toadwbg

I'm building the Tamiya A6M5 right now myself.
 
I built up the entire cockpit than airbrushed it XF-71 interior green and than hit the smaller colors with a brush, no problem. I also found the seat belt material inferior but used them.
 

 
Some of the Wire and PE hinges can be a PITA! Take your time and be patient. You will need 3 hands for some of it! I created fixtures out of silly putty and blue-tack to hold parts down.

I just finished the flaps, they weren't too bad, easier than the gear doors.
 
Careful too on the landing gear.

I'm building the Tamiya A6M5 right now myself.
 
I built up the entire cockpit than airbrushed it XF-71 interior green and than hit the smaller colors with a brush, no problem. I also found the seat belt material inferior but used them.
 

 
Some of the Wire and PE hinges can be a PITA! Take your time and be patient. You will need 3 hands for some of it! I created fixtures out of silly putty and blue-tack to hold parts down.

I do have a few things missing on this kit yet (aerial antenna wire, gun tubes) , but I've decided to call it "done" for now. I also know of a couple small errors with decal placement (Felix the cat & Kill marks), seat (the F3 didn't have lap shoulder belts, just lap belts), and wrong tail wheel.
 
Never-the-less, I present to you my Wildcat! Critique away.
 

The I instruction sheet and small PE and hinge parts can be a little intimidating at first. But with patience and followin the instructions things move along great. Everything fits like a jewel. The coxkpot is a work of art itself.
 


 

 
I used Tamiya bottle of XF-71 for the interior green and picked off black or silver details with a brush. I liked how they designed the Instrument panel to sandwich together.

I decided to glue in the removable covers for the working gear feature.   Once I'm done painting, the gear will stay open permanently in ground display.
 
Although these parts fit like a glove, I decided to screw them up by trimming and filing them for a little better fit.  I pretty much made them worse!  So I had to do a little sanding, filling, and blending in.   This is the most sanding I've had to do on this otherwise excellent fitting kit.
 

Decided to try the paint chipping.  My method involved first "stipling" areas typically wear paint chips off with liquid Micro Mask, than I airbrushed over with Tamiya Acrylics.   I use a bit of Future (Floor wax) mixed in my paint for a touch of semi-gloss and it can help improve airbrushing.   I sprayed a good coat, let them dry overnight and than used masking tape to pull off at the paint.   Maybe worked too well....
 



 
I got the desired semi-random and jagged look but instead of getting lots of small chips I get lots of LARGE chips and paint removal.  Too much?  Not certain if I want to strip the paint and try again or not.
 
After these photos were taken, I tried scraping smaller areas with a 1500-grit sanding pad and my fingernail, this improved the overall effect by adding more small chipped areas.  I think I'm going to go with this.

Loops amazingly like my own Stuka I did a couple years back. If I can find a link I'll post it for comparison.

Insane level of detail!

LOL, me too. I call sloppy seconds!

Only if they were :
1) perfectly accurate !
2) designed/engineered the same way
 
 
I have a Trumpy 1D in the stash. If someone want to send me a Tamiya 1A, i can try !

Wasn't a big fan of the material used for the seat belts but I made them work.. they are like a band-aid material which really doest work well and you have to trim them off the sheet- mine were not die-cut.
 
I added a brown wash to make them more convincing.
 

As I get older, I really appreciate a well-Engineered and detailed kit like these uber-kits from Tamiya! Let's dig in:
 

 
Everything is going to be out of the box with this as my reference material:
 

Next are the covers over the guns/landing gear mechanism Tamiya has.  They provide a tool for this but I found you can pry out the gear legs on their own once assembled also, so not sure you need these covers  removable.  I hate to have removable covers as with most kits they don't fit flush and stand out.  However, as you can see below, they fit FLAWLESSLY on the Tamiya kit.  Amazing engineering.  Not sure if I'm going to glue them shut or not.
 
 

Buttoned up the engine mount forward of the cockpit, again everything clicks like clockwork.
 

 
Here you can see the provision made for rotating the working gear at those wing cut-outs. Not a fan of having them as separate removable features. I'll decide more after some trial fit this week.

Time for the engine, much like the cockpit, this is a finely detailed and intricate assembly that's intimidating at first. Do lots of dry-fitting and note the keyed features that get the alignment fixed correctly.
 
The head scratcher here is how and when to paint? I prefer to assemble as much as I can before I paint within reason. After careful study, I broke apart the engine sub (sans-exhausts) down to 2 separate subs:
 

 
I'll airbrush everything aluminum first than pick-off black details.

Wasn't a big fan of the material used for the seat belts but I made them work.. they are like a band-aid material which really doest work well and you have to trim them off the sheet- mine were not die-cut.
 
I added a brown wash to make them more convincing.
 

As I get older, I really appreciate a well-Engineered and detailed kit like these uber-kits from Tamiya! Let's dig in:
 

 
Everything is going to be out of the box with this as my reference material:
 

As I get older, I really appreciate a well-Engineered and detailed kit like these uber-kits from Tamiya! Let's dig in:
 

 
Everything is going to be out of the box with this as my reference material:
 

wow! Masterpiece comes to mind.
 
Special request for all in the Tomcat modeling community- please make this build into an article we can downlaod and print out

Yup- this is the way to go and I've done it succesfully on multiple builds now.  Glue (bond) in the top wings first as this gives you optimum control on the seam to elmiminate gaps.  Than add the lower wing or wing assembly.

Per my post above, don't feel you MUST rescribe.

I'll disagree in principle about scribing the Tamiya aft fusualage. The raised lines don't have to be rescribed.
 
Granted, it's odd Tamiya did what they did with the mix of raised and recessed. The BDR patches on Tamiya are also a big "WTF" moment LOL. Those I feel shoudl be sanded/grinded out of existance!

LOL same here! It's sitting half built in my cabinet and may never again see the light of day.

Need this pinned