The landing gear doors, struts and wheels have been finished and are ready to be installed. I had the most difficult time keeping the brake lines attached to the struts. They kept popping off resulting in numerous repainting efforts. Hopefully, they'll stay on for this final step.
The bulk of the finish, markings and weathering have been completed. I've left off a bunch of standard stencils based on what I was seeing (or not seeing) in the reference pictures. I wanted to added the white walk lines on the top of the wings but the thin strand of decal proved to be too difficult to lay on (they twisted upon application and I couldn't get them right). The upper wings remain a big mystery on this plane. My guess that it had its share of primer and/or rough patch jobs but without any concrete references, I'd rather not speculate. The paint chipping on the starboard gun cowling was accomplished using water and a sharp toothpick. You can also see the paint chipping on the wing roots.
The wing root paint chipping via the hairspray method came out better than expected. Instead of using a sharp toothpick, repeated brush strokes with a wetted paint brush was enough to expose the metal finish in a very realistic way. I'm quite pleased with this effect! And all that effort in boring out the exhaust stacks is now realized!
A view of the bottom after weathering. Some references say the bottom of the fuselage is a dark color, either heavily oxidized natural metal or a dark grey. I chose to use grunblau (84) and use a bit of pastel wash to darken it up.
A closer view of the bottom. I've added the little ejector chutes to block off those openings a bit.
In the homestretch now but this may take a while as I want to make sure I do everything I want to do before I call it finished.