1/48 Hasegawa Ki-84 Hayate

[JKim]

Hello! I am going to build the 1/48 scale Ki-84 Hayate (aka Frank). I've been most active on the Group Build front recently but after five straight GB builds, I thought I'd try something that doesn't fit the current scheme. This is an aircraft that has always been a favorite of mine and I've heard such good things about Hasegawa's recent kits of Japanese fighters.

I bought this kit earlier this year but as I've said, the Group Builds have been occupying most of my time so I'm only getting to it now.

Without knowing too much about the kit, I ordered a set of Montex Masks so that I would not have to deal with decals for the big round Hinomarus. I also picked up the SBS resin cockpit set even though I've read that the Hase cockpit is very good for this kit.

Here are some views of the kit sprues before I start work. I apologize for the background but I was forced to use the garage carpeting for these pictures. I am certainly impressed by the molding of this kit. Compared to Hasegawa's Folgore, Fw190A-4 and Typhoon 1B (Early) that I've built this year, the engraving and detail on the Ki-84 seem to be a noticeable level higher.

The clear parts are in a separate baggy and I didn't bother opening them up at this stage but I'll show pictures of the canopy parts later.

The kit decal sheet, which I won't be using unless it is for any stenciling.

Here is the SBS resin cockpit set...

But just how much better is the resin versus the kit stuff? Let's take a look. Here are the side panels. Obviously the resin panels DO have some detail that's missing from the kit but those are the best looking kit side panels I've seen.

Bulkhead and seat comparison...

The resin seat offers the most significant visual differences...

Floorboard...

The SBS kit comes with with a 3-piece approach to the instrument panel... resin panel, clear acetate instrument dials and photoetched fascia.

If I had bothered to look at the kit prior to pulling the trigger on the SBS detail set, I don't think I would've bothered given how good the kit cockpit looks. But... since I have it already, I'll definitely be making use of it. More to come later!

 

[Crimea_River]

Garage carpeting? Are you sure you're in the right place?

 

[fubar57]

Nice John. I have the Tamiya version and Hasegawa definitely outshines it. If you need any detail shots, let me know.

Geo

 

[rochie]

Ki-84 is a favorite of mine too, already done 1 Tamiya and have another 2 in the pile !

and Wayne is your man for any questions you have.

 

[JKim]

Garage carpeting? Are you sure you're in the right place?

"Converted" garage I should say! We used it for a playroom when the girls were little and had a cheapo layer of office carpeting put down on the floor. It's now my model building/lure painting sanctuary.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Crimea_River]

"Sanctuary" sounds nice. I have a dungeon.

 

[JKim]

The first thing I like to do with the kit is to check out the exhausts and see if they can be hollowed out. The exhausts are provided as separate parts so that makes things a little easier. First up are the main bank of exhaust pipes which are situated at mid fuselage. Each individual pipe is hollowed out carefully using a sharp X-Acto knife.

The longer, rectangular openings are achieved by sets of parallel borings that get bigger and bigger until the interior sides cave in. You want the interior sides to cave in but you don't want to blow out the exterior sides.

But sometimes it happens, unfortunately!

I used a piece sprue "welded" into place with Tamiya Extra Thin liquid cement as a repair. This REALLY needs to dry thoroughly as you will not be able sculpt properly when the plastic is still soft.

Here's the entire set of exhausts with the one blowout set aside for repair.

I was able to salvage the damaged pipe so that task is complete!

A little bit of engine work is next. The engine cylinders are represented as a single piece, which is totally acceptable IMO when it is only going to be viewed from the front cowl opening. I drilled out holes in the cylinders to accept wiring.

I used lead wires to simulate the engine wiring.

Here is the engine after wiring. There are still some bits and pieces needed to be glued onto the engine... almost ready for painting!

 

[fubar57]

Nice start John.

Geo

 

[JKim]

Some more odds and ends before I really "start" with the cockpit.

Hollowing out the wing guns. These are 20mm Ho-5 cannons and have some decent detail on them.

The cowling gun location is depicted by two deep troughs in the cowling with no barrel detail. I chose to add the barrel ends of the 12.7mm Ho-103 machine guns peaking slightly out of the troughs. These were fashioned out of stainless steel tubing.

Hasegawa has given the option to show the flaps down. There is some interesting detail on the inner surface of the flaps and looking at one of my resources (Aero Detail 24), I noticed that what's shown as circular depressions on the kit are actually holes. Hmmm... should I drill these out too?

After some consideration, I decided to do it. Being on the trailing edge of the wings, the plastic is very thin here, which made me hesitate... it's easier to cut through but much less forgiving. I did all of the circular holes and only messed up once. I think I'll leave the ovals alone... I'm not confident about them.

I also drilled out some holes in the wheel wells to accept a bit of additional wiring.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Wayne Little]

great work John!

 

[Crimea_River]

Definitely.

 

[Catch22]

Nice stuff!

 

[Gnomey]

Nicely done so far!

 

[JKim]

Thanks gentlemen! Work on the Hayate is proceeding but I've been stuck on the cockpit for a few days. The SBS cockpit is very nice but with that detail comes the burden of painting it all and I'm just not very good at cockpit (read as "brush painting") work. So here is the fruit of a few days work on the Ki-84...

The cockpit set comes with a fair assortment of photo etched detail so I tried to attach as much of it as possible prior to painting. Some of the micro levers and switches were inadvertently pinged off into the abyss so I had to replace them with bits of stretch sprue.

The SBS instrument panel is a 3-piece affair with a resin panel, clear acetate for the instrument faces and a p.e. piece for the fascia. It looked decent but the instrument faces were barely visible even with the resin panel face painted white. So I handpainted the kit panel and liked the results a little bit better. Interestingly, the kit decal sheets provides TWO more options for the IP... instrument faces on a clear background and on a black background.

In the end, I stuck with my handpainted panel. The cockpit opening of the Ki-84 is quite small. You can see how the sidewalls curve inwards towards the top by looking at the shape of the bulkheads. So visibility into the cockpit will be limited. Outside of a few replacement levers, the only thing that I added was a wire on the control stick... the resin part had a molded line that was sanded off and replaced. I really like the gun sight that SBS provides. It is a three part assembly with a resin body, a petite photo etch piece on top and clear acetate for the sight glass.

Here are the painted resin sidewalls. I chose to go with a light green interior. I didn't want to use that metallic blue/green that is often seen in Japanese cockpit interiors and wheel wells. Just a personal preference... something about the metallic grain that seems to kill the scale effect, at least for me.

The SBS instructions would have you glue in the sidewalls into the fuselage sides first but I went the kit route and assembled the cockpit tub first and attached the subassembly whole into a fuselage side.

It took some jiggling to get the cockpit tub attached and the fuselage sides glued together. It's a tight fit but one benefit is that the cockpit tub acts as a spreader bar and will help the fit between the fuselage and wing roots. The jiggling was too much for the gun sight and it popped off during this stage. I put it away in a baggy for safe keeping... I will install this right before the windscreen goes on. I have to remember to be careful if I use CA glue to attach... don't want CA fumes to fog up the windscreen.

I can put the fuselage assembly aside for now and work on a few other things. The engine gets painted with Alclad aluminum.

Using a brush (ugh), I paint the crankcase gray and the ignition wire a metallic brown. The engine then gets a dirty wash of dark brown. Before assembly, I'll give the whole engine a flat coat.

While prefitting the engine assembly to front of the fuselage, I noticed that the cowling flaps are a bit thickish and would easily be sanded down.

Gentle scraping with an X-Acto knife gets the flaps down to a more realistic edge... a small touch but easy enough to do.

That's it for now!

 

[Crimea_River]

.... I'm just not very good at cockpit (read as "brush painting") work......

Yeah right!!!!

 

[fubar57]

Very nice work and I don't think you are too far off with the cockpit color, starboard side...

Geo

 

[Wurger]

 

[Catch22]

That looks awesome!