Great job there PJ, beautiful! Everything looks fantastic but I really love the fading and weathering on the orange-yellow paint on the bottom. 

Thanks for joining us PJ, always great having you along! 

BTW: PJ and Rob, I just posted you both to the front page.

Wow, PJ!

Your Seiran is phenomenal! The weathering and chipping is first rate! I really liked following this build. Great job!

The Seiran is completed. The dolly wood graining was done in acrylic basecoat and oils. I'm pleased how the hairspray weathering came out on this unusual late war scheme.

As usual, there are tons of talent in these GBs as seen in the completed entries. Well done gentlemen.

Gamera

Please use any picture you like best for the completed gallery and thanks for letting me play.

Rob,

Your Mavis looks exceptional! The weathering is fantastic! And thank you for information on this aircraft, especially the size comparison with the PBY. Great job!

Hey Rob, it's been a pleasure. Beautiful work, love the wear and the subtle different shades of paint weathering. I think I'll use the first photo if okay by you, I'll try to get you posted either at lunch or tomorrow. 

Badges are in the third post I think on the first page. Would love to have you again if you have anything else. I'm not sure I'll be doing a GB VI yet. I thought I'd stop at a nice round five but I've gotten so used to doing this now I might just keep going. You're more than welcome to join us in any case. 

I'm done. The Mavis was quite literally too big for me to photograph, so, my final pics are not the greatest. This was a great build and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought her a turkey upon initial view of the kit, but, after the fact, it was great. The fit was remarkable for an older Hasegawa mold. The biggest issue I had was the seam on the top of the fuselage, but, I dealt with that pretty well. Having a zillion rivets was an issue when sanding, but, I managed to salvage them for the most part. The clear parts were not great. VERY thick and the windows/portholes fit just OK, but, not terribly noticeable. So, all in all, I liked it. I'm happy with the results and it's going to be a 'huge' (literally) addition to my 1/72 collection. I'd love to take a badge and big shout out to those who've finished, are on route to finishing and above all our host!

Almost done. Engines mounted, wing mounted, floats on, struts on and painted, wiring started:

I popped off the engine cowlings to install the engines, hence, the numbers on each engine. Had to drill out a hole to install 8 x exhaust pipes. That was a bit of a challenge as each pipe was about 1.5mm long!

Each prop, hand painted Vallejo aluminum with hand painted red stripes.

I'm using stretchy nylon cording for the float lines and stretched sprue for the inner strut wiring. Gonna wrap this project up by tomorrow night, me thinks!

Thanks Gam, old school pencil crayons did the trick.

That looks amazing Rob! I swear I'd claim it's almost a good thing your first attempt with the hairspray didn't work since I don't think it could look better than this! 

PJ: On the other hand your hairspray technique turned out perfect! 

Love both of them!!! 

I really attacked the upper wing this evening. About 5 hours of solid work to get the upper wing to a finished state. The paint chipping was compliments of silver and terra cotta art pencils. Also, no decals used yet!

Here's the wing with a basic, splotchy IJN green followed by a slightly lightened post-shade:

Roundel being stencilled with IJN  light green as a base to give the red something to work with:

Chipping and wear (note NO chipping on the ailerons as they are material, not metal):

the pair of floats:

Painted on striping (poor lighting in my study, sorry 'bout that ):

Test fit

I need to get to the engines next. More to follow.

Thanks Bruce,

I'm trying to get the Prinz Eugen across the finish line and probably have one more week on her, then I'll hit the zero hard.

@Rob,

That wing looks amazing! and I really like that you are painting all the decals! This will be one stunning build once completed. 

@Steve,

I apologize for not seeing your progress on the Zero. I'm really looking forward to seeing your water effects on a crashed Zero in a lagoon!

Oh WOW!!! I've got to stop going off the grid on weekends... that's amazing work guys!!! PJ, Rob, Steve, I can't wait to see the end products here- ya'll are knocking these aircraft right outta the park!!! 

Some progress on the Mavis. I got the under-wing painted. Quite a big job. All I'm doing today..LOL. Anyway, pre and post shaded and stencilled on the massive roundels.

The engine cowlings are just lightly pinned on and I will finish, fill and fully glue them on near the end.

It was crazy humid here today and you can see the water spots that hit the roundel! Had to stop and drain the system before carrying on.

hogfanfs

 

 @Rob,

Your Mavis is looking great! The weathering is very realistic. What problem did you have with the hairspray technique?

 

Bruce, I couldn't get the acrylic coat to release from the undercoat. I don't know if my hairspray was the wrong formula or what. I 've done it before and it worked, but this time, no release.

Thanks Bruce for the heads up. I will let the folks at FSM know about another bug in their system.

I did some more work on the Seiran. I decanted some cheap hairspray and coated the areas to be distressed. From the pictures I have seen, the orange paint and red primer seemed to have a superior bond over the green paint but eventually even the primer failed in some spots where metal can be seen in period pictures.

After shooting the hairspray, Tamiya XF-11 IJN Green was sprayed. At the end, I added a drop of XF-71 which is a lighter green and sprayed selected panels for tonal variation.

Using a toothpick to break up the paint seal in some spots, then used a brush and tap water to distress the paint.

There is more weathereing to come but the undersides will have less distressing.

I mixed some Testors yellow and red till the color looked right and sprayed the wing ID stripes. I also painted the red and white markings on the floats. Tamiya includes the decals for these markings but I rather paint them.

I can fade them using the ab and some masking film was added here and there then pulled off with masking tape revealing a few small chips.

Still lots of more weathering to come. 

plasticjunkie

 

Toshi PM me and said that none of my threads (Floatplane GB, Japanese GB and aircraft section) have a reply box on the bottom, therefore he couldn't leave feedback. I can see the reply boxes on my screen and wonder if anyone else can look and verify that the reply boxes are there. The aircraft section thread is about the Seiran WIP.

Thanks in advance for checking for me! This is really weird.

 

@PJ,

I was able to reply to your Seiran thread. I could see the reply button while using IE11 and Safari, however, I could not see the reply button in Chrome. I did not try Firefox. Hope this helps.

@Rob,

Your Mavis is looking great! The weathering is very realistic. What problem did you have with the hairspray technique?

The weathering came out very good Rob.

Toshi PM me and said that none of my threads (Floatplane GB, Japanese GB and aircraft section) have a reply box on the bottom, therefore he couldn't leave feedback. I can see the reply boxes on my screen and wonder if anyone else can look and verify that the reply boxes are there. The aircraft section thread is about the Seiran WIP.

Thanks in advance for checking for me! This is really weird.

 I tried the hairspray method on the Mavis and it didn't work. I also tried an acrylic on Future and got the same result. I've made the hairspray think work in the past, but, for some reason, It didn't go. Anyway, no problem. I decided to use the under-sprayed aluminum and red as a preshade and 'faded' the IJN green on. I used a red and silver pencil to add chipping detail.

This is going to be a NO DECAL build as well. All the decals are basic geometric shapes and line, so, I'm going to mask/stencil everything. This is a first for me.

Finished 'rising sun' roundel and a glimpse of the weathering thus far.

The bottom is basic

The fuselage is done. The wing, however, is going to be mammoth project in itself. I'll hit that tomorrow night.

Looks great guys!!

I normally would have been done a long time ago but baby sitting my granddaugter is a full time job so modeling takes the back seat.

Here's where I'm at now. I wasn't happy with Tamiya's pitot tube so I made my own out from brass tubing and a syringe needle cut with a Dremel wheel.

Glued up with Gorilla Gel Super Glue

The flaps had mold release marks so some PPP filled in the holes.

Thank God for Eduard canopy mask, it's a time and hair saver!

IJN seaplanes had red primer for anti corrosion control so I used some Floquil oxide red primer color and added a few drops of Testors red to kill the brownish tint and sprayed the Seiran.

I used a soft old t shirt piece with a tiny bit of Rub N Buff to polish the paint and add just a hint of a metallic sheen.

My Seiran is modeled after one that was found in Nagoya and had an unusual scheme. Apparently is was used for testing and little is known about it but the combination looks very interesting. I mixed my own orange color using Testors red and yellow and sprayed the undersides of the float and the lower tail feathers and wings only. I thinned it to make it more transparent and the panel centers were sprayed fading out to the edges as part of the weathering to come.

Next will be hairspray then IJN Green then comes the chipping and fading.

Go to the Dollar Store and get the cheap Aquanet. I decant mine to use in my airbrush for better control.

Hmm...that sounds like a great plan. I'll definitely get some red in there. I need to find the right hairspray too. the stuff my wife has right now is too thick. I actually need cheap stuff.

IJN seaplanes had red primer for anti corrosion. You can use a combo of silver and red as some spots eventually wore down to the metal color from footwear, etc. 

Start brushing and chipping as soon as the acrylic paint is dry. I waited about 2 hours on a previous build and it was tough attacking the hairspray.

So, I'm going to try the 'hairspray' weathering method for this build. I'm going to spray the entire plane with enamel gloss black, next, Valejo 'Metal Color' aluminum, next, hairspray, then Tamiya IJN Green. I'm trying about a 2" test on the underside of the wing to see if this will work. I've never 'hairsprayed' an entire plane before. 

Oh wow Rob, I was assuming they were about the same size! 

Rob, that is slick! Thanks for the overlay, really puts it in perspective. I did read the PBY had a wingspan of 104' and the mavis was 131'

I'm looking forward to watching your progress on this "beast"! lol

Bruce,

Check out this overlay of a Mavis on a Catalina:

Gamera

 

hogfanfs

@PJ,

The Seiran went together quickly, looking forward to seeing some paint on it.

@Rob,

I never knew the Japanese had such a large flying boat! Your progress is impressive.

I'm looking forward to seeing some paint on this one too!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Actually they had an even bigger flying boat- the Kawanishi H8K 'Emily'. Hasegawa has a kit of her of about the same vintage in 1/72nd too. It's friggin' huge, she's at least as big as a B-17 and much fatter. 

http://www.militaryfactory.com/aircraft/detail.asp?aircraft_id=594

http://www.ozatwar.com/japraid.htm

 

 

Thanks for the link, Cliff. It looks massive! I had no idea these were produced by Japan. Thanks again!

@Rob,

Thanks for the side by side picture! I'm still amazed at the size of this aircraft. How does it compare to an American PBY?