Alex

Engine looks great! Makes me want to start my next IJA project.

I actually went and quickly deepened some of the chin rivets with a micro-drill because they weren't taking the wash well. I'm pretty happy with how this looks now: And yes, that missing machine gun is going to be replaced! If I could go back I would have ignored the instructions and not installed them when I closed up the wings. I'm still unhappy with the uneven nature of the detail over these decals. I need to go in and carefully poke/scribe it in a bit more positively and then try the wash over. This kind of fooling around is what makes me wish I had the skills to paint all insignia and stop messing with decals, at least for things this large.

This was the whole underside of the plane with the panel line liquid applied. I only did a few rivets on one of the decals as an experiment, just to be sure there was not some untoward effect. I have been giving it 2-3 hours to dry between application and removal. And after wiping all that mess off: I have found that trying to use a Q-tip (cotton bud ex-US) to remove the excess tends to be too efficient at scouring it out of the recessed detail. I'm using Kim-Wipes (lint-free lab wipes that you can buy from Amazon) folded into a little pad, ever so lightly moistened with odorless spirit, and dragged gently across the surface. I'm finding it helpful to dab an area lightly to soften the dried enamel, wait a few seconds, then come back and wipe. Seems to be the best way to clean the surface while leaving stuff in the details. Nothing bad happened to the decals where I tested, so I went ahead and applied wash over them, and touched up a few other spots where I had over-removed the first round.

On to weathering/detail painting! I'm going for some hopefully pretty subtle accentuation of the panel lines and rivet detail. Below is a shot of the horizontal stabilizers from underneath. The one on the right (of the photo; port side of airplane) has been done, the left is untouched. I'm using this new (to my workbench) Tamiya enamel panel line liquid. It's really nice! I have tried a similar product from MIG (lousy IMO) and done the DIY mix of artists oils and odorless spirit, but this stuff is superior to both by far. I'm using Black for the underside of the plane; I have some Dark Brown on order for the topsides.

Made some progress here - winglets attached and blended in (surprisingly easy to do given the minimal interface area - the Zvezda plastic welds almost instantly when you hit it with Tamiya Extra-Thin. A couple passes with Mr Surfacer and a bunch of sanding have eliminated the fuselage seams and gotten rid of all the annoying Zvezda-pebble texture. It's mostly up through 2500-grit now. I need to wet-sand with 4000-grit before thinking about paint. I also need to decide if I'm attaching the horizontal stabilizers before painting or doing them separately. Sanding mutes the molded-in panel lines and other features like door outlines a little bit, but that's OK in my view since even the very fine lines molded by Zvezda are overscale at 1:144. I will probably only rescribe the circumferential lines that thin out dramatically where they pass over the seams.

Thanks! I'm now at that nervous phase where I have to try to do just the right amount of weathering without messing up the work done to date. My last step is usually to add some light gray Vallejo Model Air to my matte varnish coat. It usually does a good job of toning down those obnoxiously bright decals.

A few more views Most people will approach the windows on these kits by installing the inevitable clear plastic strips of window "plugs" that come with the kit, then sanding them flush, painting over, and applying decal windows. My strong preference is to leave them out, and once all painting is complete, use Krystal Kleer to make them in situ. The fit of the wing to the fuselage is really good - that's just test-fit above. I'm contemplating using this to paint the fuselage and wings separately and assemble them post-hoc. Thinking it may make masking easier.

Overlapping a bit with the wrap up for my last WW2 project I couldn't resist starting to play with the next model in queue. If you looked at my small shelf of completed models, or my much larger pile of unbuilt kits, you'd quickly conclude that there are three things I'm interested in - WW2 (specifically the Pacific), anything that's a flying boat, and civil aviation. Most of the airliners I've done in the past have been nostalgia trips from the golden age of prop liners, but recently I've done a couple of the specific planes my wife and I flew on during memorable vacation trips. Recently I did a Norwegian Air B787 that we took on our trip to Barcelona, and the next up in this series is a B737-800 in Aerolineas Argentinas livery. We flew on one of these from Buenos Aires to El Calafate Argentina on the way to memorable few days of camping in Patagonia. Zvezda does a great job with modern airliners, with very fine engraved detail and super-thin trailing edges that are spot-on scale appropriate at 1:144. The only slightly annoying thing is that they mold a subtle pebbled texture on the fuselages (thankfully not on other parts) that you have to sand smooth.

Decals on. I'll give 'em a few hours to fully dry, then obsessively poke each rivet with a pin before Micro-Sol-ing them to get them good and snugged down.

I did some judicious sanding where I had a couple of raised edges on the green sections - clearly got too much paint up against the edge of the masks. 2500 grit sanding sponge fixed it, as well as a couple tiny areas of overspray. Tomorrow I will hit the whole thing very lightly with a 4000-grit sponge, wipe down carefully, and then Future it. Decals this weekend once the Future is good and hardened. One thing I always struggle with is thinking I should be painting insignia rather than using decals. I've learned some tricks to make the decals look pretty good, but they always ultimately look like decals, not like paint. I regularly make masks for simple circular insignia (i.e. RAF or Japanese hinomaru). But something like the Chinese Nationalist sunburst is way too fiddly to make by hand and expect it to look good (at least if I made it). I wish there was a good source of professional, machine-made masks for more obscure things like this. I know I can get US insignia masks from Montex, and I think I will be doing that henceforth. I wonder if anyone makes masks for the shark mouth? I saw an article once where someone masked one by hand (I think even at 1/48), but again, I try that and it will NOT look as good as a decal does...

Repainted the wheel wells. And did the photoetch flaps and wheel well doors

Some wrap up painting tonight. For the ID stripe around the fuselage I used Gunze primary red, toned down with some white and some extra-dark ocean gray. The shiny semi-gloss look is obnoxious; I just try to squint and ignore it until that final matte coat makes it all come together. Stripe from farther away

Thanks! Hope to make it even better with some oil paint filters later on...

Couple other views. One thing I've definitely learned as a best practice is to always put some thinner in the airbrush paint cup first, and actually shoot a bit through it to fill the channels inside the spray head, before adding any paint. Then mix well while slowly adding paint. Adding paint first and then thinner leads to clogs, swearing, etc. I know if I was REALLY doing this right I'd be mixing paint and thinner in a separate cup, but I'm lazy and don't want to waste paint.

The great thing (one great thing) about Gunze lacquers is that they are optimized for impatient people. By the time you are done cleaning your airbrush, you are good to pull the masks. I literally picked it up and peeled them off 10 minutes after I finished shooting the Medium Green. There are a couple tiny area of overspray where I didn't get the masking job perfectly sealed, but all in all I"m happy with how crisp it is.

Forgot to snap a photo with the masking done but before shooting paint, so here it is with the green color applied.

Thanks. And nice avatar!

I have had good luck with Mr Color gloss black lacquer as a base coat for Alclad. No need to prime under it, and it dries enough to paint over in less than an hour, especially if mixed liberally with Mr Leveling Thinner. Obviously that assumes that you get the black on smooth enough to paint over directly. If it needs polishing it's best to wait a day even with lacquer.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions. Based on the kit and color scheme I'm doing, I think the sequence is going to be 1. Spray gloss white Mr Color lacquer onto bare plastic (one of the reasons I love these paints is that they "bite" so well into bare plastic) to cover the entire model. 2. Mask and spray Humbrol enamel over that. I am going to pre-test on some scrap plastic sheet first to make sure I don't have any unfortunate reactions between the two and that the adhesion is good.

Very helpful, thanks.

Thanks Tom. Any specific recommendations on which primer to use (I'm on the west side of the pond, so esier to source from US dealers)?

Thanks! Hope to get more done today & post progress...

I'm used to working with Vallejo acrylics and Mr Color lacquers almost exclusively. Occasionally a rattle can of Tamiya for some special purpose. For an upcoming project, I have to use a Humbrol enamel - it's the only source for KLM blue. I need the color to use on an Aerolineas Angentinas 737-800, and it has to be spot-on because the kit has some KLM-blue decals that the paint needs to match. I'm planning on using AK white spirits as thinner, unless someone has a better idea. Should I thin as if it was lacquer? I usually shoot Mr Color around 50-50 or even 60-40 thinner to paint. Given the slow drying time for enamels, will I need to do several coats on subsequent days to get an opaque layer, or can I do it in one shot if I'm careful? Any other tips to keep in mind? Thanks

What trick do y'all have for replacing (sunken, not raised) rivets that get sanded away when cleaning up fuselage seams? I know that people use pounce wheels to make linear runs of rivets on kits that don't have them, but I'm focused more on restoring just a few, usually on a curved surface near a seam. I have tried using a pin held in a pin vise, but it tends to make a deep hole with a raised rim, versus the shallow, rounded or conical depressions that the molded-in rivets are. Is a blunted or rounded-off pin the best option? Or is there a trick? Thanks for your advice

I'm still getting used to how much you need to thin Mr Color lacquer for it to spray well. It doesn't help that they lose solvent sitting on the shelf even with the lid on tight. If you don't thin enough, you get nasty gritty surface texture. Fortunately, there's a way to (mostly) fix this error. Once the color cost is dry, spray a liberal, wet coat of pure Mr Leveling Thinner on the model. Voila! Anyway, this is the base color, straight up Dark Earth on the vertical surfaces, lightened with Sand Yellow on the horizontal ones to account for sun fading. Medium Green, again lightened on the wings and horizontal stabilizers, will complete the camo pattern.