Louis, @lgardner, you are doing some incredible scratch building for those wheel wells. When you get those finished and all painted up, it will look spectacular. I know how time is, I waste too much of it at times and other times can find any, but remember you eat an elephant one bite at a time. It will get done.

Nice progress, my friend @luftwaffe-birdman!

Really nice job on these components for the gear bay, Louis (@lgardner). I keep imagining how well this section will look when completed, painted, and weathered. I have also tried to create evenly spaced holes in a line and finally settled for a wavy line of unevenly spaced holes. Well done getting these done so well. I have never used a riveter, so I am interested to see how it goes for you. Take care of yourself, Louis. Cheers.

Moving forward a bit, I did the wash on the upper surfaces, using Burnt Umber, Raw Umber and Lamp Black, with Raw Umber being the predominant one used, except around the nacelles where I brought in more Lamp Black. I wish the pictures could do it justice but the wash really made a big difference. Tomorrow hopefully the bottom and then I can start working on the exhaust streaking and staining. The wheels I did with some ground powders mixed in some Mona Lisa. I am not happy with the color, I will try to lighten up the dust in the treads with some lighter brighter shades.

4 attached images. Click to enlarge.

The washing did turn out really great, Walt @luftwaffe-birdman
After lighten up the tyres, they will look just fine.

Well as hoped for, I was able to put the wash on the bottom of the plane tonight. This time I used a little Raw Umber, Ivory Black, and Paynes Gray. Most of the bottom I used Paynes Gray as it darkens the panel lines and compliments the Neutral Gray bottom of the plane. I used more of the Ivory Black and Raw Umber around the engine nacelles as they are going to get dirtier and grimier then the rest of the plane.

When I had one wing and the bottom of the fuselage done I took a step back and actually looked at what was happening, and you can see in the picture how much different both the two wings look.

I also took some pinkish chalk and ground it up and added it to the wheels, and the color comes close to matching the plane. The pictures I have show that the soil was pretty close to the plane color so the wheels should also be close to the plane color. These are close but clearly different and I think it works nicely, already sealed with flat coat.

Great work on the lower surface of that one wing, Walt @luftwaffe-birdman
Tires do look great as well.

Well last night I sprayed the plane with Dullcote. I noticed almost immediately that the Dullcote when it dried seemed to change the color. I don't think it changed the color but now that it was flat the reflected light changed and the plane seemed to become lighter and in my mind better.

Tonight after getting home late from work, having dinner, and making a cocktail, I decided to add staining from the engines onto the wing tops. Pictures seem to indicate that Pratt & Whitney R-1830 engines were cleaner then the B-17's Wright R-1820 Cyclone engines. Still the tops of the wings were subject to staining. I have some pictures from Bert Kinzey's "B-24 Liberator Detail in Scale" showing well stained wing tops. The best picture occurs on page 35.

I didn't want to go too dark because the real plane didn't show super dark streaking, but I want to take some artistic license here to add to the appearance of the plane. I am pretty happy with how it turned out. The original color still comes thru, more so than when I did my B-17 which I was also pretty happy with.

All in all it is moving along nicely and may I add the cocktail was excellent.