Gruesome Twosome Part 2

 

Here's a project from June - July 2023.

Earlier I posted the build of the Gruesome Twosome - Lee Archer and Wendell Pruitt in their Red Tail Mustangs. Well they needed some opponents so I found a deal on these Bf109s. I didn't build the kettenkrads so they are still in the boxes waiting for something to go with.

Let's get started.

Not a bad kit, especially for what I was building them for and where they will end up being displayed. I planned on hanging them from the ceiling so I wasn't going to stress too much about the details. I ran into some fit issues but we'll get to that in a minute.

The first problem I ran into was this kit is made to be wheels down and I need it to be wheels up.

This was going to require some trimming.

And also needing to fit the landing gear panels in flush with the underside of the wing.

Then I find out the panels are not long enough to fill the hole. This required a bit of epoxy putty.

Then there was the issue of getting the wheels themselves in. The wheels were molded in one piece so some severe trimming was needed.

I didn't really think it through when doing the first one but the second one came out much better with much less stress and frustration. I had to do a lot of test fitting for the top of the wings, shave, sand, and file, test fit, shave, sand, and file, test fit again but they finally came together satisfactorily.

This wasn't really a fit issue with the model. The fit problem came with the tail struts.

These didn't fit very well. They were ugly. I tried trimming and filing one and it really didn't get any better. In the process I managed to break one. I was really worried it would be a big problem since hanging from the ceiling it would be really obvious. But I had a plan.

In the end they came out okay. 

Broken strut on the left.

Now with assembly complete it's time for the painting.

I started with pre-shading and then the green all over.

Then the masking was a real chore. 

Then it was time to do the black-green.

Although it was a "chore" the masking was really worth it for the results. Sky blue for the underside, with yellow. 

A gloss coat and we're ready for the decals.

I wasn't trying to make these any particular historical unit. I just grabbed some left over decals to get numbers in sequence that were the same color. And the emblem by the cockpit was just a random decal off the same sheet I think. They are really ugly with the gloss coat but that's to make the decals adhere better? 

Next up was another lacquer clear coat to get ready for panel lining. At this point I still am not very good with the panel lining process. I was still learning and one important thing I did learn was using the white spirit instead of enamel thinner. I thought they would be the same thing but I get very different results now.

Using the enamel thinner to clean up the panel lining didn't really get it clean enough. 

Still looks terrible to me with the gloss finish. But that's okay a dull coat is next along with removing the canopy masking. Here's the finished product for Yellow Two:

Earlier I mentioned I had a plan for the broken strut. Yellow Three is going to get shot down!

A little modification to the pilot arm positioning, an open canopy to bail out, and some smoke and flames!!!!

Well that's it for this project. I don't believe I have any photos of them hanging from the ceiling. I will take one and add it to the next post if I can remember to do that.

I still have a bunch of other painting to update from '23-'24. There for a bit I was doing a lot of 3D printing and not much painting. I haven't been documenting any of the printing as it's just set up the printer, set up the STL file, insert the USB, press print, and then wait. Not much exciting to blog about in that process. Besides I'll be posting the painting of what I printed so if there is anything special or odd it will get covered in those posts.

Thanks for stopping by. 😊

More Catching Up

 Back again!

Looking back through my blog posts and my painting diary, I came to realize that I totally missed 2022 as well!

One thing that I had been wanting/needing to do for a long time was to repaint one of my gnolls.

Originally these were painted back in.... I'll say 2000?? I had just moved to Arizona at the time, had been way out of the hobby for many years, and had limited paint supplies and space. I got the pair and painted them up pretty well considering. I only had a few minis at that time and kept them out on a sort of mantle in the TV room. It wasn't really a mantle like over a fire place or anything, it was really just a big shelf under a tall window to the back yard. Under the shelf was the TV and video game set up. 

Well the story goes, my wife at the time decided to paint the living room and didn't bother to move anything on the shelf or cover the shelf. "I'll be real careful. I don't spill paint." Riiiight...😏

There were small splatters and drips on some of the books that were up there and one really big blob of white paint right on my axe wielding gnoll! All down the right side of his face and totally obliterating any detail on his shoulder, arm, hand; thick white interior wall paint. He remained that way for about 20 years until I finally came across my round tuit and decided to fix him. My main reason for waiting was I was not sure if I could duplicate the colors to match his brother or if I was going to have to repaint both.

I have no idea what the original colors were so it was all mixing with what I had. Also I was trying to duplicate the painting style I had then if you want to call it that - base, wash, drybrush. I put a little more blending and highlighting in now than I used to. Could have had better lighting in the photos but....

Unfortunately I don't have a "before" picture but as it turned out:

And here he is compared to his brother painted 20 years earlier.

I call it a success!

In the meantime I also had another gnoll archer waiting for about 10 of those years to be painted. He is much bigger and bulker than these two. I wanted to go for a more hyena look for him....

And here's how he turned out:

Not too bad.

All the way back from July 2022.

I noted something about a happy little accident when painting his teeth but I've forgotten what that was in the past 30 months. 

I also finished up a second unit of the Eisenkern troopers:

801st 

That's all I have for 2022. I still have a lot of 2023 to post up. I also need to take some more pictures. 

Thanks for stopping by!

Catch-up 2023

 Been gone a long time. It's been quite a year of life events, not that the past three years haven't been.

This post is going to be a photo dump to catch up on some of the things that I've completed over the past year. 

I got a bad case of "oooh! Shiny!" this year and went on some printing sprees with my new 3D printer from Christmas last year. 

First up is Agamemnon

He came with my order of Amazon elites. That's how long he's been hanging around.

Second I have some 3d print minis from Christmas 2020.

Finally got them painted up. They are heroic scale. I thought all the support contacts had been cleaned up until I got into printing the details. But once they are painted up and on the table no one can tell.

On the subject of 3d printed minis.....

This was my first "Shiny!" moment:

Found a Donkey Kong along with rules for Wings of War (Glory) so I had to do this and play some Donkey Kong vs. biplanes games!

I thought I had some pics of the actual game. They have to be somewhere, maybe still on my phone. We'll play another game to get pics if I have to. These are before I put the DK on his tie so we'll see more pictures of him in a later post. 

Also a minor distraction was I needed some figures for a D&D adventure. So I found what I was looking for and actually printed out specific minis for a specific game. Kinda cool and the biggest reason I wanted the 3D printer.

Mindflayer and his minions. The boss guy got away but it didn't go so well for all the rest of his minions. I grossly underestimated the party.

Looks like 2024 blog posting was a total bust!

This post has been sitting in drafts since January 17, 2024.

It's now January 21, 2025!

Let's try this again.