Accurate Miniatures TBM-1 Avenger 1/48: OOB
Paints: Golden Fluid Acrylics; Vallejo Model Color; Coat d’arms
Weathering: Iwata/Medea Com.Art “Real Deal Weathering Kit”
A few weeks back I put up some WIP pics of what I thought would be a Fleet Air Arm Avenger. Changed my mind and this is the finished result.
After spending nearly nine months building an eccentric battleship and some armor, I decided to do a serious aircraft. In the stash was an Accurate Miniatures 1/48 Avenger. Wise heads told me that the AM kits from the late 90’s were challenging but very good kits. Worth a try methinks, but there was one immediate problem: AM did several editions of the TBM and mine was the “Bermuda Triangle” :
The Avenger was one of the premier attack aircraft of WWII and a postwar build was out. Also my stash has several USN planes and ships that will all be some form of blue. Needed something else. After some reading I decided to model a plane flying off the USS Bogue. Good history. Bogue was a converted Liberty Ship that became the queen bee for the most successful Atlantic anti-submarine “hunter-killer” group of the war with 12 subs (two Japanese) to its credit with an additional five assists. Not bad for a ship that usually carried 12 Avengers and four FM-2 fighters helped by escort vessels. These groups helped devestate the U-boat arm after May 1943 and turn the Atlantic into a submarine graveyard. And US aircraft in the Atlantic were given a handsome uniform of dark gull gray and insignia white.
The AM Avenger proved to be a splendid kit despite terrible instructions. Originally the AM site had photo builds to supplement their crude guide. A very good photo build on Aeroscale based on the now defunct AM site helped greatly. (The present Academy rebox has much improved instructions and better decals but lacks the very good canopy masks that came with the original.) It lacks PE but has a hefty part count, extremely well detailed molds and very crisp panel lines. There is a very elaborate interior of which only a little can be seen. I’m not an interior guy because my models don’t go to contests and nobody sees the interior. But in the spirit of the build I spent some time there – even made some seat belts. Care when aligning pieces inside is needed an error on one step can bite your face four steps later. (Anyone who has built one of Eduard’s kits will feel right at home, although for my money AM has better fit.) I created my own colors matched it to the excellent samples found in Robert Archer’s opus on USAAF camouflage and colors. So the interior green favors green more than yellow. I gave it a black/brown Vallejo acrylic to give the interior the “lived in” look. The pics below show some of the complexity involved. Frankly I was surprised that in the end the sides fit together extremely well. The engine slipped right in. The wings and tail went together flawlessly, the landing gear was tricky but worked and the clear parts aligned splendidly. In my kits driver error is always present and I lost two clear parts which were replaced via scratch and a rocket which I left off. To atone for that sin I scratch built a small camera under one wing often shown in photos to record results from rocket attacks.
While building I was checking the net for Avenger photos – preferably those flying with the killer groups. I also had a very good version in the Squadron series dealing with the Avenger. It took a lot of digging. Because the TBF/TBM was such a versatile and solid design it was in military and civilian use throughout the world long after WWII and thus many fly today. Many contemporary photos of pristine Avengers in private hands. Looking closely at wartime photos, however, has convinced me that carrier based planes were heavily worn and faded. This was especially true with the Atlantic Avengers. Sorties were many, big radials burn oil, hydraulics elaborate, service conditions not ideal, fresh airplanes rare and planes faced salt, wind and sun constantly – these planes worked hard and showed it. Below are some photos of aircraft from the Bogue. Please note the two photos of crack-ups. One gives a good view of the heavily weathered area around the cockpit, the other a very clear view of the underside of a hard-used aircraft. Also note that Squadron’s artist, presumably after looking at more photos than I have, likewise depicts a heavily weathered aircraft.
So I decided to give the model a well weathered look. I did not want chipping or obviously rust. I did want fading across the board which meant above all avoiding uniformity in the model’s surface colors – make the eye work for a living. I also wanted show smudging, grime, exhaust stains and overall dirt. Except for exhaust and obvious points of fluid discharge, I did not want paint to show airflow: when I look at aircraft I do not see any kind of front to back or up/down movement streaking of the kind you might want on armor. I also wanted to get the panel lines right. I think that panel lines are often over emphasized, so I was looking for thin but visible. However, the Avenger had very prominent bulkhead lines along the fuselage and those we did want to see. And I wanted to do this all on a plane that was 75% white, a color I’ve never employed at anything like this quantity.
We’ll disregard a woefully botched attempt at salt fading – a technique I normally like a lot. I started with gray Vallejo acrylic-polyurethane primer. I don’t like solvents and am very pleased with this product. The base coat was 95% Golden Fluids Titanium White. For Insignia White I tinted the base with a bit of Golden Buff. (It was obvious in Archer that Insignia White had an unbleached look to it.) I used Vallejo Dark Blue Gray to create the USN Dark Gull Gray. Both base colors had progressively lighter shades used for panel fading – this is evident only on the gray in the photos. Golden Titanium White is extremely opaque and I was concerned about covering all of the preshade, so I preshaded the base with after the first thin coat of white was down. I employed Golden Carbon Black which is the most opaque black I’ve ever seen and put it on with a brush. The paint self-levels and thin strokes are invisible after an airbrush coat is applied over it. Panel lines were very thin, bulkhead lines more prominent. I paid a lot of attention to the fabric surfaces. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted them darker, lighter or a different color. The only thing I could tell from the photos was that they looked different. In practice they’re a bit lighter and busier because of very thin preshade. Below is the model after the base coat was complete but nothing else done. (The slightly “off” nature of the white does not appear clearly in this photo.) I was quite pleased at this stage.
After a coat of Future the decals went on and I painted on the black walkways next to the cockpit. (The kit’s decals were late war and useless. Instead I used some Aero Master which I found very nice. Fortunately the Bogue’s aircraft have very little embellishment so some numbers and the national insignia were enough.) I turned to fading, the stage I thought would make or break the model. First I used a filter of Windsor Payne’s Gray oil over the gray. The subtle blue in Payne’s Gray gave the color much more depth. I made a filter of Humbrol Middlestone enamel for rest of the plane with good effect. I dot faded the entire plane, decals included, with oils – white, Payne’s gray, and ocher and let it dry for a day.
To darken the panel lines I broke out Iwata Medea Com.Art paints. These are unfamiliar to many plastic modelers but are used by railroaders. It’s certainly used by rest of the craft world as a visit to a big airbrush site like Chicago Airbrush or TCP Global shows. There’s little for plastic modelers but a wide choice of colors made by Golden, Createx and Iwata/Medea (among others) that are designed to be paint fabrics with an airbrush. They’re acrylic paints, but completely unlike anything for normal styrene use. Because they’re designed to be used on fabric or other porous surfaces the solvent reminds me a little of Future but thinner. The pigments range greatly in opacity just as artist paints do. If you could imagine a cross between a heavily thinned MIG pigment and a Vallejo Model Air you’d be close. (Any art supply store will have this stuff. The Blick chain doesn’t sell the specific weathering colors but you can pick up a bottle of Transparent Smoke for $3.00 and check it out.) The reason styrene modelers don’t use Com.Art or something like it is that it doesn’t hold to a solid surface well. That is also it’s greatest advantage for weathering. For panel lines I put a few drops of transparent smoke into a cup and hand brushed it a few inches at a time with a very thin brush. Over Future, the stuff runs right into the panel lines. Here’s where it gets interesting. After waiting a minute or so you wipe the stuff perpendicular to the line’s direction with a paper towel – rather like a Swanny sludge wash, except you want to keep the paint inside the panels to avoid the directional effect that comes when wiping away the excess. Give it a quick swipe and hopefully it will remain inside the line but not smudge the surface. The most likely difficulty is to swipe too hard and remove too much. Com.Art type paints are extremely forgiving and doing things over is no problem. Removing excess is a cinch because Com.Art type paints are “active” almost like a lacquer. In other words, if you’ve got too much on, put water on and wipe it off. Do it progression if you want to be efficient but you could wait for a couple of weeks as near as I can see. Moisten Com.Art and it reactivates and can be removed. In theory you can do this with pigments – in practice I’ve often found that very difficult. Clay based washes like Flory Pro Modeler Wash are also a real problem to get off completely. This stuff will wipe clean because it doesn’t stick and I’d guess the pigments are chemical dyes and won’t get as easily embedded in the surface as will genuine fine pigments. (I can’t swear to the later, but many Golden colors use inorganic earth pigments and many employe chemical dyes – they’re artist paints and you can usually tell the difference.) After doing the panel lines I used some blue-gray smoke on top and base white on the bottom to create a series of very nice smudges that you can stretch out with the brush – complements the oils very nicely. Lastly, I put on a brew Com.Art calls “old oil” tinted with an earth color and began creating the darkened zone coming from the exhaust and going underneath the wing. OK: the stuff doesn’t stick so it’s now time another coat of Future to seal the fading and panel lines. The Future includes 30% Tamiya Flat Base which gave a very matte finish. Usually I look for satin, but the sun and salt argued for flat. Here’s where we are:
At this stage we’re basically done: just have dirty things up. The Com.Art colors are redeployed with the airbrush. I sprayed more exhaust color along the bottom – this time with the bomb bay doors open and depth bombs installed. The color I used mostly here was transparent smoke applied from varying distances to give some more smudging and just to make the thing dirty. I also did some chipping with a silver, black and gray artist pencils. I kept the tips very sharp and tapped more than scratched. This is pretty evident on a detail shot below of the cockpit area. The cockpit was already painted – it went on with a nearly perfect fit. Put on a radio antenna with some stuff called “EZ Line” that stretches and allowed the odd angle seen. I did not seal the final stage. The final exhaust highlight had Future in it for a kind of wet effect. In general, Com.Art leaves the kind of moist texture you see on heavy machinery: a good contrast with the flat finish. And if I don’t like it next month, I can clean it all off with Windex.
Whole thing took me about three weeks. I almost destroyed the kit once. The final weathering stage was delayed by an abscessed tooth (never model when you have an abscessed tooth: if I would have had a gun, I would tried to shoot my tooth out). I lost parts and committed other follies. That said, the kit itself was splendid. And in the end the model turned out the way I wanted it. I’m sure many, probably most modelers would approach this project differently and perhaps they should. But the model looks the way it does because I wanted it to. If the model is a failure it was not in technique but in mind’s eye. Always interested the the thoughts of others. Pics of a Bogue Avenger below:
