OK. I’m about to start my modeling day this morning (an advantage of being a work-at-home freelancer. The only advantage and a small one at that) by painting my, what?, 700-800th radial engine. And, yawn, I’ll go with the same old thing: spray the cylinders with no-buff steel or some other shade of metalizer. Seal it. Then bring out the cooling ribs/fins with a dark wash, followed by another greasy wash to tone down the metalizer. Ho-hum.
Would one of you fine gentlemen suggest another sequence that could put a little fun back into building engines? Only details lined up so far is the nice PE plug wiring ring that comes with this AM F3F-1 (yes, I’m finally finished with pre-build research. Gonna be a Red Rippers bird with willow green tail of the U.S.S. Ranger and gloss white (I hate using gloss white paint!) cowling, waist stripe and wing chevron with black trim lines. Looks good on that famous F4F warbird everyone’s seen, and not many of the other available 1930s colors: Red, True Blue, Lemon Yellow, etc. will look good with the Green tail and yellow wing. Hopefully, in a few weeks (I work very slowly unless I’m being paid) I get to show you guys that I really do build models rather than just talking about them endlessly. Need to beg or borrow digital camera and install necessary software until I can afford my own.
Back to the subject at hand, someone help me breathe new life into the boring act of creating yet another radial engine. One review said AM deliberately photoetched those really fine plug wires exactly as wide as thick, the theory being that with perfectly square, very fine thinness wires, the application of paint will make them appear round. Sounds good in theory. We’ll see.
Shark,
The only difference I can suggest is to do it in reverse order - but I’m not sure if your realism will suffer. (Maybe you could consider it a research project)
I paint cylinders with a gun-metal type shade - and then dry brush over with a silver/gray mix.
Now the real question… Will you be THRILLED to try this method ? Hmmmmmm…
Chris
I brush on Tamiya Smoke (sometimes mixed with a little Tamiya dull coat) to tone down the metalizer, give the added effect of a dark wash, and grease the radial engines up all in one easy step. Pretty much get comparable results to the process you’ve detailed above.
As for bordom, having more than one project at a time really helps there. Of course that requires ample space. Keeps the ho-hum to a minimum.
Let’s see, more than one project at a time. Well, you see, I have the attention span of a 2-year-old with severe ADD. So I have at least 10 started at any one time. I just wanted this project as a relaxing OOB job that would be colorful and re-introduce me to biplanes the simplest possible way. I want to start building them again, but I haven’t built, let alone rigged, a bipe in ten years.
I’ll try that Tamiya smoke on the engine. Thanx for the tip. Got nothin’ to lose that a spray-over won’t fix. These pre-war birds were kept immaculately clean, even at sea, so the engine won’t be too greasy. However, and I wish I had seen a radial fresh from the crate in real life so I’d know how they start out, finish wise, because that metal on the cylinders oxidizes to a flat, flat – what’s the word for it? – unsheen, nonluster, ultimate nonspecular flatness? – it oxidizes, so it seems, within days of being unpacked from the greasy preservative they store big airplane assemblies in shipboard. So, flat I make it, and a wash to put some 3 in the D, and wipe the wash off the raised areas well to show it is clean. Start I will with MM titanium (for its darkness) or, I just decided, MM no-buff steel. Light flat overcoat. Wash. Wipe. Voila. Well-kept 18-banger.
TOM
Me, being the lazy person I am, and having the advantage of only building tiny 1:72 radial, have my own quick, easy, simple, albeit not with the results you are probably getting now, method. Here it is-
Get your radial.
Whip out the handy Sharpie marker.
Color the entire engine (Or just the part you can see.).
Dry brush with metallic color of choice.
Add wires, spark plugs, etc. at will.
Like I said, it won’t give museum quality results, but it works for me! And the advantage of this method is that it is dry immedietly, so you can go on to other, more difficult parts of the project.
There’s my 2 cents…
Why not try adding washes of various browns and dark reds to indicate fluid spills, etc? Each engine would have its peculiar stains , drips and splatters.
Good idea Chuk. I’ve never used red stains, which would be hydrolic fluid I guess, and I’m going to paint the plug wires Tamiya hull red, which I saw recommended as accurate for the period, although all the real ones I ever saw were black. On real WW II aircraft in museums or air shows, I’ve often seen the, what is it?, collector ring, I think – the part that goes around the gray part of the crankcase in front – I’ve seen that ring many times a shiny, almost chrome metalic. I wonder what engines that’s accurate for?
Here is a URL to the USAF Museum Engine gallery. Many photos of pristine engines.
http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/engines/radial.htm
BTW about the only time you’ll see a really dirty military aircraft is right after it taxis
into it’s parking area. The crew chiefs or plane captains wipe them down almost
immediately and they are washed fairly often. Of course, the exception to this would
be a WWII or Korean War advanced base. They had more important things to think about.
Ray
sounds like good advice all around. personally i paint the engine flat black and then use something light to highlight it. but that is only me.
joe
Joe, you’re the second or third person today who’s recommended painting the thing black first. I have really nice, large-scale Wylam plans for this engine, plus I have photos of this pre-war 14-cyl. Twin Wasp Jr. (I thought it was 18-cyl., but I guess that’s the dad, Mr. Twin Wasp Sr.) and the heads are semi-gloss black, so I’m going to give that a shot, and brush on, what?, MM Steel is what I have on hand, but it’s never been a paint I use except for dry brushing and tiny details. It’s too gooey, even when fresh, and has anyone noticed just how big the pigment is in those MM brush-on metalics? And the MM Acrylic metalics seem transluscent to me. But I’ll try the enamel steel, lightly, over MM semi-gloss black acryl, see how that works. And for the future, can somebody recommend easy-brushing metalic paints for when you can’t use metalizers of any kind? I seem to recall Humbrol is pretty good in that department.
I remember when a tiny company called Metalizer (I may be wrong, but I think the company had the same name as the product) produced these same paints as MM, only with bottles bearing bright orange labels with really home-made looking graphics showing the profile of a Thud on the label. And it wasn’t so easy to come by, so if you had a few bottles you were the envy of fellow modelers. I believe Testors bought out the whole line, because their colors are identical to the old Metalizer firm, which disappeared when Testors added them to the MM line. Except for the Metalizer F-15 interior green color. Nobody makes that anymore, do they? In fact, do they still coat F-15 bays with same color? I seem to recall seeing assembly line footage and all airplanes, civil too, are coated in that blue-green protective coat. Kinda like Japan in WW II.
Oh, and much thanks, guys, for the advice. I’m changing my whole engine plan now. I’ll let you know how it works out on a big double-bank mill. If it doesn’t, it’ll be hell to strip.
Tom
P.S. This AM F3F-1, I have never, ever made such a big deal out of a simple OOB build. I just wanted to make one that no one else had done, but that’s kind of hard when the enitre production run was 79 airplanes, all in colorful schemes. Wasn’t there a racing plane orange-and-white civilian scheme for this a/c? Seems familiar.
Yep - Al Williams of Gulf Oil operated at least 3 Grumman aircraft as the Gulfhawk -(I’m taking this off the top of my head - loaned my references on Grumman Bipes to a friend a couple of days ago) - Anyway, they were painted overall orange, with black trim. There was a 2 seat Bipe (FF=1? - aircraft was seized by the USAAF at the beginning of the war and rolled in a ball in 43 or 44), Single seat Bipe (hybrid of the -1 and -3,) and an F8F. If I remember correctly all of them were variations of the military models - so if you are going to try to build them you will need to research them. Monogram released a model of both the F3F-3 and the Gulfhawk sometime in the 80’s and rhen rereleased them in the late 90s. Were kind of toy-like (move the prop and the landing gear retracted and extended, sliding canopy etc) but with a little research and a lot of work could be made in to pretty decent models.
What I usually do is,
- spray the cylinders dark grey or black,
- dry brush the cooling fins silver,
- sometimes if the fins don’t stand out enough I’ll give them a wash.
hope this helps
Like you did it your way or I guess many other modelers technique with the steel or aluminum with a black or burnt umbar wash (or smoke). Tried painting the engines black technique then highlight the details with the steel or aluminum. It has a much more worn look to them. As this Tigercat radial engine looks prior to installation to the nacelle.
I will follow up with a burnt umbar wash on the crankcase. It looks good and something different. This is the 1st time I tried this technique.
Chuck
Fly Navy
Yep. Fins look good USCUSN. That PE wiring harness AcMin including in the kit is a real gem, and it worked as advertised: I painted the perfectly square, extremely fine plug wires very carefully with Tamiya Hull red (for that pre-war rubber look) and they came out round with a thin coat of paint. And, I have that nifty little aluminum data plate from Waldron to go on the side of my crankcase. Thanks for all the good tips, guys. You’re definitely never too experienced to learn new, and very basic, ways of doing things. And even after modeling for almost my entire life to the age of 48, I’m still very nervous and insecure about my free-hand painting skills, and still fear weathering with anything other than some light pastel powders and small washes.