All Touched Up, All Klear & The Future

Sat watching the World T20 final with the West Indies chasing a very low 155 target set by another poor batting performance from England, apart from Root and Buttler.  On with the blog...

All Touched Up

So I've finally finished all those little touching up bits that needed doing and stuck that wheel back on the Tomahawk, so all ready for the decals :-)

Tomahawk, now with both wheels and touched up props

Mk1 Spit all touched up with its grey pilot

Side by side ready for the North African sun, well nearly

For some reason my head on picture keeps coming out upside down despite editing and resaving, oh well you'll get the idea.

Perhaps they could be RNZAF or RAAF

All Klear

So I have a bottle of the much loved Johnson Klear floor wax, had it for years and I believe that you can get a really good proce on eBay for the original stuff like this rather than the new formula.  Great for washes and shading I'd also heard that applied to canopies it gives a great effect as well.  So might as well give it a go, what's to loose!

All set, fingers crossed

So once I'd found a suitable receptacle I poured out enough to cover the main canopy.  I'd purposefully left a bit of sprue on the canopy so that I had something to hold on to with my tweezers.

A thorough dunking in the Klear and then a good shake off and hung up to dry.  There was a bit of pooling which I wicked off with a brush.

A quick dunk

Surprisingly good results

The result...  Well actually I'm pretty pleased with how that turned out to be honest, there is a certain  extra clearness to it which might not come across in the photos.  Just need to paint the frame and get it stuck on the bird.

The Future

So with these two starting to come to their final stages I had a rummage in the draws of Andy's Painting Bureau to see what we could move on to next.  

I stumbled across a Mk.V Spitfire which I'd sort of forgotten I had even though I only transferred everything to the bureau a few months ago.  Not too sure why this was never started (probably the same reason the various others haven't been started or finished, namely the lack of a permanent place to leave things out and part complete until the next chance I had to work on them.  That and the fact Revell didn't supply pilots and I didn't like that at that time, now I don't bother with putting them in - go figure).

Then there is the Montgomery Dakota I picked up and started a number of years ago.

A forgot Spitfire or a part complete Dak?

I think the Montgomery Dak is not the easiest model to come by these days, but it was fairly cheap on eBay when I got it and I don't have any allegiance to making it as per the picture.  It's actually going to be another desert air force scheme, seems to be my favourite.  I'd made quite a start on it upon reflection, the interior is complete and painted and the fuselage is stuck together, filled and sanded and the wings constructed ready to be put together.

Even managed to get a bit of paint in the wheel wells, trying to replicate the factory base coat which wouldn't have been over sprayed with which ever scheme the plane was going to end up in.

I don't think there is any real choice, it has to be the Dakota , it really needs finishing.  That and squirrelled away somewhere I have another one off eBay which had been completed and damaged (don't tell the wife - but it was really cheap in my defence).  this was bought as I wanted to paint it up as a crashed version for a 'Capture/Rescue the General' type of scenario, either desert or jungle based.

                  

....... Oh and the cricket.  Well England really put on a good show with some cracking early wickets, but 4 6's in a row from Brathwaite in the final over was just sublime to win it for the WIndies.  All credit to them and thank you both sides for such an entertaining match.