This
was done as part of a Battle of Britain Campaign at Armorama.
I had been wanting to make a Luftwaffe aircraft for quite some time, and when
this came along, I thought it was a perfect opportunity to build one of the kits
that has been in my stash for quite some time. I also wanted to make a plane
that was different, and given my penchant for toothy nose art, I settled upon
the Bf-110 Zerstorer from Italeri. Little did I know that it would reduce me to
a near wreck by the time I completed it, since I had to go out of my way near
the death to get it completed in time, base and all!
The kit and some
history
I
first started out looking for some reviews and references of this kit on
the Net, since I have a limited set of reference books on WWII Planes. I
came across a In-Box review of this kit at the SMARK
site, where I discovered that the camouflage and decals as given in the
kit were contrary to existing historical data. Ultimately I decided on
making a Bf110 of 6 Staffel ZG76, which is available on the box as art.
The markings of the plane were decided upon as M8+CP. The picture on the
right was picked off the Net, showing box art of a 1/48 scale Zerstorer
chewing off the tail of a Hurricane.
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Overall,
the fit of the kit is a very good one, and most of the parts do go together
without any problems. It has raised panel lines, which may not make it very
popular among the modeling crowd. However there are some missing parts in the
sprues, which are there in the instruction sheet. The decals, although of good
quality, do have some problems. The M8 and CP are bundled together, and thus
need to be cut apart for placement on the fuselage. Also, there is film even
embedded within the letters, and needs to be cut out carefully at the time of
application.
The
canopy presented its own fair share of problems, being in 5 different parts.
These consist of a forward piece, two side windows, one to cover the gap between
the sides, and a longish rear section. The number of small fiddly bits and bobs
is also less, giving less headaches at time of assembly.
Starting off
with the cockpit
At the
beginning, let me mention here that I have not used any of the commercial model
paints like MM/Tamiya/Humbrol/etc, for the simple reason that I don’t get
these in India. Instead, I use an acrylic paint called Fevicryl, which is a
combination of white glue and acrylic colour, and lends itself very well to
airbrushing. I use references from the IPMS Stockholm site, and brew up the
colors approximately equal to the color chips from primary colors. I first spray
all the parts on the sprues with grey automobile paint from a can, which helps
the camo stay on better.
As usual, I
started off with the cockpit. I generally find this to be the most intense of
all my activities, and this time it was no different. I first painted the
cockpit tub, instrument panel, seats and interiors of the fuselage in RLM02 Grau.
Seat belt painting in a brown drab followed this, and then I sprayed the whole
set with Future, followed by a black wash to bring out the depths.
Finally,
the instruments on the panel were picked off with a toothpick. This is a very
painful, finger numbing process and took me about 2 hours to complete to my
satisfaction. After this was done, I inserted this into the cockpit tub, and
attached it securely to the interior of the fuselage.
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Making the wheel assemblies
The
wheel assembly process was started off in parallel with the cockpit tub
painting. First I masked off the wheel hubs using Scotch tape, and gave it
a spray of Matt Black from a can. Then I reversed the masking, and
painted the wheel hubs in RLM02 Grau. The wheel carriages were assembled,
painted and attached to the wheels when dry and kept aside. The interiors
of the wheel bay doors were also painted in Grau, as was the well base
before attaching to the underwing piece.
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Wing
and Fuselage Assembly
The
wings were assembled next, and the fuselage was inserted onto the completed
wings. However, this did not go together too smoothly, and gave rise to gaps on
both wing roots. I fixed this problem by using stretched sprue, which I drew out
to the thickness of the gap, and stuck it into the gap using superglue. After a
little bit of sanding, the gaps disappeared.
The
back wing assembly then followed without any more problems. A little bit of
sanding eliminated a small step between the two halves of the fuselage. There is
a small part at the very back that didn’t go together with the main fuselage
completely, but using a nailfile and some superglue as filler eliminated this
irritant.
The
propeller assemblies, excluding the nacelles went on next. I figured I could
always add the nacelles later, and anyway it could be a problem trying to paint
the teeny weeny nacelles once they were on the model. I rounded off this phase
by attaching the bomb holders, since they also had the same color as the
undersides of the plane.
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Painting the Kit
The canopy was the first to get
the masking treatment. I use Scotch Magic Tape for all my masking needs, and I
find it does the job very admirably. I cut strips of tape, placed them over the
recessed frames, and pressed down at the edges using a toothpick. I then used a
sharp #11 surgical blade to cut around the windows, and removed the frame tape
to get a masked canopy. This was then attached to the fuselage using All-Stik (a
variant of Blu-Tak). I had to use quite a fair bit of the stuff, since I needed
to hold all parts of the canopy together.
I then proceeded to give the
whole model a coat of Grey primer paint. Luckily, the color corresponded to
RLM65, so I did not need to repaint the undersides (sneaky, but effective :D!).
After this coat dried, I masked off the undersides completely using Scotch Tape.
The fuselage was masked appropriately at the bottom areas to enable the splinter
camouflage pattern.
The whole model was next given a
spray of RLM 70 and allowed to dry overnight. 24 Hours later, I used masking
tape to get straight edges, and cut out strips and pasted them onto the model to
get the splinter camouflage pattern as indicated on the box art. Again, RLM 71
went on to the model, and it was allowed to dry for another 24 hours.
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Disaster
Strikes……!!!
Murphy’s law caught up
with me at last! I had put the kit out in the sun to dry, and I dunno
whether the heat got to the canopy, or a stray bird did. Anyway, the
canopy rear section got bent out of shape, leaving me with an absolute
mess of a canopy. I cursed and cussed a lot, and kept the model aside for
some time.
Finally, I decided to give my
scratchbuilding skills a go..there was nothing I could lose in any case
either. I fashioned a new canopy out of aluminium strips, thin sheet
plastic and transparent plastic from an old CD cover. It did give me some
comfort, but the damn thing looked pretty ugly to me. Anyway, I kept it
aside, thinking I would put it on at the end after some painting with a
thin brush. |
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Completing the rest of the kit
Taking heart from the fact that I
could still carry on, I completed the rest. The decals came next, after a thin
coating of Future on the whole model. I had to cut out the decal in places where
intermediate film was there. I used spot priming of Future for the decals, and
this helped the decals stick really well to the kit. This was followed up by
another thin coat of Future, and finally a clear acrylic matt coat.I put on the
wheel assemblies and bombs in due course. The rear wheel assembly was also
painted at this time.
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Making the Base
The base for the plane was made
using ice-cream sticks and a piece of Styrofoam board of size 20cm by
20cm. I started off at the edges in a diagonal fashion, adding planks so that
they could represent a series of wooden slats laid out on the ground. After
finishing this, I gave the whole wooden planking a coat of matt white from a
spray can. This was allowed to dry, and then a coat of medium-thick acrylic
black wash went on to simulate usage. I just took the stuff up from a small tin,
and splashed it all over at random, using random brush strokes to spread the
wash around. The oil stains were done using a round brush dipped in black
acrylic paint from a tube, and spread around thinly. The wheel streaks were done
using a close cropped brush dipped in the excess paint from the oil stains, and
drawn upwards using a drybrushing technique. A few splats of black paint here
and there completed the base.
Return to the Canopy, and
finishing off
Well, now that everything was in
place, I decided to return to that old humbug : the rear canopy section. This
time around, I used only the plastic from an old CD cover, and cut out strips of
plastic from it. These were then filed and sanded down to size using the front
window panels as references. One edge was kept flat, and the other was sanded to
a knife edge, so as to achieve an arch-like structure. These were then stuck on
using Testors Clear Cement solution, and allowed to dry for two days. The rear
sections were finally stuck on, and the gaps closed with minute amounts of
superglue.
After allowing the canopy to dry
for some more time, I then used a sharp toothpick to paint in the frames with
the camouflage color (RLM 71). The side windows were marked with a slight press
of a #11 blade, and scratched so as to form runners for the paint. This made the
application of paint easier, and thus the top windows and side windows were
formed.
Finally, I drilled a hole on one
of the top window from reference pictures, and inserted a thin piece of
stretched sprue for the antenna holder. I then used stretched sprue to
form the antenna wire from the rear right vertical fin tip to the antenna
holder, and cemented it in place using superglue.
This ends the saga of my Bf-110.
Hope you enjoyed it. Happy Modelling!!!
Shekar
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