George (@ gblair), my two cents, regards your demarcation lines between the white and black. To my eye if I take off my cheaters the lines appear fuzzy and out of focus. The edges of your masking tape/Tamiya can slightly be lifted to create that blurry edge with out glasses. The ground crew made some effort to paint vertical or horizontal lines and went out side of the line painting vertically or horizontally. Here you can use your hand at being a scale 1/48 sailor. From looking at the photos I don't think the paint crew would apply paint at 90 degrees from the line. I'd paint the black lines over the white with a narrow brush and then use tape over the white with the edges lifted or the thread method to get that scale blurred edge that one sees with their glasses off.Some strong work going on George. I make a point of reading your progress all the time when I have it.

Hi Stephen (@stephen-w-towle): Thanks for the kind words. I have never done invasion stripes before, so this is a new experience for me. Looking at the photos for this plane, the stripes appear to have been done neatly, for the most part. There are a couple of areas that are not quite so neat. I suspect that if you were to look at the real plane from 100 feet, the stripes would look like they were painted just as neatly as the other markings. It is when you get close that you can see the wavy lines. I really think I will mask the stripes and then add just a few wavy areas that are seen in the photos. Still working on what I want to do. Thanks for stopping by.

George R Blair Jr (@gblair)
I am SO relieved to hear that you have not been affected by the storm. That is a great thing to hear.

I think you guys are on track with painting the stripes, but I have a slight idea or twist to toss in the mix. I think it would be a good thing to spray the white on first, keeping it a bit translucent in some places. Then you could come back and mask off the areas where the stripes would be black. I would not be too worried about keeping them straight, as this is normally a case of "close enough is good enough".

Then once the tape was removed, you could come back with a small paint brush and paint the edges using black paint in place of white. The black usually covers better than white does. This way you could still get the same effect of having the edges not look as neat as what we typically see on modern day "Warbird" restorations that are perfect in every way conceivable.

In the ultimate model building world, a person could incorporate all of these techniques to include painting the edges with white, so as to make the paint look less uniform and more like it was brushed (or mopped) on.

I quit storing my models in the garage for the same reason that you added a small AC unit for. The temperatures were getting fairly hot out there during summer time. So I moved them back into our home to protect them from the heat.

Unfortunately, all of my built / completed models are out there in my display cases. So far the only casualty was a 1/48 scale AMT A-20 Havoc. I was building it up with a bare metal foil finish, and it was parked directly in front of the mirrored back wall of one display case. Typically this would not be a problem. However on this day it was HOT ! we had the door open and the model was in the direct sunlight for several hours. The sun beating down on the model, and then being reflected back onto it again from the mirror, which caused the foil to bubble up in several places. I have never had anything like this happen before.

I learned a huge lesson from this and now we no longer have the garage door open for any extended length of time when it is hot outside. If the door will be open for any length of time, I always make sure the display cases are not in direct sunlight.

You just made my day when you said everything was OK at your place after the hurricane passed through. I'm certain that others who live closer to the Gulf Coast were not so lucky.

I look forward to seeing your next post. 🙂

Today it was time to paint the camo on the top of the plane. The camo was standard mid-war British camo of dark green and dark gray. Painting camo has always been tough for me. I have tried gree-handing the camo, but it has lots of overspray and generally doesn't look very good. For my last several models with camo, I have created masks out of painter's tape and masked the camo. I thought I might give free-handing another try today.

At the same time, I wanted to experiment with some new paint. My favorite, go-to paint is Tamiya, but there is a limited number of colors. My next favorite was AK Real Colors, which were basically the same as Tamiya, but with a huge range of colors. Then several months ago, I discovered that AK had stopped producing Real Colors. Then, several weeks ago, I found out that AK was releasing a new and improved Real Color, with a new "formulation". I had no idea what this meant, but I got a set for RAF Colors and decided to try them on this model. I like the new AK Real Colors a lot. They are thinner than Tamiya and the old AK Real Colors, and the color is very dense and smooth after spraying. I started with the green first, and started by adding just a couple of drops of the old AK Real Colors Thinner. It sprayed beautifully. The big test came with the gray color, which I hoped to freehand to create the camo patterns. I again added just a couple of drops of thinner, but I turned the pressure down to about 15 psi. I was able to create a finely feathered edge to the camo with very little overspray. I think I like this new AK Real Color better than the old one. Yeah!

6 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Very nice paint result, George @gblair
The freehanded patterns came out beautifully.

Comin' along rather nicely. Looking forward to the stripes!

Looking just fine, George @gblair.

By the way, you're absolutely correct about those mini-split. Not just for AC but heat in the cold months. My wife loves the one she had installed in her water coloring studio. Quiet as well.

More painting today. I sprayed various colors and tones of gray and green in an effort to fade and weather the finish. When all that had dried, I masked for the Sky-colored fuselage band and sprayed it and the prop hub using the new AK Real Color. Some of the previously painted gray and green pulled up when I removed the tape from the tail. I am not sure if the paint is delicate or if it was my fault. I used painter's tape to mask the larger parts of the fuselage and tail, and it was there that the paint pulled up. The areas covered with Tamiya tape had no problems. Tomorrow it will be time to repaint the tail and start thinking about invasion stripes.

6 attached images. Click to enlarge.