1/144 Minicraft Boeing B-29A 'Fire Belle'

Gallery Article by Orlando Sucre Rosales on Oct 27 2014

 

      

Hello, fellow modelers.

My 1-144th scale Minicraft Boeing B-29A Superfortress is the second raised-panel-line model that I finished this year. This one is from a very old (perhaps more than 30 years old) mold, and has been reboxed by Minicraft several times with new decals, a new box and (of course) a higher price. There are some reviews on the internet that point out the inaccuracies and the assembly problems of these kits. I will only add that the transparencies that represent the cockpit windows have all the features that you don’t want in a kit, namely:

  • 1. They’re overly thick (about 1,5 mm).

  • 2. They’re wider than the place were they’re going to be glued on the fuselage, resulting in a poor fit.

  • 3. They’re wrongly shaped, specially the bottom of the main transparency, which is horizontal but should instead follow a curve that downs towards the nose.

  • 4. The window frames are poorly defined.

Nevertheless, the B-29 is a very important aircraft for those who build WW2 aircraft, and the 1/144 scale Minicraft kit is now the only option for those who don’t have enough space for a 1/72 scale B-29 model. A newly tooled 1/144 scale Superfortress kit (or a reissue of the Fujimi kit in that scale) would surely be warmly welcomed by the modelling community.

 

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Regarding the build of this kit, I started it many years ago (I don’t remember how many.) The reason why it took so long is that there were some costly accidents and mistakes along the process and I’ve put the model aside for year-long periods at least twice. The main problems were related with the choice of metallic paints for the multi-shade natural metal finish.

It was my first time at multi-shade NMF, and I started by polishing the plastic surface with Brasso metal polish (a trick I learned from old Frog models instruction sheet,) this way I got a very bright finish on the unpainted plastic. Then I followed an advice from Roscoe Creed’s book “How to build plastic aircraft models” to paint the whole model with Floquil Old Silver, and then polish selected panels with toothpaste or rubbing compound, while leaving others without polishing. I used a black and white WW2 photograph of a B-29 in flight as reference, and I was looking for a dull finish for the center of the top wings and a section of the center fuselage, as shown in the photo. Well, I polished several sections of the Floquil Old Silver finish with toothpaste as suggested, but I couldn`t achieve the bright finish I was looking for.

Therefore I decided to paint the bright finish with another paint, and SNJ Aluminum was my choice, because it was enamel instead of lacquer, it didn’t need a primer coat and it also stood masking. This fact alone produced a delay, because here in Venezuela we can spend a limited amount of dollars in Internet shopping every year, and I had to wait till the next year to buy SNJ paint by Internet, as this kind of paint isn’t available in our local hobby shops. After I received the paint, I masked the panels I wanted to remain dull with Scotch’s Removable Tape, and airbrushed two light coats of SNJ. Although the masking tape didn’t lift any paint, it did leave lots of adhesive residue that couldn’t be removed with alcohol, so I had to use turpentine to remove it, thus marring the paint job. I learned two lessons from this experience: first, avoid using Scotch’s Removable Tape as masking material; second, paint the brightest NMF finish before the dull ones. I had at this point to strip all the paint and start over, this fact produced a long delay in the build.

When I decided to restart my B-29 in 2014, I decided to paint the SNJ Aluminum first, mask and then paint the Floquil Old Silver, which has a dull finish. I found that the remainder of the bottle of SNJ left from the first session had the metallic flakes dried in the bottom, so I had to use a new bottle (luckily, I’d bought two bottles the first time.) However, before painting SNJ I had to mask all those cockpit windows, when this was done I thought it would be better to paint the frames with interior green (which has a matt finish) before painting the SNJ. This procedure (which was done also for the tail gunner’s windows) allows the interior color to show under the exterior finish and is widely used, but it generated another problem I had to solve later: the SNJ didn’t cover the green well, leaving a dull surface. I spent a lot of paint trying to fix the problem, until less than 20 % of the bottle contents remained. I also discovered on one hand that polishing the SNJ paint with cotton fabric pieces didn’t make the finish as bright as I wanted, and on the other that SNJ paint was discontinued by 2013, so it would be impossible to buy another bottle this year. I had to keep the remainder for touch ups. I didn’t remove the masking from the windows at this point.

I tried a small section of Tamiya masking tape over the SNJ finish before covering the areas I didn’t want to overpaint, it didn’t lift the paint and didn’t left any residue. I first masked around the panels I want to paint with Floquil Old Silver and applied this paint. When I removed the masks the paint was lifted at one spot on the fuselage just after the cockpit. In order to fix the problem of the dull aluminum finish of the window frames, I decided at first instance to overpaint them (and the tail gunner área) with Humbrol’s Metal Cote Polished Aluminum, just to get a shiny finish, and then overpaint again with the remainder of the SNJ paint. Before I started, I checked how good was the SNJ paint left in the bottle after two weeks of having opened the bottle, it didn’t have the original consistency. Therefore I changed my mind and decided not to overpaint the cockpit windows with SNJ paint, just the tail area and the fuselage spot where the paint lifted. Furthermore, as it would look strange that just the cockpit windows’ frames were finished in Polished Aluminum, I decided to paint with that color the whole nose section, and a section of the rear fuselage to balance the look of the aircraft. 

Well, the Polished Aluminum finish was brighter than I expected, and the resulting contrast between this and the SNJ is very sharp. The remainder of SNJ paint wasn’t enough to cover the tail area and the fuselage spot, so I had to substitute SNJ paint by mixing 5 parts of MM Aluminum Plate with two parts of MM Stainless Steel, only a slight difference in shine can be appreciated. Contrary to what I expected, Humbrol’s Polished Aluminum stood masking with Tamiya masking tape, so I could touch up the SNJ painted areas without creating further problems.

Soon the model was completely painted and it was time to apply the kit’s decals. Nevertheless, the green bands around the four engine cowlings weren’t long enough, so I decided to paint these bands instead of using the decals. I also painted the green band around the rear fuselage, as the decal provided for it didn’t sit smoothly on its place. When all the decaling were done, I applied an enamel wash to the control surfaces’ panel lines, coated the decals with satin varnish and the model was finished.

Overall I’m satisfied with the outcome of my first multi-shade NMF project, although the finish doesn’t seem very “natural.” At least I could replicate the dull metallic finish of the center section of the wings and the fuselage. Perhaps the result doesn’t justify the hundreds of hours I’ve put in this project, but I also learned a lot building and finishing the model. It was truly a perseverance test.

Greetings from Caracas, Venezuela.

Orlando Sucre Rosales

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Photos and text © by Orlando Sucre Rosales