Hi,

Should I finish this off with a satin or matt finish? It has just had second gloss coat done. I was going to do a wash with some watered down artist acrylics, just black, and maybe a few small chips with a fine paint brush and a prisma colour pencil I just bought. However, would you finish a hell cat off with a satin or a matt coat? I'll put some exhaust stains on with a tamiya pastel set. Any other tips would be welcome.



This is an airfix kit, and it was pretty terrible really compared to the few others I've built !! But I persevered to practice some things, painting a canopy with toothpick, painting the pilot and using a cheap airbrush set to do the main coat of paint. The other reason, was that my wife bought this picture for me last Christmas for fun, and when I saw it was the Airfix box art, well what could I do??

I would go with matt dead flat.

To the best of my knowledge, RN Hellcats that weren't camouflaged were painted in USN Glossy Sea Blue, so they should have a glossy finish.

thanks
Mike

While true, I believe that the gloss finish quickly weathered - eventually to matt..

so really anything is about right. just depends on how new you want the plane to look.

not that RN aircraft from lend-lease stocks served a lot longer before being replaced than USN aircraft did.

I have to agree with Vance ALL Hellcats came off the line as Glossy Sea Blue. Salt air and sun weathered them down fast. Period pictures show anything from high gloos to dull light blue. Just old age and abuse....(sounds like me )

Later

I think I'll go with the Matt finish. The main reason being is that it will conceal imperfections!

Thanks for the tips.

Finished, and all weathered up. Just will had some pastel exhausts, which you won't see much anyway on the dark blue.



It was a pretty bad kit. The prop is a spare from a hasegawa corsair kit, because the kit prop had so much flash on it, I damages when I was trying to cut it off. It had HEAPs of filler on wings etc as well.