Wow stunning work as always Robin Is this the same Hurricane in the diorama or is it another one ?

Happy building rgd Martyn

Thought it was the OK looked like DK must get my eyes fixed

Rgd Martyn

Of to Specsavers we go

Many thanks for that Kev, I agree with every word! Another group which were treated with utter contempt until very recently were the Arctic Convoy seamen, sent to risk their lives in the worst theatre of war on the entire globe and then ignored by our government because the country they were ordered to supply with armaments became our cold war enemy - pathetic!

OK then! Photo 1 illustrates the five parts of the airscrew assembly, the ‘prop blades’, the outer spinner with its rear plate, the ‘axle pin’ and the main barrel. The whole thing went together quite nicely with only some minor sanding required at the join of the rear plate and spinner. Unlike the Spits which had the old traditional method of gluing the retaining pin to the spinner/rear plate and then trapping the pin in between the fuselage halves (which is why I didn’t bother!) , the Hurricane has a much better system where the pin is fixed through the big barrel (top right) and once dry, the whole assembly is then fitted into the large hole in the already cemented fuselage. I even managed to do it with the prop left free to turn! Not spin however, it was too tight for that but the ability to turn the blades out of the way made touching up the undercarriage much easier, (and adding the yellow tips too!)
Photo 2 shows one of the main undercarriage legs, as you can see from the ruler, the thickest part of the leg is only about 1mm in diameter, the extension strut is far thinner than that which made using the kit U/C to balance the ‘plane on two wheels a non starter. Kev came up with some very clever means of using metal rods but the only way the legs would be strong enough would be to totally scratch build a complete new U/C in metal probably using brass rod and tubing. As you’ll see later, my method, although a bit of a cheat gives the impression of balancing! Fitting the legs in was a right palaver! If you get chance to look back at the first part of the Hurricane build, you’ll see that there are two fore and aft struts which bisect the wheel well. The spindly long struts which come off the top end of the leg have to pass through the triangular gap in those fore and afts and then the little nub on the end is glued into the middle of the three round holes in the front bulkhead. Not an easy job! The flat round bit at the upper end (with another on the far side) simply friction fit into the slot in the wheel well. I found I had to lightly sand them a little thinner to get them to fit, and then, once all that’s done each leg has another strut angled backwards to the corresponding slot at the end of a little channel. Again, a little light sanding was needed here too. All these bits were pre-painted in the Humbrol Metal Cote Polished Aluminium before they were glued in place. Notice the three arrowed slots in the main leg, these locate over the three bars on the inside of the leg fairings as shown in Photo 3. Note also those two nasty mould marks in the same channel which had to be filed away before the leg could go on.
In Photo 4 the whole U/C assembly is fitted on, I remembered to drill out the tyres this time, (unlike the Spitfires and the unfortunate results!) and the brass rod is superglued in place, it was cut back later to leave about an inch remaining, even this had to be further cut back as I'll explain in the base board section later. The really clever bit here by the Airfix designers was to have the wheels equipped not with a round axle hole like the Spitfires but with a flattened ‘lozenge’ shaped one. The tyres on the Hurricane are like those on the Spits, moulded with a bulge to simulate the weight of the aircraft on the ground (strangely, the instructions show them as completely round!) That flattened axle means the tyres are fixed to the legs at the correct angle to place the bulge in contact with the ground – a really clever little detail! With the Spits you have to glue the wheels on and then quickly get the bulge into position before the glue dries! Photo 4 also shows off that light shadowing with the chalk dust to bring out the fabric-covered wing surface well.
At long last, in Photo 5 we meet Test Bed Tim! Tim was one of the very last Airfix model planes I built way back in my youth and as such is probably at least thirty years old by now! I dug him out of the pile of old models in various states up in the attic and he’s been assisting me throughout this build. He’s had various coats of gloss and matt varnish ‘to see how it looked’ plus some experiments with the different weathering effects, you can probably see that he is gloss finish on the right (the original Humbrol enamel) and matt on the left, a trial of the Daler Rowney ‘Soluble’ Matt Varnish which I didn’t realise was spirit based until I tried to wash out the brush in water! It was Tim being moved around the diorama base which convinced me that there wasn’t enough room for all three fighters to go on in one piece which led to OK-1 losing her tail! I’ve introduced Tim here mainly to show just how much the Airfix kit has improved in those intervening years, Tim on the left in Photo 5, the newest version on the right in Photo 6. Tim’s wheel well is just a flat plate (which probably forms the cockpit floor above), admittedly his wings are the later metal skinned version but compare the raised rivets with the sunken or engraved panel lines of the new model. You might also notice that my ability to sand down the join on the nose has drastically improved from the ‘good old days’! (And I used to think I’d made such a good job on them too!) Going back a stage to Photo 7 we have the two engine exhausts. Unlike the Spitfires whose exhausts had an unfortunate sprue attachment needing them to be removed, sanded and painted individually, the Hurricane’s attachments are both on the locating pegs so the exhausts could be drilled out (a lot more difficult than the Spits – they’re much smaller nozzles), spray primed, painted and weathered, all still attached to the sprue. Painting and weathering was exactly the same as the Spits, a mixture of Vallejo Red Leather with Admiralty Copper and then weathered with Humbrol Black Enamel Wash.
Surprisingly, the Hurricane doesn’t have any modelling of the reflector gunsight, strange since the Spitfires which did have them are a ‘Beginner’s Kit’ and the Hurricane is a more advanced one. It was very easy to make up though, just a square of thin Plasticard painted black and given a blob of Micro Kristal Klear for the projector and with another square of clear acetate film PVA’d in place on the front edge. You need to be careful though, the sight is perched on top of that arched shelf at the front of the cockpit but you have to allow enough space for the clear canopy front windshield to fit on as well. This is shown in Photos 8 and 9. In actual fact the clear reflector should be oval in shape, not the rectangular one as in the Spitfires but in this tiny size, square was much easier! Have to admit though, with the sliding ‘hood’ in place I suddenly regretted having converted the canopy to be slid right back!
In the next and final Hurricane instalment: building the inspection ladder and the last couple of bits to finish her off.

Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!


Robin.

Many thanks for those kind words Kev! 'Tim' will be popping up now and again, in the next instalment when I begin the terrain base in fact!
So here's the last 'proper' Hurricane part, I must sort out the photos for the last Spitfire one too!

In Photo 1 we have one of the little ‘extras’ added on in the completion stages; the rear view mirror. Again, strangely, whereas the Spitfires had a rudimentary mirror moulded onto the top of the canopy which was sanded off and replaced with an identical one to this, the Hurricane has nothing at all on its clear canopy frame. It is just a thin section of plasticard, cut to size and glued in place. Once set it was painted with the usual Humbrol Dark Green followed by Citadel Mithril Silver for the actual mirror. Photo 2 illustrates one of the excellent clear moulded landing lights as supplied in the kit. These have to be positioned in the correct wing of course, as each one is slightly tapered to follow the wing contours. I painted the cut out in the leading edge with the Mithril Silver and also put a tiny drop of silver in the ‘bulb’ moulded inside the light. Looking at some of the research photos though, it might actually be better to paint the cut out in matt black instead with the lens and bulb painted silver – it looks really good either way though, Airfix have certainly got the light lens effect moulded just right. In Photo 3 we come to the sneaky support system to hold up OK-1’s rear end. I decided to construct a couple of contemporary access ladders using some 1940’s photos as a guide. I decided to make a pair of them as I also needed another step ladder to go with the painting of the Dispatch Hut. In this photo one of the ladder sections has been glued together whilst the steps for the second one are on the left. The ladders were constructed from Plastruct 1.5mm x 0.5mm strip with the main uprights made from two strips glued together for the extra thickness required. To cut the individual steps I used my Linic Chopper tool, a close up of the cutting position of which is seen in Photo 4. Note the length of strip secured with masking tape on the right. This forms a simple ‘stop gauge’ which allows the rest of the steps to be cut to the exact same length. One day I’m going to try and make up an adjustable stop which will be fixed onto that red plate and move with it making this great little tool even better!
Photo 5 shows the completed set of steps, complete that is apart from the hinging points made from stretched sprue and shown at A and B in Photo 6. At this point I was still working out which side to fix the steps in to, it could go either side equally well but in the end I plumped for the same side as the armourer laying across the wing. Before adding the hinges the side bar was drilled through with a 0.5mm bit just level with the second step down (just below the red dot on the roundel). This then allowed a 0.5mm brass rod to be passed through the side bar and super glued to the bottom of the step. You can see the protruding end of the rod at C in Photo 6 after the steps were spray primed. With OK-1 temporarily pushed into a block of foam and with her rear end supported on a small block of wood, a pencil mark was placed on the rear fuselage exactly where the brass rod touched and then the fuselage was drilled out to accept the rod. This was a nice tight fit and I didn’t actually need to glue the rod in place, just ‘twiddled’ it in and then rotated the stepladder until it was standing flat of the ground. When the Hurricane was fitted onto the actual base I did however use super glue gel to fix the ladder to the tarmac along with the Hurricane’s wheels.
The final two Photos, 7 and 8 show the completed Hurricane in place on the terrain board. With the ladder painted in Humbrol Acrylic Wood Brown with dry brushed Wood Brown and White to add ‘wear and tear’ to the centre of the steps, the brass rod is all but invisible, (I did snip it back a little so the protruding part was only about as long as the thickness of the plastic fuselage was wide). The mirror can be seen in this shot along with the stretched sprue aerials, the main one of which obviously goes nowhere! I tried all sorts of ways to take a good photo of the interior of the cut-a-way section but couldn’t get the camera and the torch in there at the same time. You might remember a while back in my Victory diary I ‘reviewed’ a cheapie endoscope camera I’d got my brother for Christmas – well I couldn’t resist getting one for myself afterwards and here’s it’s first outing! I’ve still got to fine tune the light output as it’s a little harsh here (looks like flash photography in a hanger!) but at least you can get an idea of what’s stuck in there. I’ve got another pic with the camera stuck right up inside, all you can see is the back of the seat bulkhead and the radio gear! I wonder if I can get inside the Bowser cab!
That’s the last instalment for the old Hurricane, I think there’s still one to go on the Spitfires but for a complete change the next instalment will begin the building of the scenic base onto which all the other gubbins fit!

Until then, Happy Modelling to you All!


Robin.

Hi there Kev!

Many thanks for those kind words but don't worry, with the base terrain, the figures and the various accessories to come, there's a few weeks left to go yet!
That Linic is a great little tool and no mistake! There are a few other guillotines (so that's how you spell it! I just used 'Chopper! ) on the market, most of them will actually cut thicker wood and plastic than this one but they are all much more expensive. I checked on-line and Proops (where I bought mine some years ago) still have them at only £10.50 including four replacement blades - which is a right swizz - I only got two with mine! It will cut wood up to about 3-4mm, any thicker and the handle starts to bend, but for thin plastic stock, strips (like the stepladder treads)or rod you can't beat it!
Proops is at www.proopsbrothers.com and the tool is officially called a 'multi angle craft and hobby guillotine C6035

PS By 'wood' I mean fairly hard wood like Sapele etc, for balsa it'll cut much thicker of course.

Robin

Thanks so much for that Alan, much appreciated as always!
There are a couple of mini dioramas in the offing but at the moment I'm getting back to the poor old neglected Victory with some converted railway figures for more of the crew and beginning the chainwales at long last (or at least once I've found my missing chuck collet I will be!)
Right then, on to the all essential base work!

The basis for the terrain was, just as in the Messines diorama, multiple layers of foam board laid on to a wooden pinewood shelf from B&Q. Kev (Modelmania) was right about not recommending the pine for really large diorama bases, even this one which is only a foot wide began to develop a slight warp across the width (lengthwise it’s fine), fortunately the outer decorative cladding prevented it getting any worse! In Photo 1 we have the foam sheets laid out on the pine board whilst the initial planning is still in progress. Test Bed Tim is filling in for OK-1 whilst the two Spitfires (at different stages of completion) are posed in completely different positions to those they ended up at! Even the Bowser did a ‘one-eighty’ later! The white foam boards were all left over from Messines which was just as well as the thicker green foam sheets I wanted to use were no longer available on the Hobbys website. The two Victory planks down the middle represent the roadway and since there was going to be nothing actually on the road, I eventually altered the positioning of the offcuts of the white foam so that the big sheets were laid ‘fore and aft’ and the smaller bits made up the middle portion as shown in Photo 2. The foam sheets were glued to the pine board with PVA. There seem to be two sorts of cheapie PVA, the one I used on Messines dries to a softer consistency – it still grips well, and I’ve used it throughout the Victory build in fact but I can’t remember if I bought it from Poundland or the local Tool Shed shop. For this build I bought a new bottle from Poundland, part of their new Tommy Walsh DIY range and this one is the other kind – dries to a rock hard finish (makes me wonder if it would soften down in water to remove it?) Anyway, it fixed the sheets in place fine but I did encounter a couple of slight problems later in that when some of the models and figures were being fixed in place on the finished terrain by pushing their brass rods down through the foam, they hit a layer of ‘concrete’ half way down! The Hurricane in particular ended up with half length rods, once I’d straightened them out!
With the foam sheets glued down, the first bit of ‘landscaping’ was to cut out the area of the slit trench up between the Hurricane and the Dispatch Hut. A simple slanting rectangle of foam was cut out and then the descending steps were cut off the scrap piece and glued back in at the far end as shown in Photo 3. In fact, that was all the landscaping that was required (unlike Messines with it’s slope, trenches and craters) flat airfields are great! You can just see the pencil lines on the foam surface in this photo, these are marking out the position of the Hut base and the edge of the concrete service area. In Photo 4, the full base area has been filled in with the foam sheets showing how the centre section has been made up of the shorter offcuts. Although not that clearly shown, the road outline has been pencilled in ready for the next stage, laying down a sheet of plasticard onto which the tarmac surface will be later glued. In this case, the plasticard was cut out of one of the large black sheets that my brother obtained all those years ago from the Boots warehouse skip. This was originally an LP divider in the Plymouth Boots music dept! (See, I knew it would come in useful one day!) This was cut to follow the road outline and to also incorporate the hard standing maintenance area as shown in Photo 5. The plasticard was glued down using an aerosol carpet glue – nice and strong and didn’t melt the foam (yes I tried a scrap piece first!) but has to be one of the messiest glues to employ in modelling, those oval looking spray-heads should be called “anti-directional”. However, even wayward spray glues have their uses as you’ll see later! In Photo 6, the now dried on plasticard has been masked off on one edge and the closest part of the foam has been given a coating of the new PVA glue. This is to provide a key for the Woodland Scenics Terrain Putty which follows, although this is essentially a flat airfield, being completely flat looks very artificial and even in this small scale we need a little variation in the ground to create a natural appearance. I later found that even the slight undulations in the putty wasn’t enough but more of that later.
The thin layer of Terrain Putty has been applied in Photo 7, literally just spread across the surface and no more than a couple of millimetres in depth. The next procedure has to be carried out as quickly as possible; this stuff dries really quickly, at least the top layer does! The surface was stippled all over with a couple of old 1” paintbrushes (actually, not really that old, just cheapie ones from The Works). The effect can be seen in both Photos 7 and 8 and in 8, the slit trench has also been roughly modelled by applying the putty with a fingertip and simply rubbing it along the sides and down the steps. After 24 hours to completely dry out, all the areas to be grassed were given a good coat of the Woodland Scenics Earth Undercoat, a quite slimy appearing acrylic which produces its own shadow and highlight effect as it dries, as can be seen in Photo 9.
The final task for stage one was to apply the base layer of grass onto the earth undercoat. After masking off the edges of the base the earth was sprayed with a coat of Woodland Scenics Scenic Cement using their own pump action bottle-sprayer. The grass itself was made up of a mixture of Expo Landscape Scenics Dark Green and Light Green Scatter. This provides the basic ‘green’ covering as seen in Photo 10 but as you will see in the next instalment, more work is required to escape the ‘billiard table’ look! One thing to mention here, the pump action sprayer will give a nice fine spray of the cement, but only if it is completely clean from the start. I used to keep the runny PVA cement in the sprayer but after a couple of uses the nozzle will start to gum up and just squirt rather than spray. I now pour any unused cement back into its bottle and then wash out the sprayer with warm water finishing off by spraying a quantity of the clean warm water through the sprayer to remove any traces of the glue from the nozzle. It now works perfectly every time - it's like Jase says, maintenance is everything!

Until next time, Happy Modelling to you All!


Robin

Many thanks for that Kev, I love that word! I think we should have a campaign to get our own modelling related terms (and their derivitives) added to the Oxford Dictionary!
Right then, here come the buttercups!

Carrying on from the last instalment, as I mentioned then, the first layer of grass, despite the slight undulations created with the terrain putty still appeared too flat as you can see in Photo 1. This will be remedied in a little while with another couple of Woodland Scenics products, one of which I’ve already used on the Brandywine diorama, the other is a new product which I obtained for the first time for this model. Before that however it’s back to the road and maintenance bay surfacing. Unfortunately I forgot to photograph the procedure but luckily I’d already done the same process for the Dispatch Hut so I’ll use those photos again! Like the hut floor, the basic material for the concrete road surface is another sheet of the 400 grade wet and dry sandpaper as shown in Photo 2 (but much larger!) One sheet of the sandpaper was cut at an angle to produce the whole of the road surface in one piece, although there’s no reason at all why it can’t be done in smaller sections, it all depends on how they laid the concrete at the time. The offcuts from the main sheet were then used to create the smaller sections of the hurricane’s maintenance bay. As you can see in Photo 2, the dark grey section of the sandpaper is the original surface and the light grey part has been sprayed with the Poundland Pro-Driver Grey Primer. The sections of sandpaper were sprayed grey after they were cut out and before being glued to the base. Thinking back I could have simply grey primered the whole sheet and then cut out the pieces. It’s probably my highly developed sense of re-cycling – spraying afterwards means any small bits left over can still be used as sandpaper – yes, I’m that tight! The sections of painted sandpaper were then glued down using the carpet adhesive aerosol again. This is where the messy nature of that glue that I mentioned last time comes into it’s own. The stuff is sticky and ‘orrible and tends to ooze out the edges as the sheets are flattened down in position (I used my old rubber roller which I bought many years ago for rolling out screen printing ink). This time however, that comes in quite useful as you can see in the enlarged square in Photo 3, by rolling the Woodland Scenics Coarse Turf Medium Green between thumb and forefinger, it drops down in little bits onto the joint between the concrete panels. When there’s sufficient sitting on the surface, a quick press with the roller and we have the ‘weeds’ growing up between the concrete. After a few hours of drying the excess can be gently brushed off leaving the effect as shown here.
Now originally I was going to leave the surface at that with just a little weathering here and there but looking at photos of the concrete surfaces on various websites it becomes apparent that the concrete is more of a creamy brown than a pure grey and so the next task was to change the colour a little more ‘concretey’ and a little less ‘tarmacky). This would be done with airbrushing so a simple mask using light sheets of cardboard was all that was needed as shown in Photo 4. With the card masks in position and weighted down with whatever was small enough and heavy enough to do the job (mostly Humbrol glass bottles of various media!) the grey sandpaper surfaces were airbrushed with a mix of the remaining Humbrol Sky left over from the Hurricane and Spitfires which, lightly sprayed over the grey primer produced a nice cement-looking finish. I then finished off the effect of the individual sections of concrete by adding some Citadel white to the airbrush reservoir itself and roughly mixing it into the sky colour, the resulting lighter shade was then airbrushed into one corner of each panel creating a ‘3D’ effect as can be seen in Photo 5. Also visible is a ‘streaky’ effect down the length of the road surface just to break up the uniformity of the previous coat. Once the concrete effect was finished it was time to create a slightly ‘lumpier’ and more natural looking feel to the grass surface. This was to be achieved with two more Woodland Scenics products, the first I’d previously bought for the Brandywine Diorama (still in the process of being “dioramered” – it’s quite fun making up new modelling terms!) The second was a new addition – the Woodland Scenics Fine Turf ‘Grass Green’ #T45. This is a finer version (obviously I suppose!) of the Course Turf used around the edges of the concrete/sandpaper, but is itself a courser material than the Expo Landscapes scatter used to create the first layer. I’ll have to do some looking up to find out what the differences are between the materials, but for the moment the Woodland turfs appear to be a ground up man-made synthetic, whilst the much older Expo scatter is finely ground dyed sawdust. The first task was to mask off the road surface, again using simple card pieces, and also to mask off the surrounding foam and wooden outer sides. For those, short off-cuts of wood, left over from Sammy Two the Ferret’s last exercise run up-grade, were just placed around the sides to keep the soon to be sprayed Scenic Cement off the later to be varnished wooden sides as seen in Photo 6. After the PVA cement had been sprayed over the grass areas, the fine turf was carefully sprinkled by hand over the surface, not enough to cover the whole lot but just in light clumps around the base to create a deeper ‘pile’ to the previously flat grass. Once the effect was looking just right, the final application was prepared to add a touch of colour to the otherwise green base – buttercups! For this I used the Woodland Scenics Flowering Foliage – Yellow #F176, but not exactly as the manufacturers intended. The flowering foliage comes as a net or matrix of fine fibres onto which is glued yellow particles (it also comes in purple to simulate heather). The idea is to tease out the fibres and then to spray cement the whole thing down onto the underlying foliage. I noticed however that some of the yellow particles had shed away from the fibres creating a yellow dust in the bottom of the container. After some non-too gentle pulling around, I managed to get enough of the yellow dust to sprinkle between thumb and forefinger around the grass, creating a nice ‘English Meadow’ effect as you can just make out in Photo 7. If I’d thought harder at the time I might have come up with some white dust too – daisies! The deeper ‘clumping’ effect is seen better in Photo 8 which illustrates the first of the Spruce panels being glued and clamped in place. The adhesive was the same cheapie PVA which here is gluing the spruce to both the foam sheets and the pine base board. The two smaller clamps are keeping the panel both vertical and tight against the foam at each end whilst the big long clamp is removing a slight curve in the spruce, ensuring that the panel remains straight and tight to the sides all the way along. The spruce was sourced from the local Antics shop in Plymouth (soon to be moving from Royal Parade to Cornwall Street for any locals who haven't heard!)
In the next instalment; finishing off the spruce edging and adding the decorative border before the wood staining begins.
Until then, Happy Dioramering to you All!


Robin.

Hi there Kev!

The PVA glue I used is the Woodland Scenics Terrain? Cement (sorry, I'm typing this on the ex-boss's computer so I can't check it!). This cement is essentially a form of PVA but is as thin as water. It can be either applied by a soft brush as I did for the coarse turf along the edges of the concrete sections or, as for the 'buttercups. sprayed in a fine(ish) mist over the whole of the grass area.
There was no need to pre-glue the grass where the yellow dust was going to be applied, I just sprinkled it on, masked off the concrete and sprayed the whole grass section. The cement dries to a dead matt on any kind of foliage or scatter, whilst not as cheap as standard PVA it is a brilliant terrain adhesive and I'm still using the same bottle I bought for the Brandywine diorama years ago!
I did notice that there is a very slight sheen on the concrete where there was a little 'leakage' under the card but not noticeable unless you were looking for it (which of course I do every time I look at it now!)
Highly recommended!
PS. Now I'm back home again, the correct name is simply "Woodland Scenics 'Scenic Cement'" Part No. S191. It comes in a 16 fl. oz. bottle and mine is about half full now!

Next installment coming soon!


Robin