Tamiya 1/48 N1K1-Ja "George"

[LSP_Kevin]

Traditionally, the vast majority of time I spend on my builds is in the construction phase, due to the nature of the projects I usually burden myself with. This often means I don't have it in me at the end of the build to do a lot of weathering or fancy paint effects, and I feel this area of my modelling needs work. Those of you who follow me on Facebook will have seen my recent post about wanting to improve these skills, and my plan to enable me to do so. That plan is to take a stack of shake'n'bake kits in 1/48 scale (mostly Tamiya, predictably), build them as OOB as possible, and use them as a series of "weathering studies". But I also want to experiment with finishing styles, and generally improve my painting across the board, all the while keeping the construction phase as uncomplicated as possible.

 

Anyway, enough preamble! The first of the series is this N1K1-Ja kit from Tamiya, and it took me less than a day to get the airframe mostly assembled:

 

 

 

 

While getting this far was incredibly quick, I'll be paying a lot more attention to the finishing stages here than I did with the Mustang build, so things will slow down a bit now.

 

Once I start painting this, I'll have to find another kit to start building!

 

Kev

[wingman777]

Hey Kevin I really like what you've got going on here.  I am guilty of doing exactly what you mentioned.  One thing I've recently started doing is spraying very thin paint from a gravity fed airbrush.  It gave the best paint finish I've done in years, more realistic.  It makes sense that even paint has a scale thickness and the smaller the scale the thinner it should be so that minute details in panel lines and surface detail would not be coated over.  I look forward to following your lead on this project.

[Thunnus]

Sounds like a plan!  Any ideas on what type of weathering you'll do for the Shiden?

[LSP_Kevin]

54 minutes ago, wingman777 said:

Hey Kevin I really like what you've got going on here.  I am guilty of doing exactly what you mentioned.  One thing I've recently started doing is spraying very thin paint from a gravity fed airbrush.  It gave the best paint finish I've done in years, more realistic.  It makes sense that even paint has a scale thickness and the smaller the scale the thinner it should be so that minute details in panel lines and surface detail would not be coated over.  I look forward to following your lead on this project.

 

One thing I forgot to mention in my preamble is that I don't think my finishes are bad per se, just limited, and a bit timid when it comes to things like weathering, or experimenting with different approaches. I'm often so burnt out by the time I get through the construction phase, that I just can't be bothered any more! I'm hoping that getting more comfortable with more advanced or sophisticated finishing techniques here, will all me to more easily incorporate them into more complex builds. I certainly don't intend to transition from a "mostly clean" builder to a "mostly weathered" builder, but simply just to expand my skill-set and approach, and regain some lost ground in the painting and finishing arena. I also have no qualms about going over the top for the sake of experimentation, but I know in my head the look I'm ultimately going for.

 

Kev

[LSP_Kevin]

25 minutes ago, Thunnus said:

Sounds like a plan!  Any ideas on what type of weathering you'll do for the Shiden?

 

Nothing specific, other than the usual clichéd heavy chipping. As I mentioned in the post above, I have no qualms about going over the top for the sake of experimentation, and some of these builds may end up as abject failures - but all in the name of practising and learning! One of the things that holds me back in this area on builds I'm more invested in, is the fear of screwing them up, and so I tend to be very conservative with the painting and finishing process. Which is odd, because I'm quite the opposite when it comes to construction! But allowing myself the freedom to experiment on builds where the construction is not part of the challenge, should - in theory - help build some muscle memory, without the usual fear of failure. That's what I hope, anyway! And if nothing else, I'll get some models built.

 

Kev

[Thunnus]

Interestingly, the operational (not derelict) photos that I found of the N1K1 did not show the typically heavy chipping that you'd expect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[LSP_Kevin]

50 minutes ago, Thunnus said:

Interestingly, the operational (not derelict) photos that I found of the N1K1 did not show the typically heavy chipping that you'd expect.

 

Yeah, not going for any semblance of reality or accuracy here (or with any of these builds) - just want to practise the technique. But at the same time, I want to avoid making it look ludicrous, so haven't really decided how it's going to play out quite yet. Even without heavy chipping, they're certainly grubby enough!

 

Kev

[LSP_Ray]

If you want to practice weathering, pull out that Tamiya M8 and go to town! Armor is a good way to develop weathering skills. 

[LSP_Kevin]

1 hour ago, LSP_Ray said:

If you want to practice weathering, pull out that Tamiya M8 and go to town! Armor is a good way to develop weathering skills. 

 

Yeah, I know. But I want to practise it in the context of aircraft models. And it's not just about the weathering - I also want to improve my masking and camo techniques, along with my airbrushing skills and a host of other things on the finishing side of the ledger that I'm not so comfortable with. But I can at least say that I've now got two weathered vehicles under my belt:

 

 

 

I've also started the little CMK resin artillery gun you sent me, Ray - but man, what a dog of a kit!

 

Kev

[LSP_Kevin]

Making some pretty good progress with this one, though did have a surprising amount of trouble with the lower wing to fuselage join, and some steps along the fuselage halves themselves. All taken care of now, however, and it's in primer, awaiting the painting process:

 

 

I'm using a masking set from ASK to make life easier. Just need to get some liquid mask on the bare section on the windscreen, and mask up the cockpit opening.

 

I'm scratching my head a bit with the engine colour call-outs. The kit instructions call for XF-21 Sky for the gear box housing, so I dutifully did so. But it looks completely wrong to me. Anybody got a better recommendation?

 

 

Kev

[Alex]

1 minute ago, LSP_Kevin said:

Making some pretty good progress with this one, though did have a surprising amount of trouble with the lower wing to fuselage join, and some steps along the fuselage halves themselves. All taken care of now, however, and it's in primer, awaiting the painting process:

 

 

I'm using a masking set from ASK to make life easier. Just need to get some liquid mask on the bare section on the windscreen, and mask up the cockpit opening.

 

I'm scratching my head a bit with the engine colour call-outs. The kit instructions call for XF-21 Sky for the gear box housing, so I dutifully did so. But it looks completely wrong to me. Anybody got a better recommendation?

 

 

Kev

I would do maybe 4:1 of light gray to that Sky - essentially a slightly warm, slightly greeninsh gray.  But that's just based on my perception of what's a likely color.  There are vanishingly few color photos available of these planes from the 1940s.  And you don't want to go down the rabbit hole of internet arguments over what the right colors for WWII Japanese warplanes are....

[LSP_Kevin]

5 minutes ago, Alex said:

I would do maybe 4:1 of light gray to that Sky - essentially a slightly warm, slightly greeninsh gray.  But that's just based on my perception of what's a likely color.  There are vanishingly few color photos available of these planes from the 1940s.  And you don't want to go down the rabbit hole of internet arguments over what the right colors for WWII Japanese warplanes are....

 

Apparently Eduard's new-ish Rufe kit calls out RLM 76, and I certainly think that's a more plausible hue than Sky! For US radial engine fronts, I often use Ocean Grey, which looks pretty good to my eye. I think even a dull silver would look more convincing than what I've got now.

 

Kev

[Alex]

13 minutes ago, LSP_Kevin said:

 

Apparently Eduard's new-ish Rufe kit calls out RLM 76,

Yes, that would definitely be better than Sky.

[LSP_K2]

When I did my own (now trashed) Hasegawa 1:32 kit, I just used a generic darkish grey.

[Thunnus]

FWIW...

 

The instructions for the Hasegawa 1/48 N1K1 kit calls for a silver crankcase.

 

The instructions for the Hasegawa 1/32 N1K2 kit calls for a Green (Mitsubishi) and lists Mr Hobby Aqueous H61, which is actually more of a gray than green.

 

 

I used a color similar to yours on my 1/32 N1K2 build.  Whatever color you choose, you won't see much of the crankcase once the prop/spinner is in place.