Hi guys, after following Matt Odom's A6M5 build for a while, and being encouraged by him to post my build, I have decided to dip my toe in the water and post some "in progress" shots of my build. This definitely will not be a SBS type build log, and it probably will not have nearly as many photos as Matt's; my skills are not at his level. However, I hope folks enjoy the journey and maybe find a thing or two to their liking.

I am building the aircraft to resemble one flown off either the Shokaku or Zuikaku during either the Battle of Eastern Solomons or the Battle of Santa Cruz. I think aircraft on those ships were probably fairly well maintained so I plan to go with light to moderate weathering. I am building this mostly out of box using only Quickboost's exhaust, and HGW seatbelt and Eduard Canopy masks. I also plan to do a limited amount of scratch building to the engine and cockpit.

I have been working on the build since 01 Feb and have made a lot of progress due to being off work for three weeks so there are going to be several posts right off the mark.

In a departure from my normal building routine I started the build in the engine. I made some of the flat braces that are top of several of the cylinder heads out of evergreen strip. The handle like items on the upper fronts of most of the cylinder heads were made out of copper electrical wire. Finally, I made a ignition wiring harness out of the same electrical wire. I glued two of the wires together making 14 sets and used some Tamiya tape cut into strips and super glued to the wire sets to replicate "wire bundles" I guess. I drilled small holes both the ignition hoop and the front and rear of each cylinder head. This has been a very long post so I will only post a couple photos showing the parts primed and painted.

This post will show the raw ignition wires. Unfortunately, when I started this build I had no intention of doing a build log so I don't have many in progress photos of the engine. The next pictures show the near-finished product. Painting was complex and I did it by sub-assembly; normally I build as much as can be before I paint, but given how the colors and parts interface that was not possible.

Raw ignition wires.


The finished product. I painted the wires a brownish yellow, or yellowish brown depending on your eyes.


I closer view.


Finally one from the side.

This is the finished product. The Aotake is my own mix that I sprayed over an aluminum base coat. I have not yet done any weathering of the engine.

Second update. I worked on and finished the cockpit this past Thursday. The total build time for the pit took about three days working a few hours each day. I scratch built some wiring and hydraulic lines out of copper wire. As it turned out most of that is hidden in the completed cockpit. These photos show the subassemblies after construction and painting and a close up of the instrument panel. I mixed my own interior color airbrushing the main color and hand painting the details.

This series of photos show the cockpit floor and the interior in either a partially or fully complete state. I used a combination of silver pen/pencils and True Earth weathering agents to give the cockpit a light to moderately worn appearance. The HGW seatbelts turned out especially nice. Having used these on the past several 1/32 scale builds I have done, I don't think I will ever use PE seatbelts again at this scale. Unfortunately, as with most cockpits, a lot of the details and weathering are hard to see once installed in the fuselage.

That is some really nice work Ernest, I will be following your journey here!

Cheers, D

Thank you for the kind words Damian. This model has been a pleasure to build thus far the fit is outstanding and the molding detail is really good. Unfortunately, my references are not nearly as extensive for Japanese aircraft as they for Luftwaffe aircraft so I am sure my accuracy of representation is a bit off here and there.

Ernest

Wow, Ernest! That is some great work. Love the engine, especially.

Gary

Ernest,
Thank you so much for finally deciding to share with us a build blog rather then just a Ready for Inspection type of post, as many of us discover new techniques, or modifications to ones that we're using to help us to the next level.

There is no reason to explain that your build is mostly going to be a OOB venture. I've taken the position years ago that this is a model building hobby & site, and the primary goal is to be able to build on a consistent level a near perfect replica. That includes perfect paint, decaling/masking, and weathering to achieve your build goals. When displaying a replica to anyone viewing my builds, whether at home or on the net, I shouldn't have to point out extras while the overall finished model is just about average as that's where I concentrated my time and efforts.

So far I'm more then impressed with your cockpit and engine. The wiring harness added details really make a difference especially in 1/32 scale.

Your cockpit weathering certainly adds that "used but not abused" look to it.

As for your original decision to keep the overall weathering to a min, I would think that as with USN aircraft the humidity and salt water spray would weather even well maintained aircraft quite quickly.

I'm looking forward after all these years to following your build.

Joel

Looks good my friend. Good job with the HGW belts - they make such a big difference. I wont be using P/E belts anymore either. RB makes a similar product FYI.

Gary, thank you for the kind words my friend. I still have to post pictures of my 1/48 Do215 B-4 that I promised you I would. I have taken the pictures but have been too lazy to upload them yet. I will see if I can motivate myself to do so this coming week.

Joel, thank you for the encouragement and your, always useful and helpful advice! I admit that I have never been confident enough in my building skills and/or any techniques I use, to feel that doing a build log would be useful to anyone else. So it is nice to hear from some fellow modelers, whose skills I respect greatly, that I may not be as bad as I think. As to weathering the Zero, I agree that the SW Pacific sun and salt spray would have weathered the paint job by fading it, and I plan to do just that. I mixed a base coat of paint that should be a good starting point for the fading process once airbrushed. I plan to use the products from the True Earth line to do the fading. I am as yet undecided whether to use the "hairspray technique" to replicate chipping and scuffing, or one of the other techniques out there. Whatever one I pick the time is rapidly approaching in this build for me to make a decision though.

Matt, thank you very much for your very kind and generous comments. I hope my A6M2b build provides a good compliment to your dual build.

Sincerely,
Ernest

I got in about 10 hours at the bench over the past two days and made some very good progress. Not a lot of it is very photo worthy as most of the work has been on subassemblies and doing what little filling and sanding that needs to be done with this model.

The lower wing ready for mating with the fuselage. I used to paint everything, to include detail painting, in the past. I don't do that anymore, and if it can't be seen or will only be seen in the shadows so to speak, I paint the base color - or black, and move along.


Lower flap and aileron. The pin marks near the edge were a bear to remove and some of the detail got erased by sanding; however I don't think much can be seen when the part is assembled so I can live with it. The PE on the aileron was a bit fiddly to install and when I glue the parts to the wings I will do so so they don't move.


This not very good photo shows the wings joined to the fuselage. The upper fit was nearly perfect, as it was with the elevators. The fit where the trailing edge of the wing assembly meets the fuselage did not fit as well and I ended up using a little evergreen strip as filler and evened things out with a very small amount of putty. Overall nothing terrible, but I did lose some rivet detail through sanding. I may go back and use the correct size broken mini drill bit to remake the rivets, we shall see how much energy I have though.


Ugh!


Much better.

The next few photos show one of the elevators and some of the undercarriage. I mixed a slightly different shade of the base paint for the fabric covered parts of the plane. Those parts took on a different shade from the metal parts on Zeros, at least the early ones. I plan to leave the rudder and ailerons off until the rest of the plane is painted, unfortunately I couldn't do that with the elevators. The undercarriage is sprung and moves to simulate the weight of the plane. I think this is a bit gimmicky and chose to superglue the undercarriage in the fully compressed state. There were a few ejector pin marks that might be seen so I opted to fill them with super glue and sanded them smooth.



I opted to use Master Caster wheels as I don't like rubber ones.

I filled the three upper ejector pin marks but left the two lower ones. They can't be seen with the wheel installed.

Ernest,

Sweet work on the Reisen. The cockpit looks like it has seen some wear.

That Sakei looks ready to fire up.

Good catch on that one bottle being brown. Some of the callouts were wrong - which is weird, considering there are so few Zeros remaining and only one has this part and another has another part, and they chose a different colour than the surviving one

Looking fabulous so far. I love the engine detail!

Thank you Frederick, I am shooting for a moderately weathered example. I am satisfied with the way the engine turned.

Matt, to be honest I got lucky with finding the right color. I was going to do the detail painting of the rest of that area, until I saw it would not be seen while test fitting.

Thank you for the kind words Brian. I have certainly learned a lot from modelers like you and enjoyed viewing your builds in the past.

Nice work on your Zero Ernest. Amazing detail!

Ernest,
You're making remarkable progress on your build. I certainly agree with your decision not to use the rubber tires, and go with those cast resin ones.

I also like the slight color variation for the fabric flying surfaces. A small but important detail that has usually been over looked for way too long. And I'm right at the front of that very long list.

Joel

Thank you Chris! This kit goes together very well and is nicely detailed as is; I could not resist making a few very small improvements though. I think radial engines at this scale really need a have a wiring harness, and this one turned out pretty well, making the work to make it worth the effort.

Joel, the kit tires actually are pretty well made. However, as I am sure you know, there is no way to make them look like they are weighted. They do not have the usual seam line though and do look very very nice. We shall see how well I mixed the color for the fabric surfaces when I get the of the aircraft painted today, keeping my fingers crossed.

Here are a couple of shots showing the canopy after cleanup. I used to dip clear parts in future. I now use the Novus system to clean and polish them. No worries about pooling or a piece of lint or dust getting on the part while it is drying.

I started general painting on Monday after letting the primer coat cure for a day. I just completed the third and final stage of the base coat this evening. I decided to pre-shade the model, something I very rarely do; however, I think this particular color lends itself well to pre-shading. I wanted to give the base coat some depth prior to fading the paint job. I used Tamiya's NATO Black for the pre-shading as I think it blends better than straight black, providing a smooth transition and blending effect for the base coat.

As you can see from the photos I was not particularly careful when I sprayed the pre-shading. This was deliberate as I wanted the NATO Black in other areas in addition to the panel lines to give the base coat a slight mottled look to it. I think this fools the eye into thinking there is more depth to the base coat and - I hope at least - it will allow me to achieve a nice 3D type effect when a add the fading effect to the paint job. This is a bit like the thought process behind how I paint figures.

I sprayed the base coat using my Harder and Steenbeck Infinity setup exactly the way I do when spraying Luftwaffe mottled camo. I also thinned the paint at the same ratio I do when spraying Luft camo 3 parts thinner to 1 part paint. I then sprayed four to five light coats at a shallow angle until I was satisfied with the look. It took me three evenings to finish the process, but I am statisfied with how it turned out. I still plan to use post-shading in areas that I think need a bit more contrast or touch up. Unfortunately, I was unable to get the lighting right for the photos, being too lazy to setup my photo tent for some "in progress" shots and they don't really do justice to how nicely the overall paint job turned out. I will post a few more photos tomorrow.





Ready for the base coat.


After two coats.


After four coats.


Complete

Ernest,
Looking forward to following your painting procedures, as I've been continually going with thinner and thinner coats, thus needing more coats to cover, but it's so much easier to control the overall effects. I do prefer my own version of black basing rather then straight pre-shading, but it's the final results that ultimately count.

Your wing tip really is a excellent tutorial on the effects and results of both.

Joel

Thank you Joel. I am ready to begin some post shading which will be selectively applied. The pre-shading turned out pretty well and I mostly got the effect that I was after. Unfortunately, the lighting at both my work bench and airbrush cabin area do not lend themselves well for photography so the subtle shading does not show up very well. When I am finished with the build I will setup my photo tent and see if I can't shoot some good pictures to share.

I have decided to go with either the sponge technique, silver pen/pencil technique, or a combination of both to show wear and chipping. IMHO this does not look quite as good as the hairbrush technique, but it can look good enough if I can pull it off this time. I'll post a few photos later today of some of the minor work I did preparing for post shading.

Ernest

I installed the engine and did some minor construction to setup the build for a little post shading. As I said earlier, I plan to do this selectively, only working on areas where I either was a little too heavy with the base coat or where I want some blending effect. One can also very clearly see the different shading on the cloth surfaces, a difference that shows up on the actual aircraft.

Installing the engine was a little fiddly, the fit being tight enough that I had to scrape away paint on a few mating surfaces to get them to mate up. Though it is hard to make out in the pictures, the cowling is a slight blue/black color; again in line with the cowling color of Mitsubishi manufactured aircraft. The ailerons were also a tight fit, and I opted to glue them in place to prevent them from drooping, which would have resulted in a very unrealistic look as I am sure all of you know.

Overall, I like how the general paint job turned out. I think the shading contrast between the "metal" and "fabric" parts turned out well, as did the main paint job over the pre-shading. I was a little surprised at how smooth the finish turned out given the fact that I sprayed several light coats, a real bonus there!

Following are few photos and I'll probably post another set following this one.

Engine in place

A side shot


A last wide view of the wiring harness before putting the cowling on.


The cowling in place, thankfully it fit perfectly with no fiddling around.

Second set of photos.

Another view of the cowling.


The topside of the aircraft showing the different shades between "metal" and "fabric". One can also just make out some of the pre-shading effect.


Close up of port aileron.


Finally, the port tail plane and elevator.