Well My Girl has got her stripes. Normally I would use Model master enamels, but I want to use Acrylic here, to knock back the mottling in the wing root and otherwise scratch and weather it up. Wrestled with which Green to use, had some Vallejo air medium and dark greens, tried a mix. Used my cheap Chinese airbrush, which had been doing just fine, but now it wants to splat at the end of every line. (ALWAYS test things on your paint mule, or at least paper, before committing to your masterwork.) Tried thin ratios and air pressure etc., NG. Now I decided to bring out my Grex XG which had been giving me problems, took it completely apart and looked it over. Seems the little piston that pushes down and lets air in sticks a lot on this one unless you keep it constantly lubed. I happened to buy a bottle of proper Airbrush lub at a show, and give it a drop each use. BTW the cheap Chinese airbrush has not needed a drop of oil yet. So try again and sure as s--- it still splats. Aaargh. The Vallejo air worked fine last time. Anyways, so what else we got? Digging deep, I found a jar of Tamiya JAAF Green, played with the mixes (Tamiya X-20 thinner) and got a nice fine line with no splats no clogging. Finally, to work.
I had practiced the kind of patterns I wanted on the mule, so things came out pretty satisfactory. Something like the movie star plane I wanted to approximate. In fact, after these pics were taken, I decided the pattern on the wings was a bit on the thin side, so went back and filled it out a bit more.
That slams the lid on things today.
Next challenge-wing and fuselage stripes and the 64th Sentai tail arrow. A challenge because the Alclad and now the Tamiya green show inclinations to peel like an SOB when masking tape is applied. Possible solution - Browsing the innertube last night I found a guy testing a new Alclad sealer, something I did not know existed. The reviews were good, and I also see they have semi-gloss and matt coat too. So a quick jump to Sprue Brothers...all in stock! Yay. Already shipped (I love Sprue Bros).
So we wait for the arrival of the rescue package. Also ordered a bottle of official "propeller color" from Gunze we shall see how that looks.
Also Mr. Gardner, if you see this, here's a pic I found of a different kind of Hayabusa. This guy's one of us!
6 attached images. Click to enlarge.
