Albatros D.III - 1/96 scale

[andonio64]

I apologize for not posting anything since ten days...
I am having troubles with the home PC and am spending most of my free time to recover as many data as possible from the HD.
The PC does not connect to the web any more, and needs to be reinstalled, so my works are suspended for the time being.

Antonio

[coyotemagic]

What a cool project, Andonio!  You're off to an excellent start.  This will be fun to follow.
Cheers,
Bud

[jeroen_R90S]

Nice work so far!
And best of luck with your PC troubles!

Jeroen

[Manni]

Respect,
I will watch here with high interest.
Manni

[andonio64]

Thank you guys... I take advantage of the PC at work, from time to time I get 5 / 10 minutes to offload my mind...
:-)

[andonio64]

I took home the laptop I use at work ... here are a few small (really small!) details for the cockpit:





Here is the scratchbuilt seat:



Then i printed on paper the decals:



I cut them and laid them on the plastic to see if the dimensions are good:




I would say they are OK

Thanks for the attention my friends

AnDonio

[andonio64]

Hallo, some new photos from my workbench:

Here is the fuselage halves that have been painted with Gunze Sail, I will put the crosses and then cover everything with an off-black paint, to let the fuselage crosses somehow visible as in the picture of the profile posted at the beginning.

I decided to paint the halves before closing the fuselage because I need to glue the rigging departing from the fuselage inside the fuselage itself...


Some work on the interiors


The seat. The belts are made with 0,75 mm wide masking tape.

More later, there are already some new details, I need to shoot the photos.

Thanks for watching

Antonio

[RAGIII]

Excellent progress on this tiny and rough kit!
RAGIII

[andonio64]

Thank you Steve & Rick,
yesterday I assembled the cockpit:


throttle added on the left side, seat and control stick in place


On the other side I addes the small panel with instruments, it is scarcely visible once the halves are closed so I did not bother adding more details.

I call the cockpit complete, I will add the decals on the fuselage and paint the haves off-black, then I will glue the rigging on the nose and on the tail inside the fuselage, put the engine at its place and close the two halves.

Then there will be the need to fill and sand the joining line and paint again the sanded areas.

Thanks for watching!

Antonio

[lone modeller]

I have just caught up with this - amazing. Simply amazing given the size of the model and the crudeness of the moulds. I really respect anyone who can do what you are doing - a real masterclass on improvement.

Stephen.

[andonio64]

Thank you Stephen,
just a few more steps ahead:


I took a couple of decals I printed from a former 1/72 Albatros W4 build and slided them on the fuselage to cover them later and leave the crosses a bit of visibility.


Here it is how the fuselage halves look after painting them with a sort of off-black (Matt black + a few drops of glossy pink. The finish is a good "satin" effect).
The crosses can be perceived by the naked eye, although the pics here are a bit too dark.


To replicate the radiator on both faces of the top wing, I used a 2 mm wide / 0,3 mm thick plasticard stripe, and to make it look more realistic I used the pin vise as a rolling pin.


here is the result.

I painted the wings and tail black as well, the pictures are really horrible, I will make some better ones later this week


In the meantime I've started thinning the struts (of the cabane in this picture).
Left is the original, right after treatment.

Ciao

Antonio

[andonio64]

Hallo,
I had problems in printing self made decals, so I decided to go for hand cut masks...

Here are the masks put in place:


And this is the result:


Here are some further details I worked on, the reddish bands on the prop were hand-painted.


Thanks for watching.

Antonio

[RAGIII]

Very nice work on the masks for the crosses. Looking forward to your next update.
RAGIII

[dr 1 ace]

Moving along nicely !!

Ed

[andonio64]

Hallo, here are 3 photos of the current state of the work:





During the Easter weekend I was able to:
- create the pipes on the left of the engine
- create the main exhaust tube curving a plasticard rod (1 mm diameter) and enlarging one end
- join the cylinders to the main exhaust tube... ehr... I made it too short, it was not long enough to join the sixth cylinder...
- put some detail on the heads of the cylinders
- make the cockpit rimming with a 0,5 mm plasticard rod duly curved to a roundish shape
- insert some pins in the cabane struts and mounted them at their place
- insert eyelets on the wings to anchor the rigging

I spent nearly one hour trying to cut a windshield from an acetate sheet, but most of them were badly shaped, those having a good shape jumped away in some unreachable place of the universe, so after one hour cutting and cursing I decided it was enough!!!!

Last night I painted the whole plane and he remaining pieces with a transparent satin varnish and started making the two machine guns, that were not supplied by the kit...

More pictures will hopefully come during the weekend!

Thanks again for your attention and thanks to Rick and Ed for their encouraging comments!

Antonio