1/72 Italeri Bf 110 Zerstorer

by Shekar K Rao on Aug 21 2003

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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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Photos and text © by Shekar K Rao