Guys. Thankyou for the kind words, I need to work on my construction and being a lot more patient with the airbrush and finishing sequences, I have had yet another varnish mishap, this time using humbrol gloss and matt cote, and peeling when washing with oils. Maybe I'm just not leaving it long enough. I resprayed the underside and badly painted on the crosses again. Hopefully next build I will perfect gloss/decal/gloss/matt/weathering.

A small update. Not on the model front. Had a delivery at work today.




Hooray. Gonna have to retire the sparmax to basecoating I think.

hey guys, i'm calling this one done, The model didnt go so well towards the end, hitting the model too soon with a wash slightly agitated the finish and i had a disaster on the underside with tamiya smoke ( how do you use it well, it just makes things look wayy too dirty!)

so here she is, construction is an area where i need to work on, as is the clearcoat conundrum






cheers,

james

James,
The finished Me 262a really looks quite nice. Overall, you did a fine job on the build. painting, decaling, and weathering looks just fine to me.

the new Iwata airbrush should really make your painting sessions that much better.

Joel

James,
Despite your painting problems, the end result looks brilliant. There is a nice blending of the camo to go with yo ir subtle weathering. I like it a lot!

As for Tamiya Smoke, I would suggest thinning it and trying to get it down in very small amounts building until you get the look you want.

Cheers,

Gaz

Nice work James, looks good. I think we all learn from every build, either by making mistakes or trying new techniques, so even if there are aspects you are not happy with it is still a win!

Cheers, D

Thanks guys ! I'm pleased with it as its my first airbrushed quarter scale and it does look pretty cool ! On to the next one then !

Hi James,

in the end a result alot of moddelers would be happy with! A fine plane.

gr TC

Very nice work James!

Your new airbrush is a very good one but may not give you the performance you expect out of it.
A few years back I bought the very same Iwata airbrush you just bought and was expecting it to be able to spray thin lines better than my Badgers could and after many attempts with different bottles of paint and combinations of paint to thinner ratios I could not get it to spray ultra fine details reliably.
I called Iwata and spoke with one of their tech people about the problems I experienced and was told the airbrush is fine but the paints I was using (Model Master enamels) were not.
The Iwata HP-B Plus was designed for use with high quality paints and inks used by professional illustrators, paints used by most modelers don't have the pigments ground up fine enough to spray properly through the small spray nozzle of the HP-B Plus and Iwata CM airbrushes. After finding this out I gave up on my HP-B Plus and tried doing some experiments with my Iwata Revolution BR to see just how narrow a line I could get it to spray and I found out it exceeded my expectations and not only could it spray very fine lines it did it reliably, yes the HP-B Plus could also spray narrow lines but the spray nozzle would clog way too often and take a lot of fun out of the airbrushing session.

If your HP-B Plus won't spray fine detail like you expect it to try an Iwata Revolution BR, the great thing about the BR is its about half the cost of a HP-B Plus and seems to work well with model paints.


Matrixone

Les. Thankyou, so far I have had a good experience with the hp-b, so far. Altough I'm still playing with the ratios. I can get a nice line, about .5 mm but its difficult to get it without getting spidering ha! I'm playing with different paints at the moment too. The biggest difficulty I'm having issues with is spraying gloss. Cant get a smooth finish. Either its too bumpy or too thinned and not glossy enough ! Thankyou for your input les, I appreciate it !

James,

The HP-B Plus is a fantastic airbrush but its not so good when using model paints.
I also could spray fine lines with mine but the big problem was getting it to do so reliably which was my only complaint about it. Most model paints don't have the pigments ground up fine enough to pass through the tiny spray nozzle without the airbrush clogging up after only a few minutes.
I tried thinning my paints much more than usual in an attempt to get the HP-B Plus to spray like I had hoped it would when I first bought it but that only resulted in spidering or paint just being too thin to be that visible on the model which is useless.

After giving up on my HP-B Plus I tried one of the other new airbrushes I purchased which was the Iwata Revolution BR, the BR is a low cost d/a gravity feed airbrush that I bought for base coating my models and airbrushing backdrops. As an experiment I tried to see how fine a line I could get the BR to spray and I was amazed at how easily it was to paint ultra small details with it...the key to doing this is simply thinning the paint a little more than usual and lowering the P.S.I. down to about 10.
The painting experiments went so well I decided to paint the next model using the BR and it was a huge success and have been using the BR for the past eight years without a problem.

Below is my Tamiya Me 262A-2a that has a scribble camouflage scheme on it and was painted with the BR, could I have done this using my HP-B Plus? Yes, but it sure would have been a lot more work.


Again, your Me 262 turned out great (as well as the Fw 190)!

Matrixone