Coming along beautifully, and as for Vampires, just wear a lot of garlic... 
See, then I scare
everything away.
I've had one of these for some time and it's a simple but great idea. The trick is to sharpen it a bit before use to make it tacky, it works like a charm on tiny Photo Etch etc. I think an ordinary "Grease Pencil" (Canada) or "China Marker" might work just as well but for the price this is a good little modelling tool.
This just arrived yesterday, but this is good to know. I saw someone on Youtube using cocktail sticks and Mr Masking Sol Neo, and that looked like another option.
Wonder if it works in my the local pub?
Straightman: "Why would you want to make models in a pub? It's so dark!"
This is one spectacular Albie build. I am watching the progress with a great interest.
Many thanks. I've been ogling your excellent work with great interest for years.
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So: Onward and upward. The Taurus stuff for the D.III arrived earlier than the pick-up pencil or the Aviattic decals, and that dictated my next steps. This isn't much of a progress report though. The fact is, the Taurus parts are so fiddly and delicate that it took me 3 days just to get it to a more or less acceptable level of built, so I'm just past the point of doing the Mr. Surfacer 1500 black primer coat and not much more.
Current table mess. Where's Wally?
I have done preliminary painting on the rocker boxes. Bertl's pictures in the Engines subforum here show that the rocker boxes have two different metals. One is a pale brass colour on the bottom and the other a more aluminium sort of affair up top. All the brass paints in my collection tend to be darkish and vivid, and are some of my least favourite paints to work with. The only thing that came close to Bertl's pics in my paint menagerie was AK's Duraluminium, which has problems of its own - namely that it instantly separates within even 20 seconds of mixing the stuff, with all the more goldenish hue going down to the bottom of the bottle straight away.
Nevertheless, I used it as a base tone for the rocker boxes. It ended up looking not as yellow as I would have wished, so instead of using aluminium as the top colour of the boxes I used Model Master chrome, hoping it would contrast better. Nothing doing. You could see a difference, but it wasn't stark enough, so I broke out Vallejo's pre-mixed Game Color umber wash and went to work trying to yellow the duraluminium up more. Much better.
EDIT: And no, that rocker box piece isn't glued on yet, which is why it looks to be floating in the back.
More to follow.
Best,
Matthew
