A bit of a shame to hide the area over the combatflaps, but as you say, they would not be opened when on ground unless it was for some maintenance on them. With the paint decided, I shall be looking forward to that part as well.

This afternoon was rather busy at the "Iron Werks"...

I started out by masking off the anti glare panels on top of the fuselage. The kit supplied decals for this area, but I want to paint mine on instead. So I used the canopy as a marking guide and got busy. Look at how nice and crystal clear these parts are !

Since I had planned on spraying the blue black color, I decided to spray the inside of the canopy frames using the same color. Is this confirmed as a proper color ? Nope... I have seen other unrestored Japanese aircraft relics painted in a similar manner, so I decided this one would be done this way too. So I masked off the canopy frames in preparation for painting.

These areas were painted using WW2 US Navy Dark Sea Blue, FS 35042. It is a very good match for the Japanese color when it dries. The anti glare panel is still wet in this next photo.

Here you can see the canopy frames have been painted. I will be using Bare Metal Foil to simulate the actual frames. This way it will look as if the inside of the canopy frames were painted, and is a nice touch.

Next step was to mask off and spray the yellow leading edge wing stripes. The wheel wells were carefully masked off in preparation of painting.


I wanted to spray on the red rear fuselage stripe, the leading edge of the vertical fin, and also spray on all of the Hinomaru's. I will mask these areas off once the paint has dried. I'm trying something different here and have not tried to do this before.


Once the FS 31116 Insignia Red paint had dried, I removed the masking from the wheel wells..

and the canopy and windshield.

Here's how the Shoki looks now. I will be masking off the Hinomaru's, the fin and rear fuselage stripe next in preparation for some Model Master "Metalizer" Aluminum Plate. This color will be sprayed on the upper surfaces next, and when dry, it will be buffed to a nice shiny finish, if all things go well.

Then the plane will get a coat of clear Future to seal the paint. The lower surfaces will get covered using various shades of Bare Metal Foil in an attempt to make it look like real metal.

I also still have to paint the fabric covered control surfaces. I have not decided yet what color I will be using for this. Some Japanese aircraft had these controls painted using a light Gray Green, while others simply used an aluminum dope color, which looks like a semi gloss aluminium color.

The jury is still out on this decision.

As always, comments are encouraged.
Stay safe everyone...

Great progress here. I live the intermediate stage when painting the marks on a kit. Looking forwart to teh BMF / Alupaint combo!

Gentlemen,
Thank you for the kind words. You have made me smile with some of the comments.

Bill, @billkoppos
This is proof that great minds do think alike ! Or maybe we have smelled too much parts washer solvent in the past, I don't know for sure, but it's one of these two...Your model is almost exactly how I want mine to look, with yours looking even better than what I hope mine will turn out like... I think I will change mine up just a little from how you built yours, and include the camouflage paint to cover the upper surfaces of the ailerons and elevators. Other than that, I hope that mine turns out to look half as good as yours does !

Thanks for posting this, it's "freakin" perfect, in more ways than one ! The black and white picture you posted of your model looks eerily identical to the actual photo.

Bill, @billkoppos
I was wondering about the rudder myself. I wonder if they replaced the rudder from another plane ? Or was it recovered with new fabric ? Who knows ? It could be a bazillion different reasons why it wasn't painted like the rest of the plane was.

I am really starting to like building things in this larger 1/32 scale. It leaves you more room to add improvements, but on the other side of the coin, when you have a mistake, it's that much more obvious... I have decided to take the easy way out and I sprayed my fabric covered parts in an aluminum dope color...

Let's see how many hornets nests we can kick over by doing this. The Ki-61 was painted this way too, yet often we see them done with Gray Green fabric surfaces... and I'm guilty of doing this too.

This looks superb, Louis @lgardner. I bet the hazy brown and green camo will look amazing over the shiny surface.
This is going to be fantastic!

Spiros, @fiveten
Thanks for the kind words my friend... I'm hoping this camouflage scheme turns out too... Today I suffered a major setback, I'll explain it in a few. But there's light at the end of the tunnel. I just hope it is not an oncoming train.

Erik, @airbum
I have always have very good results using these Model Master "Metallizer" paints. Typically I use the clear "Metallizer" sealer that was offered as part of the paint line, and on occasion I have used Future clear acrylic... Which is what I did earlier today.

However something horribly wrong happened. Unfortunately these masks came off a bit earlier than I intended. More on that in a few, so please stay tuned...

OK here's the scoop on what happened earlier today, and what I did to get things back on track...

The day started out normal. I had buffed the Aluminum plate color to a nice shine. It was looking OK, but not great. "No big deal" I was thinking to myself, since I was planning on using this as a base for chipping away some of the paint once it was finished. The shine was not even or consistent. So I took some 1500 wet / dry sand paper and sanded out the areas that didn't look good to me. The Metallizer paint in these places the paint had cracked.

Once I had these places cleaned up enough, I gave the entire air frame a few light coats of Clear Future acrylic, that was thinned at a 50/50 ratio.

Suddenly I started seeing areas changing right in front of me as I watched... The tail surfaces started having some areas that were not looking nearly as good as it did to begin with. This was a sign of things yet to come...

This picture shows the upper wing surface.

If you look a little closer you can see how the spine of the fuselage started to change too... Now I'm beginning to think Oh no... Not good.

This is what was taking place. I zoomed in on the upper wing surface. This has hundreds, if not more tiny pin holes opening up in the paint. Some kind of reaction was happening, and this puzzled me since I didn't change anything in the process. I even wiped the surface clean to remove all oils and greases from my hands that may have transferred onto the surface.

These next series of pictures show how this was starting to affect the entire plane...



I knew that I was going to be stripping off ALL of the paint now. So I might as well go ahead and remove the masking that took me almost a day to complete... It's a funny thing how a days worth of work can be removed in a matter of minutes. Not really funny if you ask me.

Up next came out two items that I use as my "Broken Arrow" concept to strip a kit clean of its paint in a few tries. I start out with some "Easy Off" oven cleaner. It will bubble the paint off like a paint stripper does on a full sized automobile.

I also use regular automotive DOT 3 brake fluid.

This stuff gives off some horrible odors that are not advisable to breath. So I sprayed on the oven cleaner and walked away. I don't recommend you do this and stay nearby. In fact it's a good idea to have good ventilation when you do this. These fumes WILL hurt you if you breath them in. So I was extra cautious and left it to sit alone.

Here you can see the Shoki sitting in the sink and the oven cleaner is doing it's magic.

I waited about 15 minutes and went back to have a look at the plane. I took an old soft bristle toothbrush and scrubbed the model. It received a good rinse with water next, and here's how it looked after the first episode was completed. You will see that the paint over spray from the red, yellow and Dark Sea Blue is still intact.

So I wiped on a thin layer of brake fluid, and let it sit again for about the same time, 15 minutes. Then it was rinsed off with water, blow dried and given another coat of oven cleaner to remove the remaining paint.

I repeated the brake fluid treatment again twice. Almost all of the paint was now gone, but there was still a little staining left in the plastic. I think this was due to the thinner in the paint and how it etched into the plastic surface. So I gave it a wet sanding to be extra sure that the paint was all gone.

Now I'm back to where I was a few days ago...

No sense in crying over spilled milk, or feeling sorry for yourself...So I got busy with masking off the ailerons and rudder.

You get back on the horse that threw you. Sometimes you get the bear, sometimes the bear gets you.

During the time the paint was being stripped and I was waiting, I did some more research about the colors for the ailerons, and the overall appearance of the bare metal on WW2 Japanese planes. From what I read online, it looks like sometime in mid 1943, the Japanese changed the requirements on how to paint the fabric covered surfaces. Up until that point in time, the Japanese Army used this color.

Afterwards it was authorized to use Aluminum Dope color in it's place. This was not an immediate change. The factories and small parts vendors used what materials they had on hand before the switch was made.
I gave these fabric covered control surfaces a nice coat of this color.

Here's how it looked once the tape was removed. Much better !


Next step was to mask off the yellow leading edge IFF stripes. This is looking familiar for some reason, like I have done this before.




This location was sprayed using a Yellow Orange paint I custom mixed up a while ago.



After the paint dried, I removed the masking tape to reveal a nice looking leading edge...


All of the scrubbing on the plane to remove the old paint opened up a seam on the bottom side of the fuselage. I filled it in with some thin plastic strip and allowed the glue to seep into the joint using capillary action. I will let this dry overnight and tomorrow I will sand it down flush.

I will spray the interior portions of the landing gear wells and the dog dish firewall tomorrow using some shade of a metallic silver color, since all of the beautiful Aotake blue green disappeared. Things happen. It's how you handle it afterwards is what really counts. Never give up !

As usual, comments are encouraged.