Great remedial actions, my friend @coling!
Yep, they are easier said then done!
Your Buffalo looks spectacular!

Great recovery work, Colin @coling
Preparing the repaint area is consuming a lot of time but the end result really pays off.
Agree on your comment that brushpainting acrylics is very difficult.
If someone has an idea on how to improve that, than I'm really interested to know.

Nice recovery, Colin (@coling). It drives me nuts when I making painting errors. They come at the very end of a build when you can see the finish line. My first reaction is to see if I can ignore it, but that is never the case. For me, the repaint usually seems to happen in a place where I have custom-mixed a paint color, and I can never get the right shade again.

Thanks, John, Erik, George and John H. Great to have your feedback.

George, I know exactly what you mean about getting the right paint shade twice. I make notes now every time I mix, counting the exact number of drops and thinning technique (which also affects the color).

John, this posting will save some suspense on the strut colors. The fuselage wheel well choices and rationale are earlier in the build postings. Of course, I don't know how appropriate they will look with the rest of the build until the masks come off (tomorrow). In that sense I am in as much suspense as you.

I wasn't going to post again until the model was finished, but I am so happy to get through the delicate weathering and decaling stage that I couldn't resist sharing. Decals can be nerve wracking when you don't have replacements. So, I started with a Tamiya Clear coat with ample use of thinner and retarder (although the Gunze paint was shiny, I wanted more protection against oil paint solvents and a slicker surface for decals). As usual, I wanted the clear coat to be as smooth as possible and avoid the pebbly, orange peel look. Success! The retarder helped it to level out before drying, as did relatively close-range airbrushing (being careful to keep the airbrush constantly moving). After letting the Clear cure for 48 hours, I did a panel wash with oils (Black plus Van Dyke Brown). I did some further dots of various shades between panels, adding a bit of Burnt Sienna to vary the colors.

I gradually streaked this across the model surface in the direction of airflow. The end effect is very subtle when the surface is high gloss. It will come out more after a thin matt coat. Decals were next. I started on the lower wing roundels to get used to Special Hobby's decals. Good practice. The decals are excellent quality but quite thin for handling. I worked very carefully to slide them off as close as possible to their final position. Not a single decal got torn in the end (a first for me!), so I was very happy. The earlier oil wash was really helpful because period photos showed how the British (and/or Brewster) always followed certain panel lines to apply codes. Of course the pin wash made these lines appropriately visible. I was also happy that I took care with the fuselage stripe, because it also consistently aided code-positioning in 453 Squadron. In fact, I chose this scheme partly because there were several very clear photos available of 453 Squadron aircraft lined up together, allowing comparison of camo and markings from plane to plane. No photos of TD-F ("Sniffer"), though - at least none that I could find. The serials go over the codes so I did the decals in two stages, allowing the codes to settle over night before applying the serials on top.
So, today I applied a Model Master Acryl Flat coat to the undersides. I also airbrushed Vallejo Primer and Metal Color Aluminum Satin to the gear struts and inner hubs. There is much debate on-line about main strut color on RAF Buffaloes. Black and white photos seem to show a color dark enough to be the camo Dark Earth. I doubt this, personally - it seems unlikely they would paint them camo when they were hidden in the wings. Anyway, I had long noticed that Vallejo MC Aluminum Satin looks quite dark for metal in low light. It seemed a good choice for the main struts, which I choose to believe were unpainted. The thinner struts I will give a coat of Rub n Buff later, because they look lighter in photos. BTW, you can see that I painted the wheel wells in the wings the camo color because the black starboard wing color was field-applied. Period pics of Buffaloes being literally uncrated and assembled in Singapore show all over Duck Egg Blue undersides. I figure they would have just painted over the wheel wells on both sides for consistency so DE Blue in the port wheel wells.
That's it for now. Maybe more detail than most are interested in 🙂 - but it seems John was interested in the struts and Bill Koppos might have thought this one through, too ( I have mostly gone with Bill's painting detail choices, I think). That's it for now! Comments welcome. This one will hopefully be across the finish line soon.

Colin, I found your post very interesting with all your steps and research being there. Thank you for sharing!

Thanks for this clear description of all your steps, Colin.
I also agree that camouflaged struts are unlikely and your current approach seems wright.
The decals also look great.

Thanks, gentlemen. Your comments and interest are much appreciated. Well, I have finally got this one finished. I will be posting this in headlines later on but I just want to share a few shots of the progress along the way. The sequence of operations is probably worth noting, because I had to be constantly attentive to ruining already finished painting and detailing while I added and removed stuff. I decided to take off the canopy masks before doing attaching the landing gear, because I had to move the model around so much in the process and didn't want to risk snapping the gear off. That worked out fine. I then flipped the model over on foam supports and removed the wheel well masking - which had worked perfectly , keeping the well clean of overspray. I had to attach some etch pieces to the well, which nearly defeated me but thanks to Gator glue I got these positioned successfully. Getting the main gear on was a challenge. The kit does not give good instructions on how the struts attach inside the well but I figured it out by comparing kit illustrations to what Bill Koppos showed of the work on his model (thanks for your precise photography, Bill!) I also had some OK pics of the real thing in the Squadron book. While the model was flipped, I also removed the masks on the lower window.

After the gear was on, there were no fewer than 16 different delicate procedures to finish the model. I won't describe each one but some highlights include recrafting and installing the gunsight, (which broke off during masking some time ago). I made a special tool to fit this inside the pit without dropping it or smearing glue on the transparencies. A paper insert prevented the part from accidentally falling inside the works Plenty of further work followed, such as creating tiny wingtip and fuselage lights form stretched sprue, retouching and attaching the sliding canopy (very tight fit!), crafting and fitting wing guns from styrene rod, fitting the resin exhausts, and getting the aerials attached. I made barriers to protect the model and prevent parts from falling inside at every stage. Getting the canopy rails done was the trickiest as they were etch and I couldn't mask them to paint the inside grey green and outside Dark Earth. Even brush painting wouldn't work because perforation in the pieces let the paint leak through. I used decal strips painted with the interior grey green to fix this. Success. The last thing was gluing on the knockout window in the canopy, which was stiff photo-etch. Thank goodness again for Gator glue, the excesses of which peel off like white glue without damaging the clear parts. I admit the antenna wire is not complete, in that I haven't figure out yet how to do the insulators. Suffice it to say I will get back to that later, since I want to give this build a rest, finally, and work on other things. Here is one pic of the completed model (with a single simplified antenna wire for now). More to follow in full headline article tomorrow.