Morane-Saulnier Type "N", Special Hobby 1/32

[KiwiZac]

That's very odd, Bertl - I've built a few SH kits and never come across something like this.

[Umlaufmotor]

Well, the cockpit is crammed with parts, it's time to put the "lid" on.
But first, some work is necessary on the "lid".
The upper fairing was - as already described - partly milled massively thinner on the inside.
The well visible edge should fit the scale of the model in terms of material thickness.
In addition, the openings for the pipe linkage which supports the MG to the rear were opened in the fairing.
Like on the spinner, the missing rivets on the upper fairing were replaced by copper wire.
Here in the original picture the presence of the rivet rows can be seen very well.











Servus
Bertl

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

[Umlaufmotor]

The cover was painted on the inside with Mr. Metalcolor "Aluminum" and dabbed with "Stainless".
Then gently polished.
Glued was with extra thin, liquid plastic glue.
Also very nice to see in the pictures, the dented and liver damaged engine cover.







Servus
Bertl

[Umlaufmotor]

On the original, a thin rectangular plate was riveted to the engine cover as a muzzle flash protector.
Unfortunately, this is missing on the model.
Thin plastic sheet is sufficient to represent the sheet.
Hot drawn sprue was used to show the rivets.
Here is a picture during production.







The Morane logo, unfortunately missing from the kit, was also glued to both sides of the engine cover.
A hole was drilled at the correct position and the logo was glued from the inside with 2K glue.
After the glue had cured, it was milled off on the inside.
Before the logos were glued to the fairing, I rounded them slightly with a thick brush handle to match the curvature of the engine cover.





Servus
Bertl

[Umlaufmotor]

Now the fuselage is painted.
First, along the longerons - for this, "Radome" from Gunze, whitened with white, was used.
Then the longerons are masked with 0.5mm narrow tape.







After that, a mixture of matte black and dark gray is used to paint on the first traces of Castor oil.
Somewhat stronger on the underside, medium on the left and weaker on the right.
Due to its rotary motion, the engine spins and spreads a little more oil on the left side as seen in the direction of flight.
The canvas soaks up oil, but primarily the oil (and dirt) spreads along the longerons - where the canvas fabric also "stretches" directly over it.







Servus
Bertl

[Umlaufmotor]

Now carefully peel off the thin masking strips along the longerons....



.... and the fuselage is then lightly airbrushed with "Radome" as a test.





Yep, it works ... the oil dirt and lighter longerons are clearly visible.
Now the complete fuselage is painted with thinned Radome.
This needs to be somewhat glazing though, don't paint an opaque coat of paint.





Servus
Bertl

[Umlaufmotor]

Now the black fabric stripes are painted on
These black borders were also applied to the fin and elevator.
I used Tamiya tape for this - the white tape is also from Tamiya and is very easy to stick around tight corners.
The stripes were painted with Tamiya Semi-gloss-Black , mixed with a drop of Brown.











Servus
Bertl

[Umlaufmotor]

I was not able to satisfactorily mask off the Tail-skid mounting linkage.
A little trick helps here so that the strips can still be attached.
An old unneeded decal is painted and the required strips are cut from it.
If it is done cleanly, then the difference is not noticeable.







Servus
Bertl

[bobs_buckles]

 
Magic!

[Jorgo]

Bertl, another excellent update! The rendering of the rivets is very well done. Is there a reason why you use copper wire one time and stretched sprue another?

Kind regards
Jörg

[Umlaufmotor]

Thank you Bob and Jorgo 

@Jorgo
Jörg, the copper wires need a lot of grinding until they look like rivet heads.
On the thin plastic of the muzzle flash protector far too risky for me.
I was worried that too much material would be ground off from the thin white plastic.
Therefore here "plastic rivets".

Servus
Bertl

[Umlaufmotor]

The next step is to paint the Cowling.
On most of the original pictures you can see that the upper paint layer (black on the French type "N" and later red on the English "Bullet") is peeling off very quickly and very heavily.
Presumably, it was only painted on the raw aluminum sheet, without any primers, etc.
The weight also played a role.
Due to the weather and the strong oil mist, these characteristic paint flakes are very typical for this aircraft.
Of course, this should also be shown on the model.
As a primer, a medium gray paint was used.
The raw aluminum sheet was imitated with Mr.Metalcolor "Aluminum" and "Stainless".













Servus
Bertl

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

[Monty]

You are doing some amazing and beautiful work, Bertl! This is a wonderful and detailed lesson to us all on really detailing and improving a kit beyond the good - it is simply superb! Thank You for the detailed explanations, us ordinary modellers learn so much more with every post, there is so much we can try to incorporate in our own models! Regards, Marc.

[Umlaufmotor]

@Monty
What a great compliment! 
Many heartfelt thanks, Marc.

Servus
Bertl

[Umlaufmotor]

There are various methods to lift surface color from the underground.
Salt technique, hairspray technique, various expensive chipping miracle secret agents, all sorts of things.

On this model, I opted for the simplest variant:
Semi-liquid masking agent dabbed on with a sponge.
Dabbed on all relevant areas - more masking was used on the side and underneath the fuselage, where the effects of the castor oil are strongly felt -  and then painted on the surface color (Tamiya semi-gloss-black with a small drop of light gray).

Immediately after painting, the masking agent was removed with pointed tweezers.
Now additional black paint was removed with a medium-hard brush and warm water.

Yes, you are right, this looks very ugly at first sight 
But wait .....









..... until soon.

Servus
Bertl