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Special Hobby is to release a 1/72nd Tachikawa Ki-54Hei (Ki-54c) "Hickory" kit - ref. 72270 Source: http://www.specialhobby.info/2017/05/models-in-progress-update-vol3.html Mould clear parts tooling block V.P.

Long time listener, first time caller, as they say. I haven't seen many builds of Special Hobby's 1/72 Ki-54 Hei/Hickory here, so I thought I might share my just-completed version. I consider myself an enthusiastic novice when it comes to modeling, having gotten back in the hobby about three years ago after a very long hiatus from my well-distant grade school days. The build was mostly pleasant, and errors are broadly mine rather than the kit's. I'm still trying to get the hang of CA/superglue seam sealing, and I left a few marks that only became clear when I was much further along with the project. Lessons learned for the next build. The fuselage window clear parts were somewhat larger than the corresponding openings, and sanding the windows to fit quickly turned them from nicely rounded rectangles to, well, non-polygonal forms. Discretion, valor, and all that, so I stuck them in, admittedly haphazardly, before they got worse. My story is that the passengers on the last flight didn't close the windows tightly and I'm sticking to it . . . I did need to put a small styrene shim in to close up the join between the wing and fuselage on one side, and I had to build boxes for the wing lights out of sheet styrene to prevent them from falling into the wings. The wheel well/interior gear assembly does not bear mentioning -- it sees several tiny parts coming together mostly blind with far more accuracy than I'm able to muster. I chose an overall grey-green scheme, the aircraft on the box cover that was later salvaged from a lake. I used this build to experiment with black basing, so I laid down Mr. Finishing Surfacer 1500 Black as a primer coat and then did a mottle/marble with heavily thinned Mr. Color C128 Grey Green at 10psi or so through a 0.2mm nozzle, followed by a blend coat of the same. I think the black basing gave the surface enough variety that it doesn't look like a solid block of color. It doesn't show as well in pictures as in person, but it's noticeable enough for my purposes. The black basing definitely took longer than a typical base coat spray job, though -- hours, instead of minutes. The national insignia, wing identification stripes, and white fuselage band were painted on; the only decals are on the tail and rear fuselage for the serial numbers and unit insignia. The decals behaved very nicely and didn't silver at all. I added a panel line wash using a custom light grey oil paint mix and applied Tamiya weathering powders for some engine and exhaust grime. Final dull coat was with Winsor & Newton Acrylic Galeria Matt Varnish. I used the Eduard masks, which fit nicely other than being too small for the wing lights -- happily, a simple fix. Thanks for taking a look. This one should look fine on a shelf, so long as no World War II Japanese transport aircraft experts accidentally stumble into my apartment . . .