Great experimentation day on marbling/painting, my friend @clipper! Awesome job on both engines and door!

Hi Carl (@clipper): The shape of props has always been a mystery to me. The differences can be very subtle. I think the two biggest problems with reshaping props is getting a consistent shape and doing the work without snapping a prop blade off the hub. I am sure yours will come out well.

Great progress, Carl @clipper
Those propellors are a big improvement.

Hi, Carl (@clipper): The wheels on my MPM-based models also have the square design on them. I was curious what they were, so I just did a little looking around on the internet. I couldn't find any close up photos of the wheels, but I found several distant photos where you could see the square on the hubs. I also found several photos where there was a smooth cover over the hub. I found a photo of some resin wheel for a 1/48 Hudson, and the design did indeed look like locking wires.

2 attached images. Click to enlarge.

I finally got to the painting stage on the Hudson, at least the preliminary painting stage. I had two items which caused it to be delayed. The first was receipt of a new Ammo paint rack which triggered a desire to overhaul my paint storage at the work bench. My paint storage has been a thorn in my side for some time now and I kept coming up with all sorts of schemes to address it. Most were far too complicated (as usual for me), but I finally settled on one that checks off the boxes I had set for paint storage. It's not pretty, but it is functional and it has all my paint stored close at hand and in one place now.

The second item delaying paint was actually adding the primer to the model. When I did this, I found all sorts of surface defects that had to be dealt with. I was close to the Shelf of Doom on this one, but I persevered and worked through the defects. All the pencil circled areas in the two photos below show what I had to deal with. Additionally, I made the mistake of having the airbrush too far from the model and the primer had a rough finish. That had to be smoothed out after fixing all the defects. All of this took several days.

Today, I touched up the primer, got some smaller bits started in the painting process, and added the undercoat marbling for the white areas of the final paint. Some areas may have marbling that won't be white, but I didn't have the reference handy when I was painting and wanted to make sure I covered all possible areas. So over the next several days, I will be working through the various painting tasks.

It's bloody cold here right now, and even in the house, we are having to wear hoodies (with the hoodies up), so it sort of puts a damper on motivation. But I want to get through this.

Great result, Carl @clipper
I'm glad you persisted and prevented it from becoming a member of the SoD.
Nice paint storage as well.

Thanks Spiros (@fiveten), John (@johnb), and George (@gblair). I'm pretty sure I will be able to avoid the Shelf of Doom now, but I won't jinx myself by saying It can't happen. Painting so far has progressed okay. I've got the engines done, the propellers done, and the wheels done. The fuselage and cowlings have the white paint applied. Because it is Vallejo acrylic, I am giving it a full 24 hours to dry / cure before I mask it for the upper camouflage colors. I have had trouble with water based acrylics in the past being easily scraped so I may even clear coat the white before masking.

Thanks George (@gblair). I have also been using Tamiya and AK colors and I agree they are super paints. One of the reasons I want to experiment with Vallejo is the color ranges that are available,but also because of they are safer to use. I have so far found them to be a bit more difficult to use when highly thinned, but this may also just be my airbrush technique which is still evolving. Regardless, water based or alcohol based, I find the use of acrylics to be far superior for me over my previous use of enamels.