Thanks very much Allan, Brad, Alan and Lance, much appreciated.
Apologies if I missed it, but can you step me through how you achieved the turned metal look on the cowling / metal panels? It looks lovely. That is one effect I have never really tackled and I would love to learn from your approach.
Brad, it's fairly straightforward. I used a darker aluminium colour as the base colour and a lighter colour for the swirling effect. In this case I used Vallejo Metal Color dark aluminium lightened a little with "plain" aluminium (about 4 parts dark to 1 part "normal"). I then experimented with different "light" colours for the machining effect (various aluminiums, silvers and chromes) and my favourite was Vallejo Model Air silver RLM01. I then experimented with different approaches to applying the swirls, all types/sizes of brushes along with various dipping pens. I decided on using a size 1 kolinsky sable brush as this seemed the best combination of controllability and consistency. Lots of looking at pictures of the effect and lots if practice on scrap plastic to get a consistent approach, and then away I went.
Once this was done and the decals were applied, I sprayed the whole fuselage in semi-gloss varnish, did the weathering on the fabric areas and then masked and sprayed the fabric areas with matt varnish so that the metal areas appear shinier. I was surprised to see from original photos that the metal areas did not get that dirty compared to the rest of the aircraft (presumably because these could be wiped clean).
I don't know if that sounds "straightofward" but I hope it helps.....
