The Little World

Constant experimentation within the model building craft is a two-edged sword. Do too little of it and you never find out how to advance your skills – to too much and you never develop any skill to its maximum capacity before you’ve hared off to another…

But occasionally you can get it just right.

The GSI Creos range of paints and tools is back again in stock at Hobbytech – my local hobby shop. They were in a drought for a while, but fresh supplies have arrived and i was able to rows the racks for new paint. I needed a can of spray paint to do the camouflage black for an RAF Bomber Command aircraft of WW2. I wanted the can because I didn’t want to have to remix and reload a colour cup on the airbrush in the middle of a large job.

I was aiming for a solvent lacquer paint, as these seem to set fast enough to avoid dust contamination and to give a very hard and durable finish. I’d undercoated the plane with GSI Surfacer/Primer 1000 which it pretty impervious to anything, but I hoped to carry on with GSI products.

At the same time, I had two spray cans of the rival maker’s lacquer – Tamiya Dark Earth And Dark Green to serve for the upper works. They went on a treat and gave exactly the effect I wanted in British A/B pattern.

Today was underside day. Again the model was propped in front of the spray booth as it is too large to fit inside. and again the can was well shaken and warmed slightly before application.

The underside of Bomber Command aircraft of this period is a satin or coal black rather than matte or gloss – the GSI can was listed as ” semi-gloss ” and I think it has dried to precisely the effect that the RAF wanted. I also suspect that it will be gloss enough to allow the roundels and fin flash to be applied to the sides of the fuselage and tail without additional glossing. The underside of the wings of these bombers was left without roundels. Presumably by the time they had opened the bomb bay doors and let the explosives out, the Germans looking up would have figured out they were British anyway…

If I can locate similar cans from GSI in other camouflage colours I will seriously consider using them regularly – as it is, the black is a treasure.