Roden 1/32 Strutter, A1083 45 Squadron

[pepperman42]

Very impressive work! Your different tones and textures worked out well.

Steve

[Davos522]

This is an absolutely beautiful build, Nigel, top-notch work. Those roundels look amazing, and I hadn't really had a chance to look over the Aviattic "bundles" yet, but I'll definitely check them out after seeing that panel.

And congratulations on your well-deserved win of this years's Schrödinger Trophy, the simultaneously real/non-existant award for Best Details That Will Never Be Seen Again Once the Fuselage Gets Buttoned Up (BDTWNBSAOFGBU for short, as we on the Steering Committee refer to it)

Dutch

[lcarroll]

    Beautiful Nigel, your interior is as good as it gets and truly a masterpiece! Keep up the stellar work, this is already an absolutely stunning model and I'm looking forward to the latter half of the project.
Cheers,
Lance

[NigelR]

Thanks everyone, much appreciated! It's gone well so far, I hope to make more progress next week, will report back.

Looking good Nigel. Shame all that lovely detail on the instrument panel will be lost from sight once the wing goes on 

Thanks for reminding me Of course the machine gun and associated padding will also block the view before the wing goes on.....

And congratulations on your well-deserved win of this years's Schrödinger Trophy, the simultaneously real/non-existant award for Best Details That Will Never Be Seen Again Once the Fuselage Gets Buttoned Up (BDTWNBSAOFGBU for short, as we on the Steering Committee refer to it)

Thanks a lot/no thanks at all.

Why is it that Schrodinger is holding the top wing in his hand ready to pass it to me.......?

[KiwiZac]

There's a lot going on here to comment on but, man, that oil staining on the fabric looks superb! Beautiful work!

[NigelR]

There's a lot going on here to comment on but, man, that oil staining on the fabric looks superb! Beautiful work!

Thanks Zac, I've been working on the oil staining effect over the last couple of builds. By a happy accident I found that the AK Interactive sepia panel liner I was using to outline the wood parts makes a very nice stain effect if applied carefully. It give that nice "soaked in" look. I then just touch up the central parts of the stains with sepia oil paint to give a little more depth to the stain.

I'll be doing similar on the outside of the fuselage as it's all CDL.

[KiwiZac]

I'll be doing similar on the outside of the fuselage as it's all CDL.

No pressure, but I'm excited to see that!

[gedmundson]

Very, very impressive work on your interior, Nigel.
Cheers,
Gary

[FAf]

Wow, that interior is looking very good!
/Fredrik

[NigelR]

Thanks very much Gary and Fredrik for the kind words.

I have been making slow progress on this build, much slower than I hoped but life threw several unexpected curve balls at me which has slowed me down. But hopefully I will have some updates soon.....

[NigelR]

I am back on this build after some life-related distractions. I've got several of the components decalled and ready for assembly, I am now working on the fuselage/lower wing. I am doing A1083 which has a CDL fuselage, so I need to do a bit of preshading to show some of the structure underneath the CDL. After many hours (I HATE masking!!), the fuselage looked like this:



I am a top level nerd, so you might notice I have masked off the roundel and fuselage stripe. This is because IMO these areas will not show the underlying structure in the same way as the CDL, because they are overpainted on the CDL and therefore have different opacity. I am using Aviattic decals which have the roundel and fuselage stripe on the CDL decal, so these areas need to be masked off. I hope I got them in the right place.....

I then airbrushed some Army Painter Soft Tone ink over the masked areas. I felt the effect was too extreme when I removed the masking tape, so I lightly oversprayed with
 white to tone it down. Here's what it looks like now:



I'm happy with that. I will add some oil staining along the fuselage edges, spray the aluminium and wood areas, and  then it's on to decalling the fuselage and lower wings.

[pepperman42]

That's really nice prep work. Just so it's clear in my thick skull, the Aviattic CDL is the clear backed stuff  correct?

Steve

[NigelR]

That's really nice prep work. Just so it's clear in my thick skull, the Aviattic CDL is the clear backed stuff  correct?

Thanks Steve. Yes, the Aviattic CDL decals are on clear paper, so anything underneath will show through. The Strutter sets have the roundels and other markings printed on "cookie cutter" sets, so these are part of the clear CDL decal rather than white-backed decals you apply on top of the CDL.

[FAf]

After many hours (I HATE masking!!), the fuselage looked like this:

I don't understand what you mean... hate masking?! 😁
The results look great and very promising, so well done if it tested your patience.
/F

[NigelR]

I don't understand what you mean... hate masking?! 😁

That made me smile..... I sit at the feet of a master (who does have a nice mask cutting machine...... )

The results look great and very promising, so well done if it tested your patience.

Thanks. I guess I got kind of zen at the end but the strips of masking tape kept picking up bits of fluff that I had to carefully pull off. And I wish I had that third hand....