Well, she's painted.  My first time airbrushing Tamiya acrylics and I like it.  Certainly a better smell than enamels.  The paint looks a little too green to me, but it says it's Japanese Navy Gray on the bottle.  But then again, this is my first Japanese plane so I could be wrong.  Unfortunately, I can see where I made some mistakes scribing panel lines.  For some reason this kit had both raised and recessed panels.  The raised lines were lost when I primed it so I figured I would try to scribe them myself.  I probably should have practiced on some scrap first.  Luckily, most of my mistakes will be covered by decals.  Oh well, I'll chalk it up to a learning experience.  I'll use this as a practice kit so I know what I'm doing when I get my hands on a more detailed kit .

I forgot to ask, I normally use Testor's Glosscote lacquer.  Do I need to worry about it interacting in a bad way with the Tamiya acrylic?  I've never had a problem with it over enamel.

Well I got a lot of work done on the Frank,  Sorry there are no earlier pictures as this was added after i started it.  I didn't think I would get to it in this build.  Had to switch to the army green for this one instead of the navy green on the Zero.

Tried doing the faded green look on the paint, I don't think it really shows up yet.   but I got a bunch of decals on last night.

Now i just need to figure out the best way to do the chipping on the national markings?

John

John: Lookin' good! I believe the national markings were repainted by the ground crews when they chipped off. Seems like to me that would leave them different shades of red when you painted new patches over old faded paint. Maybe they painted the whole thing though? Here I'm not really sure- maybe someone else here knows?

Bob: Testor's Glosscote can be applied over Tamiya if the Tamiya is good and dried and you apply it lightly in a couple mist coats. Heavy coats will discolour the Tamiya, I found out the hard way. I've found an acrylic varnish in a spray can- I think it's Krylon that I've been using a lot of, works about as well and being acrylic itself there's no comparability issues. Plus it's much cheaper!

Thanks for the info!  I'll try that today.  I also misted on some light grey until it looked right to me.  It was nagging at me that the color didn't look right.  

I put decals on today.  It always scares me when I see what Micro Sol does to them.  I'm going out of town for work for the next couple of days so I'll post some pics when I get back.

Looking great guys!! Will be back in this one soon. Had some life setbacks lately and managed to complete the head end of my 1/72 FW190 at least. Will get to that 'Alf' soonish.

I got a few more decals on.  This is the fun part.  unfortunately I still have all the little stuff to do,  landing gear, canopy, gear doors etc etc.

John

John: Nice work, I can see how you toned things down from your earlier photo. Gee it's the little things like that I bog down on too...

Hey guys! Great work & builds! Sorry I haven't posted much lately. But I didn't forget about ya! Getting back to this Starfighter - I put in the cockpit decals and I've placed some bits of very thin plastic flash I saved over the multitude of sinkholes on the forward fuselage.  

I took a look at my Zero tonight and I noticed a huge mistake on my part.  I forgot to sand the panel lines I scribed, so my decals look horrible sitting on those lines.  I could strip the decals off, sand the lines down and repaint.  The downside to that is I won't have markings for a Pearl Harbor Zero.  I'd also have to make masks to paint the national insignia.  I did make a couple of black and white copies of my decal sheet so I could scan it, edit it some colors and try to print more decals.  Or, I could just carry on and leave this as a learning experience.  I'll have to think about what I want to do.

I put another layer of MicroSol on the decals before going to bed last night, thinking that might help.  When I looked this morning the decals weren't perfect, but they looked good enough.  So I'll keep on trucking where I am right now.  Here's a pic with the decals on.  

Niceeee!!! All around! Trying to get my head around putting back those bits I sanded off aforementioned and trying to scope out the best paint to use for that silver doped fabric look. I'm going to do a trial spray of stainless steel buffing metalizer unbuffed then clear coated to protect the dullness I want. The color is right for what I want, just hope it conveys the effect I'm looking for. Any other suggestions will be appreciated. Chomping at the bit to get some visual progress on this floater!

I have the house to myself this weekend, so I'm hoping to finish the Zero soon.  I'm working on the landing gear and painted the strut covers and gearbay with aotake.  After doing a lot of looking around, I used the method of painting the bays gloss silver and mixed a little bit of clear green with clear blue and covered the silver.  I like the look of it.

Nice work Bob!  Looks right to me! I used the xtracolor tin on my Jake but found out, luckily before I closed the fuse, that it was supposed to be grey green lol. Anyway great work! I have the Tamiya kit as well in my stash and if I can get it half as good as yours I will be happy.

Thanks simpilot! So far my only issue with this build has been my fault with not doing a great job rescribing panel lines. Other than that I'm pretty happy.

I really haven't done much rescribing of panel lines other than the sanded down join lines on to an bottom of a fuse lol. One day...... I hope to rescribe a raised line kit. 1/72 has its advantages there :-) Awesome work!

Well, I'm done!  The markings are for Lieutenant Commander Shigeru Itaya, leader of the fighters of the carrier Akagi during the attack on Pearl Harbor.  I read somewhere that the planes that were used in the attack were new, so I didn't weather it too much.  Thanks for hosting Gamera!

Hey guys, sorry I haven't been posting that much recently- things a little hectic here.

WW: Very nice work on the cockpit there, I know those older kits can be a little sparse in detail.

Simpilot: Not totally sure about doing silver doped fabric- I've tried silver paint it just seems too grainy. Your idea there of using a matte coat over the silver sounds good to me. Please let us know how it works out.

Bob: Beautiful job sir! Despite the problems you had she looks pretty darn fine to me! Going to update the front page now!

BTW: I did get a little more done over the weekend. Just took the masks off the canopy, need to attach it and get the drop tank painted- since it was underside grey I didn't attach it and paint it with the aluminum underbelly.

Bob she's a beaut mate! Gam that's looking great! Yeah I know silver paints are very grainy for the effect I'm looking for. One of the very reasons I wondered about the extremely fine pigments of a metalizer, I will let you know how it worked, just don't know when.

Bob... She came out great! Very nicely detailed.

Gamera...Also looking good!

Thanks guys! I like your chipping Gamera, did you use the salt method?

Thanks guys! Yes I used the salt chipping method which I'm a little of two minds about, I like the randomness but I like the hairspray technique where I can choose where I want the chipping more by where I apply the brush to take the paint off. I tried to stick the salt where more chipping would occur but it sorta worked out and sorta didn't. I might try using both methods next I do this.

Bob - very nice job on the Zero, and I like the method you used to paint the wheel wells.

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Gamera - good to finally  see the ring leader post some progress.  Chipping looks very successful from here.

regards,

Jack

Thanks Jack! I spent a lot of time trying to find ways of mixing the metallic blue that the instructions called for until I started looking up more about aotake.  I really like the look of it.

jgeratic

Bob - very nice job on the Zero, and I like the method you used to paint the wheel wells.

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Gamera - good to finally  see the ring leader post some progress.  Chipping looks very successful from here.

regards,

Jack

Thanks Jack- though 'ring leader?' You make this group sound like the Yukuza or something! I see us gathering outside hobby shops: 'Hey Mister, you wanna pay us some protection money, ya know like some nice high quality kits? Or else we can't be responsible for something that might happen to those nice shiny windows in your hobby shop there...' 

been a while here. put away the JGSDF TYPE 87 SPAA until i feel like indy track. pulled out one of these from the modern asian stash, JGSDF TYPE 82 6x6 CinC vehicle.first glance and the tires were plastic, not  rubber. went together fine smoothed up well, painted MMA engine gray and 3 hubs will be jgsdf brown and 3 jgsdf green (kinda my tell for warwheels blending the wheel hubs with the body camo. ) will leave hatches closed u til my friend casts out a driver. had to drill holes for tool brackets which was annoying. tools, MGs and suspension are done. somehwat simple suspension and it would take surgery to turn front wheels. will put back and top on, fill and sand BEFORE rest of hand rails. mirrors are the last thing to go on.

lmao - Gamera, I guess ringleader has too many negative connotations, but it was meant in a good way.

regards,

Jack

Very nice 87, Wayne! Gamera, great job on the chipping!