Monday 22 October 2012

School WWII Project Nearing Completion

Well we had fun making these.

The magic Humbrol Clearfix worked wonders on the previously tricky (as in I always messed them up) canopies (see below):


It was 'really' useful on the Dornier Do.17's expanse of canopies to fill in the missing gaps in the perspex (see below):


The "Spitty" gets its undersides painted in a peculiar XF-12 IJ Grey, which doesn't seem quite right but according to my conversion chart matches to Humbrol 64 (see below):


The Dornier gets a more traditional paint scheme of light blue for its underside from a 'really' old Humbrol acrylic range they had, but after all these years it's still ready to use from the pot, unlike some more modern paints I could name (see below): 


The Spitfire starts to come together nicely when its camouflage pattern is put on. I am using XF-61 Dark Green and XF-82 Ocean Grey 2 (RAF), the latter being a newer Tamiya paint colour I spotted while I was in a local model shop (Hobbycraft). I was looking at the Tamiya colour schemes on other model kits and borrowed this one off a Tamiya 1/48 RAF Mosquito kit (see below): 


The 1/48 scale Spitfire was such a nice kit to put together, far easier IMHO than the 1/72 scale kits I am used to. You stand a fair chance of even painting the "yellow" along the wing tips and "red" machine gun patches (see below):


The Dornier also gets it's Blitz camouflage scheme. A jagged edge XF61 Dark Green interlocking with a XF-27 Black Green (see below):  


This was the later Luftwaffe 1940 camouflage at the time of the Battle of Britain as opposed to the three colour, with a light grey and a brown alongside a green in the instructions, dating to 1937. The propeller housings get a bright white covering while the propeller blades get a surprising XF-61 Dark Green (I was expecting black) covering (see below): 


They are taking shape nicely but we are coming to that dreaded phase of mine, the decals, however for aircraft they simply are a must! Also, for the record, there were little hands helping me along the way, though they did take long telly breaks from time-to-time (Merlin and Mr maker being two of the CBBC culprits).



3 comments:

Stryker said...

Wonderful job - you will be top of the class (always best to seat the kids in front of the telly when "helping" them!).

Paul said...

Fantastic progress Geordie. Looking great.

Geordie an Exiled FoG said...

Cheers Stryker and Paul :)

Don't know how I can work the 1/48 scale kit into a wargame though

But I am working on it ;)