Nathan T

RB riveter Gamera. It comes in a stainless PE fret, then you can chuck in a regular exacto. Comes with 4 different wheels. It works great. I also have the Trumpeter one as well. I do like it, and I like the different sizes it comes with. I also like how you can quickly change out the wheels, as opposed to this RB one you have to remove a self locking nut each time. The only beef with Trumpeter is the plastic handle and area where the wheel mounts is kinda clunky, and its real hard to see where you are going as you move the tool along. The solution is to carefully cut away the tip of plastic near the wheel, this helps alot with being able to watch the wheel as you go. It makes me want to rivet all my models. Just swipe some 600 grit paper back over the rivets to smooth them out  and it'll look great.

This is interesting Nathan...had not heard of this tool before. So do you prefer the RB over the Trumpeter? How did you control for straight line rivets (use a jig/ruler or freehand)? What kind of pressure of hand would you say works best? I see this as a cost effective way to add substantial detail...

The tool is from RB Productions. Check out their website. Radu has some amazing tools. I find I use it more than the Trumpeter because I can more easily see where the wheel is positioned, as the tool isn't as clunky. I tried dymo tape as a guide, or holding a small stainless straight edge, but the problem was you just didn't know what your line was gonna look like til you removed the tape. So now I do it freehand. First, I measure a straight line with a ruler, like so many mm down from the last panel line, then draw the line with a pencil, then just follow the pencil line with the riveter, using slight to medium pressure. Straight lines everytime. I do practice on scrap plastic once in a while to figure out what spacing, pressure, etc. I'm looking for. I like the extra detail. The cool thing is, unlike buying a kit with rivets from the Manuf. and being stuck with them, this way I can add as many, or less rivets as I want, in certain places I think will look good, and leave the rest of the model alone.

Hello to everyone

After quite a long absence out of the country for work, I'm back and  tonight I managed to deal with the cockpit of my Ki-46 a little. A PE set of Eduard was used for the first time in my modelling life, but it takes me so long to fit up these tiny bits , I will try to post some photos tomorrow.

Congratulations to all modellers in this GB, the builds are really inspiring.

Friendly regards

Hey great work guys! As I said I'm on vacation/holiday and my internet access is though the phone - and I suck typing on it so I'll just say impressive work all around.

I would like to say thanks for all the comments about my Yamato it means a lot. There is some great going on here and I really enjoy looking at it. Ok the Stack is now basically done so onto the next stage of the Yamato Build.....Cheers mark

Nice photo etch detail. Can't wait to see this all completed.

Thanks Nathan neither can I. Just a small update. The Main After Fire Control Station is now complete so onto the next stage of her Build.....Cheers mark

Good progress Mark.

I've got my 1/72 Aichi Nanzan ready for a wash and a priming coat. Here it is. It's out of the box except that I replaced the pitot with one I scratchbuilt from Microtube.

Cheers

Tony

Hey guys, just got back.

Mark: Again, great work with those tiny little PE parts.

Tony: Nice clean build there, she's gonna look good with a little paint.

I'm slowly pluggin away at the Aires cockpit. The instructions are poor and as there is parts for multiple variants things are a little fuzzy az to what goes where. I also broke out the Eduard set and used some of that PE in leiu of the Aires PE. Now I just have to decide to use either the Eduard pre painted panel or paint up the Aires on myself and use the acetate dials...?

Nice updates guys!!

Yesterday received the decals to complete the 108 from a friend :) soon will finish it!

Another small update on my part; all decals applied, and light weathering done (not going heavy as this aircraft was only supplied to the Japanese for evaluation). Just got the landing gear to build, propeller to finish up, and paint a couple of details then it will be more or less done

Hey again nice work guys!

Alex: That's really cool! I love the weathering and it just looks cool with hinomaru instead of crosses.

Like the 109 weathering 

Hello

I think I am the slowest builder in this GB.

The Ki-46 cockpit's basic plastic and PE parts are in place and painted. Some extras, such as oxygen bottles, additional cable trays at the side, a small navigator's side table,etc were added.

Color came out of a mix, in order to achieve that metallic blueish green the Japanese used for the interior (if I am wrong on this, please correct me). 

small parts such as control stick, pedals, etc are painted and waiting for installation.

I have left everything to dry now and from tomorrow I shall proceed to placing those pre-painted PE parts in place (control dashboard and various other panels, seat belts, etc) and then a wash/dry-brushing session will hopefully make things look less like painted plastic.

Zvezda1980

Color came out of a mix, in order to achieve that metallic blueish green the Japanese used for the interior (if I am wrong on this, please correct me). 

Probably needs a little more blue. The blueish green coating (aotake) was an anti-corrosive, something like zinc chromate in American planes.

Opinions abound on what color it was, and the colors varied. I generally put down a base coat of aluminum and put a light coating of teal over top of it.

WineTanker thank you for the advice, this is the most prominent approach from what I have researched until now.

The selection of such a tone was based :

1.  on a photo I found over the net, where the front cockpit area seems to be in a - not so blueish - green

of course I don't know if that was the orignal color or a modern museum restoration.

Your method with aluminum base coat, etc seems very interesting, I will experiment in an old Tamiya zero I have hidden somewhere.

Zvezda: looks good to me. Yeah the colour there, Aotake, was a blue-green varnish applied over natural metal giving a blue-green metallic look. It started out more blue and turned green as it aged.

The cockpit paint generally wouldn't be aotake but painted solid, Mitsubishi to me looks very close to US Interior Green or green zinc chromate.

Motivated by our discussion, I made a small search yesterday and came up with this book below. Unfortunately it's all in Japanese (which is not exactly my strong point) but has many cool photos and artworks. The cockpit seems to be in a green final coat of paint, as Gamera pointed out.

I hope this proves useful for other fellow builders also.

Zvezda1980

2. The pre-painted PE parts that I got, are in a green variant that approaches very much the interior green of USAAF. I consider this is is done wrong by Eduard, yet I wanted to use them, so I tried to make them compatible with my paint work and I decided to overlook history and give it a kind of artistic license on this.

I've noticed this on the Eduard set I have for my Hayate, and will probably do the same thing.

Discussions are Aotake are like discussions on dunkelgelb or RLM 82...there is no 'right' answer.

Not to mention there are various opinions on USAAF zinc chromate green....

Mitsubishi interior green looks almost the same as US interior green as I said. Nakajima interior green looks to me pretty close to RAF interior green. Some of the other companies like Kawanishi, Aichi, etc are a little more problematic. What you've got looks good to me Zvezda.

Aotake since it changed colour as it aged, any shade from metallic blue to metallic green should be ok just go with more bluish on a brand new plane and more greenish on a older one.

A lot of '70s era material tells you to paint everything in aotake. Now we know the cockpits generally were painted a solid paint rather than the transparent aotake. You still find some stuff telling you to go the aotake route. In five years they may find information that this is all wrong though!  

In order to approach all theories, the cockpit green was sprayed with a very thinned and light layer of Gunze's H63 so as to obtain a bit more of the metallic bluish sheen. This was also sprayed on the pre painted PE parts so as to make them blend with the rest of the area. The instruments dials, panels and rest of pre-painted details were then swabbed with the nose of a thin brush,  lightly moist in alcohol in order to remove this thin layer from these excellent details.

Then everything was covered in Long Shine (the equivalent of Future in Greece).

I will post pictures when I have made progress within the next days.

Thank you all for the educating exchange of info.

Zvezda: Looking forward to more photos!

Nice works Zvezda   waiting for more updates :)

No pictures but i've done the first layer of gloss coat for decals  few time lately for the hobby

Updates 

Removed a bar from the tail wheel

the decals

I omitted the "M" on the fuselage decals because the only image o have of this plane have only the "58"

Walking black stripes from the decals storage :)

...Also the engine is rolling in the nose   i break it with the toothpick seda to hold the plane 

That's a really eye catching 108, BSY. It will look terrific when complete.

Here is the latest on my Nanzan. It is primed, but I've just picked aup a couple of things I need to improve. Hopefully the prop will be mske and sprayed today.

Cheers

Tony

Really nice work guys!

Nice looking Tony 

taxtp

That's a really eye catching 108, BSY. It will look terrific when complete.

I'm not sure about 

updates and downgrades..

Fixed the engine again

Drilled the landing light

then... destroyed the 58 on the wing 

These decals needed the superfilm protection liquid (these decals seems to be a craft production ) .. will try to recovery with a brush drawing 

Damn, that's gotta be a pain in the ***. Good luck with trying to restore it, I'm sure you'll figure something out.

Ouch!

Well, on the good side at least the decals are black, which makes it a lot easier to colour match with some black paint or cutting some up another black decal to cover the ripped areas.