Revell 1:72 Lancaster BIII Dambuster
Discussion
Wife bought me this for Christmas. Anyone made it? Any tips? Surprisingly, the kit is black, not normal grey. I suppose it still needs to be painted black, can’t just leave the underside unpainted. Or can I?
My last Revell model was a Fokker DrI, about 40 years ago, that I recall was a bright red kit.
Ayahuasca said:
Wife bought me this for Christmas. Anyone made it? Any tips? Surprisingly, the kit is black, not normal grey. I suppose it still needs to be painted black, can’t just leave the underside unpainted. Or can I?
My last Revell model was a Fokker DrI, about 40 years ago, that I recall was a bright red kit.
Of course it's up to you if you paint the black or not, but it will look much better painted - you can tell bare plastic a mile off, especially where any sanding is required along seams etc.
Yertis said:
All RAF bomber kits used to be be moulded in black plastic, all the Airfix night bomber kits, and the Revell ‘Dambuster’ Lancaster too.
USAF - silver/grey plastic
RAF fighters and the entire Luftwaffe - pale blue.
Not sure about that.USAF - silver/grey plastic
RAF fighters and the entire Luftwaffe - pale blue.
Definitely dark green for some of the old Revell RAF fighters like the Hurricane and Tempest. I’ve still got a wheel and cover in the spares box from the latter. Also the Revell FW190 was dark green, and the Airfix version pale grey, not pale blue. Also, the Airfix Stuka wasn’t pale blue - it was silver or grey.
You are correct, of course, and now the port has drained from my system I recall immediately that the very first kit I built - the Airfix Me110 - was moulded in pale grey plastic (I recently bought one again, for the fun of it).The Airfix heavy bombers were all black though, in those days.
There is a lot of debate on the dihedral on this kit.
I will not be too concerned about it, suspect that the wings flexed upwards in flight anyway (see B52) so the ground dihedral would be different to the flying dihedral, which would change anyway depending on the aircraft’s weight.
I will not be too concerned about it, suspect that the wings flexed upwards in flight anyway (see B52) so the ground dihedral would be different to the flying dihedral, which would change anyway depending on the aircraft’s weight.
It's quite a nice kit - and it allows one engine to be shown with the cowling off. The dihedral is a bit of an issue but having seen a few built up, it's not that obvious.
Back in the 1960s, Airfix tended to mould their RAF bombers in black plastic. They gave that up a long time ago.
I built their ancient Wellington kit not that long ago. It was a 1975 or so boxing and the plastic was still black then.
Back in the 1960s, Airfix tended to mould their RAF bombers in black plastic. They gave that up a long time ago.
I built their ancient Wellington kit not that long ago. It was a 1975 or so boxing and the plastic was still black then.
HighwayToHull said:
Remember that the undersides of RAF WW2 bombers wasn't black, it was "Night" - which contained quite a large proportion of blue.
Brett Green (of Hyperscale and well know model writer) uses Tamiya NATO Black mixed with a small amount of Tamiya Hull Red to get his desired "RAF Night". He also adds small amounts of white to the mix to get variations in tone.Mixing shades of solid colour to the nth degree seems a popular pastime, but at the end of the day it'll just look "black" unless you're looking at back-to-back examples. Even then it would be impossible to tell which one was "right" seeing as there would be an infinite number of variations of the real life colour due to wear, weathering and fading. On mine I used Vallejo black, pre-shaded with light grey to give some contrast with the centre of the panels. Bit of a line wash and that was that.
If you do some weathering, don't add too much exhaust staining to the top of the wings behind the outermost exhausts - most of it went under the wing due to dihedral there.
If you do some weathering, don't add too much exhaust staining to the top of the wings behind the outermost exhausts - most of it went under the wing due to dihedral there.
Eric Mc said:
If you look at photos of the real thing you can see how shaded "Night Black" can be. As long as you are happy with the outcome - that should be good enough.
Different manufacturers use different paints too. IIRC Canadian built Lancasters were an almost glossy black by comparison. Whereas some early Wellingtons are almost brown in colour. When my Uncle was on Malta during the siege he was instructed to get the Albacores painted black. As they didn't have any black paint, he arranged to have battleship grey (one thing they did have plenty of) brought up from the docks. They poured this into 50 gallon drums, and then stirred in soot, gathered from the destroyers. Apparently it worked quite well.
Dr Jekyll said:
Painting black on black plastic has to be a bit of a challenge. Is it worth giving it a coat of dark grey or blue first?
When I built the previous version of this kit a few years back, it came in dark green plastic, and was given a white primer. The grey one underneath is the Airfix version.
ETA - you can see the blue tinge in my version of 'Night' here, although the use of flash does make it look bluer than it is.
Edited by HighwayToHull on Saturday 2nd January 01:37
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