Builds
The Tamiya 1/48 Junkers Ju-87B Stuka
Oct
Editors Note: Mat “Mottle Man” Mathis is back having survived building the Tamiya/Italeri Ju-87 Stuka. I have this kit; it’s a bear. As usual, Mat did an awesome job of the build and used a lot of pre-shading to get a deep finish, accentuated with a nice bit of weathering. Along the way he painted the insignia using masks made with Cricut Design software. Well done, sir and many thanks for sharing your tricks! To see more of Mat’s work, check out his Trumpeter Me-109F, Tamiya F-51D, Hasegawa c.202 Folgore, Academy P-47, Trumpeter P-40B, or my personal favorite, FJ-4B Fury.
Introduction:
It’s been a while since my last article, so let’s see if I remember how to do this…… Next build on the bench was a red herring – figuratively, not literally. A while back when I first started this hobby, I purchased a great offering from Tamiya – the Ju-87B Stuka. Having done no research (other than seeing it was in a Tamiya box) and wanting to buy it immediately, I pulled the trigger. Days came and went, still with no additional research, and then my box arrived in the mail. I opened it and took a good look over the box and what did I see that shocked me, you ask? An Italieri logo on the box. Then it clicks – this is no Tamiya kit. The plane’s plastic and tooling is from Italieri and Tamiya re-popped it in their box and added a couple of their figures——great…..
Now, I’m still fairly new to this hobby with only about 2.5 years under my belt, but I’ve built an Italieri kit before, and it was not the most pleasant of experiences. In fact, it was the worst kit I’ve built. Right then and there, I told myself that I would pass on them in the future if at all possible. So as I open the box I’m thinking a few things simultaneously – “I could just sell this,” “It can’t be as bad as the last one,” “If Tamiya is willing to put this in their box, the tooling must be spot on.”
Needless to say, I didn’t sell it, but I did pop it in the stash for almost two years. Well, the time has come for me to tell you my story about the Tamiya (or Itamiya, as I like to call it) 1/48 Ju 87B Stuka.
Construction:
Nothing in this kit fit together. Next section.
Just kidding – let’s get into it. The long of the short of it is – it was as bad as I expected. We began in the cockpit, as usual; built it out of the box – no added extras, but the box was nice enough to include some PE seat belts, which I was happy to include. Knowing that this was going to be a canopy closed version, I spent very little time here before moving on to the rest of the build.
While this was a fairly simple build process, it was not without it’s issues. Any major piece that came together had gaps to deal with. I won’t go into great detail here – all the reader needs to know is that this kit required a significant amount of filler around the wing roots, the landing gear joins, and where the engine cover meets the rest of the fuselage. In fact, this last item was the most troublesome spot. The angles on the fuselage and engine covers were not correct, so that the engine/nose was pointing off center to the right, initially. It took several attempts of sanding and dry fitting to get it straightened out. At the end of the day, I got it to a point where I was happy with the join between the fuselage and engine cover; looked (almost) like there were no issues at all.
Having sorted out the many, many issues it was time to prime it up!
Painting:
This build followed my normal painting process that I’ve grown accustomed to, and thoroughly enjoy. First I primed with the Alclad Black Primer and Microfiller utilizing my Harder & Steenbeck with a 0.4mm tip/needle and spraying at around 25psi. Once that was nicely laid down, it was time to start the shading process.
For shading, I used several different colors before getting to my final blending coat of RLM 79 Sandgelb (I wanted this Stuka to be in a tropical scheme). The first color I like to lay down is white inside all of the panels. Next, I used various shades of dark yellow and brown to highlight and shade various areas and panels, ensuring that there were varying degrees of each color throughout the model. Ultimately, I used more than the three colors that the images would suggest. I ended up getting in a zone and just painting instead of stopping to take pictures along the way (It won’t happen again…until it happens again). Each shade was applied with my Harder and Steenbeck Infinity fitted with the 0.15mm tip and spraying someplace around 12-15 psi with fairly thinned down paint, (roughly 30-40%). In the end, I blended everything in together with a light top coat of RLM 79 Sandgelb.
Once I was satisfied with the coverage of the RLM 79 (Hint: most people would likely have used at least 1-2 more light coats of RLM 79) I broke out the RLM 80 for some mottle action! Now, typically when I mottle, I would drop the pressure and amount of paint in the cup down, but I was using Mission Models paints here. They can get pretty finicky if you over dilute them, so I diluted my normal amount with MMP Thinner (probably no more than 20% thinner), dropped the pressure down to around 10-12 psi, and went after it with my Infinity fitted with a o.15mm tip; same airbrush setup as the shading. Overall, I was very happy with the mottle effect and the entire scheme.
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Making Masks with Cricut Design Software:
Moving into my “new normal” procedure for the markings, I broke out my computer and the Cricut Design space software and started in on making masks for painting the national insignia and plane specific/unit markings. While it took some time to figure out the overall process, the software is pretty user friendly (maybe not quite as much as the Silhouette software, but it does just fine).
The trick in designing masks is to find a high-quality image of the item you’re designing. I’m talking about a graphic design/vector image (pardon my ignorance, if this is the incorrect term) and not a photograph. This will increase the sharpness of the design and overall cuts of the mask. While designing, I determined that I would use a two-layer approach to the mask, similar to what 1ManArmy does (see my previous build article). In this approach, you create a layer that will help you paint everything that is white and then the second layer will mask everything that is to remain white, so you can paint the black (we are of course talking about the German Balkenkreuz for the wings and fuselage). The trick here is to make sure your measurements and cut lines are on point, otherwise there will be some unevenness to the finished insignia.
With the masks cut and on the plane it was time to sling some paint. As stated above, I started with the lighter shade and moved darker. It’s important to apply the paint in light, thin layers here so you don’t flood the mask and get a build up of paint where the mask meets the model. After allowing adequate drying time, I put the second layer mask over the top. It’s important to note here, that to ease in this task, I made sure that the overall cutout square for both layers is the same size so that all you have to do is match up the corners to lay it down properly.
Once the second color was done for the two-layer markings, I went back and did the unit markings on the fuselage, which were all single colors. After the markings were on, I did a quick once over and noticed that in a few spots the 2 layers didn’t line up perfectly, so some touch-ups were needed. Once that was completed, I applied the very few remaining decals including a couple stencils that would bring out some additional color (it’s not even worth having a separate “Decal Section” on this build!).
Note that the unit insignia doesn’t match the unit markings on the fuselage so this is not a historically accurate scheme.
Weathering:
There was really not much done in terms of weathering on this one. With each build, I have visions of grandeur of what I want to do weathering-wise, but always end up falling back into my same pattern. I’m hoping that within the next few builds I can actually break this cycle and apply some different techniques that I’ve been working up, on the side; soon, I hope.
For this one, I airbrushed some exhaust staining, did some chipping in high traffic areas around the wing root, and dusted the model in pigments to simulate the harsh African environment. After these simple steps were completed, I did a final Matte Coat with VMS Supplies Varnish and called it. All that was left to do was some rigging and to remove the canopy masks.
Conclusion:
All-in-all this was a build that I didn’t have high hopes for at the beginning, but in the end, I was able to turn it into something I’m fairly proud of. There are certainly flaws within the model but it still sits on my shelf and I enjoy looking at it from time to time. I don’t think that I would build this Itamiya kit again, as it did leave much to be desired in terms of construction, but the surface detail was quite nice. I think I will give the old Hasegawa kit or the newer Airfix kit a try next time.
Follow along on my Instagram (@spruecuttermodels) or Facebook (Sprue Cutter Models) pages to see more from this and other builds!
Until next time!
Mat
For Additional “How-To” Articles and Reviews
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Airbrushing Basics Diluting and Spraying Acrylics Chipping w/ Gunze Silver
Polishing Clear Parts Testing Mission Models Paints Airbrush Cleaning
Me-109 V-Tail Build Macchi Saetta Desert Scheme Fw-190 V-18 Build
Micron Masking Tape Harder-Steenbeck Infinity Spraying Mission Chrome
And my personal favourite: Matching the Needle Size and Dilution to the Job at Hand
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