzaS]

Hi everyone,

     Thank you for the great replies!  I'll a  nswer some questions further down...  After the update.

 

When I bought the kit it was marked "missing one small decal"  So, I paid $8 for it.  Unbeknownst to me, the "small decal" was one of the upper wing Fasces. 

 

So, using White 17 of JG 77  as inspiration, I dug into my decals stash.  I decided my safest bet for fictitious-though-plausible would be to make a plane for the Gruppen Kommandeur Siegfried Freytag.  My reasoning was that the CO's plane would have some better markings than the rest of them...  Here is my result:

 

The first thing I did this morning, was to give the plane an overall wet sanding with 12000 grit micromesh.  This gave me a smooth surface for the decals as well as evening out some of the paintwork.  Then I began applying some 20 year old Tamiya Fw190 decals.  The fuselage kreuze were each made of two decals to mimic the painted markings on White 17.

 

I made the Herz As insiginia with my Silhouette Cameo cutter.  They came out pretty so-so, mainly due to me.  Interestingly, it would not make the hearts correctly.  Instead of two nice lobes at the top of the heart, the heart formed in the program as a rounded triangle.  So, I had to finish it with a little hand painting.

 

7 hours ago, Ivan Ivanovich said:

Applying smoke ring camo IS challenging. And sometimes, it can be a real PITA.
Even with a perfectly balanced setup this type of camouflage requires lots of patience.

The spray pattern clearly reveals you were consistently struggling with paint drying too quickly. It also reveals an overall imbalance between pressure and paint consistency.

What's your setup? 

• Airbrush - single/double action? Any provision to control/regulate the paint flow? 
• Airbrush handling?
  How close? Did you use your other hand as a support? (better control while spraying) Did you try to remove the needle cap?
• Paint brand?
• Thinner brand?/Thinning ratio?
• Retarder?
• Pressure?
   

 

 

I'm pretty sure my setup isn't perfectly balanced.  I'm just muddling through really...  but I'll tell ya what I've got.

 

Airbrush:  I was using an Iwata HP B+.  It has a regulator at the back to limit flow.   I use a shop compressor.

Airbrush handling:  Single handed, and I tired to keep the tip close to the painted surface with little success.  I often find myself farther away than I started.  The needle cap is on there pretty tight.  It ain;t coming off without tools.

Paint brand:  I use artists acrylics in a tube and mix my own colors though I did start with some AK paints that gave me dry tip way too fast.  I thin them with Future, and a mixture of glass cleaner and water with a bit of Glycerol as a flow enhancer.  I have acrylic retarder...  didn;t even think to use it!

 

Pressure...  the gauge is below knee level...  hard to see.  I just adjust up and down depending on how the paint is flowing.

 

I have some Tamiya paints, though I didn't feel like using them.  Probably would have been easier.  But I would have had to mix colors, and more often than not, I waste paint that way.  At least with the tube acrylics I can use a color recipe book and paint very cheaply.

 

I admit I'm still learning to make everything work together.  Maybe better next time.

 

Thanks for looking!

 

Gaz

[GazzaS]

Just a small update...

Added a spiral spinner decal from an Eduard Old Tool FW 190 kit.  Also used some oil filters in three zones:  White uppermost, Brown middle, and blue lowest.

I hate waiting for stuff to dry.

 

Thanks for looking!

 

Gaz

[GazzaS]

HI Everyone,

   Another lesson learned as this kit joins the 10-foot-away club.

I used a Flory type wash which buried itself into every tiny pore, making this aircraft armor-dirty.

The main problem may have been caused by me.  After sealing with a coat of Future, I tired some shading with an oil wash.  Therefore, every brush stroke in the oils shows in the wash.  Not happy, but it's another lesson.

You can see how the wash has really ruined the white areas, especially around the heart insignia.

But

 

But anyway, it was fun to build the small nimble-looking fighter.

 

Thanks for looking!

 

Gaz

[Drifter]

Still look nice Gaz. Luckily I will never encounter any issues with Future, as we dont get it in South Africa. 

[DocRob]

Hey Gaz, at least the wash camouflaged the smoke rings , just joking. In the end she came out good, so what the heck. It's a thing about modelling, that you always try to do new techniques and not all of them work to perfection. On the other hand you get two benefits out of that, you learn to get a fine result despite the difficulties (like you did here) and you gain a lot of experience for the next build.

Cheers Rob