1//32 Hasegawa Ki-61-1 Tei Hien

[Stikpusher]

If Tamiya plays well with Alclad, you can use that as a replacement John. They make a gloss clear and flat clear for top coats.

[jkim]

Thanks for the suggestion, Carlos. I'll have to check em out a again but I'm pretty sure I tried Tamiya clears and for whatever reason (that I can't seem to remember), moved on from them. It may have been a simple matter of the bottle being too small. I also tried their Flat Base mixed with Aqua Gloss... inconsistent results with that combo.

Time to paint the exhausts. These are resin and included in the Wolfpack Tei conversion set. In the background are some of the paints that I commonly use to paint exhaust pipes.


I started off with Dark Aluminum but I thought it was too light.


So I put a couple drops Steel into the airbrush and mixed it in with the Dark Aluminum.


Next I use Exhaust Manifold, which is a dark brown metallic color, to highlight the exhausts. Instead of just spraying it all over, I decided to try and isolate each exhaust pipe using a Post-It and highlight the tips. Differentiating each exhaust pipe helps add some visual complexity to this part.



After the base colors have been established, I use a mixture of Tamiya Flat Red and Red Brown and dry brush this rusty color on the pipes.


The final touch is highlighting the tips of the exhausts with black. Not only from the outside but shooting the black into the openings to help with the hollow look.



I know that sounds like a lot of work for just the exhausts but its pretty quick and I don't even clean the airbrush going from one color to the next.


Here's what the painted exhausts look mounted into position.

[Medicman71]

Hey. I got some MMA Flat but it'll cost you. I'm having the same problem you are. What I have is it. I'm trying new gloss coats first then I'll try satin and flats.

[Stikpusher]

Looking great! Excellent contrast between the exhaust stacks and the aircraft skin.

[tempestjohnny]

Looking great! Excellent contrast between the exhaust stacks and the aircraft skin.

[jkim]

And just to clarify, I will be painting the top sides in late war olive green. This is the scheme I'm doing...


I've started painting the horizontal stabilizers but have run into a little issue. The paint I was planning to use is AK Real Colors 330 Ohryuko Nana Go Shoku (Olive Brown).


I like the color but in a parallel test, I could not get this paint to chip consistently with hairspray. So I'm doing some tests with other paints to see if I can get a decent approximation of this shade with either Mr Hobby Aqueous or Tamiya colors and do a chipping test.

[Stikpusher]

AK Real Colors are very hardy paints/lacquers. I can easily see them not wanting to chip due to their properties. The color scheme and tests look good so far John.

[mostrich]

Oooh, that scheme looks awesome!

[jkim]

Here's an update on what I've been doing on the Ki-61 the past few days. I had to finalize my upper camo color choice so I did a hairspray chipping test on a paint mule. The three color choices are the AK Real Color IJA Olive Brown RC330, which I'm using as my target shade. The second candidate is a mixture of Tamiya XF-49 Khaki Drab and XF-13 JA Green. The third and fourth candidates are Mr Hobby Aqueous H-52 Olive Drab 1 and H-320 Dark Green in different ratios.


My test showed that the AK Real Color was difficult to chip. Aggressive brushing got the chipping to happen but once started, the chip patterns tended to be circular and not as randomly ragged as I would've liked. The Tamiya mix chipped too easily in this test. Big chunks of paint came off as brush marks. I liked the chipping of the Mr Hobby Aqueous mix, which only took a few brush strokes for the very small chips to appear, making it easy to build up to a desired effect. I decided to go with the Mr Hobby mix, using a 50:50 mixture of the two colors.


After sealing the anti-glare panel with a gloss coat, I masked it off using Tamiya tape. As a precaution against paint lift, I de-tacked the tape using my finger tips. Hairspray was applied to the AS-12 Silver areas and then I put on a simple panel line preshade layer. I left my customary mottle off because I didn't want an extra paint layer to possibly interfere with the chipping process.


The Olive Green color was sprayed onto the hairspray areas. I was really paranoid about the chipping so I chose to paint this core area first, chip it and then paint the rest of the green later.



I waited about an hour to pull off the mask and start chipping and unlike the test, the Mr Hobby Aqueous mix was very resistant to my wet brushing. I had to work a small area aggressively for a long time for any chips to appear. I was pretty discouraged until I took a cheapo craft paint brush that I use to coat my lures with epoxy, shaved the bristles really short to maximize the stiffness and went at the Olive color with this new tool. It worked although a lot of the effect was not related to the hairspray effect and it was just the stiff brush plowing through the top paint.



Anyways, I got a lot of chipping done. The result is not the fine chipping that I got on the paint mule test but it will have to do.



The rest of the Olive Green was applied to the topsides.


A slightly lightened version of the Olive Green was applied to the fabric-covered control surfaces. The major camo painting step is complete.







Obviously, the pretty undersides will have to get dirty at some point!

[Stikpusher]

Looking sharp John! I like how your gave the doped fabric control areas a different shade of green.