These are pics of my almost finished, 1/32 scale, Hasegawa Ju87G-2. Sorry about the screw up with the multiple photo copies. Learning to delete those will be my next project. To the matter at hand.
See the problem? The decal for the spiral on the nosecone didn’t make it. So now what do I do? As you can see, my modeling skills aren’t the worst in the world (especially compared to my computer skills), I airbrushed all the yellow and camo and the canopy. Anybody ever painted one of these spirals? Or made a decal? I have white decal paper. How did you go about masking/painting or making the decal? Anyone that can help will be my hero for at least 20 minutes.
Do you mean the spiral that was painted on the propeller spinner?
I would sugest you maybe mask the blades and paint the spinner in the colour the spiral is. Then cut thin strip as wide as the spiral should be from fine line masking tape and stick it on where the spiral must be.Because it is so narrow it should conform well to the spinner.
If you paint over the whole thing in the color it must be and remove the masking spiral it should work ok.
Love the build. If you really want the spiral I’d be tempted to contact Hasegawa and try to get a new decal set from them. To mask a spiral would be a nightmare, from memory of building a 109 with a spiral its not the same width so you’d need to figure out how to increase the width as you get closer to the fuselage, if you can do that you truly have my respect.
Save your sanity and try Hasegawa first or accept that not all Stuka’s had the spiral and getting it wrong would spoil a great build
Thanks, Guys. All good ideas, and I found an email address for hasegawa so we’ll try that first. Now I see how the stripe does get thicker as it nears the base, and that would be a nightmare. However, I did find a shot of an actual nosecone on the internet and this guy was saying the spiral was usually painted on by hand and in his photo you could really tell some young tech just slapped it on with a brush. Has anyone ever heard of that, or seen similar photos? I think my brush skills might be enough to get away with that if I can’t get a new decal. I can’t seem to find any aftermarket decak sets for a Ju87 that has a spiral decal, either.
You might try to make a rotary stand of sorts that you can mound the spinner on and slowly rotate while just moving the brush up. This will certainly give a “brush painted” look to it.
Just like Allied invation stripes, they were pretty darn roughly applied at first, not nearly as neat as modlers make them LOL.
Thanks, Mike. I did get lazy with the canopy and didn’t apply RLM66 first but you can’t really see the inside of the framework so I’ve forgiven myself, and there should be a couple places where it’s lighter green and that I may try to correct. I found it was much easier to break the canopy painting into three sessions, first painting the borders of all four pieces, then the vertical stuff and then the horizontal frame pieces. It went a lot slower but the frustration level was much lower and it didn’t come out too badly. By breaking it down like that I was able to use much more of the edge of the tape and kept my cuts to a minimum. I think the fewer cuts the better when it comes to masking clear stuff. Here’s a pic of what I mean. By doing just a few lines at a time it’s much more managable and easier for an old fossil like me.
And I like your idea of a rotary stand, Theuns (that’s an unuasual name. I’d be interested to know more). The prop isn’t permanently attached so it should work fine like that. I want to try and come up with something to practice on and see how that goes. And I completely agree that a lot of this stuff was much cruder than we re-create it. I’m really trying to improve my weathering skills and I’m very, very slowly dirtying up this Ju87 a bit.
There are spiral decals for airliner engines, maybe you can get one of those or copy, then enlarge/reduce it as necessary to make a pattern for a mask.
Theuns is from roman / dutch heretage as I understand it.
My surname “van Vuuren” in dutch history means “he who keeps fire” or “lighthouse keeper”.
My granddad’s father came to South Africa from Holland , married a girl with german blood (dad’s side of family)
My mother’s side of the family has english and scottich blood, all of this mixed in to result in me LOL!
We truly are a nation of many difference here in SA ,heck we have 9 official langueges (bu my poor spelling you can see english is not my home “speak” LOL )
I am sure the rotary stand will serve your needs well, gool luck with it.
