In this 342-page eBook, John Kim guides you through the process of building, painting, weathering, and finishing the Hasegawa 1/32 scale Fw 190D-9 kit. He uses a carefully curated selection of aftermarket products, and cuts his own paint masks for the markings. The result is a stunning model that is both instructive and inspirational.
The cut files for John’s paint masks have been included as a bonus download, in DXF, Studio3 (for the Silhouette platform), PDF, and SVG formats.
In this 342-page eBook, John Kim guides you through the process of building, painting, weathering, and finishing the Hasegawa 1/32 scale Fw 190D-9 kit. He uses a carefully curated selection of aftermarket products, and cuts his own paint masks for the markings. The result is a stunning model that is both instructive and inspirational.
We’ve also included profile artwork from Eagle Editions and JaPo, along with our usual appendices featuring aftermarket products and reference titles.
The cut files for John’s paint masks have been included as a bonus download, in DXF, Studio3 (for the Silhouette platform), PDF, and SVG formats. And if you don’t have access to a cutting machine, the PDF version could still be printed out and used as a template for cutting out the mask shapes by hand.
And as with all our books, should any updates be required, anyone who purchased a prior version gets lifetime free access to all subsequent updated versions! All new purchasers will of course receive the updated version automatically.
I’m pleased to report that our latest title in development, Building the Hasegawa Fw 190D-9 in 1/32 Scale by John Kim, has now reached the First Draft stage. The book is already over 300 pages, and promises to be the Gold Standard in Build Guides for this kit.
John Kim’s completed build of the Hasegawa 1/32 scale Fw 190D-9
Stay tuned for an official release announcement in the next couple of weeks!
I’m pleased to announce that our next title will be Building the Hasegawa Fw 190D-9 in 1/32 Scale by John Kim. This will be the third title that John has authored for KLP Publishing, all covering Luftwaffe subjects in 1/32 scale. Work has begun, with an eye to launching by the end of February.
John’s model is exquisite, and his methodical and fastidious approach to the build will be useful to even the most experienced modeller.
John Kim’s build of the Hasegawa 1/32 Fw 190D-9 as “Brown 4”.
In this massive 595-page eBook, Geoff Coughlin—with the aid of a host of contributors—guides you through the specifics of building the FGR.2 Phantom in RAF service. With 11 kit builds, 26 colour profiles, chapters on the Evolution and Key Features of the FGR.2, along with an extensive 113-page Walkaround section, this book is an essential resource for anyone wanting to build this particular version of the British Phantom.
Also included is a small gallery of FGR.2 model builds, a chapter on special markings, and a list of useful reference resources. Foreword by David Gledhill.
I’m sure you’ll agree that, at just 22 Australian dollars, this really is a bargain!
Building the British Phantoms Volume Two
In this massive 599-page eBook, Geoff Coughlin—with the aid of a host of contributors—guides you through the specifics of building the FGR.2 Phantom in RAF service. With 11 kit builds, 26 colour profiles, chapters on the Evolution and Key Features of the FGR.2, along with an extensive 113-page Walkaround section, this book is an essential resource for anyone wanting to build this particular version of the British Phantom.
And as with all our books, should any updates be required, anyone who purchased a prior version gets lifetime free access to all subsequent updated versions! All new purchasers will of course receive the updated version automatically.
I’m pleased to announce that our next title, Building the British Phantoms Volume Two, has reached the first draft stage of development. While this makes it sound like a mere halfway point, the book is in fact substantially complete, and now only needs some final revisions and a bit of spit and polish. We’re on track for a release before the end of January.
Not only that, but Volume Two has come in at a smidgen under 600 pages—and we thought Volume One was massive! It’s now our largest-ever publication, edging out Building Race #80 Spitfire Mk XIVe in 1/18 Scale by Peter Castle (565 pages). If you’re familiar with Volume One, then you’ll know what to expect—just more of it!
Geoff Coughlin’s build of the Hasegawa 1/48 Phantom FGR.2, as featured in Volume Two of Building the British Phantoms.
Stay tuned for an official release announcement!
And don’t forget Volume One if you haven’t purchased it yet:
Building the British Phantoms Volume One
In this 366-page eBook, Geoff Coughlin—with the aid of a host of contributors—guides you through the specifics of building the FG.1 Phantom in Royal Navy, Fleet Air Arm, and A&AEE service. With six kit builds, 20 colour profiles, chapters on the Evolution and Key Features of the FG.1, along with an extensive 61-page Walkaround section, this book is an essential resource for anyone wanting to build this particular version of the British Phantom.
I’m pleased to announce that work has begun on the follow-up to Volume 1 of our Phantom series, and will be entitled Building the British Phantoms Volume Two: The FGR.2 in RAF Service. Geoff Coughlin again delivers in style, with 11 kit builds, 26 colour profiles by Simon Hill, Walkarounds of both FGR.2 XV424 and the Martin Baker Mk 7 ejection seat, and chapters on both the evolution and key features of the FGR.2 in RAF service. If you’ve seen Volume One, then you know what to expect—only, Volume Two will be even bigger!
Our launch target is the second half of January 2023, with some wiggle room to allow for the vagaries of the Christmas holiday period.
And if you haven’t checked out Volume One yet, it’s available from our webshop for a mere 20 Australian dollars.
Building the British Phantoms Volume One
In this 366-page eBook, Geoff Coughlin—with the aid of a host of contributors—guides you through the specifics of building the FG.1 Phantom in Royal Navy, Fleet Air Arm, and A&AEE service. With six kit builds, 20 colour profiles, chapters on the Evolution and Key Features of the FG.1, along with an extensive 61-page Walkaround section, this book is an essential resource for anyone wanting to build this particular version of the British Phantom.
Yes, you read that right! Hot on the heels of the v1.2 release of Building the British Phantoms Volume One, Simon Hill, our esteemed provider of profiles, spots an error in one of his contributions. Well, you know the drill: the error has been corrected, and v1.3 is now available!
All new purchasers will automatically receive this new version, while anyone who has already purchased it will be able to download it for free, either from the Downloads section of their account, or using the original link in the order confirmation email. All you need to do is re-download the book to obtain the updated version.
If you have any trouble accessing the new version, please contact me and we’ll get it sorted out.
Building the British Phantoms Volume One
In this 366-page eBook, Geoff Coughlin—with the aid of a host of contributors—guides you through the specifics of building the FG.1 Phantom in Royal Navy, Fleet Air Arm, and A&AEE service. With six kit builds, 20 colour profiles, chapters on the Evolution and Key Features of the FG.1, along with an extensive 61-page Walkaround section, this book is an essential resource for anyone wanting to build this particular version of the British Phantom.
I’d like to thank yet another eagle-eyed customer in the form of Rick Godden for spotting a couple of typos in our new book, Building the British Phantoms Volume One. These have been corrected, and Version 1.2 is now available.
All new purchasers will automatically receive this new version, while anyone who has already purchased it will be able to download it for free, either from the Downloads section of their account, or using the original link in the order confirmation email. All you need to do is re-download the book to obtain the updated version.
If you have any trouble accessing the new version, please contact me and we’ll get it sorted out.
Building the British Phantoms Volume One
In this 366-page eBook, Geoff Coughlin—with the aid of a host of contributors—guides you through the specifics of building the FG.1 Phantom in Royal Navy, Fleet Air Arm, and A&AEE service. With six kit builds, 20 colour profiles, chapters on the Evolution and Key Features of the FG.1, along with an extensive 61-page Walkaround section, this book is an essential resource for anyone wanting to build this particular version of the British Phantom.
Our latest title, Building the British Phantoms Volume One by Geoff Coughlin, represents our most successful book launch to date. And the feedback has been equally positive:
“All I can say is wow! When combined with the Richard Ward book on British phantom units, you have everything you need to build a decent FG.1” – Paul Pendleton-Brown, UK
“…just started to go through it and it’s excellent!” – John Laidlaw, USA
“Just bought a copy, it’s a whole new world in aircraft restoration in model form. 366 full color pages full of high resolution photos for only 20 Australian dollars. Bravo” – Yoav Efrati, Israel
“Bought it the day it was released and it’s brilliant mate. Well done” – Paul Harrison, Australia
“I have just started reading the Phantom book and WOW, I really like it. Thanks for putting it together, it will be a fantastic reference for anyone building the FG.1. I can’t wait to get the next volumes!” – Don Harding, Singapore
“Just purchased it… If it isn’t already thought of as The gold standard for how these “how to model” guides should be done in the future, well, it needs to be !” – Bruce Anders, Australia
This bodes well for the future of the series. If you haven’t purchased your copy yet, it’s available from our webstore for just 20 Australian dollars.
Building the British Phantoms Volume One
In this 366-page eBook, Geoff Coughlin—with the aid of a host of contributors—guides you through the specifics of building the FG.1 Phantom in Royal Navy, Fleet Air Arm, and A&AEE service. With six kit builds, 20 colour profiles, chapters on the Evolution and Key Features of the FG.1, along with an extensive 61-page Walkaround section, this book is an essential resource for anyone wanting to build this particular version of the British Phantom.
Volume Two is a work in progress, but will be delayed somewhat while Geoff recovers from some shoulder surgery. Stay tuned for news on other titles very soon, however!
It’s been a while since our last update on this build, and sadly, things have been moving rather slowly. I think as modellers we share a tendency to start finding other things to do when a build starts getting tricky, or when it gets to those bits that we just don’t enjoy doing. In the case of this build, I was stalled on needing to create masks for the chequered nose, and baulking at having to deal with the vacuform canopy. So I built a Bandai Snowspeeder instead!
But I’m pleased to report that I’ve finally made enough progress to be worth posting about, so let’s take a look at what I have done. The main focus of my recent efforts has been the propeller, and more specifically, the spinner. The aircraft that I’ve elected to depict, “Butch Baby” of the 357th Fighter Group (44-14798), features a red-and-yellow chequered nose band with a spinner striped in the same colours:
Decals for this aircraft are supplied in Hasegawa’s 1992 boxing of the kit (ST5), but I decided that I’d prefer to paint as many of the markings as possible, with decals being limited to the aircraft name (which I didn’t feel I could replicate neatly with masks), and the occasional airframe stencil. My plan was to take a high-resolution scan of the kit decal sheet, and then using the trace function built into the Silhouette Studio software, produce a cut file that I could send to my Silhouette Portrait cutter to produce a set of vinyl masks. In practise it turned out to be slightly more complicated than that, but we’ll get to that shortly!
In any case, there were no decals for the spinner stripes to scan, so I knew I’d have to do this the old-fashioned way. I started with the easy bit, which was to paint the entire spinner yellow, using Tamiya XF-3 Flat Yellow. But then I had a fancy idea. And that’s where things went a bit wrong!
I thought I’d experiment with a technique I’d used successfully in the past for scribing spinners and other conical objects. This involves taking a blade or scribing tool, and ‘mounting’ it horizontally on some flexible putty (such as Silly Putty, for example), in such a way that the sharp end of the tool meets the part where you want the line. I figured this could work for cutting the central band out of a masked-up canopy too!
Here’s the general arrangement I came up with:
The balsa sheet is to accommodate the central tube moulded into the back of the spinner that protrudes beyond the backplate:
The idea is to simply rotate the spinner against the blade at the required height—starting with the higher of the two cuts—then press the blade handle into the soft putty until you reach the required lower height, and repeat. Using that process gave me this:
Now, you’ve probably already figured out that this didn’t go as well as I had hoped, but it really wasn’t a complete disaster. After applying the red and unmasking, I arrived at this result:
Hmm, not really what I was going for! I did learn some lessons, though, and I’m sure on a repeat try, I would have achieved a much better result. For starters, the knife/putty combination really needed to be on the balsa sheet with the spinner, as I struggled to stop the balsa square from rotating away from the blade. Consequently, I ended up applying the blade force inconsistently, resulting in some areas of tape not cutting properly, while in other areas I actually cut into the spinner.
Overall, though, I concluded this method a fail, and decided to try another approach: one that I’d used before on smaller parts, but not for a multi-coloured object like this spinner. So I stripped it all back to bare plastic by leaving it in a jar of Windex overnight, cleaned up the wounds, and started again.
First, a fresh coat of yellow, this time using SMS RLM04:
This second method involved using a circle template to form the demarcation points, and backfilling the remaining areas with masking putty.
Unfortunately I didn’t have enough hands to snap a photo of the mask in action, but I can at least report complete success:
The red is SMS Red. I did have to touch up a couple of areas, but that was no big deal. Phew!
But of course, I still had to do the prop blades, which were the source of yet more modelling angst. The basic paint job was easy enough: paint the tips yellow (SMS RLM04 again), mask them off, and then paint the rest of the blades black:
The problems came once I’d applied the kit stencil decals. Thick and shiny, I just couldn’t hide the carrier film, despite multiple gloss coats, sanding the edges, and a flat coat:
The blade top right in this photo really shows the thick and shiny carrier film, despite doing “all the right things” to eliminate it.
I could see straight away that the problem wasn’t traditional ‘silvering’: that horrible problem caused by are becoming trapped under the decal. I really had no choice but to repeat my previous treatment process, but with one important change; this time, instead of using a sanding sponge to reduce the thick edges of the carrier film, I used a stiff sanding board of a very mild grit, so that the sanding surface wouldn’t make allowances for the said edge like I suspect the sponge did.
So, some judicious sanding and some heavy gloss coats later, I was pretty convinced I’d solved the problem:
Hmm, shiny!
And the final flat coat to seal the deal, as they say:
Not perfect, but much improved, and certainly good enough for gubment work.
And I think that’s about it for this update! Next time, we’ll take a look at how I get on with the nose chequers, the vacuform windscreen, and the process of painting on the markings.
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