Short Stirling & RAF Bomber Command Forum

A good idea Kevin........Press on Regardless as Dennis would say!!!

Max,

The 'aircraft' is coming along beautifully ................ I'm completely jealous of such straight paint lines .......................... Will you be adding any 'weathering' or are you keeping it strictly 'factory issue'?
John

Yes it will be lightly weathered John.....the key to any convincing weathering is subtlety, too many modellers go overboard with it.

I'm off to my mother's for Christmas, back on Wednesday so I'll sign off with:





HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO ALL.....SEE YOU ALL SOON!!!

Preparing to put on the decals! I first gave the surfaces two or three light coats of Klear (also sold as "Future"), it's a floor polish but modellers have seized on it because it gives a shiny surface so that air isn't trapped under the decal giving the dreaded "silvering effect" around the edges. Klear brushes equally well but a soft brush and a minimum amount of Klear on it is required otherwise you get the "runs" , if you know what I mean. Also in this shot is Micro-set and Micro-sol which are decal softeners. I paint the area where the decal will go with Micro-set, then apply the decal which should "settle down" nicely onto the surface, especially when pressed gently with a soft cloth or paper towel. Then when your decalling session is over (I usually do mine over three sessions), brush Micro-sol over the decal's surface. It's scary at first because the decals "wrinkle", but DON'T TOUCH and after a couple of hours the decals will look as if they've been painted on!



One wing in progress! I've got the "Wing walkway" line near the aft edge a bit too low, the line should run just above the dinghy stowage demarcation square, but never mind!



The white exhaust staining will also need slight touching up because of course it should be over the top of the walkway lines.



The fuselage roundels and squadron codes next........bit of an adventure!

^^^^ re Klear - a real favourite of mine from my ACF days, my "bulling" was obviously immaculate anyway, but a wee bit of extra help never did any harm!

Max said .......

I've gone out of sequence with the instructions here, mainly because I'm going to be airbrushing my model instead of hand painting it. The instructions would have you build and position the three turrets in one half of the fuselage, and the windows by the w/op. position before joining the fuselage halves together. The main reason for doing this is so that the turrets can be rotated, but I'm not bothered about this. If I followed the instructions, I would then have to mask all these difficult and fragile areas before spraying, so I'm joining the fuselage halves and doing as much painting and maybe even decalling before adding the turrets, windows etc.

Max, can I carry the same line of thought with my 1:48 scale Tamiya lanc ( fitting of turrets afterwards ) or do I need to fit them first, thanks.
John

I'll check up and let you know John. Funnily enough I've joined a Lancaster Group Build on Britmodeller http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/inde ... wforum=313 as an incentive to get mine finished, so as soon as my review build article for the Gladiator is done, I'll be getting on with my 1/48th Lanc too.

ME453 wrote:I'll check up and let you know John. Funnily enough I've joined a Lancaster Group Build on Britmodeller http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/inde ... wforum=313 as an incentive to get mine finished, so as soon as my review build article for the Gladiator is done, I'll be getting on with my 1/48th Lanc too.

Hmmmm ......... admirable - you must be getting old though, old chap. Take much more than that for me to get motivated. As fro review builds - tried that with R/C Flying models - did one and the manufacturer threatened to sue me -which would have been fun - but he walked away ion advice from his lawyers. No, as with commissions - too much like hard work.