Hi Everyone,
Starting another campaign, so starting another blog, this time the ICM Dornier Do215. The kit is for the B-4 version, but also has parts on the sprue for the B-1 and Dornier Do-17 Kauz I models.

My main inspiration for which bird to build is this photo:

You can see that the plane appears to be heavily faded with dark blotches that could be stains, or patchwork painting. Even the propeller blades appear to have lost substantial amounts of paint.
Here are some other photos of Herr Generalfeldmarschall and his Dornier.


This last one could be anyone in a White Schirmmütze peering down the the Beetle's eye of the Do 215

Except the above photos, I haven't been able to find any anecdotal evidence regarding the plane. I don't know the fuselage codes, nor do I know if he used the same one all of the time. So, for some things we'll stipulate that some things are fictional.
Here is the box and sprue shot. The parts aren't numbered on the sprue, and the instructions are... well, a picture is worth a thousand words:

Honestly, I think drawings would have been better than using photocopied pictures. Placing the parts is a challenge since the pictures are so vague.
The kit is some parts brilliant, and some parts eh...not so much.

Many of the panel lines are faint and not straight, or well defined.

Dymo tape and the UMM scriber. I couldn't find a vendor here in Australia for the UMM scriber, so had to buy it straight from the manufacturer in the US. In a few guided strokes, it does better than a combination of pins and knife blades. Scribing has always been something I considered a personal failure, but now I can do it with a lot more confidence.
I generally prefer my fuselage in two halves.

The interior is RLM 02 white khaki meshed seats, all with a light dry brushing in white. Seat belts to come later.
I really had to scratch away a lot of plastic to get the lower hull window to sit close to level.


Now here is what I think is brilliant about this kit.

Instead of putting the chairs on some floor that never existed in the type, they made it hollow with the separate seats attached to the fuselage sides as it must have been done in real life.

Thank you for looking!

Edit: Silly me, I talked about the sprue shot, but it didn't get into the thread.


Sorry bout that!

Gary

Hi Gary,
the rate of production impresses me.

You gotte love the lines of the "flying pencil".
Good luck with it! I am curious what you make out of it now you cant foil her :-).

gr TC

Hi Lars,
I loved model building as a teen. Then, being an adult in the USMC and chasing women took me from the hobby. Now, much older, I can return to my first love with money and devotion. My wife is a late sleeper and is only a little jealous of my hobby, so I have some time almost every day to spend on building.

I always liked the shape of the Dorniers. The earliest versions look like twin engined racers! And I do have a book with pictures of them in an unpainted state...lol

This will be an unusual departure for Luftwaffe aircraft. In general, we see that they are well taken care of with no paint chipping. However, this plane after serving for at least four years of long range reconaissance, became a liaison plane. The color picture above gives me license to make it look faded and war-weary.

It should be fun!

Bw,
Gs

Well good luck with the weathering. I Always like a model with good weathering I am curious what you make of it.

I am still in the fase of a busy job, 2 kids and ofcourse my wife and friends to attend to. So some evening I make alot of progress some other I do just a little to nothing. But key to modeling is having fun isnt it :-). And as long as I dont make the same mistake as some years back (building up a huge unbuild stash) you wont see my wife complain lol

gr TC

Hello everyone,
...and thank you Lars. I've spent the last while putting together the main parts and getting rid of visible seams as well as re-scribing lines, re-doing the lines where I made mistakes, and finally buttoning the main assembly up.

And, just to make things more difficult for myself I decided that among other things, I would scratch some MG-15's. The kit MG's look alright, but they are very thin plastic affairs that I don't think would look complete on the model.

Clean barrels look right on most other planes, but on a German bomber, they've got to have that large ring sight.


So, I made them from brass tube, brass rod, and the gun training wheels from a 1/350 scale destroyer I built a year ago. Here are two guns I've completed so far. They're not perfect, but they're so tiny at this scale, that I'm lucky to have assembled them at all.


On the plane, I've drilled 2mm holes in the appropriate pieces of windscreen through which the guns will hang out of once I'm done with everything else. You'll note that the windows aren't exactly clear. You should have seen them before I gave them two dips in Future.


This kit has certainly made me wary of further ICM purchases. I got curious yesterday after fighting this plane for a few days and looked up reviews on all of their stuff I'd consider buying. They all seem to have the same faults.


I tried to take pictures of the guns by themselves on a surface with no details. The problem was that my phone couldn't find anything on which to focus, so I had to stick them with the plane. Then of course, I enlarged em for viewing.

Eduard actually makes resin guns in 1/72 scale for German planes. Two guns cost 15 bucks. They look really nice, but I just can't justify paying that much for something that small...plus postage!

Thanks for looking!

The guns look nice!
That was a good go.

gr TC

Thanks Lars!

Hi Everyone,
The true joy of of building greenhouse canopy models...the masking of the canopy.


I used the high-risk canopy masking method.
1. apply strip of tape.
2. burnish it down snug.
3. cut away at frame, hoping not to go all of the way through.
4. move on and repeat.

Thankfully I have a book on the Do17 and 215 with useful pictures and diagrams. I discovered that some of the clear wasn't meant to be clear.

Thankfully there are only 59 panels of clear plastic to cover and trim around.
Unfortunately, blowing them up makes it look like the guy doing the masking was not having his best day.
I wonder how many panels Lars will have on his 217?

Thanks for looking!

Gary

Gary,
Great progress on an interesting little kit! I know little about the dornier series of bombers so that is an interesting aspect as well! I also find your choice of subject intriguing too and look foward to seeing it come together!

I was just looking over the eduard 1/72 mg-15s as well. They may come in handy for my Ki-45 build coming up and a bf 110d in my stash!

Hi Mike,
Thanks for stopping by. It's an interesting little kit that has been close to getting chucked more than a few times. It's saving grace is that nobody else offers one that I have seen.
Still, it's a cool looking bit of aviation history, and it's a shame none exist as complete airframes today. Most of what I'm doing with it is from the photos above and conjecture.
I've never tried to heavily fade and weather a plane before, so it should be interesting to try. Hopefully I don't bungle it.

Gary

Enjoying your progress with this build Gary. I'm really impressed with the lovely lines of this aircraft. I'm very tempted to acquire one.
Keep up the excellent work.
tim

Hi Everyone,
Tim, Thank you very much! I want to build more of the Dornier family eventually. I just wish I had more to choose from.

I'm finally putting some paint on this bird. First was to put RLM 02 over the canopy framing so that it would look right from the inside.


Then I painted the entire thing white and fixed flaws. Then I added mottling in an attempt to pre-shade. Topside:

I went extra heavy on the larger control surfaces to try to fill the depths.
On the underside vertical-ish surfaces I added more mottling so that hopefully it will look like the higher-upper sides got more sun than the lower bits.

I still have some Model Master enamels left. For this bird I have plenty of RLM 65 and RLM 70. The RLM 65 has been lightened for scale, but it still looks dark to me.


Until the other day, I was undecided about whether I would build the plane wheels up or down because almost all of the finer landing gear parts were broken. After a lot of wrestling I cobbled together some simplified parts of soldered brass rod to support the main oleos. So now I will have to paint the insides of the wheel wells.

THanks for looking!

Gary

Well, Christmas draws near and I'm having a hot lazy sunday. Christmas shopping is all done, most of the presents wrapped, and even the lawn is mowed. What is a man to do?

Ok...I'll do another update

I started applying the top coat of the camoflage this morning. So, now it gets to sit and cure until until I can apply the final and darkest color, RLM 71.

So, what do you do while the paint dries...yes, sub-assemblies!

Here are the propellers, spinners, and main Oleos:




The propeller blades were primed with Alclad black primer, and then buffed with tissue paper before being sprayed with Alclad polished aluminum. Then they were airbrushed with artist acrylics. After drying, I rubbed a damp towel across the blades in the direction of the airflow causing the acrylic paint to wear off the blades in a pattern that I hope looks realistic.

As I mentioned before, many of the landing gfear parts were broken. I've replaced a complex assembly hidden deep in the landing gear well with pieces of copper tubing.

Thank you for looking, and if I don't get a chance to say it before the day, Merry Christmas to you all!

Gary

Gary,

cheers for Your progress. The Dornier comes out very nice. I will give it a try and do some pre-mottling on my next model, too! Great performance repairing the landing gear. And you have all Christmas presents?! I am out of words .

Oliver

Hi Gary,
seeing the problems I face right now I don't even start to think abou masking the canopy. But to be honest I bought an Eduard masking set... I hope it will make the masking more easy. But I read it still takes you a hour or to work ... :-)

gr TC

The triangel on the spinners look cool!
Nice work on the brass tubing for the langding gear.

gr TC

Thank you Oliver and Lars!
I still have some doubts about getting the landing gear to work correctly. But we'll see what we can do. The best thing about copper and brass is that it joins well with CA.

I tried to emulate the spinners in the photo at the top of the thread. I could tell that they were a lighter color than the back plate of the spinner, so red was a guess. The challenge will be making them look a little oxidized.

Gary

Hi Gary,

dont forget the little line in the center of the triangel and the hole in the spinner :-)

I would do a little fading on the spinner and after that a filter with brown and burnt umber...

gr TC

Comrades,
I am back from the dead. When I last wrote, I was in the process of putting on decals when the kit supplied set shredded when I tried to adjust them.

This was last year when I ordered them via Ebay (all hail it's greatness!) and they were speedily despatched by the seller on 28 December. Ten days later they had arrived in Sydney, Australia. Tracking is a wonderful thing. Two weeks later I still hadn't received them so I went to tracking again. In the meanwhile I had begun a journey of building the world's coolest and most well known tank, the vaunted Tiger I.
Anyway, my check on tracking showed that my decals had been delivered on the 19th. Silly me, I'd checked the letterbox, and every other cubby where the postie (Aussie slang for mailman) might stash them for the previous 12 days and not seen them!
So, here it is, the 21st and having learned my parcel was delivered on the 19th I launched an online inquiry with Australia post. I had a response in less than an hour telling me they'd launched an investigation.
Returning home from work today, I found my decals placed between the screen and storm doors under my carport! I'd spent all night thinking that some other crumb had received my decals and not had the decency to drop them in a mailbox.

Obviously the mistake was that of the distribution center to have found it so fast and got it 'back' to me. They also notified me via e-mail that the parcel was now delivered.

Thank you, Australia Post.

So, I'll be back with an update soon! I'll just have to ensure that no parts from the Dornier or Tiger get crossed.

Hi Gary, excellent work on a very, very interesting subject aircraft. I am getting ready to decal my ICM 1/48 scale Do215 B-4, and like you, I found that the kit supplied decals were not useable. I am waiting on a set that will allow me to combine with some leftover decals I have to get aircraft markings I want - mostly at least.

Just out of curiosity, how did the 1/72 scale come together? My build has a few areas where the fit took a bit of work to get right. Overall not bad though. Providing I can get the mishmash of decals to look good this will be a fairly decent build.

Sincerely,
Ernest

Hi Ernest,
I'm glad to see you are working on the larger scale kit of this same aircraft. Please post pictures when you can.
I haven't had much fit difficulty with the kit. Most problems with the engine nacelles and perspex were solved with sanding and scraping. At the upper side of the wing roots I used a lot of melted sprue to fill in gaps, then finished with putty. Then there was a fair amount of sanding to get it to look right, then rescribing. The tail fits like a glove. Fuselage halves and nacelle halves went together nicely. The cockpit section was separate from the rest of the fuselage which made some things easier when building the pit, but required some putty and sanding when joined to the rest.
It's a brilliant little kit. I just wish it had that polished and precision feel when you are building Hasegawa or Tamiya,

Cheers,

Gary

Hi Gary, I will be sure to post some photos of the build when it is complete. The decal set arrived today, so I can begin with that process; the set is one of the old Xtradecal sets for the Do17 E/F. Some of those decals will go along with parts of two other sets, making a bit of a "Frankenstein" decal set for this build.

I also found the fit to generally good with the exception of the areas I pointed out before, and they were fairly easily corrected with a bit putty and/or plastic scrap. I plan to buy and build the Do17 Z-2 kit in the future, as this has turned out to be good value for the money. I agree that the kit does no "fall together" like one of the better Tamiya ones, so I won't be building it when looking for a "relaxing build" type kit, but it is fun exercising the old skill set with one of these kits. Of course, I am hoping RoG produces a 1/32 of the Do17 family in the future!

Sincerely,
Ernest

Hello everyone!
A productive day at the paint shop. I wanna get this thing done!

I used a product new to me today called Panzer Putty. I'm pretty sure it's the same thing as the Mig masking putty advertised elsewhere on this site but not available at my favorite Aussie Model distributor. (BNA Model World)

In one of the photos at the beginning of this thread, there is a black streak coming from the port engine that hints at a one-time catastrophic oil leak. I painted the oil stain with black, brown, and yellow ochre then covered it and a small area adjacent to it with the Panzer putty. The area adjacent to the spill was left unfaded to give the impression that the paint had still been impregnated with some of the oil. Then, immediately behind the Engine cover, I sliced the Panzer putty right off...something you can't do with blue tack.

Then I sprayed the entire upper side of the plane with a very much thinned greyish-yellow to fade the paint and upper surface decals.

The fuselage codes are purely speculative. AK = Albert Kesselring.


You get a feeling of satisfaction when you are peeling off the canopy masks.



I tired to be a little more adventurous than usual when it came to dirtying up the underside.

The underside Balkenkreuz by Techmod are a litle bigger than the ones by ICM. They do however have the advantage of not crumbling into dust once dry.
Finally another image of the faded upper surfaces.

If anyone has any comments or suggestions, in particular regfarding the fading, I'm all eyes. I'm not certain that I'm completely happy with mine.

Thank for looking,

Gary

Hi Gary, very nice paint job. The weathering looks really good all around. The canopy looks really sharp also. I think the fading looks fine in the photos. I have started using a product by True-Earth to reproduce fading effects. They are basically acrylic glazes based and can be applied either via airbrush or brush. They take a bit of practice to get the hang of using them; I thought my application on my recent Bf109 F-4 Trop build was a bit overdone, but the comments on this forum said the effect looked excellent - and it has grown on me since the model has been in the display case.

Again, excellent work!

Ernest

Hi Ernest,
Thank you very much. I remember your 109F4. It looked excellent. I'm still learning a lot as I go, while trying to keep expenses down.
I'm almost persuaded into buying some pigments as the only effects I am doing now are done with paint. Pre-shading, black-basing, washing, fade-coating, and whatever else I can do to reach a result.

Looking Forward to your Dornier!

Gary