What's On The Workbench? #4

As you might have guessed by now, my "What's On The Workbench" posts are mostly filler posts when not much progress has been made on my current projects.

So what's on the workbench?

To start with, Academy's Me 163B is now assembled and has been base coated in Vallejo Model Air's silver. I had a bit of trouble with the horizontal join around the nose, which took a couple of attempts to fill to a point where I was happy with it, but it's now there.

Why a silver base coat? Well I intend to try the hairspray technique of weathering so I want the silver to show through the paint scheme. I believe the wings of the Me 163 were wooden but I decided to keep a uniform base colour so when I add further layers they too stay uniform in colour.

However I'm not going to try a previously untried technique on this model so I've quickly mocked up an old scrap kit, in this case an Airfix Spitfire, with a two colour camouflage scheme to practice on.

Again I used a silver base coat followed by a coat of Tamiya semi-gloss clear from a spray can. Once this had dried I airbrushed hairspray over the whole model, let it dry, before over spraying the camouflage scheme.

So now I just need this to dry before applying warm water and attempting to rub off some of the paint. If it works, then I intend to repeat the process on the Me 163.

Build Review - Academy Me 163B/S (12460) – Part 1

At the end of my previous post I mentioned Academy's 1:72 scale Me 163B/S kit, so time to get on with it. Experimental aircraft from WWII / the early Cold War period are an area of interest to me (something I'll probably write about in the future) and so this seemed like a good kit to get me back into modelling after my break.

Academy kits seem to have a reputation as a bit hit and miss but generally I like them. Opinions on-line tend to suggest that this is a good kit so my expectations were raised. Time to have an opinion of my own.

First impressions were that this looked like a really nice kit, I especially liked that there was a choice between the standard single seat Me 163B and the two seat glider trainer, the Me 163S.

I decided to opt for the Me 163B, enhanced as usual with an Eduard photo-etch set (SS256) for the interior and some small exterior details. Colour scheme wise, I'm probably going to deviate from those offered in the box, we'll see how things go before I decide.

So to start with I built the cockpit. I took the twin seater cockpit tub, filled down the consoles, cut away the rear seat area but left the rear floor. Two reasons, first, insurance in case I made a mess of the photo-etch. It's been a while since I'd worked on something this small. Second was that I felt the longer floor would settle in the base better as cockpit slippage seems to a caused a few problems on previous builds.


However in the end my fears were unfounded. The photo-etch built beautifully and the cockpit fitted fine.

I will say one thing though, it's really small, less than 1cm x 1cm and that includes the full width of the side consoles. Yes I knew it was a small aircraft, I knew I'm working with a small scale, but still, it was tiny! However a plus side is that nice bubble canopy really opens up the cockpit compared to many aircraft of the time, so all that detail is going to be on show for a change.

Next up was the tail section, two halves together with a tail wheel assembly at the base. It appears the tail wheel is meant to be moveable but that makes it quite difficult to glue around.

I also found there was a bit of gap at the base. Pushing this together tight seemed to impede the movement of the wheel assembly so I left it. I then filled and filed it while it was dry fitted to the fuselage which ensured the wheel still moved.

As for the wings, they went together as wings should. And there we are, all the main parts assembled,ready to be put together. So far, so good. I'm really enjoying this kit, which is how it should be.