WingnutWings Fokker D.VII (Alb) Robert Greim, Jasta 34b

[KiwiZac]

I can only echo what the others have said, this is a delight to follow. The engine is a particular highlight for me - it looks great!

[jeroen_R90S]

Thank you, Ed and Zac!

Not a lot of text this time, but more pictures to compensate

I managed to paint the guns and indeed, as RAGIII and Lance advised, no problems with parts being left unpainted

(still need some small bits attached)


Fuselage primed enamel flat white and polished with 3000 grit polishing paper:

I tried something I devised to make the rear fuselage less boring white and a bit brush-painted, without overdoing it. I brushed thinned medium grey and dabbed here and there with a sponge.
I then brushed over some pure white.

Kind of difficult to see, but here it is after overpainting with gloss white:

And the whole thing painted this way, including the red bands:


Unfortunately my paint was too thick when applying the pre-shaded brushmarks, so the red bands look better in the photograph than in real life. I hope some polishing and buffing will even it out, but I'm afraid the marks are too thick for that.
Red is a mixture of Revell Aqua Ferrari Red (34) and Purperrot (331) which is a purplish red. It's actually an old German train colour.

Jeroen

[jeroen_R90S]

As I wrote, I wasn't entirely happy with the red bands...
Upon closer inspection the KIP tape I used gives fuzzier edges than my usual Tamiya tape (I had the same problem with my Jasta 18 1/72 models) and only when putting the model in my dry box I realized I used the forward leg of the boarding step to measure them out -so now they are a few mm's too far forward throwing the alignment with the cross off, and I can't fit the patch of lozenge behind the cockpit any more.
I can only redo them, or respray with flat white and used the decals. I copied them and they appear to fit quite well.  Kind of a bummer after half a day work 

Jeroen

[jeroen_R90S]

As I wrote, I wasn't happy with the bands.
They had fuzzy edges, were in the wrong position and had a lot of dust and imperfections in them.
So off they came, mostly:


I then re-masked them with the new Tamiya tape for curves and new normal Tamiya tape, then re-painted the white forward part in preparation for the Aviattic lozege decals. I've cut those to size as well, but the bands need a tiny bit of touch-up here and there and the forward white part a bit of polish. Then some complicated masking before a glosscoat. A drawback of all this extra painting is now that that paint coat is getting quite thick, so the stitching details on the bottom are not as crisp as I would have liked.
Takes some extra effort and persistence, but getting there... but after 2 red/white 1/72 aircraft and now this mostly red/white one, please remind me for my next model not to pick one with red and white on it!


I hope to catch up reading here and posting comments as well, been quite busy and spent most of the little free time I had actually working on this model...

Jeroen

[GazzaS]

The new bands look very nice!

Gaz

[Juan]

Sorry to hear about your misadventures Jeroen.  Your Fokker is looking great with the new stripes.  Looking forward to your progress.

[RAGIII]

Your re paint of the bands look excellent!
RAGIII

[jeroen_R90S]

Thank you Gaz, Juan and RAGIII

Now that the bands are mostly fixed, I'm getting my enthusiasm for this build back, which is always a good thing.
I started our with some tiny touch-ups (again) on the red bands, mostly on the bottom, followed by a very light polish. Those Revell Aqua paints are quite tough, so even though they are acrylics, they can be polished with 3000 grit polishing paper.
Then it was time for some complicated masking of the cowling decking and time for a coat of Tamiya Gloss. I left that to dry a few days (I've learned from the red bands to avoid doing too much in too little time) and pre-weathered the forward part with Raw Umber and Payne's Gray oil paints so that some of it will (hopefully) show up though the Aviattic lozenge decals.


It is a bit overdone, but some experimentation showed it needed to be because it would not show up otherwise.
In the Albatros-D.VII assembly manual is a great photo showing this kind of weathering so I used that as a reference.

Being oils, the fuselage is now left alone, so time to focus on the wings. I wasn't really going to do pre-shading, but a bit of testing showed it would look nice on the lighter underside, on the top I did not do this. I used Revell Aqua Desert Sand, but the decals (especially the pink) would all turn ochre, so I oversprayed it with some white. It's doesn't show up too much, just enough to be noticable.


And another evenings' worth of work:

The (rather fiddly) fuselage decals are also all ready, so when the paints are dry I can gloss them all over and start putting on those decals to give it some character it is now lacking

Jeroen

[RAGIII]

Looking good! The oil stains should show up nicely.
RAGIII

[jeroen_R90S]

@Red Baron: thanks for the tip, (I have the transparent decals) I'll check again and cut as appropriate. Better to know such things in advance!
Did you also cut out the openings for the access panels and such, or did you decal over them (the decals are very thin) and paint them later?

@RAGIII: Thanks for watching -I'm hoping for it, especially since I intend to apply some brown-tinted varnish over the lozenge (as well as some more weathering on the whole thing to tie it together)

Jeroen

[Manni]

Very interesting weathwering on the fuselage, it looks great!
Bye,
Manni

[GazzaS]

Love the oily look on the fuselage.  I find making oil staining very difficult.

Gaz

[jeroen_R90S]

Thanks, RB, Manni and Gaz!

The oil staining is actually a mixture of Raw Umber and Payne's grey, an almost black grey colour. I simply apply a few dabs with a toothpick and smear, smudge and mess it up with a short haired (cut off) brush and some sponge. Then I add a bit of clean thinner and just let it flow, then clean up some off the excess.
Honestly it was about 10 minutes work... the splatters were thinner dirtied up with the paint mixture in a brush and then simply blowing my airbrush (without paint, obviously!) through the brush. This creates a nice splatter pattern.

I actually could have made it a bit heavier, as it does not show up all that well. Part of the learning curve I guess!

In the meantime I added some Lozenge decals. As RB indicated the Aviattic wing decals are slightly too wide so they eventually misalign a bit with the rib tapes on the model, perhaps not as noticable with lozenge tapes, but all the more with those blue ones. I did the center part first after checking its fitting, then I tried the left and right bits with the cut-out for the ailerons and found as RB indicated I need to take about 0,5mm off for a perfect alignment. There are a few bubbles and wrinkles -again part of the learning curve, but the bubbles will be taken care of later.

The fuselage sides were drawn over from a photocopy of the WNW decals and carefully trimmed to align with the red bands. The small upper part with the cockpit cutout was the single most hard part of the whole decal process -took me 3 tries to get a part with everything lined up and not showing any white. With hindsight I should have cut this in 2 or even 3 sections applied individually, as I have a tiny bit of overlap on the fuselage spine on the red. Perhaps only 0,3mm, but it does show op. Again, part of the learning process I guess, and a bit of weathering will hopefully camouflage it a bit! Don't get me wrong though, I'm my own worst critic, but I'm loving where this is going!


Next up is the fuselage bottom, then masking off the red again for some brown tinted overspray after a few bubbles and cuts have been made around the access panels.

Jeroen

[Borsos]

Very nice progress so far on your Fokker, Jeroen. Your decalling looks awesome!
Andreas

[RAGIII]

Excellent work with the lozenge application! Looking terrific!
RAGIII