Rufe 1/32 tamiya/MDC

[mc65]

hi all!

here a project started a lot of years ago. decades, actually. 

at the time the only A6M available was the -5 Hasegawa, with all its limits, dimensional and 70's style. moreover, as I tried to understand it, my certainties crumbled until they thinned to a single one: sooner or later I would have done it, and I would have done it on certainties, not on hypotheses.

and Tamiya finally came up with the suitable base, a -2, and the MDC made a resin set for making my-damn-Rufe.

very well, but some uncertainties about the painting also emerged, until I recently found documentation that comforted me on what I should try to reproduce, hallelujah.

so, here we are. 

 

Beyond the conversion itself, I focused on the weathering of the paints. I wanted both the red primer used on these aircraft and the factory color under the definitive green of the operating theater to appear.

to achieve this I used the salt technique, but using baking soda, then eliminated with vinegar. in this way the peeling is finer, and the residues practically...well, zero, altough technically this is a Rufe. 

 

this effect was built in layers, obviously, each one protected with transparent for subsequent treatment. the hard part was keeping the layers thin!

 

I worked the mainplane and the floats separately for ease of handling, joining up these at the very last stage.

 

the trolley supplied by MDc was on my opinion too fragile to support the weight of the whole finished model, so I put it aside, saving just the wheels, and built a new one in welded brass and wood, based on the MDC one, on the Tamiya 1/48 and on the historical photos found.

 

much better, IMHO. after some close inspection of the original photos and with the help of a friend from Tokyo, we decided that the writing on the wooden poles reads "front left/right" and "left/right".

 

 

the building itself was free of troubles, I just cut off the headrest/rollbar not present in this version, and added few details here and there, mainly in the cockpit and engine area.

 

 

 

all in all I'm quite satisfied by this work, now I'm just recharging the batteries to throw myself in the last step of the idro-trilogy I've in mind!

 

cheers, Paolo

 

 

[Cicciuzzo]

Molto realistico. Modello professionale. Ottimo 

[aircommando130]

That's awesome! The weathering of the paint looks perfect

I have that same Zero book too...has some nice fold outs.

 

Cheers and Happy New Year!

 

Ron

[Greif8]

Wow, that is one exceptional build!  The weathering is perfect.  Great job on scratching the trolley, it is very well built.

 

Ernest

[MikeMaben]

Excellent work Paolo  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 28, 2021 by MikeMaben