Sopwith Dolphin - nearly finished

I've made a bit more progress this evening and suddenly it's nearly finished.

Sopwith Dolphin - not much progress

Apologies for the lack of posts recently. I've been working on getting the upper wings into place, but in such a slow and cack-handed manner that I'm still not quite there yet.

Sopwith Dolphin - final coat of varnish

I've got the final coat of varnish on at last, and here's how it's all looking:

Sopwith Dolphin - markings

Haven't made any more progress on the problems I've had recently with the simple task of spraying an even coat of varnish onto a model. I think I might try the idea of overspraying with Satin Cote: and I've realised that I can try this on the tailplane because it doesn't need any decals. Then, if this works, I can do the decals on the upper wings knowing that the Satin Cote will solve the problem.

Sopwith Dolphin - further cackhandedness

I was nearly ready to do the decals, but I've mucked it up again. The picture shows the upper wings after their coat of Gloss Cote, and somehow I've managed to get a kind of discoloured rectangle right in the middle of each one.

Sopwith Dolphin - progress of a kind

Well, that's the main paintwork done. I was hoping to have started doing the decals by now, but there have been a few setbacks and I've started recognising a certain reckless tendency in my recent efforts. This tendency probably arises from boredom and pressure, and has on previous occasions led to disaster. So I'm calling a halt now for a few weeks, before the quality of my work goes into a steep dive that can end only in the wastebasket.

Sopwith Dolphin - more progress with paintwork

A bit of a grey area

This is my Dolphin after a bit of tidying up. As I had expected, there was a bit of damage when I removed all the various types of masking, and the main culprit was the masking solution. It was impossible to stop it straying slightly beyond the edges of the apertures, so it left ragged edges. So then I had the job of rubbing down with 1200 wet and dry and retouching. Under a magnifying glass, you can see the patches, but to the naked eye (or a 3 megapixel camera) it looks fine, doesn't it?

But then, having patched up the real damage, I'm going to add some simulated damage later. Apparently, the paint was prone to flaking off the aluminium panels in real life, so I'm going to do some drybrushing on the edges that would experience most wear. But for the moment, it can keep its factory finish.

Sopwith Dolphin - nose corrected

Right, that's the nose job done. This time I managed to reduce the swarms of dust and small particles to a more manageable level, much as NASA has just done with its asteroid survey. And I am pleased to say that it's all been a complete success. The colour is a slightly darker shade of grey now - and that's a phrase you don't want to hear after a nose job. In this case, however, I think it looks a lot more convincing. Tomorrow I will, so to speak, remove the bandages and assess the damage.

Sopwith Dolphin - more paint being splashed about

Pope surrenders to half-built model aeroplane

More progress on the paintwork. The picture shows the first coat of battleship grey on the plywood and aluminium panels. It's been quite a job to get this far, though. I've spent most of the day applying various types of masking. I suppose it's a bit easy to criticise a design 94 years after the event, but the Dolphin did seem to have rather a lot of apertures of one sort or another.

Sopwith Dolphin - more ideas on bodged paint job on wings

After some thought and a bit of experimentation, I've decided that the wing surfaces will after all need a bit more work. Not only are the ribs a bit too prominent and jagged, but there are an annoying number of little bits stuck to the painted surfaces, even though I had brushed all the surfaces with a soft brush before doing the final coat. Perhaps I charged them with static in the process, thus attracting the small bits. I'll have to be careful about that in future. In addition to those problems, I've decided that the colour I've used for Clear Doped Linen is far too rich and I need to tone it down a bit.

Sopwith Dolphin - In Colour

I've just done the first coat of the undersurfaces, as you can see, with a kind of clear-doped linen colour. The wing ribs are showing up nicely, I think. Because of their dark colour I had to do two or three coats, but to save repeatedly cleaning the airbrush, I only waited a few minutes between coats (until the finish had gone matt). Enamel paint is very forgiving of this sort of treatment. Even when I got a few spatters (too thick mixture maybe? Incompetent airbrush technique?), they just flowed out when oversprayed. So I think it's all looking OK so far. I'm going to wait until tomorrow to see if another coat is needed. But at this rate, we're getting close to seeing some actual PC10 in this blog.