Trumpeter 1/32 TBM-3 Avenger

By Daniel Sahling

The Trumpeter kit is fantastic, almost every piece had a near perfect fit, only difficulty was getting the firewall to line up properly with the fuselage, in the end I had to remove some plastic but this error could have just been me? Overall if you're thinking of a large scale Avenger you won't be disappointed. I decided to do a really heavily weathered Avenger, as these WWII USN aircraft are a dream for this type of work. I did this one OOB with the exception of Maketar paint masks for the numbers and stars & bars. I decided to switch to Model Master acrylics to try a different kind of paint without the heavy chemical odor of my favorite Mr. Color. I also read an article about a product called "AK Interactive worn effects," this stuff is similar to the hairspray method. You spray it over some kind of either lacquer or acrylic paint sealed with a gloss coat (Don't use a clear acrylic coat, use lacquer) then once its dry you spray on your base acrylic color and take brush of some sort dipped in water and start brushing and scrubbing. I really liked the results with this stuff as it creates a great worn and chipped effect on the paint. I then used some of the base colors lightened with white to highlight certain areas and create bleaching effect. I tried several new techniques to keep it interesting, one of which was to use an oil based wash and makeup sponges for cleaning up excess. I'm still getting the hang of working with oil paints for effects, but I really like the look they create and found they are MUCH easier to clean up than enamel or Flory washes. Does anyone familiar with them know how best to create fluid and oil streak effects? Next time I use them I want to experiment with oil dots for filtering effects. I ended up screwing up the stars and bars on the wing, but just imagine the crews ran out of the right size masks and had to improvise in the field? You may notice the lack of stencil data, well I attempted to sand the decals on the sheet for a faded effect however I took off too much of the carrier film in the process and the decals disintegrated in water and I didn't feel like spending more money on a new stencil sheet. Next time I'll place the decals on flat paint, let them dry for several days and then sand like I've done before as this is a safer way to do it. Win some you lose some. I decided to do wings up since I don't have any USN planes this way and the wing span is HUGE not enough real estate on the shelf. Anyhow have fun checking it out! Now on to my F/A-18F in desert camo!


© Daniel Sahling 2014

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This article was published on Thursday, November 27 2014; Last modified on Monday, April 04 2016