Vic Balshaw
Major General
Not having a good time Andy. 
**** DONE: GB-54 1:48 Kawasaki Ki-61 Hien - Pacific Theatre
- Thread starter Crimea_River
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Bustedwing
Tech Sergeant
I hope my bad decal karma hasn't rubbed off on you !
- Thread starter
- #163
Crimea_River
Marshal
"Rubbed off"....I see what you did there.
Here's a pic of the mule with trials of the red (no clear winner yet) and blue (first try seems to be OK).
Here's a pic of the mule with trials of the red (no clear winner yet) and blue (first try seems to be OK).
Nicely done so far Andy!
Bustedwing
Tech Sergeant
Nice mule, much nicer than my paint pig ! That was once a clear fuselage ??
- Thread starter
- #166
Crimea_River
Marshal
Yes. The kit comes with an optional clear fuselage half so you can display a dumb-looking engine, a pretty nice cockpit, and a lot of empty space behind the pit. Pretty gimmicky but it does make for a nice part to experiment on.
Doing good there Andy, few minor irritations but moving along nicely.
fubar57
General
Hope it all works out Andy. I had an odd decal on my current build. There was a white halo around half of the decal that wasn't obvious until the decal was placed in water. It took forever to release in that one spot and ripped
- Thread starter
- #169
Crimea_River
Marshal
Thanks guys. To avoid further decal mishaps as much as possible, I've decided to mask and paint the Hinomarus now that I'm satisfied with a decent red shade. I settled on using just straight Tamiya XF-7 shot straight onto the aluminum base, which matched the decal shade well after spraying a light coat of gloss clear on it. The result is shown below where I masked and painted the tail area. The colour is a little orangey in the pics and not so much in real life so that's what I'm going with.
A tiny bit of touch-up is needed on the tail fairings where the masks lifted the paint a bit but it turned out very well. I like how the fabric rudder and elevators show a slightly different hue due to the very flat Alclad Dull Aluminum underneath.
I've just cut some masks for the Hinomarus on my Cricut cutter and will show the process for painting these next. Thanks again for following along.
A tiny bit of touch-up is needed on the tail fairings where the masks lifted the paint a bit but it turned out very well. I like how the fabric rudder and elevators show a slightly different hue due to the very flat Alclad Dull Aluminum underneath.
I've just cut some masks for the Hinomarus on my Cricut cutter and will show the process for painting these next. Thanks again for following along.
fubar57
General
Nice neat work with the curves
- Thread starter
- #171
Crimea_River
Marshal
Thanks Geo. Carefully cut with a scalpel along the raised seam.
Question for anyone who might know. There's a panel on the wing MG's that Tamiya calls out to be XF-7 Red. I know I shouldn't go by colourized pics but the detail below from a previously posted picture shows a colour more in line with the brown used on the prop and spinner for the area (see arrow). Anyone know is red is right?
I'm not sure how colourization works but the Hinomaro on the fuselage is definitely red and if the panel is supposed to match that red, it isn't doing that.
Question for anyone who might know. There's a panel on the wing MG's that Tamiya calls out to be XF-7 Red. I know I shouldn't go by colourized pics but the detail below from a previously posted picture shows a colour more in line with the brown used on the prop and spinner for the area (see arrow). Anyone know is red is right?
I'm not sure how colourization works but the Hinomaro on the fuselage is definitely red and if the panel is supposed to match that red, it isn't doing that.
IMHO the panels there aren't any panels but fabric adhesive patches stuck to protect the MG barrels. So the colour there would depend on the tape and glue that was used for.
The pic was taken with the orthohromatic film. It causes the yellow and the red colours always look almost the same very dark. As you may notice there are remnants of the glue or patch around the MG and there is no difference in the tone between them. This can suggest the red or red-browish colour.
Also it should be mentioned that there was something that looks like a small "cross". The kind of marking also can be found in many pics of the Hien. Not sure if it is the result of using such shaped two thin crossed patches or it was applied with a paint in order to mark the MG barrels slots. I believe it is the result of using the adhesive canvas tape.
Anyway the "24" had both traces there ...
However the one in the museum got the panels of the dark colour what may indicate the steel used there. But I would say the panels were painted with a kind of black or steel colour to make a better attraction for visitors.
The pic was taken with the orthohromatic film. It causes the yellow and the red colours always look almost the same very dark. As you may notice there are remnants of the glue or patch around the MG and there is no difference in the tone between them. This can suggest the red or red-browish colour.
Also it should be mentioned that there was something that looks like a small "cross". The kind of marking also can be found in many pics of the Hien. Not sure if it is the result of using such shaped two thin crossed patches or it was applied with a paint in order to mark the MG barrels slots. I believe it is the result of using the adhesive canvas tape.
Anyway the "24" had both traces there ...
However the one in the museum got the panels of the dark colour what may indicate the steel used there. But I would say the panels were painted with a kind of black or steel colour to make a better attraction for visitors.
I do believe it's a kind of marking. Checking some Ki-44 "Shoki" drawings (I'm pretty interested in this a/c's history) I found this:
The colour is obviously red and this is not a patch, but I can't read the text.
fubar57
General
All it says is "The base of the cannon is red" according to my translate app
SaparotRob
Unter Gemeine Geschwader Murmeltier XIII
I'm kinda' liking this paint scheme.
- Thread starter
- #176
Crimea_River
Marshal
Thanks for the inputs guys. Wojtek that cross you mentioned is a 4 pointed mark used on most if not all Ki-61s. I don't think it's tape because if that were the case the marks would be more random. Tamiya provide these "stars" on the yellow leading edge decal and in the colourized detail you can see the points sticking out beyond the brown coloured panel. The thought of dark bare metal did occur to me but Yves example shows another case of a red panel. I will mull this over some more.
Vic Balshaw
Major General
With a good red wine I hope.
- Thread starter
- #178
Crimea_River
Marshal
The weather was crap again today so I spent most of the day at the bench masking and painting. I started with the Hinomarus and, as mentioned above, I cut vinyl masks for these on my digital cutter. These are about as simple as home made masks can get but the ones on the fuselage where a white border is needed turned out to be a bit tricky. We start with simple circular masks which are positioned after a lot of trial and error
The white border was then sprayed:
A ring mask was then placed over the white border and the rest of the circular masks were placed in preparation for spraying the red:
The red (Tamiya XF-7) was then sprayed and the masks were stripped:
So there are two learnings for next time. First, I should have painted the entire area within the fuselage Hinomaru white instead of just where the border is. There was a difference in the red due to the different base colours and this required a lot of coats to hide. Second, I should have taped over the seam of the ring mask as some red managed to leak through at the edges. There was also a small kink in the mask on the starboard side that resulted in a small amount of bleed of the red into the white.
Fortunately, the red edges were easily removed by carefully scraping then off with a scalpel since these were sitting on top of the white. The wing insignia came out well.
After lunch, I launched into the blue stripes. Again, Tamiya provides decals for these but the film around the edges and multiple bits to align looked like a PITA for fitting these over the intake and over openings. So, it was a matter of spending a couple of hours carefully masking for these stripes using the decal dimensions as a guide:
For the blue, I used Tamiya XF-8 Flat Blue with a couple of drops of white and the results were pretty nice after the masks were removed.
I'm glad that all that is done now. Next, I will add the various stencil masks before launching into the green mottling. Thanks for putting up with the long post and for your interest and comments.
The white border was then sprayed:
A ring mask was then placed over the white border and the rest of the circular masks were placed in preparation for spraying the red:
The red (Tamiya XF-7) was then sprayed and the masks were stripped:
So there are two learnings for next time. First, I should have painted the entire area within the fuselage Hinomaru white instead of just where the border is. There was a difference in the red due to the different base colours and this required a lot of coats to hide. Second, I should have taped over the seam of the ring mask as some red managed to leak through at the edges. There was also a small kink in the mask on the starboard side that resulted in a small amount of bleed of the red into the white.
Fortunately, the red edges were easily removed by carefully scraping then off with a scalpel since these were sitting on top of the white. The wing insignia came out well.
After lunch, I launched into the blue stripes. Again, Tamiya provides decals for these but the film around the edges and multiple bits to align looked like a PITA for fitting these over the intake and over openings. So, it was a matter of spending a couple of hours carefully masking for these stripes using the decal dimensions as a guide:
For the blue, I used Tamiya XF-8 Flat Blue with a couple of drops of white and the results were pretty nice after the masks were removed.
I'm glad that all that is done now. Next, I will add the various stencil masks before launching into the green mottling. Thanks for putting up with the long post and for your interest and comments.
- Thread starter
- #179
Crimea_River
Marshal
With a good red wine I hope.
Of course!
Vic Balshaw
Major General
What a great bit of masking and spraying. It sure looks good.
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