Allen's 1/32 WnW Hansa-Brandenburg W.12 (early)

[Andy T]

Great to see you back in the thick of it Allen.

[papa 695]

Just caught up again Allen, really liking the work so far, looking great.

[The Smythe Meister]

Just caught up with this one too Allen,and it's looking superb mate ,those lozenge decals look very smart,the little rips will be fine and not noticeable after the weathering/varnish.
Top stuff buddy,and glad you're on the mend :thumb2:

[Mickc1440]

Great to see you back on this one Allen, looking really good

[Ian M]

Happy to learn that you are feeling a lot better.
The build is looking great. A great jog on the Maltese crosses and the lozenge coverings. Shame about the little tear but you sorted that well and it will not notice once the finishing has done its magic.

If you had Gorilla flue, then I think I had its big brother Godzilla.

[Allen Dewire]

Morning All,

Still driving on with the Hansa. The paint dried and I moved on to the decals 'Nasties' over the past couple of days...First,

Welcome back to the bench Allen! Looks good.
Pete

Thanks Pete! It's great to be back and hopefully, I can finish this beasty...

Great to see you back in the thick of it Allen.

Thanks too Andy! Thick is definitely the right word Buddy...

Just caught up again Allen, really liking the work so far, looking great.

Much appreciated Ian!!! I can't believe you've already completed 2 builds and I'm struggling with just one!!!...

Just caught up with this one too Allen,and it's looking superb mate ,those lozenge decals look very smart,the little rips will be fine and not noticeable after the weathering/varnish.
Top stuff buddy,and glad you're on the mend :thumb2:

Thanks Andy! I've been out of touch for a while and got a lot of Ketchup to still do. I just saw you've put the Albatros back on the bench. I take it the He-111 was whooping the butt a bit...

Great to see you back on this one Allen, looking really good

Thanks so much Mick! I too just saw you have built an Octopus killing thang...

Happy to learn that you are feeling a lot better.
The build is looking great. A great jog on the Maltese crosses and the lozenge coverings. Shame about the little tear but you sorted that well and it will not notice once the finishing has done its magic.

If you had Gorilla flue, then I think I had its big brother Godzilla.

Thanks Boss! Man must learn to look at what he's using (re. Set & Sol). Decals get worse, as you will see below. I hope you are feeling better too Ian. It seems this flu crap has been spreading around like wild fire, north to south on the continent...

So I woke up on Saturday and prepped everything to drive on with the decals. Warmish water, Micro SET in front of me, paper towel bits and the little helpers I use to apply them. I started with the steering fin crosses first. They went on great, so I moved on to the naval hex piece for the fusi spine. That too went on fine, so I did the rear wing. The Micro Set did it's job,


Only the rear of the wing, where the flappy attaches needed some trimming. The little gap between the spine and the rear wing will get covered by the fusi stripe decal. I set these aside to dry and moved on to the floats. Now something in three of my four brain cells kept saying that this wasn't going to be fun! Then I remembered doing the floats on my Albatros W.4 and they weren't fun...Anyway, I slobbered Micro Set on the left float, soaked the decal and slid it on the float. Yup, I was right!!!...Slid it here, wiggled it there, slobbered more Set on it, tried to get it to settle into the ribs, and......Forget it. It didn't want to play,


The rib row in front and behind the strut mounts were the problem child. I fiddled around a bit more and, before I lost my temper, I put it aside and let it dry. Of course, there is always a Plan B, so I went in the stash and pulled out the sheet of naval hex camo that Lukasz gave me last year at the SMC. The Lukgraph decals are good, but the color register is way different that the Cartograph kit decals. Hmmm, gotta think about this for a while and moved on to painting up the belly windows and windshield frames,


I used AV Metal Color Dull Aluminum and a tiny brush for them. They came out good and cleanup was minimal. These will be installed later on in the build. Back at the decal fiasco, I started using Micro Sol to get the larger areas on the float to settle down on the surface. It seems to be working, but it will be a few days of tinkering to hopefully fix them. I then decided that cutting the other float decal into 6 pieces might work better. So far it has,


It's a bit more work, but they do settle down better. What's also nice, is that WnWs give you some extra hex decal material to play with. I figure I can get the floats looking decent by the end of the week. Hell, if it was a tank, I could just cover them in mud!!!...Yesterday was a new day and I moved on to adding some of the fusi decals for the C-Staffel at Zeebrugge, in late 1917,


The cross has the stripe attached as one piece. There is also a top and bottom stripe piece to add. These went down very well too. The other side,


A couple of drops with Micro Sol will get the ends to fold down/up onto the main stripe. There is the plane's chassis number that goes in front of the cross on each side. These will be added after I get through handling the fusi to do other things. While still feeling lucky and more treatments on the float decal, I went on and added the big crosses to the top wing. These go over the hex camo and have to be placed pretty exact, so the bridge decal will fit and not cover an edge of cross. It's a 2 mm play room and I measured it all out a couple of times to leave no margin for error. Slobbered Micro Set all over the wing area hex decal and slid the cross on. I gently moved it into place and wiped it down with a piece of paper towel. Set it aside and did the other wing, using the first as a guide for the cross placement. Wiped it down and in the end, we had these,


I think they look pretty damn evenly placed, L to R and front to back. I'm happy with them and I'll check later to see if they need to be snuggled down onto the ribs a bit more. Then it's back to showing the floats a whole lot more love. They need it!!!..

More to come, so you've been warned!!! Thanks again for looking in, putting up with my madness and the kind comments. Stay healthy everyone!!!...

Prost
Allen

[Tim Marlow]

Going along very nicely Allen. Really starting to look the part now.

[Allen Dewire]

Going along very nicely Allen. Really starting to look the part now.

Thank you Tim! It still has a long way to go. I had to go to Plan B, but with luck, I can maybe start putting all the parts together over the weekend...

Time for an update on the Hansa W.12. I had to stop thinking/researching over the build and just start doing things. I spend more time in thought than I do actually working on the kit. I finally glued the bridge between the upper wings and set it aside to dry. Then I went and added the decal to cover it,



I slobbered a lot of Micro Set on the bridge and inner wing ends so moving the decal into the correct position would be easier. It worked really well and is almost 100% perfect in place. The hex pattern aligned nicely too. The two rough areas in the middle of the center ribbing is the attachment bolts for the Cabane struts and the cable hooks. Hit it with a coat of Micro Sol to snuggle it down,


I trimmed the decal off around them and drilled the 2 holes for the cable eyelets for the lifting cable. The decals need some more Sol coats on the front and rear wing edges to get them to snuggle down better though...
Now back to the floats. I have been giving them lotsa love and coats of Micro Sol for a week now. It just wasn't working out very well. One float was looking okay, but the other still looked like oop:,


I was all out of love, and decided to go with Plan B on them. I didn't have enough extra decal to redo the one on the left, so.................Yesterday, off they came,

I really didn't feel like waiting for multiple coats of Micro Set to loosen them up, so I peeled the first one off with tweezers. I then tried putting the other one in a pan of warm, not hot water to soak for a while. I didn't want to chance warping the plastic with hot water. With the tweezer and an old tooth brush, we ended up with this,


That worked for me and you can see some water still in the strut mount holes. Now Plan B went into effect!!! Wooden floats were built and sealed very water tight. Salt water shot the sealing all to hell and many floats filled with water. Not too cool for a float plane. The solution was to 'paint' the floats in a bituminous coating to resist the effects of the salt water. In other words, they smeared a thick coating of tar on them as a sealant. All the pics of the plane I am building show the floats in Blue/Gray with the naval hex decals on the tops. Other planes in the same manufacture sequence did have tar coated floats on them. I'm just moving my plane 4 months forward, into early 1918 and say they have tarred the floats against leaking, on the Mole, at Zeebrugge. So today, I assembled the floats and the cross struts, as well as the upright struts to the fusi. I let them dry for an hour and then mixed up a batch of Tamiya XF-85 Rubber and X-20A thinner, 60% to 40%. Fired up the hissy stick and shot a coat on them,


I had a oopsy with my finger on the left one, but it won't be seen. The paint went on good over the original paint, but is a bit prone to scratching as the old coat was mixed with clear for the hex decals,


On the topside, there are a few places that need some touch ups as I couldn't get into the strut mounting points with the hissy without flooding the paint on. I'll use a brush to fix these. You can also see a scratch on/under the cap at the top of the left float. They will get additional 'roughing up' as the coat on them is a bit too smooth for a 1918 application with brushes...

With some luck and decent weather, I can shoot a coat of Matt on the wing tops to tone down the hex decal shine. Then I can weather them too. I'm still debating on whether I will Matt coat the fusi or not. The rear wing decal for sure, but I don't feel like masking the fusi again. We'll see and after it's all dry, I can finally begin the assembly of this damn thing....

Thanks again for looking in and have a great weekend everybody...

Prost
Allen

[yak face]

Wing and fuselage looking excellent allen , shame the float decals didnt want to co operate but the bitumen covered look will be great too , cheers tony

[Allen Dewire]

Morn from Zeebrugge, 1918,

Wing and fuselage looking excellent allen , shame the float decals didnt want to co operate but the bitumen covered look will be great too , cheers tony

Thanks so much Tony! It's always good to have a Plan B. I just need to study up on how to get decals to snuggle down onto the floats. I have 2 more float planes in the stash to build.......Someday...

Lots of work going on here at the Mole. With a bit of warmer weather and no wind, on Saturday, I shot 2 coats of AV Matt varnish on the wings and 1 coat on the fusi. I put them all aside to set overnight,


They turned out rather nice and not 100% dead flat. I went back to the floats and did the touch up with a brush. I was curious to see how they sat into the fusi mounting points. The fit of things on a WnW's kit is very tight and they didn't want to set into place. I had to scrape the paint off the mount points and the holes in the fusi. Then they slid in place,




Nothing like a Hansa standing on it's own two feet. Took them off and put the aside for their rigging. They also still need some touch up on them and a couple of decals on the front outsides. Test fitted the lower wings next,


Again, a nice good fit thanks to the kit designers. So yesterday was the day to start the knitting. Luckily, this baby only has 12 on the whole thing. First up was the steering fin on the back end,


I always made the pieces a bit extra long to give me some play room. Then I did the bottom flappy controls on the top wing,


The taped skewer was the only way I could hold the wing to Matt coat the decals on top. Letting the CA set on these, I rigged the floats. A whopping two on them,


Then I went back and did the fin and underside ones. The one side of the fin didn't turn out very good as it was too slack and drooped. The other side came out fine. For knitting, one really needs 3 hands to do the job. Then I had the stupid idea that maybe heat would tighten up the Infini Rigging line. NOT!!! I almost set the tail on fire and I melted the rigging. Cleaned up my mess and re-did it. Lesson learned that fire (Sorry JR) isn't the answer for this. The rest all turned out fine. I'll take pics later to bore you with it. 6 down and 6 to go, with 2 for the topside wing flappy's and the 4 between the wing struts. Today's top job is installing the 150 hp Benz in front, then adding the windows on the bottom, and some other stuff. I also have to experiment with some weathering for it. More to bore soon...

Thank you for looking in and have a fantastic week everybody...

Prost
Allen

[Mark1]

Thats taking shape nicely mate

[Neil Merryweather]

looks like a lot of fun ,Allen

[scottie3158]

Allen,
A right bummer about the float decals but in my opinion they look better with out the lozenge. Cracking work as usual mate take care.

[Mickc1440]

More great work Allen

[Tworrs]

Very neat Allen, she is looking really good.