Latecoere 631

Beautifully made 3D printed model, lovely detail with the usual caveat of all 3D printed models I have done so far, and that is the printing wave effect in the printing process. If you a really fussy you will have to spray putty the whole plane and then sand it back to get a totally smooth surface. This model has the least obvious printing wave of all the models so far, so I have decided to just live with it. The worst and most obvious is in the tailplane.  

This was the most fussy assembly part, you really need to read the instructions and carefully release all the bits from their '3D cage' so that you don't accidentally leave some of the part in the 'cage'. I got caught out,,,,twice...Aaargh!  

Did a trial of possible blue/grey/green paint choices but decided to just go with Tamiya XF-23 Light blue 

Used an old broken bike spoke to add some strength to the wing section. Only 2 body, 1 tail and 2 wing parts to make the main plane, pretty good fit on all the pieces. 

A few panel lines in Midnight Blue 

First coat of XF-23 and engine nacelles attached 

 

Final coat and engines nacelles painted and floats installed 

Finnicky radio antenna's attached, lets see how many times I can knock them off before it goes on display. 

 

Paint finished and I had to re-printed the decals on clear decal film as the decals supplied were on white backed decals which were too hard to use.  

 

 

 

Just need to do some panel lines and some liquid glass for the windows, one of the advantages on these smaller scale planes - small windows. 

Decided to do this DC-2 as a filler project during the Latecoere build. My first use of ALCLAD paints, so I did play around a bit... 

I used ALCLAD Airframe Aluminium which turned out very polished. The camera/flash/lighting doesn't do the finish justice in most photo's as the black sometimes seems to come through or the light makes it look more like a silver finish, but definitely the best polished finish I have mangaed. I used ALCLAD white aluminium on the underside which is more of a silver no-polished look. Still have to try their Duraluminium next time.... 

 

This photo brings out the best polished look. 

Final look of the Latecoere with it's trailer, antennae rigging and windows all liquid glazed, very pleased with the result. 

 

 

La fin !