@gblair The fellow that built that Ki-54 (Harvey Low) is a fellow canuck, although he lives in Ontario (I won't hold that against him). He's on a few FB Japanese aviation groups that I am also a part of.

The first good news is that I went to visit my new house and things seem to be moving forward. We bought the house in November and hope to be in the house by Christmas. Who knew it would take this long to build a house?

The Hickory is finally done, of course not without the end-of-build drama. While weathering the plane, I managed to break of the small loop that acts as a step below the entrance door. I saved it and reattached it at the end. I also discovered that I had failed to paint a thin white stripe around the rear of the fuselage. I hate trying to add something like this at the end because all manner of heartache can pop up, but it all went fine this time. I did all of the weathering with various colors of artist oil paint. The colors were added very sparingly to the surface of the plane, then used Odorless Turpenoid to blend it in to the paint. Odorless Turpenoid dries flat, so I didn't need to add a layer of flat clear. At this point I realized I had done things in the wrong order. The weathering filled in many of the previously completed panel lines, so I went back and carefully reaccomplished the panel lining. At this point, you really need to be careful or you will mess up your newly completed weathering.

I added the cabin windows using Microscale Krystal Klear which worked very well. I added the door and the tall mast on top of the fuselage and prepared to take my sayonara pictures. It was at this point I discovered one of the gear doors was missing. The plane only has two gear doors, so it would be very noticeable. Ironically, I had lost this door earlier in the week and had managed to find it downstairs in the living room. (What are the chances?) Same door went MIA and the subsequent search turned up nothing. I built a new gear door out of sheet plastic, painted it, and added it to the plane. With that, my Hickory is done. Yeah. Overall, this is a really good kit, even with the few fit issues I encountered.

I hope everyone stays safe. Cheers.

13 additional images. Click to enlarge.

I suppose building a house is just as building a model? That is one nice hobbyroom. The Ki-54 turned out very nice - well done, and high hopes for a productive winter in the hobby room George.