Banzai! KB gets a touch of the Divine Wind

[Kevan Bailey]

Aaaarrrgh! The Evil Pixies have been here during the night, stolen my Maskol and left a lump of pink rubber in its place. The LMS is shut today, so I thought I'd try a salt mask. I have no idea how it's going to work out.


I'm just waiting for it to dry then I'll spray it JN grey.

[Gadfly]

Good luck with the salt mask. I believe all Zeros had a primer coat of paint between the airframe Aluminium and top coats this was a red brown colour. That may help or not.

GF

[Kevan Bailey]

Thanks, GF. That's an interesting proposition.

[Kevan Bailey]

Well, it seems to have worked.


Because I'm looking for a 'pre-loved' look, I decided not to use the kit decals but spray on the hinomaru instead, something else I've not done before. I really needed a masking sheet, but as I'd got no chance of getting one today and I really wanted to try this out, I used a 35p roll of low-tack masking tape I've had hanging around. I cut out 23mm holes with a template and just went for it.



The red's a Vallejo flat red; I got a bit of leakage but it tidied up reasonably well.



I completed the underside because I wanted to see what it would look like (what a kid!) so I Kleered it and gave it a clay wash.



I'm feeling quite pleased with myself this evening. Something is bound to go wrong very soon.......

[iggie]

I hope it doesn't; that is looking very authentically pre-loved!

[59North]

Sometimes, we just gotta go for it; and that looks absolutely wonderful. A Zero sufficiently dirty.

[DazDaMan]

That looks really good!

[celt]

Well tidy weathering effect.

[Kevan Bailey]

Good grief! It's the 28th already and it looks as if I've walked away from this one. Not true; I'd been working on it up to the 15th but just not posted. Here's an update:

I masked off the worn areas with Mr. Wotsit masking stuff this time; it's better than Maskol but I wish now that I'd stuck with the salt. The IJN green seemed a bit dark so I used the slightly lighter IJA green, but when the mask came off it still looked a bit startling:



I spent hours toning the whole thing down, using clay wash and dry-brushing, sprayed on the markings but bottled out and used kit transfers for the numbers and finished off the undercarriage. At the same time I'd been working on the kamikaze ceremony figures, but they just wouldn't come right. It'll probably take me a day to sort it, so here's the plane as it now stands; I'll finish the figures off shortly ( I know I could theoretically meet the deadline, but we only got back home at 3.00am and I'm feeling a bit jetlagged) and I'll post the whole thing on the diorama/figures section on the site. Anyway:

[DazDaMan]

Nice work, Kevan!

[iggie]

Like the stripped paintwork effect, and the washes have toned it down nicely