Speed,Combat,Scale,Racing > Scale Models
1/2A Ki-61 Build
Jake Moon:
Thanks for the kind comments, folks. So much of this is new for me, so the advice is appreciated. Here's where the plane stands: ready for paint!
It's all in one piece with the major accessories in place. I made a few mistakes along the way. I couldn't tell the difference between coverings, so I accidentally covered the whole thing with Polyspan instead of silkspan. It required a whole lot more dope and sanding than hoped, but eventually we got there. The bigger mistake was knocking the bottle of dope off the table and spilling it everywhere. You may also notice some discolored wood around the tailwheel—I was using a head gun to shrink a piece of stubborn covering and promptly lit it on fire.
Here's detail on the radiator.
Landing gear doors were cut from styrene. That's a material I'm more familiar with!
The paint plan is going to be as similar to what I do for plastic models as I can make it:
1. Mr. Surfacer 500 airbrushed over major seams and other rougher areas.
2. Tamiya Surface Primer from a rattlecan over the airframe.
3. Tamiya LP laquer paints thinned with Mr. Hobby Self-Leveling Thinner airbrushed.
4. Auto clear.
Dick Byron:
I got to have a look at this at last weeks contest in Dallas. I have to say Jake is very talented and I would expect this to be a winner at the nats if he chose to fly there. He is good just like his dad.
Dick Byron
Jake Moon:
We have paint!
Here's the airframe primed and sanded. I used Mr. Surfacer 1000 through my Iwata Eclipse airbrush over the seams and Tamiya surface primer over the entire thing. I discovered a couple spots where the covering was rough or a seam was bad (wing/fuse fillet, leading edge, fuse behind the cowling) so I had to go back with a little putter and reprime. Sanding consisted of 600 wet, then 1000 dry.
I then sprayed white primer over the leading edge (as it will be yellow) and on the fuselage sides where the hinomaru has a white border. Then I masked the hinomaru and airbrushed Tamiya LP-7 Pure Red. Since I had the paint mixed and in the airbrush, I painted the stab, elevator, and rudder.
Here's the plane as of last night.
Here's the livery I've chosen. It's a pretty famous Ki-61 and was the primary option for the recent 1/48 Tamiya plastic model kit. It's one of few Ki-61s that has useful reference photos.
My order of operations from here will be:
1. mask over the fuselage hinomaru and white border and the red tail
2. airbrush yellow over the leading edge and mask over
3. airbrush bright aluminum over the cockpit and then mask the canopy framing
4. airbrush grey blue over the canopy and mask over
5. airbrush the airframe with mica silver
6. mask and airbrush the blue fuse stripes
7. mask and airbrush the wing hinomaru and mask back over
8. freehand airbrush the green splotches
9. mask and airbrush the nose anti-glare panel
Jake Moon:
We're getting somewhere now.
I masked the tail and roundels and then airbrushed the airframe with Tamiya Mica Silver lacquer, thinned 30% with Mr. Color Self-Leveling thinner. This is what I use for my plastic models, so I figured it'd work here too. I ended up using about 25 mL of paint to cover this little guy. I then masked and painted the ailerons flat aluminum.
Confession: I've built hundreds of plastic models but had never done a Japanese or German squiggle livery. I've actively avoided them. But here we are. I used a smaller point needle in my airbrush and thinned the olive drab a little less than the silver point to avoid runs. I unfortunately had some contamination issues in the beginning and had a few splatters. I later covered them up with even bigger squiggles. Eventually I found a sweet spot: holding the gun 3 inches from the surface (which felt insane to me) and extremely low pressure: just 15 psi. I typically do my plastic models with the airbrush 8 inches away and at 25 psi, so this felt so weird.
But it was all worth it! After the green dried, I masked off the wing roundels and painted them red. I used a very thin coat of primer again there. Red is quite translucent, so I could get a much thinner, complete coverage over the silver and green wing with primer and paint vs. lathering the red on. I then painted the anti-glare panel flat black. Then I masked off the canopy area and painted it a 50/50 mix of gunmetal and mica silver. Then I masked the canopy frame with 1 and 2 mm Tamiya yellow masking tape (it's the best) and painted it again with a light blue I mixed.
I won't lie—I'm extremely pleased with this. I was practically giggling when I pulled the tape for the blue fuselage stripes and say how clean they came out. Unmasking is always my favorite part. I'd like to give a huge thanks to Frank McMillan who gave me some great advice on painting scale planes and even sent me some reference material for paint colors.
Unfortunately there won't be much more to update with for a while! I move to Singapore in exactly 1 week. So this will get a coat of clear to seal everything and then go into storage for a while.
Jake
Ken Culbertson:
Wow, simply Wow.
Ken
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