The blue looks fantastic, Harvey @scalerambush
Other paintwork as well.
Decalling approach will be easier this way indeed.

Thank you all!

Sure am wishing they stayed with good ol Cartograf.

Decal Fun

So, a few more decals were 'sorted'. The upper wing is mostly fine, some tears over at the B and some tiny ignorable bits elsewhere.

I did have big old tear on that right decal, but after being annoyed at the underside I thought 'expletive, you can drown' and put a load of Micro Set (not Sol) on the half taken up film, and when I came back later it actually fixed the issue. So, that's something to keep in mind on the other camel at least.

The underside? Well, let's just look at the results.

Yeah, lots of rips, lots of tears. Not sure why this one has taken it so much worse, bad luck or bad skill? Perhaps I only gave the underside one gloss coat and forgot to give it a second? Either way I'll have some. Fun fixing that mess later, after more clear coats of course.

So what have we learnt? Removable film isn't reliable, but we knew that already. We can fix them if we drown the decal with setter solution if we see a rip, which is handy but I wish I thought of that before resigning myself to the fate of the underside. Personally, I think that the decals just don't particularly like raised surfaces. Aside from the left fuselage B, the majority of the fuselage issues are around the raised areas. The wings, of course, are full of raised decals. Maybe its just bad luck but I didn't have these issues with the Spitfire build.

Aluminium and Wood Work

In other, less frustrating news, I was about to lay down decals on the fuselage when I remembered I needed to actually finish painting it. So I masked off the metal section at the front (plus the cowl) and painted it in MRP White Aluminium.

Once this dried, I masked and painted the wood. I would have used Tamiya XF-10 flat brown but I used the last of it on the brown camel, so I mixed up XF-64 Red Brown, MRP Black and a tad of MRP red to make a colour roughly similar (of note is that Tamiya's XF-10 is darker, and actually a little bit more red, than XF-64).

I used this as a base and then got the MIG oilbrusher dark brown out and applied it with a sponge to make streaks, then using a small flat brush I brushed across the surface too. From a quick jump into the Google images it seems quite a few Camels that popped up have the wood grain facing horizontal quite often, so I did that, though I'm sure many had vertical grain.

And finally, more decal fun. The wings got the start of the roundels which will hopefully work far better this time, fingers crossed. At least this kite doesn't have a lot of decals to contend with, just a serial, the roundels and then finally a couple of markings near the fuel port.

I've also started on the prop by painting XF-59, but realised it would be easier to do the painted sections of the wood prop first which the instructions of this and WNW say is a light grey. I'm half tempted to give the blue one a blue prop, can't prove me wrong very easily can ya! We shall see.

Great progress, Harvey @scalerambush
Indeed a pity about those decals.

Thank you two! Thankfully, better success with Suds. A fair bit has been done since last!

More Decals

Not a lot of decals for the blue one, this time I went for the kill and used Mr. Mark Setter, and Mr. Mark Softener. I even went out and got some Tamiya Mark Fit strong.

And it worked, the film was harder to get to but no issues with the decals this time thankfully. Most even looked fine with the film, though the roundel on the wing looked weird over the aileron and the serials really showed the thick film quite a lot.

With that, I built the undercarriage. It's not perfect and needs touch ups, but it begins to make the aircraft look right. I also got round to fixing those broken decals on the brown camel with the airbrush and regular brush.

Struts and Assembly

Next up was to think about turning our monoplane into a biplane. The lower wings that were dry fitted previously were glued in, and then those struts done at the very beginning were added.

For the brown camel I began to prepare for the dreaded stage of rigging. Rigging wire was dipped into superglue, then put into the moulded holes mostly on the lower wing. A few wires were added to the upper wing. I then began my first attempt of assembling the upper wing to the model.

This didn't go too well. Let's look at why. On previous WWI models I've done I put some glue on the upper wing in each of the strut locations, then using a box to help align everything I try to put every strut into the upper wing at once, applying pressure whilst they dry before adding a weight (in this case, paint pots) to keep it down whilst it dries for a while.

This caused a lot of issues, mostly with the wing struts not fully sinking into the holes in the upper wing. This resulted in the wing being very weak. Eventually I got it to work, but it took a lot of effort.

Annoyed with this, I tried a different method immediately with the blue camel. For this one, I started by gluing the fuselage struts on, weighing them down to and letting it dry solid. About an hour later, I glued the wing struts on. This resulted in a far better and stronger join, and is definitely the better way of doing it.

I think a possible reason for trouble is the dihedral on the lower wing, if both wings were flat it may be better to do all struts at the same.

An Entry to Rigging

This is where the fun begins. Oh boy.

Actually, it's not been too bad. Tedious? Yes. Slow? Yes. Difficult? Not really so far, just a couple of wires that really didn't want to stick.

With all the wires for the wings mostly on the lower wing, I then stretched the wire and held it in place with tape whilst I let it glue onto the upper wing.

So far the wings are done, but some struts over the fuselage are needing doing. They should join together in a cross with a brace in the centre, but the plastic piece is horribly slip moulded and I'm not sure it would even really work out since it isn't hollow. I may ignore this piece.

I also need to do the tail, and the various control wires.

Beautifully done, Harvey @scalerambush
Maybe I missed it, but did you protrude the rigging wire through the upperwing? I do see tape on top of that wing so looks like the wire goes entirely through that wing.

If you make the wires for the cross brace four separate pieces (you kind of have to anyway if you look at the different angles they're supposed to be) you can glue them to that central piece and have all look right.

This is a huge WOW, Harvey @scalerambush
Everything is detailed to the max.
Your paintwork, weathering, detailing is true craftsmanship.

Definitely a huge Wow! @scalerambush. This is a really nice result you have here.