Thanks, Scott. Hope your Christmas is a good one too. :sunny:

Next project: A resin kit of the FE.8. It came after the DH.2 and was inferior, so didn't make a big mark on the war. It did produce one ace, however, and will be a welcome addition to my collection.

The Nieuport 12 took more than two months, thanks mostly to my doing other things. I'm hoping to have this one done in as many weeks.

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...psfw7qbfii.jpg

Interior done...NOT!

They have a nice interior, but it's so narrow inside that I have to put the pilot in before I put it together. I also have to sand his arms down or he still won't fit.

They give a nice resin engine, but like the ones from Small Stuff it has a lot of tiny parts to glue together. The extra tiny pushrods are just to tricky for me. I looked around my stuff to find another Gnome Monosoupape, but couldn't find one. I ended up drilling nine tiny holes in the crankcase and using that super-fine guitar string. It looks about right.

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...psv0reqj3g.jpg

Pilot in, fuselage haves together. Engine is finished with guitar-string pushrods and monofilament line spark plug wires.

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...psumwrxeuc.jpg

Lower wings mounted, basic paint applied. The body isn't painted yet because it's going to be grey, and I want to let the wings dry overnight before I put masking tape on them.

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...psddo611tz.jpg

Steve, I didn't read thru all the pages so I'm going to ask. What airbrush do you use? I was given a compressor but the airbrush with it is iffy whether it'll work ok. It wasn't taken care of so I'm looking to buy a new one. Pasche comes to mind from the old modeling days gone by.

I bought this kit when I started building again two years ago. I tried all three brushes and pretty much exclusively use the G-25 (the larger of the two gravity feed models). It does a pretty good job.

Paasche has a great reputation, though I've never used one. I used to have a Badger 100 and a Badger 150. The 150 was great for very fine spraying such as mottled camouflage on WW2 Italian and Japanese planes. These days most brushes seem to do the job. One thing I do these days is read all the reviews on Amazon, whether I buy it from them or not. That way you get a good idea of what users liked and didn't like.

Whatever you go with I would recommend a double-action brush, which lets you keep the air flowing while you fine-control the paint flow. With a single-action the air and paint come through at the same time and it's harder to control if you're doing any kind of fine detail work.

[edit] While I've considered getting another Badger 150, because it comes with three different needles which give a wide variety of spray patterns, lately I've been thinking about something like this. I think the spray-gun style trigger might be easier on the hand.

Merry Christmas!
 

Merry Christmas Sailor Steve. Enjoyed your thread this year.

http://www.schs.ws/schs2/wp-content/...mas-truce2.jpg

I think you are mistaken about the airbrush action. A single action airbrush has a fixed, although adjustable, air flow and you control the amount of paint with the button. A double action has the button controlling both air flow and paint amount making them more versatile but also more difficult to use.

Huh. I thought that was what I said. But then I often express myself poorly. :dead:

I see what you meant now and I got it backwards on the single action. It's the paint flow that set by an adjustment wheel so the button just meters the air flow. I have both types and use the single action mostly because it's easier to clean mainly, and the type of painting I'm doing doesn't need much variation most times so just setting the wheel for the need means fewer mistakes. I'm sure if I used the double action enough to be highly skilled I'd use it more.

Well, you're definitely right about the difficulty with the double-action. Lately my finger tends to cramp after a too-long session, which is why I'm considering trying to get one of the trigger-action brushes. It works just like a full-sized spray gun.

Another five days gone. Sometimes I had other things to do. Other times I didn't feel like doing anything. Today I got the upper wing on, and that took several hours of measuring, drilling, cutting and fitting.

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...psecm10ab5.jpg

Tail boom and stabilizer.

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...psdn1qivqo.jpg

Landing gear and tail.

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...psmi907ngc.jpg