George, @blackadder57

Thanks for posting the information on how these "butterfly" combat flaps should look when raised. I'll definitely take a closer look at this area and the size of the Hinomaru's. If I can I will try to mask them off and paint them on this plane. I have had problems in the past with some decals wrinkling and I want to eliminate the chance of this happening on this build if I can.

Yesterday I sprayed on the Blue Green "Aotake" color in various places on the Ki-44, the prototype A5M and the B5N Kate. How I do it will be explained next.

Typically I start out by spraying a light aluminum color. It will look even better if you can use a highly reflective shade. Unfortunately my choice of color this time dried rather flat looking, so it doesn't have the exact same result I normally go for.

Here's the small parts painted for the Ki-44

The wheel wells were also painted. If you look closely at the holes I opened up in the flap well, you will see that some of them (the very last two I drilled) are not perfectly centered... so the flaps will be closed on this plane.

The inner rear fuselage section.

The next two steps involve these two Tamiya colors. Clear Yellow and Clear Blue.

I sprayed the wheel wells and other parts with several coats of blue. You should try to do this randomly. The real stuff didn't look uniform. The more that was applied, the darker it becomes.




Then I go back and add just a little bit of clear yellow. It turns the color green. This is exactly what you want. The real stuff would vary between blue and green.

You can see the different between the B5N wing which has been treated with yellow. It is the lower wing. The Ki-44 wing has not been painted yellow in this picture.

I wanted to add more yellow so I gave it a few more light coats. This is the look I wanted.

It's random and not uniform.







The parts are now ready to be assembled. Here's a picture showing how a single part can have blue and green on it. These are photos of actual relics.

As always, comments are encouraged.

As usual a thorough research and great results - keep it comin' my friend!

Nice technique Louis @lgardner. Not sure my Airbrushing skills are quite up to that ability just yet. I would have been more tempted to play with a wash than trying to spray. Very impressive.

I installed the throttle levers and did a little more detail painting on the Ki-44 today.

Then I glued the fuselage halves together and will let them dry overnight. I used clear tape and clothes pins to hold it together as the glue dries. The fit was perfect, and I don't think any filler will be needed.

The cockpit assembly will fit in place from underneath. Once this all dries, and I make a set of seat belts, I'll be installing the rest of the "office".
I didn't get much done, but progress is progress, and I'll take that !

As always, comments are encouraged.

Looks perfect Louis @lgardner. Nice to see things proceeding!

Last night, I spent some time working on the Ki-44.
I filled in the small panels on each side of the fuselage. In order to make it easier to apply the putty and sand it later, I used some yellow masking tape to preserve the panel and rivet lines. This will also keep the putty from filling in areas that I want to keep clear.

Then I did some bare metal foil work on the cowling, and painted the "blue black anti glare panel on top.

The foil wanted to wrinkle around some of the compound curves on the cowling. So in these areas I used a "Chrome Pen" and simply colored in these places instead of using foil. Once it dries it will hopefully look better. Most likely this one will get some dark green mottling sprayed on, so the chrome doesn't have to look pristine. Time will tell what color scheme I decide to go with.

This last photo shows how it looks temporarily sitting in place on the front of the fuselage.

It's getting late so I'm calling it a night.

As always, comments are encouraged.

That's a great looking bare metal foil Louis!