Roland C.II, Airfix 1:72, corrected! (I hope!)

[radio]

Sorry for this issue, Ian.
Cheers
Martin

[IanB]

This has not been a good week.
 I sprayed over the cracked Pollyscale with Tamiya to see how visible the cracks were, and although some disappeared, there were quite a few that needed attention - but the paint didn't crack! I carefully rubbed down the problem areas to smooth them out but I haven't been able to get to all of them as well as I'd like, so I'm just going to have to accept the cracks in some places. I sprayed it again today with a further coat of Tamiya - it cracked again! I have never had this issue before and I'm at a loss to figure out what is happening.

pic lost on PB

In places I did rub it down to the original Modelmaster Acryl primer, and there are areas of Pollymaster showing through, but the majority of these areas are fine, it's just the centre fuselage that is now the problem and it is basically Tamiya over Tamiya - why is it cracking?

Ian

[steveb]

Did you spray the Polyscale again or is it a darker shade of Tamiya?

[IanB]

No, this is another coat of Tamiya. I already sprayed one coat of Tamiya over the Pollyscale and it was fine, apart from the fact that some of the cracks were visible through it. I spray indoors too, so temperature shouldn't be an issue.

Ian

[IanB]

Well, after respraying a few times and having the same problem, I decided to bite the bullet....
armed with a box of q-tips and some Testors airbrush cleaner I set about removing the paint from the fuselage. I took the rear right down to the plastic, getting rid of that awful, rubbery, primer too. The rest I just rubbed over with a q-tip until the layers of Tamiya and Pollyscale were gone. It took a while, and I then had to carefully micromesh the edges of the primer to make sure that they were flush and there were no bits sticking out. I had to remove the tail to do this so it's now sitting on the bench waiting for the re-attached tail to dry.



Hopefully this will solve the problem. I'll find out tomorrow......

Thanks for looking in!

Ian

[Ernie]

Hopefully that will do the trick, Ian.  The paint problem has been such
a pain for you in an otherwise brilliant build.  I have no doubts that what
you have done in removing all the paint will be the key, my friend.

Cheers,
Ernie

[RAGIII]

Hopefully that will do the trick, Ian.  The paint problem has been such
a pain for you in an otherwise brilliant build.  I have no doubts that what
you have done in removing all the paint will be the key, my friend.

Cheers,
Ernie

My thoughts exactly! Looking forward to the next update saying all is well on the painting frontier!
RAGIII

[IanB]

Thanks Rick, Ernie, this has certainly been a trial!
 I spent some more time this morning going over some of the edges to make absolutely sure they were flush, then mixed another batch of light blue and sprayed the fuselage again. I kept a little paint for touch ups...
 There was still a faint trace of the primer edges on the rear fuselage so they were carefully sanded down with micromesh - basically just removing some of the paint I'd applied that morning to leave it level..then it was sprayed again..
Finally I'm happy with it! It's not perfect by any means, I just can't get to all of it, but fortunately those areas were not too bad so they don't show unless you get it in just the right (wrong?) light.
 I've lost all the underwing structure that I so carefully drew on but that's a small price to pay...I'll just assume it represents the aircraft on a dull, overcast, winter's day: no sun = no translucence!



Now I'm going to leave it alone until tomorrow when I will start to mask off for the black stripes.

Thanks for looking in, and for all the suggestions and support!

Ian

[lone modeller]

Have missed a great deal of this and have just caught up. This reads like an old saga - one dammed thing after another. But like any saga hero you have kept going and it has been well worth it. I agree that stripping off all of the paint and starting agin was the correct route to follow but I can appreciate your frustration at having to sod so. Some models are like this - two steps forward and one back, but this one will be a real stunner when it is finished and well worth the effort. You are demonstrating with your very high levels of skill that those old Airfix kits really can be the base for an excellent model. Will keep in closer touch to see this one finished - it will be well worth it.

Stephen.

[RAGIII]

Good to see you have recovered from the paint mishaps... Too bad about the underlying drawing but all in all a terrific job!
RAGIII

[WarrenD]

Glad you were able to overcome this Ian.

Warren

[IanB]

Thanks, I was about ready to give up, but never having done that before i decided this wasn't going to be the first!
 I did have one more small problem though. I was masking for the black stripes and decided to use the Jammy Dog thin tape to get the lines right. I wasn't happy so removed it and guess what...I got two lumps of paint off with it! After nearly throwing it at the wall, I realised that both the spots of missing paint were in a fortuitous place - I changed my plans from doing the black striped plane, to the black spotted one, as the front right hand spot is right where both the missing pieces are!

 I touched in a little white paint to fill the small indents where the paint had been and went ahead with drawing and printing some black circles. That was done this morning, so this afternoon I touched up the engine where my masking wasn't quite up to scratch, and painted the radiators, observer's gun ring, and pilot's leather cockpit padding.



 A gloss coat is now required, then the nose markings will go on before the aircraft is rigged, and the rest of the decals will follow that.

Thanks for watching!

Ian

[Des]

Sorry to hear that you had such a bad run with the paint Ian, but I see you have overcome the issue and are now back on track, looking forward to seeing the decals applied.

Des.

[ALBATROS1234]

sorry about the paint, on the paint issue the only time i had this happen was once but i thought it was due to possible over thinning. not sure if this is what happened but thought i would add another pov to the mystery.your build is amazing as always and your corrections are firt rate to this old kit.making it quite accurate in appearance. this is true modelling my friend not assembly.

[pepperman42]

Just catching up on this great project. Glad the paint problems have been solved and looking forward to the final stages.

Steve