With the fourth week of the “lady” build completed I spent the week painting and detailing the aircraft. To start with I masked the open areas and painted the base coat of the aircraft with semi-gloss black. Then I added the antennas, landing gear doors, the cowls, and turret. There were some areas that required touch up in the landing gear bays and the belly cannons. I then installed the nose bay boarding ladder. Once all of this was completed I then started to add the decals. I used a mix of the kit decals for the general decals and the Print and Scale for the specific “Lady” scheme and the propeller decals. The kit propeller decals looked incorrect for the colors compared to the reference photos.
I had been previously warned that the Print and Scale decals tended to fall apart but I had no issues with my set. I used the kit walkway decals as these were only 3 sections where the others were 6 sections per wing. All of the decals worked out very well. Once all the decals were placed and dried I covered the top coat with a matte finish. I then removed the canopy masks and added the two antenna wires that went from the tails to the rear of the center fuselage. I used EZ-Line fine black for these.
Next I began to weather the aircraft with pastel chalk. For the exhaust stains I started with a medium grey, then a red/brown, and finally black. I then weathered the leading edges of the props and wings with a sand brown. I used the sand brown and some mud brown of the wheels, struts, and landing gear doors. Finally the under wing landing lights were installed and this basically completed the aircraft.
I am now working on the display case base. I am using the Master Tools medium display case along with some Scene-O-Rama accessories like sand, gravel, plants, and even a little of their water effects to create a small puddle in the drainage ditch area accented with some long grass reeds. This will represent a typical pacific island air field. I have some scale drums and ammo crates to add to the scene as well. I also ordered a black aluminum name plate that will be etched with silver lettering with the aircraft details. I should have this build finished over the next week. Stay tuned for the big finish!