Yesterday was a bit of a stop, go, stop, go kind of day.
I decided to paint the prop and rudder, however things didn't go to plan!
First off my idea of layering Aviattic decals and then removing with thinner the top coat failed miserably and I was lucky enough to save the work I had done previously on it. Back to the drawing board on that one!
I think I will just go CDL and then a coat of PC10 and tinted lacquer over the top then applying thee worn weathering effect from there, but I decided to put it to one side and concentrate on the 4 blade propeller.
Now some of you fine and very talented gentlemen have been using coloured pencils to make laminated props and they look the business, absolutely incredible finishes, so I decided to see if I could replicate this technique...........
7 hours later - NO I BLOODY CAN'T!
So its back to playing to my strengths - MASKING TAPE!'
Having removed all traces of my first 8 attempts I coated the propeller with Mr. Finished thinned and applied through the airbrush (You need to clean it out immediately with lacquer thinner or Tamiya Airbrush cleaner or it will kill your brush!) The reason I use it is because it has great leveling properties and also helps Tamiya paints bond to the propeller better.
Now I normally mess around and make masks and I had a few left over from a previous batch I made and nope they were not the right size, so rather than mess around stretching and pulling the .psd file I decided to use the very pliable 1mm mask that I use for the rib taping.
It's pretty straight forward and apart from the first line of tape I used 1 continuous length for the others and anchored it down on the blade tips.
After checking that all the tape was firmly affixed, especially in the center where not only do they need to be perfectly parallel but have a tendency to pull up in the corners when you move on to the next blade, I sprayed a fine coat of Tamiya Nato Brown and then using a tooth pick pushed down the tape in the area again.
3 coats later and a beer it was time to remove the mask.
It always reminds me of chocolate! But the lines are way to sharp so after hand painting any corrections that might be needed I applied several more very thin coats of Tamiya Deck Tan. Now as long as you follow the lines you can really soften up some of the lamination lines and this will give the effects of different woods used and will really help when you apply the oil paint.
Next up was the oil paint, I use a Japanese brand with a touch of Uschi van der Rosten's excellent Blitz Dry and it really does what it says on the bottle - with two bladed props its not an issue but with a four blade prop I found it was drying before I could get to the 3rd blade to create the wood grain.
So with this done and not wanting to risk messing up the wood grain and all on top of the days failed attempts it was late and I decided to call it a night and go at it again this morning, that way the oils would be VERY dry!
My daughters alarm awoke me at 5am this morning, so before walking the dog I applied several thin coats of Tamiya Clear Yellow, this really gives a warmth to the finish of the wood and also a slightly satin finish. I forgot to take a photo so here is a picture of some bread rolls I made this morning while waiting for paint to dry
After the clear coat was dried I applied a very thin coat of a Japanese product that is very similar to Klear - I'm not sure if the formula is the same but it pretty much does what others have described Klear doing. This layer I applied by bursh and followed the wood grain, after that I applied several more very thin layers using the airbrush and masked up the prop using the excellent and very helpful HGW masks.
First I tried the Brass Tip finish but I really didn't like the way it looked in comparison to the rest of the machine so removed it with lacquer thinner and went with Tamiya XF-66 that pretty much coats everything on this aircraft.
Slowly and carefully I removed the masking tape and took a huge sigh of relief.
Now one of thee other issues is that Wingnut Wings is very vague about the propeller used on the DH.2 so after 2 hours of searching on the web and 20 cups of coffee later I found out that some of the DH.2's were fitted with DMD.Ltd propellers and some kind gent had even posted a picture of his - so on with the decals and another very fine coat of varnish!
DONE!
now where is that rudder?
