My current Albatros projects

[Albatroid]

I've been working on a pair of Eduard kits this month and I'm at the rigging phase; first 12 photos of my photobucket gallery are the relevant images. The D.III was intended to be Goering's, but I really wanted to experiment with mauve so I broke through a mental barrier and did a fictitious "Walter Mitty" scheme on that one. Comments and criticisms are always welcome, hopefully I won't trash them during the rigging phase.

http://photobucket.com/albums/1003/tatzelwurm/

[edmondthieffry]

Hello Albatroid,

Very nice built, painting and decaling job. Keep up this good work and good luck with the rigging.

I've just a little remark (it's just a matter of personnal taste). I find your green on the D.III a little too dark (but it's maybe due to my screen settings).

Best regards from.Belgium

Philippe

[Albatroid]

I had done up a custom mix and sprayed a test which looked good, problem is the test was on white cardstock while the model is molded in buff plastic. It did indeed come out a lot darker than I'd intended, but I figured it would lighten up during the pastel weathering. It didn't and I'm not going to worry too much about it, but I'll be the first to admit that it came out too dark.

[StephenLawson]

Greetings Albatroid!!! Its good to see and old avatar. The builds are great. Its been awhile and we have some new members, could you discuss your fuselage painting method? Model On!

[Albatroid]

I use a combination of paint and prismacolor pencils as follows:

Every color for paints, tints, and pencils should be selected in advance depending on what color finish and grain coarseness you're shooting for. As you're no doubt well aware, a walnut-stained fuselage requires a different foundation and tints than say a reddish mahoghany stain would. I arrived at my formulae for these various wood effects by shooting different tints over different foundations prepped with various grain colors on card plastic.

For the wood finish on the D.III, the "Honey-Lemon" variety, I used the following materials in 5 steps:

1. Foundation: Model Master(MM) Radome Tan with a touch of Floquil Butternut to warm it up. If it dries flat it is left flat, or clear matte coated if it dries a bit glossy. You need a matte surface to apply your wood grain.

2. Wood grain: A medium brown Prismacolor pencil is kept very sharp throughout a light application of grainy streaks; here and there I used a reddish brown pencil to vary the exact colors of the grain from panel to panel, and also to create a transition across the surfaces of some of the larger panels. Overall, you must ensure that the density and pattern of your grain differs slightly from panel to panel, however the general direction should go horizontal from nose to tail. Drastic changes in wood grain and color between adjacent panels are not recommended because they jump out at the viewer and presumably the woods used were of the same grade so in photos the grain often looks quite uniform from a distance.

3. Varnish Color: I mix an equal portion of MM radome tan with MM insignia yellow, double the volume of that with Testors Clear Gloss Enamel, and add a little thinner. Test spray should result in a warm yellowish film- spray this in very light layers over the whole fuselage until you get the depth of yellow tint that you like.

4. Varnish Depth: After the yellow tinted "varnish" coat dries, I add some MM British Dark Earth (about equal to the amount of yellow originally tossed in the cup/jar), a little more gloss coat, and a few drops more thinner and spray in a butterscotch colored tint starting at the center of each panel and working it out toward the engraved lines. It's a good idea to allow some irregularities in coverage on the larger panels. I prefer to leave it very light along the edges of the panel lines in order to avoid blending them completely.

5. Once that's dry, the whole thing gets a liberal coat of Future mixed 2:1 with 70% isopropyl alcohol. If preferred, your favorite enamel gloss coat should work as well.

The Albatros D.V had the same foundation, but I used a Cream colored pencil lighter than the base and used a much lighter varnish coat of MM Radome Tan and Butternut without any yellow this time in order to arrive at a blonde finish.

The utility inherent in this method is that if you do it all in one shot with Aerodrome breaks between steps you never have to clean out your airbrush. Leaving the residues from Steps 1, 3, & 4 in your airbrush bottle virtually guarantees harmony between your foundation, varnish color, and varnish depth applications.

[willycoppens]

Dear Albatroid,
Really wonderful workmanship! Your Spitfire MkII??? looks good as well. Is that one side-view image a FW-190 F ( the one with armor plate by the cockpit )???
Willy

[Albatroid]

I know it's taboo here, but my album has some WW2 stuff in it as well since I use to source images for discussions on WW2 modeling fora. The Sturmjager diagram was posted for the benefit of a guy over at Hyperscale intersted in scratching out some armor and blinkers for his model. The Spitfire is actually an early Mk.V in the markings of Eric Lock. Last November I cranked out a Spad XIII and N.28, but I didn't get photos posted. I'd like to post photos directly here instead of asking people to navigate to my album, but I can't figure out how to compress them down so that they'll come in under the forum kb limit. My pc abilities barely move the needle on my quasi-simian talent-o-meter.

[bobs_buckles]

Albatroid,

Great work on both albatri!

If you need some turnbuckles for your rigging job give me a shout and I will send some samples of to you.

I will be posting pictures of my DVII soon! Watch this space!

Bob Von Buckle

Fantastic work Albatroid! That's a really impressive build and I enjoyed your "Walter Mitty" scheme as well! Thanks for sharing your pics...I find seeing others' finished models very inspirational.

Brian da Basher

[Albatroid]

Thanks for the offer on the turnbuckles, Buckle Bob. I would like to try them- I see you are a modeler as well, would you be willing to trade a 'trial set' for some decals or something? Please let me know- and let's see that Fokker D-VII here soon!

When it comes to building faithful replicas I have lots to learn. For years I built models in the vacuum of my apartment with almost no contact with others in the hobby; I spend a lot of time on the 'puter at work so I was reluctant to buy a home pc for quite some time. Once I did though, and discovered modeling sites, it opened a global vista of learning opportunities. I benefit from nearly every model I see posted online, which is why I like to post mine. Both the affirmative and the corrective feedback I receive helps me build better models, though I have yet to (and indeed may never) build one that could be considered perfect by any stretch.

This DML S.XIII below, for instance. I wanted it to represent Pierre Marinovitch, but somehow I got the Kellner & Bleriot patterns stuck in my head and opted for the Bleriot; for all I know it was neither but at the time I didn't think about that . The Roden N.28 was inspired by photos in the Windsock Datafile and in the aim of tricking it out I surmised that it may have eventually worn full 27th PS regalia. It's probably quite incorrect!





These and other full size images of these two are over at my Photobucket album if anyone is interested:

http://photobucket.com/albums/1003/tatzelwurm/