1/72 Academy F6F-5 or; How to Overdo Weathering

[aur0ra145]

Howdy,

I've been busy with work so modeling took a backseat for a bit (except for the two briefing sticks I made, technically for work so I made an exception. I'll post those a bit later.)

So, I've been wanting to try the hairspray technique for quite some time. I found the secret sales section in Hobby Lobby when I was there to buy a dowel rod and ended up leaving with 4 models. Any how I ended up with two of these models and decided to try hairspray with one of them.

It started well. Like most models. Not perfect but happily passable and put together rather quickly.

Sprayed a base coat of Vallejo Metal Color Aluminum. Too easy, left over night. Applied hairspray straight out of the can and waited about an hour then shot some Model Masters Acrylic Yellow Zinc Chromate. Used a beat up brush and toothpick to weather. Went really well! Waited about 4 hours (not enough by any means) and applied another layer of hairspray (this time out of my airbrush.) Waited about 40 minutes and applied the top coat of paint. I must say, I think I nailed the color. Used Tamiya XF-17 4:1, XF-8 2.5:1 and XF-2 1:1. Then cut it about 5:4 paint to thinner.

Then it happened. As I sprayed and it dried the top coat started to crack so I reapplied paint. A lot of paint. Still cracked. Darn. Let it dry about half and hour and started to weather with a cut short trash brush and a toothpick
The top coat was so thick that getting it to come off was difficult. Mistakes were made. I started weathering on the starboard side of the cockpit. You can see where I went amiss. So I chalked it up as 'buggered' (is that the British term?) And decided to try a bunch of different techniques to see what worked best.

I will finish this eventually, I kind of like how trashed the plane looks. Well without further ado. Here it is.

Critiques, suggestions, and anything else is welcome.

[aur0ra145]

Is there a good way to weather decals? I'm kind of at a loss on how to apply them and make it look somewhat passable.

[aur0ra145]

Ended up just trimming the decals around heavy wear. Not as hard as I thought. Next I used some MM Stains to weather it. FInally ended up with a MM Semi Gloss coat, ended up looking pretty good. I'll post final pictures over in the Gallery.

I'll also note here that several of the decals were quite a bit off in size. Like the tail decals wouldn't even fit on there. So I had to do some creative messing about with them to get them to fit.

[aur0ra145]

Finally done. Here's a preview of the final build. I ended up putting together a small photo set for the final pictures!

[Lysus]

I'm not a decals expert, but I do know you can dab some of the base coat over a decal after it's been sealed in to give an impression of wear.

What did you think of the hairspray technique? Never tried it myself.

[aur0ra145]

That is something I didn't think of. I just cut the decals to look like they conformed to weathering. I'll try that next one!