Sunday 28 September 2014

On the Bench: Citroen 2CV Part 4 (Finished)

 

 

 

The simple Revell Citroen 2CV project I started while waiting for my house move to go through is finally done.
 
Last time in Part 3, the 2CV’s main assemblies were fitted together leaving me with a recognisable, but still unfinished, 2CV. Over the last couple of days I have finished assembly (this was just a case of fitting the glazing, bumpers, roof and trim parts) and applied some weathering to make the car look how I wanted: a used and probably much-loved but rather uncared-for old 2CV that might still be in use somewhere in deepest France.



As had been the case throughout the build, the last few pieces went together very well and fitted nicely. It is easy to forget that things like door handles and windscreen wipers were commonly moulded in place as part of the body shell on older car kits, and the improvement in the finished model thanks to the use of separate parts for such things in this kit is apparent.



The only thing I’m not really happy with is the lights. Firstly, I used Revell ‘clear’ colours for the amber indicator and red rear light lenses, and it really isn’t as effective as the Humbrol clear paint I normally use. Secondly, I was concerned that the headlamp reflectors looked a little too dark, as the chrome plating applied during manufacture had not coated the insides of the light reflectors very well. I brushed some silver paint into the headlight reflectors to try to improve it, but after fitting the clear lenses I still think the headlights look too dark.




On the other hand, this was my first time using Humbrol’s new washes and weathering powders, and I am pretty happy with the result. I wanted the wheels and bodywork to look used and to show an accumulation of dirt together with a suggestion of rust, and though it’s not a show winning job the end result is just about what I wanted. Dark grey wash was used to darken the panel gaps and to make a dark stain beneath the fuel cap to suggest fuel spills, and rust wash was applied sparingly along the door bottoms, beneath the windscreen and under the bonnet sides. Dust was then brushed gently along the lower panels and bumpers.



Overall I'd recommend this kit. There are various ways to build it - a smart Charlston edition like the kit was designed to be, an old hack like the one I have built, or perhaps a racer or a family car loaded down with groceries or luggage. Quality is good and you should encounter no real issues with this kit.

Wednesday 17 September 2014

On the Bench: Citroen 2CV Part 3

Time for a quick update on progress with the Revell 1/24 Citroen 2CV, which I am building using only minimal tools and paint, on my kitchen worktop, while my modelling gear is packed up for my upcoming house move.

As explained in an earlier post, I have painted over the chrome grille, bumper and headlamp parts to make my 2CV look like a bog-standard base model.

In my last post, the main subassemblies – chassis, body and interior – had pretty much been completed, and I explained that I will not be building the engine. Since then, those main parts have come together to make the 2CV recognisable, and I have to say I think it’s starting to look like a great little model. One job I hadn’t done last time was to fit the steering gear: I did this one evening, following the instructions and using tweezers heated in a candle flame to flatten the ends of the kingpins and create a working steering linkage to allow pivoted, poseable steering.

Stance is very typical for a 2CV. This is a good-quality kit.

After that, I fitted the wheels (these still need properly weathering on their back faces), fitted the dash and steering column into the interior, fitted the interior assembly to the chassis, and finally fitted the body over the whole lot. As a result, my 2CV has started to take on its final shape. I also added the headlamps (without glasses), bonnet and grille and front bumper.

Suitably basic interior. The instrument cluster is represented by a decal.

Friday 5 September 2014

On the Bench: Citroen 2CV Part 2

The Citroen 2CV begins to take shape as its sub-assemblies are built and painted.

Last time, I had more or less finished painting the 2CV’s body and all the other kit parts. That meant it was time to begin assembly, and the first jobs were the chassis and interior. The kit instructions, as with many car models, begin with building the engine but I have decided not to bother building the engine on this model. Instead, I will simply glue the bonnet closed and make it a ‘kerbside’ or ‘curbside’ as the Americans call it – that is, a car model with no engine detail. I’ve chosen to do this because despite having spent many hours building model car engines in the past, when the models are displayed I like to have the bonnets closed, meaning all that effort is only seen if I go and open the bonnet to have a look – and I hardly ever do!


The almost-finished chassis, painted, with the interior floor which has been painted and dry-brushed.
 

So, it was straight on with the chassis and interior. I must say that the quality of this Revell kit immediately became obvious, as the fit of the parts is very good indeed. Not only that, but the part sprues/frames have been moulded intelligently: the ‘gates’ which attach the parts to the spures/frames are small and are located in places where the cut marks from cutting them free will be invisible on the finished model, avoiding the need to go round the model touching in loads of small imperfections where the parts were cut loose. Also, the one-piece chassis and floor pan includes a wealth of moulded-in detail including the legendary 2CV interlinked suspension units. The chassis was 80% completed by simply attaching the front and rear axles with their swing arms, plus the one-piece exhaust system. All that remains to be added is the steering rack and kingpins, which are pivoted to allow the front wheels to be posed in a ‘steered’ position.


The chassis and wheels having received some weathering with Humbrol washes.

I recently purchased some weathering washes and powder from the Humbrol range, just to see how they worked, and thought this model would make a nice test bed for them. I have not used these pre-prepared washes before, so I wasn’t too sure how to get the best from them or what sort of result to expect, but I must say the results are quite pleasing for a first attempt. All I did was give the chassis a quick wash over with Humbrol ‘Rust’ wash, focusing on the edges of the floor pan and other areas I thought might be extra rusty like the exhaust, and let it dry. I then brushed a little ‘Sand’ weathering powder over it here and there to add some tonal variety, and that was it. If you haven’t tried using pre-prepared commercial weathering washes before, I recommend you give them a go. I also gave the car's wheels a couple of heavy washes with Humbrol dark grey weathering wash to suggest general filth and brake dust.
 
Seats installed on the interior floor, with some light dry-brushing and powdering to suggest wear.
 
The interior goes together quite easily, again with plenty of detail which unfortunately won’t really be visible when the model is finished. For example, the seats are supported by thin frames as on the real car, but these will be hidden after final assembly. Again, all the ‘gate’ marks are hidden during assembly thanks to Revell’s clever moulding.

Monday 1 September 2014

Down Memory Lane 3: A New Beginning


Having looked at my early beginnings as a modeller in Part 1, then my teenage years in Part 2, I’m going to look back now at my late-20s, when I returned to modelling after a gap of almost ten years.

The Mercedes 540K roadster was my first step back into modelling.
 
Like many modellers, I started young, developed my skills into my teenage years and then life – or more accurately, my social life - took over from my old childhood hobbies. The world of work, and a 3-year stint at university, took over my life together with its attendant friendships and social activity. I probably also thought it was time to leave behind the things of my childhood, as is often the case at that time in your life. However, after leaving student life and getting stuck into full time work, it was only a couple of years before the mundanity of the 9-5 life and the inevitable toll it took on my former carefree, social lifestyle left me looking for something undemanding and rewarding to do in my spare time. Spotting a Mercedes 540K kit in a model shop on Burleigh Street in Cambridge, I assembled some paints and tools and took the kit home. I soon completed it, and found to my satisfaction that a) my basic skills had not suffered too much in my years away from modelling, and b) my more patient attitude as a working adult, now acclimatised to the frustrations and imperfections of daily life in the world of work, helped me to achieve a higher standard of finish simply because I was happy not to rush the project.

The German SdKfz was the first of many military kits I was to build.
 
More trips to the model shop yielded more kits, and I started getting more into military modelling, starting with a German SdKfz 232 radio car. I then took on more of a challenge, and built a diorama featuring a German King Tiger tank with its crew at rest at the roadside, which I gave to my brother as a Christmas present. Around this time I picked up the remnants of my old modelling tools from my parent’s place where I had left them, and I was still essentially using the same tools and techniques I had been using since my very early days.

The Aztek A-470, complete with changeable spray nozzles and paint cups.
 
In 2003 I moved to London for work, of course taking my model supplies with me, and that winter I began a new chapter in my modelling career with the purchase of an airbrush – an Aztec A-470. I had dabbled with a simple spray gun before, which was powered by compressed air from an aerosol can. My first attempts with my new airbrush also used an aerosol can but I soon found this to be very problematic: firstly, compressed air from a can cools dramatically when you discharge any amount of it, and on my first couple of projects I found the air became so cold that the airbrush nozzle froze. Secondly, as you use more air propellant from the can, the can becomes lighter and more inclined to keep toppling over. Thirdly, the cans eventually run out of air! So that winter I bought a nice air compressor from Machine Mart, with an electrically-powered compressor pump and a 6-litre ‘receiver’ or air tank to hold air compressed up to 110psi.
 
A Panzer II was one of my first airbrushed models.
 
After a few early failures, I soon managed to achieve a mediocre but useful standard of even spraying with the airbrush. The many fascinating techniques for fine detail spraying and airbrush weathering were still beyond my skill level, but I could lay down smooth coats on my models. That Christmas my brother received another diorama, this time a German Panzer II in a Parisian fighting scene, and with the tank and the road surface sprayed using my new airbrush.
 

Next time: Down Memory Lane comes right up to date, and sees the growth of a guilty secret - 'the stash'.....

 
 

Thursday 28 August 2014

On the Bench: Citroen 2CV

A Revell Citroen 2CV begins to take shape on the workbench – or in this case, on the worktop.

I am in the process of moving house, and many of my possessions are now packed up and in storage. This means all my model kits and modelling tools are packed away, and even my desk has been dismantled and taken away. As my house move drags on, I have started to get restless and this weekend I finally snapped – I bought a 1/24 scale Revell Citroen 2CV kit, some paints, brushes and tools and effectively started modelling from scratch. With no desk, building is taking place on my kitchen worktop.
This actually opened my eyes: if you want to begin modelling these days, there are some really handy tool sets available. At my local model shop (Regal models, Chatham) I picked up a Humbrol-branded set comprising a sharp craft knife, tweezers, sprue cutters and a file for £9.99. I also purchased some polystyrene cement glue, two brushes (small and medium sized), silver and light grey enamel paints, and mid-grey and satin black acrylic aerosol paints. From Halfords, I picked up an aerosol of Ford Fjord Blue paint and what I thought in my distracted mood was some white plastic primer (it was actually a can of surface cleaner, not what I wanted but it still turned out to be useful). 


This shot shows slight weathering on the canvas roof, and the decent paint shine achieved straight from the aerosol can. 

The build began with one of my favourite jobs: giving the body shell its colour coat. Without any primer I was concerned that the paint finish might not be very good, but I was actually quite pleased with how it turned out. The paint is non-metallic so has a decent shine straight from the can. I want this basic 2CV to look a bit careworn and used, so I will not bother to polish the paint – after all, the real car would probably never have been polished in its life!

 
My new tools alongside the painted body shell.

At this time I also gave the chassis parts, floor and dashboard parts a coat of satin black, and the seats and interior panels got a coat of mid-grey. I then brush painted the wheels, grille and bumpers with light-grey enamel. The kit includes a chrome grill and headlamps and chrome hubcaps, but my 2CV will be a basic workhorse so I deliberately painted over the chrome on the grill and headlamps to represent the plastic items from an older, base-model 2CV. I will not fit the chrome hubcaps either. When I finished painting, I realised that my brush cleaning fluid - white spirit - is also all packed away, but luckily the surface cleaner I accidentally purchased works a treat as brush cleaner, so that worked out nicely!

 
 More or less everything is now painted.

With most of the parts now painted, I used the light-grey enamel to dry-brush the floor, seats and roof. This is to give the impression of a little wear and to add some additional texture to the parts, to make them look more like fabric. The roof is fine I think, and the floor is OK, but I’m not really happy with the effect on the seats so I might do some work there (I might buy a set of weathering powders to improve the seats, which I also want to use on the exterior of the finished model).

 
This is the look I am going for with my 2CV.



Tuesday 26 August 2014

Making Model Snow – and a Sea King helicopter


 
It’s been a while since I updated this blog, so I thought I’d mark my return by fulfilling a promise I made earlier on: explaining how I made the model snow on the WW2 weekend diorama project. I used the same technique to create snow on a model helicopter display base, which is what the photos in this post show. I built the Royal Navy Sea King helicopter as a Christmas present for my brother last December, and in looking for an interesting way to display it, decided to use the snow technique again.
Click on any of these images to view a larger version.


The snow is very easy to make. I can’t take credit for the technique myself, as I simply did a Google search on how to make model snow and came across this method on several different modelling forums. You will need:

PVA glue (woodwork glue)

Baking soda

Water

All you need to do is mix the three together. I found that mixing the PVA with just a little water enabled me to judge the quantity I was making, then adding the baking soda afterwards turned the gloopy diluted PVA into a thicker and brighter white mixture. The thickness of mixture that you create will determine what kind of snow effect you end up with: for this display base, and for the WW2 diorama I made earlier on, I used a fairly thick mixture which when dry gave the effect of areas of half-melted snow. Once you have your mixture (I mixed it up in a small cat food tin), it can be applied with anything that comes to hand – I used a small strip of card. On the helicopter display base, I used some thinned black paint and Tamiya weathering powers to suggest areas of ‘dirty’ snow, where people’s feet, vehicle wheels and a few oil or diesel spills have discoloured the snow and made it look dirty.
 
The based itself is simply a round chopping board, available fairly cheaply from many shops, covered with a piece of fine wet & dry sandpaper cut to size to represent tarmac. I applied the snow onto this, weathered it as described above, then secured the helicopter to the base. It is not based on any real location, but is supposed to represent a dispersal somewhere around Stanley in the Falkland Islands.


The helicopter kit used here is the old Airfix Sea King AEW Mk2 kit, which is supposed to represent a submarine hunter complete with a large radome built onto the starboard side. I didn’t want to make mine a sub-hunter, as the one my brother had flown in was a regular RAF chopper, so I didn’t add the radome or other anti-sub gubbins. The kit itself is really showing its age and posed a number of problems during construction: the fuselage halves fitted together rather poorly, requiring a lot of filler to smooth out the gaps, and the cockpit glazing and nose area didn’t fit together well either, so more filler was needed there. Also, kit manufacturing was not very advanced back when this kit was designed, so the complex nose windows have over-thick frames and are therefore the wrong shape. Following other people’s lead, I helped to disguise the incorrect nose windows by adding painted-on black surrounds to the windows, giving the illusion of larger windows with fine frames.
 
The overhead cockpit windows were tinted green with translucent paint, representing the tinted windows on the real craft, and with the windows masked off using masking fluid, the whole model was given a coat of grey paint to match Navy Sea Kings of the early 1990s. I must say that the masking fluid did not work well, requiring quite a lot of touching in after I finally managed to remove it from the glazing. I will need to find a better solution for future projects. After final painting and a coat of Johnson Klear floor wax to seal the decals and add a slight sheen, I used Tamiya weathering powders to add some subtle staining and grime to the Sea King. Also, many photos of real Sea Kings I managed to find showed that when parked, they tend to have large removable red plugs in the engine air intakes and exhaust, so I made some from scrap plastic, painted them red and attached them to the model.