Sopwith Dolphin - Wheels

Apologies for the lack of posts recently. I've made a bit more progress since the last once, as you can see. I've had another go at pinning the tail on the Dolphin, and I've added the undercarriage. Now that it's sitting up properly it's looking a bit more lively.

On previous projects, I've hand-painted the wheels, but getting an even demarcation between the tyres and the hubs has always proved almost impossible (the old Revell kits used to have a separate hub, which made life slightly easier). In any case, airbrushing provides a better finish so I decided that this was the way to go this time, despite the disproportionate amount of effort per square mm.

My machine belonged to B Flight of 87 Sqn, and was distinguished by small white circles on the wheel hubs. These proved unexpectedly difficult to reproduce: ideally I would have liked to do the white circles first, mask them off and then do the PC10. But that would have meant trying to make little discs of masking tape 2mm across conform to the bosses at the centre of the wheel hub. So I did the PC10 first, then punched a hole in some masking tape and sprayed several coats of white. But the punch was blunt, and I ended up with a big ragged uneven cake of white paint, that had seeped under the masking tape for good measure.

I cleaned off most of the white paint with thinners (I've found that once a coat Humbrol has cured properly, you can do another coat and wash it off with thinners with no fear of disturbing the first coat). Then I entertained various far-fetched ideas for doing a better job. Finally, I decided to do the same thing but better. So I found a whetstone in the tool cupboard, sharpened the punch I was using, and made sure the tape was stuck down properly. This time, I got acceptable results:

Next, I masked off the hubs with little conical bits of masking tape (after belatedly gluing the wheels to their axles, which made handling much easier):

And then after spraying the tyres a sort of medium/dark grey I added a few hand-painted details and there you are (they will get a bit of mud on them eventually but I try not to rely on mud too much as a quality control substitute):

While I'm at it, I've painted the Lewis guns. These represent my second go at weathering, after the reasonable success I had with the exhausts. I think the effect I should be aiming at is blackened metal, but this is a very difficult effect to achieve in my experience. I ended up just doing a coat of Satin Black toned down with white, and then some very restrained dry-brushing with Humbrol 27003. I think the results are OK:

These are going on the lower wings eventually

And then there's the propeller. I had been intending to use one from the spares box, but a few days ago, I realised that the Dolphin I had a left-handed propeller because of its geared Hispano engine. And all my spare props are right-handed. Even my unbuilt Roden SE5As have right-handed propellers - I assume these are meant for the direct-drive Bentley version.

Rather unlucky. So after advice from a forum, I have decided to carve a propeller.

Here's what I started with:

And here's what I'm up to, with the basic shaping almost finished:

The next job is to shape the blades themselves. I'm actually looking forward to this.

More soon hopefully.