Thanks, John. I made some progress on the Hayate this weekend. Hopefully on a roll now. First, I retouched the IJA Grey to get it to the right shade. Didn't take any photos of that. It may be worth mentioning that the Gunze IJA Grey is too dark, especially over a pre-shade. I mixed it 50/50 with Flat White to get it to the shade of the Tamiya IJA Grey. The first photo shows the technique I used to work on the topside mottle while the underside Grey was still drying. The next two show the model ready to recieve the green upper camo with lower surfaces masked.
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1. This is the first time I have used sticks as temporary landing gear. I did this to work on the marbling on the top while the underside IJA Grey was still drying - quite effective.
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The camo green was a 50/50 mix of Gunze H 60 IJA Green and H52 Olive Drab 1. I wanted the more brownish shade mentioned in many sources for late war IJA camo - close to OD. The application went very well with marbling shining through just right (not so obvious in photos as I photographed the model on a cloudy day and later after dark with mostly artificial light).
In spite of the nice overall effect with the camo, I faced one discouraging "disaster" for the day. After airbrushing and doing my usual surface inspection, I noticed a weird blob covering some of the rivet detail just below the cockpit under neath the green I had just applied.
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1. Ugly blob of superglue suddenly visible under my nice new finish!
I fairly quickly deduced that this was a stray blob of dried superglue left over from doing corrections to rivet lines elsewhere on the model. GRRR. Anyway, I decided to attack this as I would damage to a metal finish when I get bits of debris in that. I masked off the panel that the blob resided in, making sure I had clear recessed panel lines all around to delimit the correction area and hide my repair work. I then stripped the paint down to the plastic with careful application of Windex. Removing any smaller area of paint would leave a visible scar on the surface of the paintjob. When the superglue blob was exposed I got out my trusty VMS Super Glue Debonder and applied tiny drops of it with a micro brush.
The debonder melted away the blob completely without damaging the plastic or rivet detail.This was the result - very clean.
I could then mask off the panel, and spray on my black base mix.
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1. Careful masking with Tamiya tape and post-it notes because I was too impatient to let the pint cure a full day! All went OK.
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A bit of flat white was next for marbling.
Finally, I reapplied the IJA Green/OD mix. Good as new now with ugly glue tumour removed!
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1. No blob and no sign of repainting residue
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Tomorrow I will work on the Hinos and the lightning bolt. I am impatient to remove the masking for the yellow ID panels and black anti glare panel but I will resist the temptation. So far so good.