Those are great clamps Erik, I bought mine as a 3-pack. A little pricey but well worth it. There was mud. I prefer to use a method the requires no sanding to save surrounding details.

For those unfamiliar with this method, here's how we get there. You'll need nail polish remover, Q-Tips and mud. There's a whacking great gap at the rear of the wing/fuselage join. I was going to fill it with plastic strip and sand but this kit has raised panel lines. I have replaced these with stretched sprue before but it is a right pain in the keester.

The first step is to surround the offending area with masking tape to prevent too much filler being spread. My preferred mud is Bondo Glazing and Spot Putty (more on this in a bit)

I use a toothpick and force putty into the gap

Immediately remove the tape and with a Q-tip lightly coated with nail polish remover, start removing excess putty. This is the key, don't let the mud start to set

The end result without sanding

This is the nail polish remover I use. I have also striped the paint off of entire models with this.

The Bondo, with Tamiya bottle for scale.

"But I use Squadron Green Stuff. Will it work with this?", some may ask. The answer is yes and here's why. Green stuff is actually rebranded Bondo which I found out about on another modelling site. So I head over to the 3-M website and sure enough, Bondo is also sold in a green tube. The difference between the colours is working time which is only a matter of minutes. It also comes in white. Now here's the kicker...Squadron Green Stuff sells for about $8.50CAN for a 65g tube. Bondo Glazing and Spot Putty sells for about $9.98CAN for a 128g tube, prices vary of course depending where you get them. A word of warning about the nail polish remover. Some have said it will melt plastic but as I have said, I have removed the paint from four models without incident. I use it sparingly and if I feel I've used too much I immediately rinse with water

Those are some useful insights George. I never used nail remover because I believe it contains acetone, a chemical I like to use for diluting Tamiya grey putty. The only occasion I use it over plastic (using a earbud) it bitten the plastic within seconds...ouch

Nice progress, George. I've been using glazing putty for years, and yes it's cheaper in the long run, which is good for a low budgeter like me, ha! Not that I'd recommend it but a little spittle on the finger would help in smoothing it out, it's actually little trick we used when doing repair patches on aircraft.

Nice progress @blackadder57.
I love this metallic blue and and the black prop too!

After much deliberation I went back and resprayed all the metallic blue with Tamiya XF69 Nato Black as I should have done in the first place. A buddy who is well versed in Japanese aircraft sent me a fourth photo of this kite, still in Japanese markings and taking off. He also confirmed what I already knew; Mitsubishi aircraft had the insides of the gear covers and wheel well painted in the underside colour so this would have been a lightish grey colour. All photos show these areas as a very dark colour. The aircraft was a Frankenstein being rebuilt from three aircraft in Australia. I have my doubts that there would be access to Aotake paint. A lot of RAAF Spitfires had landing gear, wheel wells, and inner gear doors painted the same colour so my way of thinking is that when they rebuilt this aircraft they tried to match it all to the semi-gloss black landing gear as found on the Zeros.

Sprayed on a concoction of three Tamiya colours trying to achieve the "dove grey" as mentioned in the opening;: XF83 Medium Sea grey, XF55 Deck Tan and XF66 Light Grey. I'm happy that the cowl turned out a bit darker.

Did I achieve dove status?

This is where it stops, back into camp tomorrow for another week

"Ruuruuu" to quote a local dove. I've been slipping your journey lately on this one it seems - lots of good stuff here! I appears that the trick to the nailpolishremover is more or less common sense, as the same reaction is found with expensive thinners and stuff. Gotta have a peek at the local beautyshop one of these days. . . .

This is some remarkable progress George. Yes your friend is correct with Mitsubishi built A6M's having the wheel wells painted the same color as the underside. You have made some great progress too. I wonder if the overall color referred to as "Dove Grey" was actually a US Navy color ? The same one they used just prior to the start of WW2... Light Gray ? This Light Gray color was retained as the under surface color when they added the "Blue Gray" color on the upper surfaces.

I like your Dove Gray color... I think you nailed it.

The tutorial on how to use putty and acetone was very good. Thank you for taking the time to post this for us.