Thank you everyone for the kind wishes and thoughtful words! It's good to feel welcome in a great group of model builders.
I never got to build this kit when I was young. The only WWI aircraft I ever had were the 1/48 Fokker D.VII, 1/28 scale Fokker Dr.I and Spad XIII.
Today was spent on fixing surface flaws and coming up with wood grain in a scale I never imagined doing wood grain. First objective was to find the color of the light part of natural pine. To make this, I used the paints illustrated. Blue is a very powerful color... You need it, but you need as little of it as you can get onto the end of a Tamiya stir stick.
Then I used some Citadel washes to make some streaks. Most of which I wet-sanded off.
I have been guilty of building orange-stained Albatros fighters. Only about a year ago did I learn of the Idflieg (Inspekteur Der Fliegertruppen) regulation stating that the wooden areas were to be stained yellow. How yellow? I'm not sure. But probably not orange. So, mine now looks like this:
Now... there are a couple of them with natural wood showing in museums... and they look pretty orange. But I believe that many stained woods, particularly pine, darken as they age, providing they aren't exposed naked to the elements.
Hopefully It'll all look alright with the Voss Decal set... which hopefully still works after 15 years. I wish I had thought to scribe some lines into the fuselage before i added the wings.
Anyway.... Happy modelling!
