The Stuka is all repaired well kind of

I haven't posted for a week or so. I eventually went back and looked at JU87 I was building. In the last post, I put up photos of it before it took its one way dive onto the floor. At the time of the accident I put it all away (there were a lot of pieces that came off) until I felt like dealing with it. This past week I went back to it, it looked fixable lol kind of. I straightened out the PE airbrakes, fixed a big crack in the fuselage using (Apoxie Sculpt) I fixed the canopy with future and cut small antenna's from plastic rod, cut new struts for the tail from rod. Repainted where I needed to, gloss coated and sealed everything. A couple of decals got wrecked. I didn't have spare decals and was going to just leave it, but what the heck I've seen others paint there own markings so why not try myself. I had to cut a roundel mask and some Spanish crosses. I carefully sprayed white then black for the roundels and crosses, i was sure it was going to be a mess with bleed through under the masks but it worked. they actually look better than the decals. I'll try this more often, roundel decals have a nasty habit of not settling down very well or getting kinks in them when you use decal softening solution. Therefore airbrushing is probably a better option, you just need a circle cutter for the masks.

The model still doesn't look as good as it did, but I tried some post shading/weathering around panels with my airbrush to cover some of the damage. In 1/72 I think this is over kill and I wouldn't normally have done this. In this case it covers some nasty scrapes and scratches. In 1/48 post shading would look a lot better. Put it down to practice since I had never tried shading before. All I can say is use either a dark Grey or brown. You just need a tiny amount of paint whisk around the paint cup filled with thinner. Actually even that can be too much. It should look like dirty water. With my Iwata I can airbrush multiple times if its thin and this builds up the shading. My first attempt was a bit to thick since I had too much paint and not enough thinner so be warned if you try this.



Anyway I have a coat of flat to do and some last little bits to fix back on and the monster is done. I'll put pictures up later today.