Some of you will know that we have another hurricane heading our way. We spent part of the day getting ready for it. This cut down on my bench time, but it was a necessity. We should be OK though, as long as we are not without electricity for too long. We are keeping our fingers crossed, and saying our prayers that this hurricane will go through without causing too much trouble. I will keep you all posted.

I got a chance to try out the new circle cutter. It took me several tries but I figured it out, and it's pretty easy to use once you have it set up. It works better than I thought it would. Now, just like George Blair stated in another post on the Nieuport 17 builds, I don't know how I managed to get along without one for this long.

You can bet I will be masking off more circular style National Insignias on my future builds. Having a painted on marking almost always looks better than a decal. This is especially true when the decal wrinkles up. I might come back and revisit some of my older builds and touch them up. First I will finish up what I have started.

I will say this was an excellent purchase, and I am glad I decided to pull the trigger on it...

Here are some pictures of what I got done tonight.

This shows what the upper surfaces of the wings looked like once I masked them off. The upper wing has the circular masks on it. I made these with the new cutter.

This shows the undersides of the wings after they were masked off too. The lower wing, which is located on the top side of the photo also has a set of home made circular masks on it.

This shows everything I wanted to paint ready to go. Both sides of the elevator / stabilizer and the rudder / fin will be painted using Insignia Blue color.


I still had some of my old Model Master enamel left over in the exact color I wanted to use. I figured they probably would have had a similar color around and used it to paint the real SPAD XIII.

Now it's GO time...

I sprayed the stabilizer / elevator, and the rudder / fin. The color has dried here and has a flat sheen. I will be spraying some gloss clear on it to help with the star decals.

This shows how the top sides of the wings look, once the masking tape was removed. The top wing is located in the top half of the picture. There was also a small amount of paint bleed under the tape. This should be fairly easy to take care of when I spray the Red color on next. (His famous last words...) 😉

This is a similar photo, that shows the bottom sides of both wings. The lower wing is on the bottom.

Tomorrow, (If I can), I will try to mask off the wings to get ready for painting the areas that will be painted Red next. I'm really starting to get excited with this one...

It's going to be a very colorful and patriotic looking airplane.

Thanks for stopping by. I'm calling it a night.
Take care and have a good evening everyone.

As always, comments are encouraged.

That circle cutter did a good job, Louis @lgardner
The blue accent is really nice.
Take care with that upcoming storm.

Paint scheme is very striking, Louis (@lgardner). Blue paint bleeding on white will be tough to fix. Do you have a secret vault of old Model Master paint?

Googles circular cutter…..

Phenomenal work @lgardner this is peak masking! Love your work.

Stay safe, my friend!