Fokker finale – stick a wing on it!

The final stages of a biplane are really a long list of small projects, plus one big one – the addition of the top wing. I started these by painting the leather rim around the cockpit, and then added the fuel gauge mounted between the machine guns using Eduard’s photoetched part. I also made the large tachometer from a piece of styrene rod, which was drilled and fitted with a cable before being added to the opening in the photoetched Part frame. The Eduard instrument face was added and this little detail was complete.

The tachometer (big instrument at the center), fuel gauge (between the guns) and the guns and theo

The kit guns were replaced by two Mini World Spandaus. These brass guns are lovely, but they require a little finesse to get correct. You must roll the gun jacket around a supplied metal mandrel, which is easy. Then, you have to add the jacket to the gun, which is simple. The hard part is getting the tiny photoetched gunsight and end cover in place, which requires tweezers and a good eye. One false move and you get tweezer launch, but it’s also easy to glue the sight on so it’s leaning to one side or the other. Once I had my guns assembled properly, I painted them with some ModelMaster burnt iron and picked out the charging handles with a wood color.

One of the Mini World Spandaus, up close.

As soon as I could, I added the guns to the model to keep them safe! First, I removed the kit’s ammo feed chutes, which were shifted slightly to one side. The guns went in next, and the feed chutes were re-installed where they should have been. The chutes for the expelled casings were separate parts, and they went in place next.

The vertical tail, which was already painted and decalled, went on next. There seemed to be a visible join at its base, so I ran a wash of the fuselage color along the joint – problem solved!

Next, I used a dark metallic tone for the radiator, which was added with a fine brush. The photoetched oil pan panel was added below the nose and left unpainted, since the instructions called it out as “stainless steel.”

The radiator (and a nice view of the detailed radiator overflow valve).

The wheels were painted the same color green as the nose, then masked with the Eduard–provided masks and had the tires applied in gray. I also gently sanded the hubs, allowing the gray underneath to pop out. The wheel wing was painted Napoleonic violet on one side and olive drab on the other, to match the instructions. The struts press-fit into the wing so tightly that no glue was necessary. I added the wheels to the wheel wing, and then embarked on the tricky process of adding the wheels – there are no positive attachment points for the four struts, so care was needed to get them aligned in all three axes.

Next, I added the rigging on the wheels using .001mm nickel-silver alloy wire from Albion Alloys. I attached the rigging with small amounts of scenic glue – it dries clear and flat, and should it detach it won’t mar the underlying paint.

I prepared all the struts – the N-struts, the cabane and the support struts for the wings, and the tail struts – and sprayed them gray. Then, I carefully painted the front two legs of the cabane struts green. The cabane struts and the N-struts were added to the fuselage; I then placed the wing upside-down on my desk and lowered the upside-down fuselage into place, first securing the N-struts and then getting the cabane struts into their mounting holes. The support struts were added next. The kit’s good fit made this process much less nerve-wracking than past biplanes I’ve built.

The first batch of struts in place. This is the most nerve-wracking point of the build.

Flipping the model upright, I added the single control line from the upper wing to the left fuselage side and the bracing wires on the tail, both from the .001mm nickel-silver alloy wire. The tail braces were added next, and I tried to add the photoetched handles on the side of the tail, but I lost one. I made two replacements from brass wire and painted them gray once they were glued to the fuselage. The photoetched boarding step went on the left side next. The exhaust manifold had been drilled out and painted red-brown; I added it to the engine, taking care for it not to vent directly onto a strut, and brushed powdered graphite on it to enhance the oxidized metal look.

Next, I added the control lines and actuators on the tail. There were actuators for the rudder and two for each elevator, plus control lines. I added these by holding the tiny parts in some needle-nosed tweezers, then dragging them through a puddle of Dullcote, which acted like glue. I did the same thing with the actuators on the top and bottom of each aileron. Once in place, I shot the model with a coat of thinned Dullcote, which unified the finish.

The engine still needed its radiator overflow valve. There were several in the kit; I selected the right one, cut it off the tree and carefully sanded out the attachment point. I also sanded a bevel to the bottom – the valve poked out of the left side of the radiator housing, so it would have to mount on a slanted surface and still point straight up-and-down.

I painted the valve aluminum, glued it in place, and then touched the top with Tamiya gold leaf to replicate the brass top of the valve. This last touch revealed detail on the top of the valve molded into the Eduard part.

I had the proper style of propeller already painted, and I added an Eduard photoetched hub, which then received a dark wash. The prop was fixed in place, and the model was done!

The prop is an overachiever – it started out as a Roden kit part and ended up on an Eduard model!

WWI models are fragile once finished, and so I like to put mine on a base – preferably, as part of a diorama. That’s next!

Assembled and ready for a base! The Eduard 1:72 Fokker D.VII is a fine kit that really shines with just a little extra work.

Monster with a Mullet: Daedon diorama in 1:20

Although many prehistoric mammals are reflected in the animals who live with us today, there were a lot of creatures whose lineages came to dead-ends a long time ago. The bear-dogs, the chalicotheres, and the brontotheres are examples of these beasts, which had their times but were then overcome by climate change, competition or some other factor that made it impossible for them to find their niche.

Daedon (which means “dreadful teeth”) was a six-foot tall, one-ton terror. Its head alone was three feet long, and outfitted with a set of teeth for crushing, cutting and nipping – including four enormous, rounded canines. The first paleontologists to discover it classified it as a swine, leading to the nickname “hell pig,” but its real parentage was with the cetancidonamorphs, which was discovered through molecular analysis of its bones. Daedon probably lived a little like a bear, with an omnivorous diet. It was equipped to kill, and it certainly did when it had a chance, but it probably got most of its protein from a more efficient method: by intimidating other predators and taking their kills. About 16 million years ago, things started to change for this bullying giant. The climate cooled and the ocean levels dropped, allowing sabre-toothed cats from South America and bear-dogs from Asia to come to North America. These animals – which were likely more social in their behavior – meant that Daedon could no longer scare predators away from their kills. And nature’s arms race meant that the prey animals now were faster and could run farther. The slow-moving Daedon just couldn’t keep up, and they became extinct. 

Paleocraft’s Daedon (sculpted by Sean Cooper) had been part of my small stash of 1:20-scale prehistoric mammals for a while. When I asked my daughter what I should build next from this collection, I expected her to ask for something cute – maybe an elephant or a rhino, or even a prehistoric otter (Megalenhydris – a six-footer from Sardinia!). No. Her current 10-year-old penchant for scary stuff led her to pick the Daedon.

Modeling-wise, it was a good choice. The kit comes in four pieces – Daedon, Daedon’s tail, a base and a resin log. The mostly-single piece body is a miracle of resin casting, featuring the ears, legs and the open mouth – with detail inside – on a single beefy piece. These are some bits of flash from what must have been a two-part mold that were easy to clean up with a sharp No. 11 blade. There was also a small plateau-like pour plug on the belly that I took off with a motor tool. Once the clean-up was done, I used an UMM scriber to replace the hair detail over the areas that had been cleaned up; the resin was soft enough that this was very easy.

All cast as a single piece? Holy cow! (Or, maybe, unholy hell-pig!)

 The tail went on easily and I blended it in with Apoxie Sculpt, which was also textured with the scribing tool. At this point care had to be taken to prevent the tail or ears from being subjected to a shock, since they were vulnerable (and would be until the model was mounted on a base). 

The tail was added with CA glue and blended in with Apoxie Sculpt. A scribing tool then restored the hair texture.

The model is designed in a running pose on a base, which is like a small hill. I decided that the model’s expression and its pose lent itself to a pursuit diorama – which led me to modifying a 1:35 zebra into a Pliohippus. I finished Daedon’s potential lunch first, then prepared a base for the two animals before returning to paint the Daedon. I thought a bison-sized animal was likely to share the same colors as a bison – with some differences. The animal first received a custom mix of African mustard and French chestnut – a Luftwaffe color and an Armeé de la Air color, blended together! The yellowish resin was useful in that I could spray light coats of the base color and have the highlight areas lighter, just thanks to the natural color of the resin.

The first coat of paint was added, capitalizing on the light color of the resin to help with highlights.

Recesses were airbrushed with a mix with more French chestnut in it. The face, with its multiple folds and lumps, was carefully outlined with shades from the airbrush. What I’ve learned is that the ideas you use in painting figures’ uniforms directly translates into painting of animals – base coats, shadow, highlights and then some dry-brushing. The very nicely defined mane on the animal’s back was painted with a slightly lightened shade of black (which also went onto the hair on the end of the tail). Airbrushing textured things required a couple of passes – there are more valleys and hollows than you initially realize, which only appear when you rotate the model and look at it from a different angle.

The black mane was airbrushed, then heavily dry-brushed to bring out the wonderful texture.

Once the black was dry, I started dry-brushing with panzer gray, then followed up with a lighter application of white. The outstanding texture jumped right out once I was done. I mixed some base color with a tiny amount of pink and painted the nose.

A little pink in the nose seemed reasonable – the omnivorous Dadeon probably spent a lot of time with its nose to the ground.

The eyes were painted white, and once that was dry I drew in the irises and pupils with Micron pens – a .05 brown pen for the irises and a black .005 pen for the pupil. Then I returned to the base color to sharpen up the eyes, and covered each of them with a tiny bit of five-minute epoxy, which added an appropriate shine. 

A close-up of the eye, all drawn on to a white background with colored pens.

The mouth was particularly challenging. I started with a mix of red, violet and white for the roof of the mouth and the gums. A tiny amount of red was added to the mix and used for the tongue. I then carefully painted each tooth with white, taking care to outline the gum lines precisely. I also took the opportunity to smooth out any rough spots on the teeth, a big pitfall on resin critters like this. To add some differentiation to the dentition, I then mixed up a Future was (50-50 Future and water, with some Payne’s gray watercolor paint mixed in) and brushed it, pinwash-style, around the teeth. (I also put some up the nose for depth and, er, a “snotty” appearance.) Reviewing the mouth, I thought the teeth were just too white. I mixed up a wash of of Future with a tiny bit of Tamiya clear orange and coated the inside of the mouth. The teeth now looked appropriately yellowed, and the entire mouth had a “wet look” that was just right. 

The last step was to paint the hooves. I mixed up a dark gray color, carefully brushed it on, and then heavily drybrushed the hooves with a lighter gray color. 

So, now I had Daedon and Pliohippus – where do I put them? I started out with a 12 inch-by-six inch board, which I stained a dark shade and treated on the border with a polyurethane gloss coat. When I was sure it was dry, I masked the border with painter’s tape and started applying AK Interactive’s Nuetral Texture for Earth, smoothing it on with a popsicle stick much as one might frost a cake. I had collected fine earth and small rock from the yard of my home, and while the AK Interactive texture was wet I added the rocks to the base, with a real effort to avoid unintentional symmetry. The human mind likes symmetry, and fights to make things even and balanced. Nature has no such hang-up. So, instead of trying to fill up the entire base with rocks, I put them mostly on one side of the base. Then, with the texture material still wet, I sprinkled on the fine dirt. Most of it stuck – I shook the rest off the next morning. 

The base after the application of the AK Interactive texture and the application of the rocks and fine earth. The dark spots are the texture still drying.

The yard dirt was a bit too dark for what I wanted, so I airbrushed the base with some British armor sand, avoiding the rocks as much as I could. I then ran a dark enamel wash around the rocks, which increased the visual contrast with the dirt. Next, I added some 6mm Silflor grass tufts, starting in places on one side of each clump of rocks (I guess we know which direction the prevailing wind blows from, don’t we?). I again tried to avoid symmetry or any non-random placement of the tufts. I used an olive color of tufts, but also used some burnt yellow and deeper green tufts here and there to mix things up. I had wanted to include some tall grasses in the mix, but I couldn’t find the bag of Woodland Scenics grass I needed for the job. Looking around the workbench, I spotted something better: a rough 55-cent brush I bought at the hardware store to apply stain to the base. The bristles were a bit thicker than the scenic grass, a little varied in their color, and the tips of some were split – so, perfect tall grass. I cut some groups of bristles from the brush, trimmed the bottom so they were even, dipped them in scenic glue, and planted them around the base, especially in the middle of the tufts. A little push on the top spread the individual bristles and made them look like clumps of weedy grass. For variety, I used some small sprigs taken from a “Super Tree” set from Scenic Express. These are from a sagebrush relative that grows above the Arctic Circle. They’re intended as the small branches for the “Super Trees,” but I just trimmed bits off a single five-inch “branch” and added them as small, dried-out bushes on the base using scenic glue as an adhesive (this is a white glue that dries to a matte finish). 

The final effect of the rocks, grass clumps, bristles and bushy sprigs – suggestive of an arid high plain.

The rear hoof of Daedon was drilled and a pin was inserted. I drilled a hole in the base to accommodate the rod from the rear foot of the Pliohippus and inserted it, turning and bending the rod so the horse was leaning to the right as if in the middle of an evasive turn. I measured Daedon in relation to the horse and drilled a hole for his pin as well, placing him so he was threatening Pliohippus but far enough away to suggest the horse had a good chance of escape. 

Run, little horsey! Run!

A view from the other side of the scene.

And that was it! The Paleocraft kit is a phenomenal starting place, and putting another animal in the scene only enhances how scary this creature would have been.  

The tail was added with CA glue and blended in with Apoxie Sculpt.