Well, I was working on the Hasegawa Stuka but Luckymodel's seat belts from Eduard was delayed, so, I have to put that project aside and work on the Tamiya 1/32 scale Corsair.
This is a breathtaking build as the parts in the cockpit alone was 16 stages covering 5 pages! Painting it and using the Eduard Zoom kit was no mean feat. The dials needed me to file down the transparent part which was very thick, and then paste one layer on another, which I felt was not very good, so I added CA into the layers and then correct the blur with Johnson Klear on the dials.
Then the bulkhead and the side consoles were weathered. The green is Gunze, a mix of my own from the Israeli Green with some Catapillar yellow and a dash of white to warm it up. These are further washed with Tamiya enamel black and brown washes to warm the colour further and take in the shadows.
The raise areas are highlighted with Vallejo Olive Green with 50% white added to increase the contrast of the raised details. The photo etched panels are a little too shiny, so I drybrushed the panel with some neutral grey with some blue added to it. Then toned down with matte varnish.
Document carrier is painted hull red and drybrushed with buff. I washed it with Tamiya Panel Black and set it vertical for gravity to enhance the look of shadows. Seen here is before the wash. The dials were filled up with Klear. Note the highlighted details even though most of it will be very faint.
A view of the front fire wall with side panels attached. The wheels and bobs were chipped with aluminum and then later I painted the bob heads red according to the instructions. The Eduard detailed throttle system was junked and I kept the kit's offering but added the decal from the Eduard set to increase contrasts and details in the side walls to make it a little more interesting.
Another view of the cockpit firewall.
The rear bulkhead was painted insitu on the tree to ease handling and the cut off parts of the sprue is then touched up when ready for assembly. The seat belts on the photoetch of Tamiya looked like 308 stainless steel and it behaves like one. It does not respond to glue well and parts of the nylon release straps, depicted as a T shaped part number 6 were junked, I prefer to use paper dipped in Super Glue instead for better manageability. Bending the belts to conform to the seat was a nightmare. Painting it and shading it as well is too since nothing sticks well to 308 stainless steel. I wished Tamiya will junk this and go back to copper or steel. To prevent corrosion associated with the 2, Tamiya can opt to plate them later. This prevents the nightmare of trying to bend them to shape to look natural.
Finally, the backward part is married to the cockpit assembly, this alone took about 80 man hours of work as the whole area is hand painted. No airbrush is used as I wanted the wear and tear look. Chips on the bucket were also added before I added the belts.
The cockput completed at long last. Next is to bring this thing into the body halves without the headaches for painting later. There are parts of the canopy that needed to be added and masked into the cockpit before the marriage of the halves, this poses a serious challenge. Nothing bazzare though.
Final Look of the cockpit.