Lotus 25 without masks

I cannot deny I felt pretty stressed before I removed the masking tape from the Lotus 25. I already saw that it did not stay in place where there were crevisses in the moulding of the body and I expected something close to a mess. Looking at the pictures it is a mess indeed, however I feel confident I will be able to make up most of it without too much effort. White is over green, so sanding should be enough to repair. I just hope I will not have to do too much touching up.
Next time I will think twice before using common, house work bound masking tape on a model: it is never sticky enough and much too thick.

Cockpit part 1

That part will give me some troubles when I try to get it into the body of the car. The assembly manual shows that the cockpit should be ready in place before the cover is placed onto the monocoque. However, I chose to close the body before anything else, mainly because the parts do not fit perfectly together. So now I do not have much choice but slide the cockpit into the body from the rear opening. Easier said than done... There are lots of plastic ends that go in the way of the ribs at the bottom of the monocoque. I had to cut them out in order to make some way. The artillery at Jena all over again!


After a thin coat of primer and some assembly, I painted the side walls in a neutral grey tone. Blame the various pictures from 1967 found on the internet for that... Some would prefer a metallic approach, but I will stick to the real thing as much as I can.

























The seat is also a source of trouble. I do not intend (at least for the time being) to use the driver figurine of the kit, so I have to find a way to render a visible seat. The Modeler Site guide uses a piece a real leather shaped in the plastic part itself. Even thought the idea is tempting, I think it would look a bit bogus since the grain of the material would not really be at the right scale. I may still change my mind about this, but for the moment I went the easy way by painting the seat in flat black. I painted a first layer so as to cover all the primer and minimise the lighter areas. Then I painted a second, very diluted layer so the crevisses in the moulding would be completely soaked. With the quality of this moulding and the slight variations of reflectivity of the paint, I would say that the look of this seat is more than enough. Until of course I think about something better... I initially wanted to dry-brush the seat with a slightly different tone of black, but I have the feeling that the big scale of this model does not require it here.

Radiator

Both parts were cemented together before painting. The whole radiator was painted Flat Aluminium: two brushed coats on the perimeter, in order to give an even surface and a good finish, and only one coat on each grid side. I just wanted to give the minimum metal effect to the grids before giving them a thorough black wash, which gives the part some depth. Then the grid bars were highlited with flat Al again. As the result was not very obvious, I did a second, darker wash.

Time to paint the body: first colour

I spent so much time far from this model that is looks like a new challenge to me. However, since I got some good results on the body of the Lotus 25 and since I need to have a finished body to go on with the Lotus 49 kit, I must take a deep breath and make the jump. At the last minute I decided to follow the Modeler Site Lotus 49 guide by Tony Allen. He starts with a white coat of paint, then add masks for the number areas and goes on with a yellow coat. After masking the yellow stripes he finally applies the green coat and unmask the body before spraying a clear coat. I must confess I am quite skeptical about adding so many layers of paint and I hope I will not lose the details on the body. On the other hand, it makes sense to start with the lighter colours and finish with the darker ones, as I can see with the Lotus 25.















Those are the nose cone and cockpit with their final primer coat. There is no dust or hair at all in it and that should prove a perfect base for the white paint.










Those are the same parts after the white wet coats. I encountered quite a few undesirable things trapped in the paint after each coat but carefully sanded them off with a fine grit (3000 or 4000). The second wet coat was applied only on the surface which will need them: the top of the nose cone and the sides of the cockpit. The edges of this second wet coat will be finely sanded so as not to be visible on the end product. After each wet coat, paint tends to run at the bottom of the part. Those runs are lightly sanded if I think they will be visible, meaning that the underside of the body is not as cared for as the top and sides.

Last details on the engine

The wiring is now in place and each piece of flexible tubing glued into place. Cyano glue was necessary to join those different materials and to save the time usually dedicated to applying some pressure on both parts until the bond correctly together. The black tubes are bundled together with a small strip of electrical tape.

References for HMS Victory

There is a model of the HMS Victory sitting in the attic and waiting for me to start building it. It is the Heller 1/100 plastic kit. Given the size of the model and the detail level, it is worth looking for some good reliable starting point. Obviously the two main challenges will be painting and of course rigging the ship.


McKay's book is a nice one to have close to the work in progress. It offers lots of drawings of the outside and of the inside of the ship, allowing someone with too much time at hand to add many details to his model. There are also sketches for running and standing rigging. This book must be the result of a hard and passionate work and is available here.
















Longridge's masterful opus is what some would dare to call the bible for tall ship modellers. It has every bit of information for anyone tackling the task of building a model ship from scratch. It is that thorough... From the construction of the keel to the diameter of any rope on board, Longridge gives it all. It is consequently a very technical read, but written in the style of someone who went himself through every step of the building. It is available here.













The internet is still the best source of information for the choice of colours and for pictures of any detail outside or on board the ship. The official site is of course the first stage of a larger search and even offers pages dedicated to model makers. Finally, my favourite one is Pete Coleman's forum and is the best place to share advice and ask questions about the Heller kit.

Practice time

I used the Tamiya Lotus 25 Climax kit to practice a bit before getting serious with the Lotus 49. I painted the whole body in green first then masked the proper areas in order to paint the yellow stripes. When I removed the masking tapes, I had some bad surprises.


















Some paint soaked the tape and I will have some repairs to do. The white areas will be painted when the whole body is assembled.

Finishing the engine

The cam cover highlights were painted flat aluminium and the spark plug holes flat red. The flat red from Tamiya is a real pain: it is as clear as their flat black and strips itself when it dries a bit too much on the brush. Many coats have been necessary to get a dark finish, not really astounding even by my poor standards!






The various accessories were painted in different shades of metalic paints: chrome aluminium, flat aluminium, silver titanium, and Citadel's chainmail and boltgun metal. The golden bits are from Citadel too, but I should have made a mix of gold and mithril silver to cut the brightness of the paint a bit.

Continuing the engine

I did not describe the assembly of the gearbox as it is completely straightforward. I made however early mistakes, as I wanted to make parting lines (those on the cylinder block) disappear and found out later that they were useful for painting! The whole part was primed again before being painted. As usual, the primer was a great help for highlighting surface defects and correct them.

The whole assembly was painted flat aluminium, except the cam covers (they will be dealt with at a later stage) and the strap and pulley side. The later was evenly painted with semi-gloss black. Seeing how the engine will be attached to the body, the details will never be visible, so I just made sure to have an even colour and no missed spot. Two layers of paint were sufficient enough to give the engine a nice metallic aspect, but a third would have been required if I wanted to leave it as is. My goal is to weather the engine through a black ink wash and a flat aluminium highlight over it.

The wash is a tricky thing if no attention is paid to it. By its principles, you drop a liquid paint into crevices to highlight the tiny shapes. Consequently it follows the basic rule of fluids: it flows from the higher spots to the lower spots. That means you need to be careful when you leave the engine to dry: the washed portions must be perfectly horizontal otherwise the ink will accumulate in the lower recesses. That also means that you cannot apply the wash on every side at the same time. So patience is your friend for this operation. The flat aluminium brush I did after that took away most of the wash to leave only what was in the deepest recesses.

The cam covers are painted flat black, except for the tips where flat aluminium was used. As with the dashboard, successive layers were applied perpendicularly from one another to ensure a good paint covering and to minimise brush patterns.

Dashboard part 1

The dashboard was initially primed while not separated from the bundle and I painted it there as well. The attachment point is on a non visible line of the part, so that was easier to handle that way. I painted it semi-gloss black, with three layers, changing the brush direction for each of them. If I did not paint first lengthwise, then crosswise, the brush pattern is too visible and not a nice thing. Both sides were painted with the same method.








Once it was dry, I painted the dial rims and start/ignition panel in chrome silver. Some black touch-up was needed afterwards, of course. It is worth doing it neatly in order to avoid the "hand painted in China" effect that ruins everything. The inside of the dials is also chrome silver.