Using the 2 weeks holiday, I went head on for a full swing into catching up on model making.
I had this Tamiya 1/48 scale model for a long time. The first thing that happens, is that I noticed the film of the decals turned brownish yellow. The thing about Tamiya old decals is that its double the thickness of most decals produced and its film is robust.
I packed the decals in a Zip Lock bag and hang it out on the window grille of my kitchen to sun for a week. The UV rays of hot Singapore is gonna bake it bleach clear again.
After 4 days in the sun, the dials can be used and cut out for good measure, to prevent them turning pink anytime soon.
Now back to the subject of choice. Its because its a super fast fighter adapted from the Kyofu that is used to strafe the Brits on the ground in Burma and used to attack Singapore back in 1941. A result that devastated the next to useless Buffalos and some Hurricanes that the RAF had in Kallang Airport. The war resulted in my grandma losing 6 of her children to Japanese atrocities against the Chinese population. Hundred thousand lost their heads and were forced to dig their own graves in Changi and bayoneted. Officers will boasts of their prowess on the katana in competing with each other of the number of heads that they can chop off their hapless civilian prisoners with single blows. They would have them knee in a row, chop off one, kick into the pit and go on to chop the next guy. The other office will stand opposite side of the trench and do the same to his row of prisoners and the guy who gets to the end first wins. Most of these will result in free rapes arranged by the soldiers from women captured during the day!
Well, this is part of our country's history, it does not matter if the Shinzo Abe accept it or not. The Shiden, or purple electricity or lightning (direct translation) has a great part to do with this taking of the Fortress of the East! The sun indeed set on the British Empire then and also with the sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse battleships nearby.
First part of the job was to gather enough research materials for this subject. I noticed that there were thousands of rivets on this plane that is not depicted in any kit available except in 32nd scale. However, the 32nd scale one has shameless cockpit details that is reminiscent of ancient Airfix kits that cost 80 cents each back in 1971! Albeit without the rubber bladder of cement.
The discovery of such drawings almost gave me a real challenge. How do I put in the thousands of rivets? There must be some mechanical process. So I headed down to Lee's shop. Miniature Hobby and saw a rotary rivet stomper. Got it for about 19 bucks. And for good measure, I bought a 22 bucks P38 Lightning just to try it out. Better that than the old N1K1 as its kind of rare nowadays.
I used a masking tape to mark the distance of the lines from the previous ones and started rolling them press hard on the plastic using my Hasegawa flexible ruler template set.
The rivets were kind of shallow and painting it will obscure it from view. Therefore, I used o 0.3mm drill bit and gave each of them a 4 turns! One half of the fuselage took about 8 hours of struggle. There had to be a better way. I went down to Hobbypoint and pick up a 0.25mm Hasegawa rivet stomper! This is very costly, 35 bucks. It is a huge improvement, however, the other fuselage also took me 6 hours! What an improvement!!!! Hahahahah......
To help me see during preshading, I need to increase the contrast of the rivets. So I painted the whole aircraft with Vallejo Black, then I rubbed this down with super fine Tamiya sanding sponge with water.
This is quite satifying. Seeing the enhancement it did to a 20 year old kit!
Next I spent 2 days working on the cockpit with Eduard photoetches.
Once this is done and glued in place, Work begins with pre-shading the lines.
The colours I did on the model were all Gunze Sangyo. Russian Green darkened with Black to form a 2 tone green for the tops. Greyish white is used for the bottom. Black is used for preshading on the bottom, while the top is sprayed dark IJN Navy green and highlighted with the darkened Russian Green.
The topside was painted near the wing roots with glossy white followed by Silver Chrome from Gaia paints. Reason for this is to serve as a scratched paint chips as part of weathering. This surface is cured and then painted over with Gunze Silicone Barrier and then the main painting goes over that and is allowed to cure for 24 hours before any masking tape is used.
The ailerons are painted solid darken Russian Green highlights and then the ribs are masked with tap and given a dusting of the dark IJN Navy Green.
The whole model is now coated with Klear and gotten it ready for decals. The wing root areas are chipped with a small screwdriver.
Once this is done and the decals are cured, I started the blackwashes.
