Bulldog - paint!

 I've finally got round to doing some painting. This was something of a psychological hurdle, for three main reasons:

1. It was going to involve a lot of airbrushing, which is not my strong point
2. It would involve using brands of paint that I haven't used before
3. Nameless fears
   

At last, I made a start by getting the compressor out to see if it still worked. And this is where the nameless fears started to take a more definite shape. It was more than twelve years since I had last used the compressor, and in that time, as I immediately found out, the air hose had perished. My immediate thought was to get a new compressor; but I 've already spent quite a lot of money on this project, and so I decided it would be better to try to and replace the hose, though obviously it wouldn't be quite as enjoyable. So I went to my local car parts shop and got some fuel hose, and as it turned out this did the job quite well. Those circlips really make the new hose look as though it's meant to be there.

 I was going to start with the interior framework and associated parts (the fuselage might still need a bit more work before painting, but more on that later). According to David Luff, all steel fittings were protected from corrosion by a paint-dipping and stove enamelling process. And there were also a few brass bits to be painted at this stage.

These are the paints I decided on. I would give all parts a coat or two of SMS Black, and then give the brass parts a further coat of AK Extreme Metal Brass.

This is the bits after painting:

And this is what they look like after they have dried for a while:

 Not a bad result, but I'm not completely sure about the finish I've got. You would expect it to be fairly glossy, but I'm not sure this is exactly right. I might do a coat of half-gloss clear lacquer to see if that improves things, but I won't rush into it.

Anyway, this amounts to real progress, and the nameless fears did not amount to much in the end. More soon!