Got a little more done on my Zeke today (1/32nd Tamiya kit). Gere is a photo of the completed subassemblies (except for paint):

The landing gear doors with those metal hinges were a royal pain in the butt to assemble!! There was no easy way to do it, and it took me about an hour of trial & error to finally figure out a way with two pair of tweezers to hold the hinges while I glued the two door pieces together. Looks very real afterwards, but I sure wish they coulda designed it so that it assembled easier.

My next step is to spray some paint, mainly that wierd greenish-blue metallic color that Japan used on the wheel wells and other interior areas of the Zero. Then more gluing of parts. Stayed tuned.....

Armor_Aficionado

More progress on the Zero: adding details to the cockpit bulkhead walls, and built and mounted the engine.  I'll be ready to put the fuselage halves together and complete the cockpit as soon as I have the pilot figure painted and installed.

 

 

 

modelcrazy

Nice Zeek Gary! Love Zero's but I don't have that one  

Thanks, modelcrazy!

Gamera

Gary: Good to see you again! The Zero looks fantastic! It's a great kit, wish I had just built mine right outta the box and she's be done if I hadn't taken the time to try to add a bunch of extra details. The kit looks great as is, as your model proves!  

Thanks, Gamera!

More progress on the Zero: adding details to the cockpit bulkhead walls, and built and mounted the engine.  I'll be ready to put the fuselage halves together and complete the cockpit as soon as I have the pilot figure painted and installed.

Nice Zeek Gary! Love Zero's but I don't have that one 

Gary: Good to see you again! The Zero looks fantastic! It's a great kit, wish I had just built mine right outta the box and she's be done if I hadn't taken the time to try to add a bunch of extra details. The kit looks great as is, as your model proves! 

bsyamato

Immediatly broken original wells, too few dept, opened guns bullet holes and thinned cowling  

 

Removed cockpit pins and thinned walls to put a new scratched cockpit. Also drilled engine exhausts

 

 

 

 

Last night started with new innes structures, also opened one of little doors in spitfire style

 

 

PS. also i started another japanese kit but it's a not usual material for me 

 

 

Hasegawa Shoho. If i'll able to do something decent i'll add

Impressive so far, BSYamato! 

Armor_Aficionado

More progress on the cockpit details:

 

Did you make the seat cushion yourself, Armor? Great job!

waikong

Love that orange claude, enough of that IJAF green! :)

Ok, it's time for a ground target as I finally finsihed my 1/48 Tamiya jgsdf Type 10 heavy tank. Additional pictures with a short description of the build is here https://waihobbies.wkhc.net/index.php/14-models/ground/144-jgsdf-type-10-main-battle-tank

Thanks everyone for this great GB, I really needed some incentive to finish a build.

 

Great job, Waikong!

Gary Mason

falconmod

Got started  on the cockpit, prop and engine.

John 

Nice!!

Gary Mason

Wooooo-Weeeeee, Edwin! That's nice! I might hafta copy you and stick a motor in the Zero that I'm building, too! Impressive!

Gary Mason

Armor_Aficionado

Finally getting under way on the A6M5 Zero; initial cockpit construction:

 

Man, that is looking good, Armor! That Tamiya kit is just about as close as you can get to throwing in some paint & glue, closing the box, shaking it up, and out comes a completed model. I love this kit!!

Gary Mason

bsyamato

Still alive and here some updates:

 

Claude on first final orange layer (humbrol orange 132+ yellow 188)

 

 

Also the cayuse is almost done, few retouches needed and a new missing decals from a new kit (that i need to buy  )

 

 

 

bsyamato

 

Sorry for delay , the little Jpa cayuse is near finish and forget to take intermediate pictures:

After grey humbrol primer , painted the yellow and orange , then masked and green on

 

 

 

And decals after glossy coat and colored upper windows

 

 

 

Unfortunately i destroyed one of rotor basement serial number decal (obliviously white color..) so i need to leave it withouth till i found a good replacement.

 

No updates on the other two subjects but i started also the same nanzan kit that Zvezda 1980  and no reason to double here :)

 

Great job, BSYamato! Lookin' good!

Gary Mason

Ok, got some more done on her tonight:

As you can see on the instruction sheet, parts D30 & D31 were supposed to be glued to the firewall first, then part D25 glued to that. After test/dry-fitting this several times, I finally determined that there was no way my shaky hands were gonna accomplish that. So, I glued D25, D30, & D31 together first. Way much better! After the glued set for a bit, I test-fitted the assembly to the firewall, and it fits very, very well, with no parts trying to fall apart while trying to assemble them. But, the assembly still needs paint, so it's gonna be like this until I can spray some semi-gloss black on it. Then it gets mounted.

The two horizontal stabilizers. Tamiya designed them so that the elevators connect to each other and move together. This is done with some small photo-etched hinges (zoom in on one of the pictures to see them). Normally, I shy away from photo-etch, as I can't see them that well, even with my Magnivisor, plus I shake a little bit, and that causes me to smear the glue when I apply the photo-etch. But, Tamiya made this really easy to do, as the stabilizer halves have small grooves/recesses for the photo-etch to sit in, plus they help with alignment, so plusses all around on this design. One aspect I'm puzzled about is the deflection of the elevators after everything is assembled. Very little max deflection at all in either direction - maybe only about 5 degrees or so. Not gonna worry about it, as when they're neutral, they're correct! So, no biggie. I will need to look at some photos to see if the max deflection angles are correct, just to satisfy my curiosity about it. 

And in case you were wondering, the top of the control stick really is supposed to be green. All the pictures that I can find show this. I figured it would be black, or maybe wooden. But, nope, Tamiya had the correct color listed for it.

Whale, shooooot! It's been since 29 April since my last update!! Sorry, guys!

Not much done since the last update, but I do have the cockpit assembly mounted in the fuselage. This is actually coming out much better than I had anticipated, which is good! I'm doing more work on her tonight (Wednesday 24 July), so I'm hoping to have another update posted sometime later tonight. Let me know whatcha think......

waikong

Nice start on the Ki-44, but I can't seem to click on the pics to see a larger version.  Looks like the hosting site needs a login even to see the pics.

 

Hmm, had the same issue here. 

Nice start on the Ki-44, but I can't seem to click on the pics to see a larger version.  Looks like the hosting site needs a login even to see the pics.

Looks good Bsyamato! Your usual nice work! 

Btw: Steve/Modelcrazy is running a Japanese ships build in the future. You might hold on one or two ships for that. 

Great work Waikong 

Heres box n sprues and some progress on the little tojo

AA: Looks good! Almost ready to mount in the fusilage. 

More progress on the cockpit details:

Waikong, nicely done! First tank of this group build. 

What camera are you using? Nice photos. 

Thanks Gamera, have to get myself the badge now

Waikong: Nice!!! Great job there! Going to put you on the front page now. Good to see someone else use the Silly Putty approach to masking. And despite your comments I think the C.O. came out pretty darn well!!!  

Bsyamato: No problem, adding her now. 

Love that orange claude, enough of that IJAF green! :)

Ok, it's time for a ground target as I finally finsihed my 1/48 Tamiya jgsdf Type 10 heavy tank. Additional pictures with a short description of the build is here https://waihobbies.wkhc.net/index.php/14-models/ground/144-jgsdf-type-10-main-battle-tank

Thanks everyone for this great GB, I really needed some incentive to finish a build.