Next I detailed the engine with some lead wire, nothing fancy, just something to add a bit more interest to it. Then I drilled out the huck starter attachment on the spinner and thinned out the rear gear doors as well as the small gear doors for the main gear. Additionally I thinned out the front cockpit coaming and drilled out the hand holds.

8 attached images. Click to enlarge.

This finally brings us to yesterday. I painted the control surfaces grey green hairyokushoku AK RC328. I wanted to attempt a weathered bare metal finish technique, where one marbles with metallic paints and then sprays the blend coat overtop, similar to my usual black base technique. Well suffice it to say that my blend coat was a little too dray and there was too much flirm (dust) in the paint so I sanded it all back with a 3000 grit 3M sponge and just sprayed the final coat directly. The results were much better but the weathering was all but lost. As you can see, the shine of the paint is quite bright, but I intend on using some oils or perhaps some post shading to weather it a bit.

The paint I used was the newly released Mr Color Super Metallic (SM) super Duralumin SM208. It was my first time using this shade and I like it quite a lot. I thinned it 2:1 with MLT and MRT (so maybe that's just like the regular thinner?) as I didnt want the paint to dry too quickly (hence adding the MLT), although the recommended thinner is MRT (Rapid thinner).

I still have a few panels to pick out with a darker shade metallic, namely by the exhausts and the fuel tank covers on the underside. Then I'll start designing the masks for my Cameo cutter and start painting the hinomaru and markings.

Finally, I added some lead wire to the landing gear and primed and painted it with Tamiya Lacquer Flat Aluminum.

Hopefully with the paint on, my pace will speed up, especially since I would like to bring this to a model show on September 11th.

13 attached images. Click to enlarge.

@billkoppos I find the Super Metallic series has very fine pigments and is very resilient to masking. My ki-61 build in this group used the SM206, but I think I many now prefer 208.

Amazing entry and ditto results, Woody @wkubacki

I’m hoping updates will be coming more frequently now that the paint is on. Tonight is cut my masks at sprayed the hinomaru, tail markings, Leading edge bands, and the retractable steps. I usually have a hard time getting the red and yellow to be opaque, especially over a metallic, so what I usually do is spray a white or light grey first and then the top colour. What I find happens is that the white really lightens up the top colour, making me add more paint and then I get significant buildup of paint when I remove the masks which I have to sand down. Now, knowing that Mr Color has a pink Surfacer intended for red paint jobs, I tinted Mr Surfacer with red and yellow . It seemed ti work well, especially with the primer and top coat thinned about 75-80% with MRT (and shooting at 10 psi). I still have som ridges to sand down, but they are not as noticeable as before.

I have a few touchups, but not with tonight’s painting. Instead I have some dust/flirm in the metallic paint which I will have to sand out and then primer and paint, but I’ll leave that to the end to let the touchups accumulate so I do them all at once.

Next up is the anti glare panel and a red fuselage band, and then working the the last bits like canopy, landing gear and exhaust stubs. I’m sitting and looking at the plane now and I’m digging the contrast between the alum and the red, especially the unique tail markings of this plane.

21 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Amazing paintwork, Woody @wkubacki
Thanks for sharing your approach.

Thanks everyone for the kind words. I know I haven't been here much lately, but I wanted to have a bunch of progress to post up instead of posting in dribs and drabs. After this plan I will bore everyone with Raiden #3, it only took a year!