The more I progress this model, the more I want to go out and pick up some more of them - fortunately the nearest model shop is an easy 100km away otherwise I would be in trouble...it is easily the most well-engineered model that I have every built and the first one to every come close to the epithet 'doesn't need filler'...I am very keen now to hook into my other two Eduard kits, the Roland and the Bf-110 but anyway...
...a number of firsts tonight...
Firstly a big hurrah to Merlin Jones who introduced me to the humble cocktail stick as the primary tool in a modeller's arsenal for removing paint from transparent parts. I forgot that I had fitted the armoured rear window to the cockpit and managed to swipe a painty finger across the rear surface while painting the cockpit. The trusty cocktail stick instantly removes indications of that screw-up.
Second, I then remembered that the model came with a sheet of those precut masky thingies - I've never used them before but thought that it might be an idea to fit them to that window before I did any further painting.
Thirdly, I sought to use the humble cocktail stick to remove some of the paint around the gluing surface for the wing intakes - that didn't work and I ended up doing some scraping with a sharp knife edge to achieve that mission but...the rubbing of the stick against the dry Gunze Burnt Iron paint I used on the intake interiors revealed a lovely polished metal appearance. A quick trip to the bathroom and I was polishing away with a handy button cod to produce lovely shiny metally-looking surfaces...first time I've every done that metal polishing thing.
So here we see the wing intakes, polished on the left, dull and boring and yet to be polished on the right - what a difference!!
And now two shots of the wings assembled and with another coat of hand-brushed paint in the main gear bays...I found some Tamiya XF-58 in the garage which is what I have always used for US interior green. It went on quite thin but I think I have cracked that problem as well and have tracked it back to my habit of mixing my paint for airbrushing in the bottle so most of my paints are already milky-thin for the airbrush and thus sub-optimal for said hairy stick.
I think my photography is coming back online as these shots seem better than the previous nights' efforts but still a wee way to go because these three are the only really usable ones of the seven I shot...
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