Hi everyone. This build has a few of firsts for me. It's my first ever build log on Aeroscale, the first time I've built a kit since 2008, and it's the first time I've used an airbrush.

The kit I'm building here is Tamiya's 1/48 J2M3 Raiden that I bought fairly cheaply at my LHS. Uppon opening the box and taking a look at the parts I had a genuine "what the heck?" moment. The panel lines around the cowl, on the wings and most of the smaller details like rivets are finely engraved, but from about the cowl to the tail just about all the panel lines are raised, and on the wings there are raised panel lines right next to the engraved ones. It's just bizarre, as if half of the kit was made in the 70's, and the other half of it was made in the mid-90's.

Apart from this the kit seems quite good. The fit on most parts is a bit loose, but everything lines up nicely. There are a few gaps here and there around the cowl join, and there is a small step where the wing joins the bottom of the fuselage and around the cowling join. The only thing that seems quite fidly is the canopy which is a little difficult to align, but it shouldn't be a problem for an experienced modeler.

So far I've only got to the stage of spraying the interior, and even then it hasn't been an entirely smooth ride and I'll have to touch up some areas. My first try with an airbrush was done with rather shaky hands and a bit haphazardly. Hopefully my next attempt will be a bit better .

Anyway, enough jibba jabba, here's some photos of what I've done so far:











Any comments or advice throughout the build is most certainly welcome!

Dean,

Good to see you adventuring into the world of airbrushing. Like anything, you'll need a bit of time to pick it up, but it'll be worth it. Practice, patience and keeping it simple (no Luftwaffe mottling at the start!) is how I suggest you should go. Before spraying at the model, try spraying onto an empty plastic bottle. You can experiment with the paint:thinner ratio, air pressure, distance from brush to model without worrying about stuffing it up. I did this for one arvo and learned a great deal.
I haven't built the Tamiya Raiden, but I'm guessing it's one of their early 48 scale kits. There was a time when they seem to have transitioned from raised panel lines to engraved, so some kits have a mixture of the two. I'm sure there was some rationale to how they did it.

Hope this helps

What a throw back! I build this kit as a kid in the early 90s, one of the nicest builds i did back then. Of course back then i didnt know about stuff like raised verses recessed panel lines, photo etch, resin, aftermarket parts etc. Squadron putty was the fanciest stuff I owned! I dont know the history of tamiya aircraft kits, but i do believe that generation of tamiya aircraft kits, all japanese planes which i think were the only WWII aircraft subjects til the mid 90s, had a mix of both raised and recessed panel lines. I have one of their Ki 84s in the stash, pretty much for the purpose of learning to rescribe panel lines.

Hi Dean,

And welcome to the forums, it's great to have you aboard. You will find the community here very helpful and friendly.

Simon's advice is spot-on; patience and practice is the secret to the airbrush.

You picked an excellent subject and judging by your photo's, you're off to a great start. Please keep us updated on your build.

Happy Modeling,
Mark

Thanks a lot for the advice and encouragement guys!

@Simon: Practicing on an empty bottle sounds like a really good idea. I might give it a try when the wind dies down a bit (it's a bit blustery today). I might first try using a 3:1 ratio of paint to thinner which is what the Tamiya website says is about right, and I might up the pressure to 20psi to get a wider spread of paint. When I sprayed the interior yesterday the ratio was about 5:1 or more and the pressure was about 15psi and the paint spread was fairly narrow.

The copyright date on the instructions for the Raiden says 1974, so for a kit that's nearly 40 years old it stands up remarkably well next to todays kits.

@ Mike: The first 1/48 kit I made was a Tamiya Bristol Beaufighter and ever since then raised panel lines have been a bit of a "put off" for me, which is why I bought the Raiden instead of a dirt cheap Tamiya Ki-84 off ebay.

@ M.C. Howard: Thanks mate. I've actually been a member of this site for 3 years now and I've found it to be a great community.

So far I think the build is going to take a bit longer than planned because as I said the weather is a bit gusty outside, but also because I can't for the life of me find any Pledge One-Go or the Johnson's equivalent in the local shops. Anyway, I'll post pics when I get some more done.

Hi everyone!

Just a small update on the build. Due to time constraints I've decided to make this a quick build for the sole purpose of learning exterior finishing techniques (using putty, using primer, airbrushing, etc.). Also I haven't done much of the interior because my glasses have been sent away for new lenses and without them I can't see a thing . The cockpit of the kit is quite simple (all the detail facing upwards), so picking details out while it's installed in the fuselage shouldn't be too hard when I get my glasses back.

Anyway, all the major bits are glued together and it's ready for some putty and primer, which I'll hopefully get done in the next few days.







The forward edge of the underside of the wing where it joins the fuselage needs a bit of work to get it to fit nicely, but it's not much. I just shaved the front-most edge of the wing underside in a couple of places and trimmed off a little notch that causes a 1mm gap on the port side of the plane where the join is horizontal. I then roughly sanded the small step with a (new) nail file. U'll clean it up with some fine sand paper when I can find it.



Please let me know if you think I've forgotten something!

Hi Dean,

Here are some walkaround pix of the only surviving Jack:
Cockpit

Exterior walkaround

. Mine looks nothing like it! . Man, if I'd seen these photos before starting this build would have been so much more simple. I've been getting my brother to try to translate the Japanese kit instructions but now it seems they're useless for painting the cockpit.

Then again, the cockpit there looks nothing like the one in the kit. OK, so the side switch panels are positioned pretty much where they should be, but the starboard side one in the kit has switches on the top, which the real Raiden in the photos doesn't have, and the shape of the box isn't very convincing. The lever next to this side box with the red knob doesn't even exist in the kit. The port-side one is even worse, with none of it being remotely like that of the real Raiden there. What I'm annoyed about most is the instument panel which the instructions apparently says is green, but it's clearly black in the real one.

I've tried to take the seat out to respray it green but it doesn't seem to want to co-operate, and I'm not keen on pulling the entire model appart just to fix up a cockpit that isn't particularly accurate in the first place. I think I'll just pick out a few details here and there and move on to the exterior.

Thanks for the links Frederick

Just a small update. I've finished primering the Raiden and sprayed the underside colour (XF-12 as per instructions), but the results weren't what I was expecting.

XF-12 looks to be completely the wrong colour, being closer to a lichen green than a light grey (should be fixable though). What's really got me stumped is that it has a very grainy texture, comparable to P600 sand paper and far rougher than the Interior Green that I sprayed earlier.

Does anyone have any ideas as to what I was doing wrong? For the underside of the model I had a paint to thinner ratio of about 2:1 and the air pressure was about 15psi (same as when I sprayed the interior). The only differences present between spraying the interior and spraying the underside of the model were that I was a bit more precise with the paint-thinner ratio this time around, and that I was spraying with the lever on my airbrush pulled all the way back for most of the time (at full blast, you could say).

Any help would be greatly apreciated.

Hi Dean, 2:1 ratio sounds a bit thick for smooth spraying with Tamiya acrylics. This could be the cause of your graininess problem. Everybody's technique is different, and what works for one person won't work for someone else, but I'd suggest a ratio closer to 1:1. When Tamiya flats are mixed properly, test spray on a scrap piece of plastic (don't test on paper-it behaves differently) will hit the surface slightly shiny and dry flat in just a few seconds. If it hits runny and transparent, it's too thin. I know a lot of people like low air pressures like you're using, but I get better atomization with around 25p.s.i. Another technique that works really well with Tamiya paints (and others, for that matter) is to do the first coat with a mix that's a little toward the thick side, and add successively a little more thinner to the mix with each of the next 2 or 3 coats. 3 or 4 light coats of Tamiya will yield the best results, and if you're using this technique, the last coat would have been way too thin if used as a first coat, but will serve to both soften and fill in microscopic surface irregularities in the paint coat., The result should be silky-smooth. Tamiya's thinner is a bit pricey, but seems to give the best results with their paint. Also, a bit of Liquitex artist's acrylic retarder (a little goes a long way) can help smooth things out.

Another thing that can cause graininess is spraying from too far away (the spray partially dries before it hits the surface and can't flow out). Like I said earlier, you should see a slight temporary gloss where the spray is hitting the model. I'm guessing, though, from your description that a too thick paint mix is your key problem.

I don't know what kind of primer you used, but if the grainy paint is too bad to "live with", it could possibly be removed with 91% isopropyl alcohol. Tamiya paints applied to bare plastic can always be removed with iso alcohol with no damage to the kit. You might want to try removing a small patch with an alcohol-soaked q-tip (I suppose you call them "cotton buds" in Oz?) to see if it works with your primer.

HTH;

Automaton

Thanks Automaton. I think I might be spraying from too far away because it doesn't apear wet when I apply the paint (I'm an ex-paint brush user so I worry about flooding the area with paint). I'll try a thinner mix of paint and spray it a bit closer to the model next time.

The primer I used was Tamiya's own, so if I do decide to remove the paint it hopefully won't be much of a problem.

Hi Dean

You shouldn't have any problems removing the grainy coat of paint with isopropyl alcohol - it won't damage the plastic.

The key to nailing a problem is to alter one element at a time, so before you go changing your paint mix, I'd try the same one you're using sprayed a little closer onto some scrap styrene. What you descibe does sound like the paint is drying before it hits the surface. If that doesn't help, then try altering the mix too.

All the best

Rowan

Well, I just don't think today is my day .

Because I had been handling the model a lot with my bare hands I decided to give it a quick wipe down with the hospital grade alco-wipes I have - which coincidentally have 70% isopropyl on them. It not only got rid of any grime that may have been on the model, but it started to strip the paint off, making the finish semi-gloss and about 5 shades darker in some areas and completely stripping the paint off in other areas. Whoops! . That's what I get for assuming that they had methylated spirits on them!

I then thought "oh stuff it, if iso alcohol can remove the paint I'll just go and spray the underside grey and see how it goes". I mixed up some grey using Tamiya Flat White and Semi Gloss Black, put about an equal amount of thinner in it, and also bumped up the pressure to about 22psi. I sprayed it onto a coke bottle to try out a good distance to spray from and eventually found a distance that I liked, so I then turned to the model.

I found it really difficult to keep a consistant distance from the model and in some places I came quite close to making the paint "spider". I also found that I didn't mix up enough paint to cover the entire underside of the model sufficiently because I used quite a bit while playing with the distance, so the finish is a bit "streaky".

I think the reason why I'm spraying from too far away from the model is bacause my airbrush only has a 2cm wide spray at the best of times, and as I said I don't want to create a pool of paint. Being a little impatient may also have something to do with it.

After all of this I went and did a few experiments with pressure , paint mixture and distance and I think I've found the sweet spot that I've been looking for: 15psi, 1:1, and about 7 to 10cm from the subject. I wish I'd found this earlier though.

Airbrushing proficiency just takes some practice, and it sounds like you're starting to get a better handle on manipulating all the variables. Before you know it , it'll be second nature.

Regards;

Automaton

Hi Dean,

Sorry I have not checked back sooner.

Your Jack looks good. I am sorry for the paint problems. Airbrushes are both a blessing and a curse. Like the gentlemen said, it just takes some practice and experimenting. I can't tell you how many times my usual mix has had something not quite right, and spurted globs all over a model.

Don't sweat the cockpit. Keep in mind that this model came out in 1973 or so and Tamiya has had no reason to try to update it. When you start to build your next Japanese plane, scroll around this Japanese part of the forum--I post all the research links I can find.