Chinook - Finished

This one was as good as finished in september 2014, but kept sitting on the bench, because I wanted to add some finishing touches. I wanted to tone down the overall colours with some fine dusting and also add some staining behind the exhausts.

I used AK Interactive "Dust effects", diluted with white spirit and applied with the airbrush. It could have been more carefully applied, and managed to creep under some of the decals, actually accentuating the carrier film. Oh well ...
For the exhaust stains I used black oil paint and earth-coloured pigments. Not entirely to my satisfaction, but if you don't go too close, it looks as intended.

Kit : CH-47D Chinook HC.Mk1
Scale : 1/72
Manufacturer : Revell
Price : around €10 (second-hand)
Number of parts : 126
Time spent : 32.5 hours
Project completion time : 14 months

Paint : (Vallejo)

• Black primer
• Pale grey blue (71.046) - Base coat
• Gunship green (71.014) - Green "stripes"
• US Grey (71.046) - Interior
• Scarlet red (71.003) - Outside + seats
• Black grey (71.056) - Rotor blades (better than black)

Other products :

• Alclad II klear kote (semi-matte) as varnish
• AK Interactive "Dust effects"
• AK Interactive "Dark earth" & "European earth" pigments
• Mig productions Abteilung 502 "Starship filth"
• Evergreen styrene strips and rods, Tamiya masking tape for scratch-building the interior seats.

Findings or issues?

A beautiful model of an impressive machine. Fit issues when closing the hull and later the bottom, but nothing a modeller with a few models under his belt shouldn't be able to solve through patient filling and sanding. The cockpit needed major surgery to close.

I didn't dare use the provided decals for the large black&red strips, so painted them instead.

Time flies

I can't believe 4 weeks went by without any post. It's not that I've done nothing, but certainly not as much as I would've liked.

Where were we?

• The patriot radar truck was being painted.
• The Vipers had been painted and needed a coat of varnish.
• I had finished the photo-etch on the Panzerjäger.
• The Chinook was "finished" late september, but requires some light weathering.
• The castle hasn't been touched since november, when I did some experimenting with oil paints.

Do you feel the disadvantage of not being able to focus on one kit?

So, if I haven't done nothing the past month, what HAVE I been doing?

Patriot Radar

Painting was finished, the entire thing was varnished and decals have been applied. The building instructions only mention where to place 15-20 decals, but many more are provided on the decal sheet. I guess I went a little crazy creative.

Vipers

The Vipers both needed just a coat of varnish, before decaling. Because the Mark II is going to receive many big decals, I sanded the entire body extra smooth (Tamiya sanding paper, 1200-2000 grit) before I started with varnishing.

I've been experiencing issues with spraying the Alclad II varnishes lately, but if I thin it 50/50 with white spirit (or "mineral spirits") it sprays perfectly, more controlled and levels smoother. It does require at least 2 layers however.

The Mark II has been giving me troubles. First the paint lifted after I masked off the side engines. Then when everything was smooth and done (again), I dropped a big blob of glue on it when attaching the nose gear. Some harsh words could have been heard ...

Panzerjäger

With the photo-etch done, I primed it black, added a layer of chipping fluid, then the sand-coloured basecoat. I'm doing both the plastic and PE version to see if all the extra PE- trouble is really worth it in the end.

Chinook

I finally convinced myself to finish the Chinook. I started with a very fine layer of AK dust effects, because I want to make the black and red less "in your face". The dust managed to creep under some of the decals, distorting the intended effect somewhat. I'll add another layer of matte varnish, then do some darkening aft of the exhausts. (and also some dust over the rotor blades)

Also some light dust effects on the Patriot truck, if you can spot it, near the bottom of the side thingies (fuel tanks?).

Detailing Chinook rotors

The Chinook is as good as finished, so I took it to a local IPMS-meeting to show off the scratch-build interior (at least, what CAN be seen through the rear hatch) and maybe get some feedback and/or tips.

One person remarked I did a lousy job on the rotors, while those parts actually look nicely detailed. He was right : I had just lazily sprayed it all black and hadn't put more thought in it.

So, I resprayed the middle in Vallejo black grey, then dry-brushed over the raised details with a lightened shade of German grey. When dry, I applied Black glaze to remove the "Hey, look, we're brand new and unused!" look.
While doing the glaze, I also coated the entire blades with a very thin layer, to make it a little duller. (The same effect might have been achieved with some matte varnish.)

Next up is trying to do some light weathering on the entire kit and attempting to do some exhaust staining behind the engines. I'll be trying to achieve this with oil paint for the first time. Wish me luck!

Below a picture of both rotors. The above one has had the blades treated, the other is still awaiting it's glaze layer.

Chinook - Almost there ...

Not much left to do now, except a few more antennae, not included as kit parts. The building instructions suggest stretched spure, so that's what I tried.

I had never done it before, but have to say it's easier than I initially feared. For a short antenna (1 or 2 cm), this is really not big a deal. But for the longer one, I found it hard to stretch a part long enough with a consistent thickness.

As I soon discovered I was unable to produce anything good enough, I simply took some Evergreen styrene rod that I just happened to have lying around anyway.

Next step : to weather or not? These are very well maintained machines, so I don't want to overdo it.

Chinook progress

A few more hours spent on the Chinook, in between the Viper cockpits and installing the swing and slide in the yard. It needed a wavy line near the bottom to ease into the the pitch black underside.

I spent just under 3 hours on the decals. Now I remember why I prefer armoured vehicles over airplanes!

I removed a few of the canopy masks too early because I was curious to see how well the paint job was, but maybe I shouldn't have done that. The 2 coats of varnish (1 gloss to receive the decals, 1 matte to seal in said decals and remove the gloss sheen) have made the canopy less transparent. I have no idea what product to attack those "glass" panes with, as the Alclad varnish seems very durable. Another lesson learned in patience?

Just when I though I was about done, I tried fitting the loading ramp in the open position, which is really needed if you are to see anything of the interior. You can guess that it wouldn't fit already? It's a weird thing. When fitting the canopy, I concluded that I fitted the interior too far forward, blocking the canopy from closing. Now the ramp at the back won't fit because the rear wheels are too far back? So either the interior is too long, the cockpit is messed up or .... Anyway, I'd recommend against building this one with the ramp open. I fixed it by adding about 2 mm of styrene strip. The result was a bit wobbly, but as the ramp was pushing against the wheel's anyway, I superglued them against the oleo's, making it a lot more sturdy. Both landing gear and loading ramp are now a lot less likely to break.

Masking & painting - Repeat until done

I decided early in the build not to use the provided decals for the black and red stripes, because I do not trust these big decals to sit well and conform to the needed curves. Also, some of the red was not provided in decal-form, meaning I would be painting some part of it anyway. It is nearly impossible to find the same shade of red in paint as on the decal, so I decided to paint all of it. It would be a good lesson in masking.

After masking for the red zone, I airbrushed matte varnish against the edge of the tape. This is just a little trick to prevent paint from bleeding underneath the tape. You basically fill all the spots that WOULD bleed with transparent varnish. This doesn't work 100% all the time, but reduces the amount of cleanup a lot.

I needed 11 layers of the red paint, before the difference between the underlying grey and green were no longer discernible. In retrospect, I should have started with a light grey layer, so the red would be covering well with fewer layers. To the last layer, I added 50% of gloss varnish, in hopes of achieving a smoother finish. I did the same with the black.

After removing the tape, a few faults can be spotted, that will need to be touched up, but the result is good.
I still make the mistake of spraying too much paint sometimes. It's ever an exercise in patience to spray thin layers and wait until adding the next one. The urge to pull back on the trigger and spray away is hard to resist sometimes. Especially against the edge of the tape, this is dangerous and only results in more cleanup, if only I could resist wanting to go too fast.

Next up :

• anti-glare in front of the cockpit
• painting the bottom black, then varnish the whole model
• stretching sprue for the forward antenna's
• adding antennas on the side and finding some thread to rig them with
• adding the wheels so it can finally stand upright without me constantly breaking off the searchlight
• decals
• (slight) weathering?

Post-shading and blending everything

Airbrushing sessions are going rather well these days and seem to be following each other in rapid succession. Maybe it's the weather, maybe I'm counting the days until we go on vacation (4 more days). Best not to dwell on it, in case we jinx it.

I wanted to do some post-shading, because last time, the green layer went on a little too heavy. With a slightly lightened version of the green, last time's smaller nozzle and some extra thinner to keep it all flowing, I slowly attacked the centers of all (well, most) panels. I soon realized it wasn't light enough, so I added some white. Still not enough, added some more, but the paint started flowing more slowly.
Long story short, by the time the thicker paint had left the nozzle and the easy-flowing mix was spraying again, it was TOO LIGHT and I had to add more green. Grmbl-mbl ... I messed up a few of the panels, but all in all the result is adequate and it was a good lesson in patience for next time.

Next up : blending it all together. The green is too sharp against the grey, so I decided to give another try at misting it all over with a very fine coat of grey. Remembering a tip one of you guys gave in a comment to an earlier (failed) attempt, I used 10 parts thinner to 1 part paint. It sprayed nicely but the result was negligible. 5 parts thinner to 1 part paint and we were slowly building opacity.

Everybody always has the same to say about this technique : "If you think it needs one more pass, STOP!" I can agree wholeheartedly, having just taken it 1 or 2 passes too far. I have no idea how further varnishing and (subtle) weathering will influence the colours.

Oh, and I broke off one of the forward antennae. Easy fix, no biggie.
Below is the before and after. Next step : masking for the red and black area's.

Second colour is down

Masking is done with silly putty, because it easily conforms to the contour of the kit, can be shaped anyway you want and is incredibly easy to remove afterwards. The gaps in between are filled with masking tape. I prefer to use regular painter's tape where possible, because it's a lot cheaper per meter than the Tamiya tape.
Then again, the Tamiya tape is THE best tape for straight lines. Regular tape doesn't burnish down as well and paint is more prone to bleeding under the edge.

After the problems last time painting the panel centers (I'm sure you noticed the huge overspray), I decided to give the smaller nozzles on my Aztek another try. I have been experimenting with them in the past, with mediocre to bad results. They're not intended for acrylics - according to the manual - but how else will I do some finer work?
Past experiments always ended with a non-spraying nozzle, requiring several minutes each time to get it going again. I'm not known for my patience, so those experiments were quickly halted. Many months later, I may try again, as was the case yesterday.
To prevent clogging I thinned the paint really well (even though Vallejo is supposed to be usable unthinned) and gave it a go. It was actually too thin to cover the panel centers up close, because the paint was spidering away, but from a longer distance, it worked remarkable well and kept on spraying for the entire session. A victory in one field, but it does mean there's no recognizable shading in the green area.

I'll try to fix it with some post-shading (i.e. going over the panel centers in a slightly lighter version of the paint) and follow up with a very thin coat of the grey misted all over to blend it all together. This is a widely used method to remove contrast between camouflage colours, but something I haven't been able to pull off yet. I'm feeling confident though, so wish me luck ...

Chinook - Time for paint

It took  a long time, but the Chinook-project has reached the painting stage. After getting the canopy in place, I added all the fiddly bits, like antennae, searchlight and stuff I know neither function nor name of.

Some decisions:

• I left out parts 32 at the tail because I couldn't find it on any reference photo's and they just looked wrong. 
• I omitted part 23 because it was badly molded and would just look like an ugly lump at the back of the tail.
• I attached parts 31/38 upside down (also missing on reference photo's), because I'm stupid or blind. The instructions were clear, but I must have had a short circuit in my brain.

Anyway, the only thing left to do was mask up the windows, because after all that work I spent on the interior, I did not want to ruin it with black primer flying through the windows onto my seats.

I settled on cutting pieces of plastic (roughly octogonal) until they fit in the openings and attached them with Maskol (Humbrol's liquid masking stuff), easily removed when painting is done (at least, that's the intention).

Out came the trusty black Vallejo primer for a nice coat of "Don't I look awesome and fierce!?"

I decided to do some panel shading, just because I hadn't really done it before. I always follow the reasoning behind it - breaking up monochrome plastic, accentuating panel lines - but had yet to really try it out. Inspired by several articles/posts/blogs and pushed over the brink by a recent post of Doog's, I tried filling in the panels first, then going over it with a diluted version of the same colour.

I dare say the result so far is looking okay, but we'll know more when the other colours have been added to the model. The colour nuances are actually a lot more visible with the naked eye, not quite getting captured on camera. We'll see how this evolves...

Cockpit repair and some further fiddling

Last time, we ended on a very sour note, with a cockpit looking like this :

A 2mm gap because the canopy is stuck against the control panel

The reason was that I assembled the middle part of the fuselage too far forward and the control panel inside turned out to prevent the canopy from closing.

So, the control panel needed some "adjusting". I have a motor-tool just for this occasion. I ground away about 2mm over the entire width of it, and then the canopy closed easily. I wouldn't say it fit perfectly, as the overall fit of the kit seems to be rather wanting, but it's a hell of a lot better than before.

If you do not own a motor-tool, I can highly recommend one, but if you don't want to spend that kind of money, I recommend metal files, not just sand paper or sanding sticks. You're more likely to ruin a perfectly fine (and surprisingly expensive) sanding stick before you manage to remove enough plastic, especially if it's the harder kind of plastic. I once bought a set of 10 metal files for something like €9 altogether. If used only on plastic, these files will probably outlive me before they show any sign of wear and tear.

Normally, I attach clear parts with MicroScale Kristal Klear, which dries translucent and is ideal for these parts, but it's gluing quality is less and probably inadequate for this big piece. So I used white glue instead (plain old "wood glue"). It dries white, but can be easily handled for several minutes after applying so you can remove any excess with a wet cloth or q-tip.

Tip: avoid the regular cement for clear parts, as well as CA glue, as this last one tends to "fog up" the inside of your canopies.

Lastly, because I didn't like the total lack of detail on the inside of the kit, I decided to add some ribs to "busy it up". It's not accurate by far, but gives a better impression than just bare plastic. Or maybe that's just my opinion.

 

Chinook - Closing up

For the left side of the Chinook's interior I had settled on 2 crates and a row of stretchers to carry patients. The trusty "third hand" helps hold the pieces together until the glue has set. I'm not going to bother providing straps and seatbelts.
I must say this Evergreen styrene is a joy to handle and glue. The Tamiya cement I use glues it together in seconds. That may be because the pieces are so small, I dunno.

A few days and some painting later, this last piece is ready to be installed.

I took time to take some pictures of the finished interior, because - once closed - I doubt you'll see much of it, unless I can get some really good light through the little windows.

And now it's time to close the hull up. Out come the trusty clamps and a day of patience.

The seam is big and will require work, but seems manageable (Keep reading, it get's worse)

I didn't go too sparingly on the glue. When you press the parts firmly together, some of the molten plastic will ooze out. Resis the temptation to remove it while still wet. When sanding the seams afterwards, this extra plastic should have filled all the little gaps. This way, you don't need putty anymore.

The last piece goes on the bottom. Getting the alignment right required some - or in some places a LOT of - extra strips of styrene to make it sit flush.

Here's where the overall fit proves worst (so far), so it will need a lot of filling and sanding and even more ... to get it all smooth.

And the worst part : when trying to fit the canopy, something seems off. That's not merely a gap, you can fit and arm or a leg through it (in scale).

I suspect the middle part (the floor sandwiched in between the two hull halves) sits too far forward. This is because there aren't any locator pins or tabs to get positive positioning of the parts. Now the control panel is preventing the canopy to close. Normally, if this were a simple hull not closing, you'd snip off some of the interior bulkheads until it fits, but this specific part sits behind a clear window and will remain visible.
This will require major surgery to get right. We'll addres that next time.