1/48 Revellogram Bf109G-14/AS kitbash Schmittporn

[Slam]

Well, it's time to put my meat on the slab. Rather than making you wade through pics of crushed kit boxes, dog-eared instruction sheets, yellowing decals and piles of nondescript plastic bits, I thought I'd start with a pic of the finished product and then post the in-progress photos. You know, starting out fully dressed... And then letting you get to know me, as it were.

Here's Revell's 1/48 Bf109 done up as "Black 10" from JG5. (Testing, testing...)

Ah! It worked! Okay, I'd better qualify and quantify. "Most" of that is Revellogram. Revell's Bf109 is one of my favorite kits: it just plain looks right when it's done, and it's great fun to hack up, hack on and hack apart. My spares box bulges with, well, spare Bf109 parts, many of which wandered across my desk and were corralled and commandeered in the building of this particular turkey.

I'll add the nerdy sepia-toned WWII fakery nostalgia shot:

Stand by and I'll reveal all...

 

[Slam]

I started with the cockp-! No, wait. I actually started with the wings. If my plan didn't come together there then I'd have to pick another paint scheme, but I'd already rifled through my decals in the hopes of finding a black-and-white winkel just for this project.

I had it on fairly reputable authority that this particular a/c had the small wheel bulges. How was I going to tackle that? Well... Otaki's Bf109 is fun to cut up, too! I know, I know, I could (should?) have sanded down the Revellogram wing and swiped those warts from a Hasegawa kit, but my coffee had gone to my head and I had the needle out.

You see, Revell's wing outline is almost bang on the money. Otaki's wing's chord is too narrow but I 'thought' the control surface hinge line looked to be in the right spot:

Maybe I could work out some kind of jiggery-pokery by removing flaps and cutting stuff up and just getting lucky, right? Yeah, that's it...

See where this is going? I didn't at the time. The Otaki wing is MUCH thicker than Revell's, and the aileron hinge line is a work of fiction, which meant I couldn't just slap Otaki's wing top on Revell's bottom. Oh no....

It seemed like a good idea at the time...

 

[Slam]

After that little fracas was over and the dust and the sweat settled I figured I needed to teach the kit a good lesson. This I did with power tools:

Here's a crappy pic for you. The seat pan was sectioned from a bomb half, with styrene sides tacked on. The floor and control stick are Revell. I stuck a spare Hasegawa instrument panel right on top of the kit part (yes, I sanded first) and thought part of a cut-up Minicraft F4U panel would look neat stuck underneath that. The belts are paper, with etched and wire buckles, the rudder pedals are old Reheat ones and I plopped in some electrical boxes to add eye candy.

Representation, not duplication. I think if modeling is to be fun it has to be done with gay abandon. Place tongue in cheek and go for it! I cobbled together sidewall detail from what I had on hand:

And dry-brushed, painted, washed, shaded, poked and prodded myself into a coma:

The majority of the sidewall clutter is from scratch. Testor's cheap brushes are great for dry-brushing. I use Model Master Flat Gull Grey.

Looks just like a Messerschmitt panel to me:

 

[Wurger]

 

[Lucky13]

 

[Slam]

Sorry for the fast-forward, but I don't have pics of me kung-fu-ing the fuselage together and the wings on. At any rate, I got it to this stage but it took a lot of kissing and cuddling where I'd done the wing graft and dropped the flaps. God bless Krazy Glue and Evergreen styrene. Our cast of characters in these pics includes a Hasegawa windscreen (which I later removed and gave an attitude adjustment), the FuG loop base from a Dragon FW190, ICM exhausts, a scratchbuilt battery cover, scrap photoetch Flettner actuator, sprue for the piano hinge, turned styrene for the gun muzzles, a little spacer-upper for the supercharger intake, and on and on.

I used colored toothbrush handle stock for the wing markers, Tamiya tape for the inboard flap stiffeners, and garden-variety copper wire for the brake lines. I dropped the elevators by scribing through the outboard balance-weight separation line and just bending them down till they matched, then reinforcing the join with Krazy Glue. I love that stuff!

And the bashing went on...

 

[Slam]

That verschlingen windshield! I'd glued on a Hasegawa windshield but I hadn't prepped it just right (you gotta cut A LOT off the Hasegawa part) and now it sat proud at its trailing edge, it tilted backwards and I hated the gap round it. Hey, no problem. Isn't that what sanding sticks are for? Yeah! If used in moderation - which I tend to struggle with. So I snapped it off and started over. This was at least a two-Goon-Show job (I have all the Goon Shows and tend to time modeling sessions in terms of how many Goon Shows I listen to while working) but in the end I won. You can see here how I'd already shot some primer and a first color coat before losing it on that tiny bit of glass.

My supercharger intake needed a weld bead, too.

...aaaaaaand I whipped up the de-icing pipe thingy and that vent while I had the paint sanded off. You can see how much I had to touch up my bodywork, hey?

 

[Crimea_River]

Good to see this detailed sequence Simon. The finished product looks excellent and I'm interested to see the rest of the story on how you got there.

 

[Lucky13]

Looking great mate!

 

[Wurger]

 

[Slam]

Thanks, guys. I'm glad to finally have something to bring to the party.

To that end, time for paint. I tried to mix colors similar to those depicted by Claes Sundin in his rendition of this a/c...but more about that as we go. If I think I'm going to have a lot of corrections to make I shoot the underside color over the whole airframe. In this case, MM RLM 76 tweaked to be a little lighter and a little more grey. The joy of late Luftwaffe colors is the leeway we have in interpretation. But it's a two-edged sword, as I proved to myself on this build...

First, some cheery yellow. I don't bother with designer RLM colors when it comes to stuff like red or yellow. This is just good ol' Testor's Pla Enamel. Applied with the same airbrush I've been using for the past 20 years.

Fresh edge on strips of Tamiya masking tape.

And here's my first mistake: assuming the color demarcation line between the yellow and black fell along a panel line.

And here I am deliberately making matters worse by shooting the black. Testor's MM Flat Black sprays okay.

While my mistakes were drying I thinned Revell's wheels (so they matched Hasegawa's) on nice, aggressive, rough, thoroughly-abrasive-grit sandpaper laid on glass.

And I chopped Revell's prop blades off and replaced them with a set from Fujimi, pinned with brass rod. I thought the Fujimi blades looked a lot better.

 

[Slam]

I masked the tight, wavy line on the cowl with Tamiya tape spaced up (out!?) on crappy painter's tape. I never would have been able to do that freehand, no matter how much caffeine and nicotine were in my system. Isn't that panel line right in front of the windshield just totally in the wrong place?

I shot low, hoping to get a good feather edge.

Which I didn't. I thought my line was too tight. Bollocks. Whatever. I unmasked that schnoz and painted the rest of the upper surfaces. Shooting over the cowl and down onto the wing minimizes overspray on the fuselage sides and helped me get the inboard side of that bulge a happy grey.

I like Model Master semigloss...yes I do...

I freehanded the fuselage and tail. If I get it right at this stage I'm pretty happy but I've resigned myself to the fact that this rarely happens and touch-ups will be forthcoming.

Card stock keeps the grey from going wherever it pleases. By this stage I'd fixed my yellow/black stripes - see how the masking line on the black is slightly aft of the panel line? "Pay attention next time, Harrison," said my old English teacher in my head. That poor photo-etched Flettner actuator is already looking all bent-up.

I hard-masked the rudder. Hasegawa's tailwheel looks nice, I think.

Now we're getting somewhere. I decided I could live with this, considering the mottling was still to come. And the weathering...

But still! I'd wanted a softer line. Sigh...

 

[Wurger]

 

[Lucky13]

Excellent, most excellent!
Looking forward to the next post....

 

[javlin]

I like the style and humor Simon

 

[N4521U]

Inspiring work.

 

[at6]

Quite good modeling there.

 

[Wayne Little]

Nicely done this kit has stood the test of time, it really is a good kit for it's age.

 

[Airframes]

Very nice work.

 

[Slam]

Thank you, gentlemen! I love that kit, partly because I can feel superior to it, and partly because I know I can (usually) leave it better than I found it.

I'll post more pics tomorrow. Today I've gotta take wifey-poo to see the doc. I had her in for some warranty work last week. Carpal tunnel...