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Mitsubishi A5M4 "Claude" [1:32 Special Hobby] - RFI


Alex

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Sprayed the black (actually very dark gray, as I find that pure black always looks artificial/toylike on scale models).

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Here it is with all the tape removed to show the white and red as well, although you can't really see the distinction between white tape and white paint on the wings.

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As I mentioned before, I'm going to need to overpaint all three colors with a layer of clear flat (or more precisely clear nearly-flat - I'll probably go 1/3 gloss and 2/3 flat as a mix).  As should be visible above, the three colors differ in their sheen significantly (white > red > black) so I need to unify them before re-exposing the "metal" parts.

 

Unfortunately, the masking fluid I used (quite successfully) to seal gaps between pieces of tape when masking off the narrow white stripes on the wings has hung around stuck to the tape and laying over the area I need to clear coat.

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That's not red paint on top of the white, just red-painted gummy stuff stuck to the tape.  I was afraid to smear red around if I tried to remove the gum, so I just pulled the bordering strip of tape entirely.

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Which nicely shows the final look of the stripes, but also means I'm going to have to re-tape the edges before the clear coat.  Fortunately since it is going to be just a thin layer of clear I don't need the same micro-fine precision as if I was re-masking for another color coat.  Before doing that I touched up a few tiny chips in the white bands that happened where I was forcing the tape down around the edges of the big stiffening rib in the wing, and applied a few decals that need to go on the painted areas:

pmIsaKXij

 

Once that's all dried overnight, I'll deal with re-masking the wings and shooting clear tomorrow.  Then we'll see what it looks like with all the tape removed.  I've now got *almost* all the other pieces made and painted (probably an hour's work left if that), so it's possible, if I don't need to do much in the way of Alclad touch-ups, that I can do all the final assembly this weekend.

 

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19 hours ago, Alex said:

Hope it helps.  Please let us know how you get on and if you discover and other useful things.  I’m still very much a beginner when it comes to Alclad.

 

 


Same here Alex, I have been modelling for most of my life, but the P-47 will be my first ever all over NMF, apart from a small section underneath a 1/32 Hasegawa Focke- Wulf Fw 190-D9 once.

 

Excellent work on the latest update!

 

Cheer's,

Jeff.

Edited by JT68
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So this is what it looks like with the clearcoat on and all the tape removed.

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There's some annoying aliasing of the white layer under the red tail.  Not much I can do about that now.  In the future I guess the ideal approach would be to unmask and re-mask offset by just a fraction of a millimeter before painting the second color.  Because these should definitely take me longer to complete than they already do...

 

A different angle.  One positive is that there's basically zero paint overspray anywhere on the Alclad - so that's a win for trying to be thorough/careful with masking.

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Decals are next up, I think.  I still need to paint the red visibility bands on the prop, and I need to get to grips with masking the canopy (really just a windscreen).  I have a preliminary mask design done in Silhouette, but they don't quite fit, and the clear piece provided by SH is actually subtly asymmetrical (of course), so I need to optimize each pane separately - can't just mirror one side to the other.  I just need to block off a couple hours to sit down with the computer, the cutter, a pair of tweezers, the canopy, and some patience, and get it done.  I will of course share that mask file when it's done.

 

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48 minutes ago, LSP_Kevin said:

That looks fantastic, Alex! In order to avoid the white fringing from the undercoat, I would have sprayed the silver paint last, after having painted and masked off all the coloured areas.

 

Kev

Yeah, that would have been an effective approach, in hindsight.  I guess I could still try to mask the edge of the red and shoot some more Alclad over that white fringe.

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There's always a specific excitement when removing the masking tapes!

 

Your effort pays-off. The painting scheme is really appealing. With added black engine cowling she'll look fantastic.

Edited by Jaro
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I decided to actually mix up some 5-minute epoxy to attach the engine/cowl and the landing gear, in the interest of maximum strength for the bond.

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Here are the rest of the bits and bobs that attach underneath the airframe.  For both the drop tank and the tail hook I drilled and ran a piece of wire into the part and drilled a corresponding hole into the fuselage (same as I did with the LG) to add strength to the bond.  For anyone contemplating this kit I would recommend doing this all over the place - the kit provides little dimples to indicate where parts are to go, but there's no positive interlock - you have to provide that for yourself.

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And flipped right side up.  I applied the rest of the (few) decals last night.  They are *very* thin and consequently somewhat tricky to work with.  The upside to this is that the decal film effectively disappears on top of the Alclad finish, without resort to any harsh decal solutions.

 

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Still a few bits yet to go:

 

Aileron actuators.

Antenna mast (another place you need to drill for a reinforcing wire) and rigging.

Paint and install prop.

Ditto for the canopy (I'm dragging my feet on dealing with optimizing the masks right now, by writing this instead...).

Make a little headrest pad for the pilot (a part that is curiously not included in the kit, even though it is visible in photos and clearly indicated in the cockpit paintings I posted at the beginning of this thread). 

Finish "rusting" the exhaust stubs and install them.

Do some low-key exterior weathering with pastels.  Since this is an early-war (pre-war if you are counting from the start of hostilities in Europe) carrier-based fighter it should not look banged up, just like it's been on a few missions over coastal China).

 

One other thought on the decals - given how challenging it was to maneuver the very small stencil decals that I used, I think that painting the hinomaru and tail codes is almost a must for this kit - I can't see how I would have been successful getting decals of that thin/fragile a nature flat and un-torn for something as large as the wing roundels. 

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