tates, awesome looking interior. Looks like you are coming along nicely.

Brandon, Really sharp looking plane you have there. The paint job is stunning.

My apologies if I left anyone out. All of the builds are looking awesome.

Doug

quick update, more pics in my build log. Interior's done, plan on sealing it up tomorrow

Travis: Don't sweat it, you've got eleven months to get going!

Brandon: Everything looks great to me so far, both the decals and painted on markings look perfect in the photos.  

I managed to get all the decals done yesterday. I wanted to paint many of these on this kit, but I wasn't in a position to do so leaving me to use only kit decals. They look nice and went on without any fuss, but the kit decals are very thick and just don't want to conform to raised panel lines. I scored the recessed panel lines and used Microsol and they sank in nicely, but I have had to work quite a bit to get them to lay down on the wings over the raised surfaces.

I did mask and paint the red warning lines which was pretty easy. I used Mr Color 114 which is RLM 23 that is darker than Tamiya's XF-7. I found this color was a near perfect match for the kit decals. I'm most happy with them now, but I bit more attention before I clear them and move to weathering. Next time I will paint as many as I can. 

Gamera

Tates: Interior work looks good so far, I've used a few AK Interactive paints and liked them. Did you want to cross-post over here too? 

Ouch that blows Ken, still the PE parts will probably look better. I really like the Eduard ZOOM sets, a better panel than I can paint or decal and less than ten bucks.

So true Cliff.  I agree it will look a lot better.  But man, I was finally going to get some work done  on this thing.  The photo etch should arrive this Friday.

Ken

Gamera,

I haven't forgot about this GB. Just trying to finish another GB before digging into this one. Hope everyones builds going well.

Tates: Interior work looks good so far, I've used a few AK Interactive paints and liked them. Did you want to cross-post over here too? 

Ouch that blows Ken, still the PE parts will probably look better. I really like the Eduard ZOOM sets, a better panel than I can paint or decal and less than ten bucks.

Hi Everyone,

Well I blew it!  Stupid move on my part!    I put the instrument decal on and the stupid thing was just a little too big.  There was a little bit hanging over the left and right edge.  No problem I thought, I will just hit it with the Micro Sol.  Just one more brush stroke should do it!  (How many times have you thought that?) 

The decal moved and bunched up.    There was no straightening it out.

So, I was planning on this being strictly out of the box.  But with that mistake I put an end to that.  I ordered an Eduard photo etch set that has the instrument panel.  Yay! 

Ken

good looking builds so far. just a heads up, I've set up a build log for my betty in the aircraft section

Looking good so far Ken.  We're hit with a storm here which should knock out going to work for a few days, so I should be able to put time in at the bench and get some progress done on my Ki-45.  

I look forward to seeing your progress!

Regards

Freddie from LI

I'll be watching this one, as I have one of these in my "stash".  

Hey Ken it's a start! You'll have that cockpit assembled in no time.

Hi Everyone!

Believe it or not, I have actually did a little work at my bench!    I painted the instrument panel of the Tamiya Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero with Future.  The kit comes with a decal for the instrument panel, and since I had already painted the panel with flat paint, I needed the smooth surface for the decal.

Ken

Brandon: Looks pretty good to me too, sometimes you just got to tinker with it!

Jibber: Sure, putting you down now.

Gamera would you please put me down for a Japanese Army Type 1 Tank by Tamiya in 1/35.

Thanks, Terry

After sleeping last night and letting the plane dry for several hours I spent several more looking over photos of Zeros and I just decided that I didn't like how much pre-shading I had showing so I went ahead applied a few light coats of color focusing on toning down the panel lines. When I got that done I thought I needed to make more a distinction on the control surfaces so I added some IJN grey to my IJA grey green and hit them again. I am extremely pleased with how it looks now. I actually think this may be my best paint job so far. I am starting to get the hang of mixing, thinning and spaying with an airbrush. Hopefully, I will be doing some decals soon.

Brandon: We must have posted at the same time, looks good! I like where you're going here.

Tates: No worries- still eleven months to go yet.

Brandon: Looks cool! I'd read somewhere that Japanese carrier based aircraft had really good primer and didn't chip or wear much as compared to land based navy aircraft that didn't get any primer and chipped like crazy. Very interesting and look forward to seeing how things work out. I think I'd pre-shade too, single colour subjects seem like they need it just for a little more interest.

Craig: Gee whiz you're more than welcome! Maybe you forgot but I didn't finish anything for Japanese GB II, my OWN GB and I didn't finish anything! I'll put you down right away.

Okay gents, I got the final color I was hoping for.

I did pre-shade and I am glad I did because it helped me know when to stop on the top coat so I can still get the affect of the base coat coming through. The overall color is grey green, Mr Color 128 and the base coat is Mr Color 7 brown. The control surfaces were painted with the remaining 128 with a few drops of Mr Color 1 to lighten it up a touch and then I added some light streaking to condensation stains. The affect is not really visible in the photos but your eye can pick up on it. The tone is just a tad lighter but very subtle. Next will be gloss coating and decals.

Well, I slept on things last night and decided I would go ahead and pre-shade this bird. I will also attempt to paint in the round insignia for a cleaner look. I'll get on that and post more pics later today.

Brandon, when I first saw all that red, I thought I clicked the wrong thread.   Be interesting to see the results with the  top colour on. 

regards,

Jack

Hey Cliff, I'd like to join in on this years GB.  I know I flaked out last year with my Ki-46.  I just wasn't feeling it with that kit.  Not sure if other folks do that, but when it came to start masking off the canopy, I threw in the towel.  Anyways, if you let me in, I'd appreciate it.  I've got this little gem to contribute.  An oldie but goodie.  It looks fairly easy to build.  So I shouldn't have any excuses for not finishing.  I need a week or two to finish up on my F-107.  Thanks.

Craig

1/48 scale

I managed to get the Zero in base coat today. As you may be wondering why I painted it red brown as a base. Well, the Japanese apparently, and photos show this, painted the planes a color like this first and then the mysterious grey/green/tan on top of that. So, I will be painting the Zero Mr Color Grey green and I am cuirous to see how this color base coat affects the final color. As we all know the base will have an impact on the final color provided it is not applied overly thick. Since the Zero is new in this build I will not preshade it but rather just Flory wash is for panel lines. This should be interesting.

Cool, thanks for the head's up! Next time I'm looking for masks I'll see if they have the one I need.

Gamera

Nice, I've never used Montex brand masks, only Eduards but they look really good. It's great to see you've got things in hand and under control now!

I have used Eduard and now Montex and I can say I definitely prefer the Montex over Eduard. Now don't get me wrong, Eduard are nice and they really save time and make nice clean edges. The big difference I found between them is Eduard are like Tamiya tape, while the Montex are almost a pliable rubber like tape. They will bend and conform to your demands and shape to complex shapes much more readily than Eduard. Another benefit I found is that once in place they will not move where sometimes on the Eduard masks I will get one that will move around when handled and I find that annoying at best.

The Montex masks also come with cuts to mask both inside and outside of the canopies and sometimes that would be a huge benefit, like with that Me410 where the details of the canopy are on the inside which means you paint the inside also, tricky. These masks are awesome and they are usually less than Eduard also. So, I will use them when I can get them for my kits. 

Nice, I've never used Montex brand masks, only Eduards but they look really good. It's great to see you've got things in hand and under control now!

Quick update:

Got in my vacuform canopy and the Montex mask kit. Managed to get the canopy cut and trimmed, Future dipped and masked up. It's installed and when it dries I will fill the gaps and its ready for primer. The canopy is a bit tricky on this kit since the glass basically sits on the fuselage and doesn't rest in some sort of groove like many kits. This forced me to us the kit windscreen and the vacuform for the other two parts. It fits nice and should look great when it's done. 

Thanks Bsyamato, I don't speak Italian but Google Translate worked for the page! Nice work there too and I love that crazy autogyro at the mall for Christmas!

Thanx Cliff :)

The Spitfire is the Vb version from italeri , here the wip but.. it's in italian language :D

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