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I haven't had any actual leaking in any of the bottles that I have ordered, but it quite obvious that the caps are not perfectly air tight, as there is a smell of fresh lacquer on most of the bottles. I get the smell of paint by just getting near the drawer where I store them. I've got some colours of the original glass bottle, (most of them Regia Aeronautica, it seems that is not a popular subject at least here in Finland) and there is absolutely no smell. I have to curse the company for getting rid of those glass bottles which are great. Now they don't even come with steel balls, this kind of cutting of expenses is rather extreme. The world is a big place, if the original glass bottles are not available anymore, I'm sure there exists a good replacement for them. I just wonder when this evaporation becomes a problem, has anyone had problems with disappearing paint? I have quite a large collection of different colours for all future projects, so some could be used after years, not months. I wonder if Mr Color Replenishing agent would work with MRP? It contains some resins, would adding that to MRP make it thicker than it's supposed to be?

Hi, I'm looking for the tints I should use for a MiG 29 9-12 Late (like GWH 4811 kit) in Russian Air Force camouflage. So, any ideas? Cheers, Sebastien

Time to dust off a model that was built as far as the primer stage about five years ago: Hasegawa F-16A, to be finished as S/N 92-0409 from NAS Fallon circa 2002-2008: and a shot of the blue / grey aggressor scheme - decals will come from the Eduard "Top Falcons" boxing. I also have the Eduard "NATO Falcons" boxing so intend to build two of the NATO versions using those two kits - as one is at a similar stage to this model, it may too appear in KUTA in due course. I'm going to use Mr Paint for the first time and have a set of jsworkmodel masks for the camo. Here is a link to a rather patchy version of the scheme. Mike

A few months ago I went and bought the entire RLM colour range from Mr Paint. These are a lacquer based acrylic paints that come pre mixed in glass bottles for airbrushing only, similar to Alclad. I have only just had the chance to try them out on a complete kit and thought I'd let you all know that they are superb paints to use. I used Mr Paint's white primer as a base and it went on very smoothly and only required a light buff with an old cotton T shirt (to remove the bits of dust I'd managed to miss) to prepare it for the top coat colours. The colours I've used so far are RLM02, 04, 70 and 71 along with some of their basic white and black. All colours went on super smoothly with good coverage, even the 04 Yellow, and they all dried very quickly to a semi gloss finish (except the basic black and white). They were touch dry to a very smooth finish within an hour but I did wait for several hours before applying masking tape just in case they hadn't fully cured. The masking tape didn't lift any paint on removal and didn't mark the paint at all. I have also discovered that Gunze's Mr Color Thinners will work with this brand of paint if required, which is handy, if like me, you have a lot of this stuff already. I'm very impressed so far with these paints and they will possibly even replace my current favourite paint, Mr Color/Hobby from Gunze. Today I will be spraying on a coat of Mr Paint's super Clear Gloss for decaling and weathering onto so I'll see how that goes. Duncan B

From Tamiya new lacquer paints in 10ml bottles https://tamiyablog.com/2017/10/the-long-awaited-new-product-tamiya-color-lacquer-paint-in-bottles-appears/ and from Mr Paint a new range of water based acrylics http://mrpaint.sk/farby/Aqua colors . The Mr Paint ones look interesting for me as they are not smelly like lacquer based paints. Robert

This is something I've been working on for almost a month but is nearly completed now so this isn't a traditional WIP but I though I'd show some of the build photos anyway. This is the Eduard Weekend edition of the Fw190D9 which I was originally going to build right out of the box however when I saw a profile for Red 18 I was hooked. It turned out that I found 4 or more different profiles for Red 18 so this is a bit of a pick'n'mix of them all. I had originally started building this while away on holiday a few years ago but it soon became obvious that I should have taken something a lot simpler with me so after completing the first stage I stopped and put it back in the box which is where it had stayed for the last 3 years. So this is roughly where I set off from three weeks ago. The instructions would have me glue the rear of the engine, the supports and the firewall together as one piece before joining the fuselage halves. I just couldn't see how I was going to get that to work so I fitted the firewall to one fuselage half then fitted the supports and the rear of the engine to the firewall once it was set. This also helped align the fuselage halves which were slightly warped on my kit, possibly due to them having been stored off the sprue. I knew most of the detail of the rear engine was going to disappear once closed up so took another photo of it as completed, I was quite pleased with the way it turned out. And the cockpit, I hate detailing cockpits but didn't have any after-market bits for it other than a set of fabric seatbelt that will be fitted at the end of the build. The firewall and rear of engine in place From underneath... ...and it starts to disappear About this time I noticed that there was something a bit odd to my eye with regards the supercharger air intake. To me it looked like it had been moulded upside down or as a mirror image. In all the photos and drawings I've seen the shorter side is on top. Here's the mirror image, I think that looks better Anyhow there is nothing available to replace it that I could find so I had to go with it. (I've only ever seen this problem mentioned in one review of the kit so it's something that either isn't a problem or hasn't been picked up by many people) I don't normally build my kits with anything open but I'd heard a lot about closing up the gun bay doors on the Eduard Fw190s. I decided I'd give it a go on one of the gun bays anyway and have the rest open. After some dry fitting I thought it would be easy enough to fit the wing root gun cover to the top half of the wing before fitting the whole wing to the fuselage. The cover needed some sanding to get the fuselage side of it to fit snuggly into the fuselage but I had no problems cutting out the upper wing part and gluing the cover in place, I didn't even need any filler on it. The rest of the build went smoothly enough although I did have to sand the back of the wing spar to get one of the upper wing halves to fit, ironically it was the wing that I left the gun bay open. Other than the fit of the wing to fuselage I had no problems worth mentioning. I've read that the front of the fin is too wide but it looks fine to me so I left it alone. As I mentioned earlier while looking for information on which type of canopy to fit I found that there were at least 4 different colour profiles in the various books and decal options I had seen. I knew which colours that the production batch it came from used so at least I could confirm that the profiles were all variations of those colours. After some assistance from a couple of BMers (and an expensive purchase of the JaPo books ) I decided to go with (mostly) the EagleCals version of the colour scheme, I painted the flaps RLM76 whereas EagleCals leave them in bare metal. From the only photo of the underside I've seen it looked like the flaps were missing anyway. I painted the underside of the wing with AK Interactive's Extreme Metal Aluminium which went on beautifully smooth and shiny, too shiny for what I wanted in fact so I toned it down with matt varnish sprayed onto various panels in varying densities to get some variation. This worked really well however I didn't get a photo before I moved onto the next stage of weathering the NMF. To give the NMF a weathered look I sprayed a very thinned down version of the RLM76 I'd been using onto the various panels to give them an oxidised look, I might have taken it a bit too far but I was aiming for a worn look. I then sprayed some very thinned down smoke over the panel joins. Here is the underside as it is now with the painting and oil wash completed In the various profiles they all agreed that the front of the fuselage and power egg was painted in RLM 83 Dark Green, some then went with RLM 83 over all the fuselage and others with RLM75 or 82, I decided to go with the RLM75. The profiles showed the wings to be either RLM83/75 or RLM83/82, again I went with the RLM 83/75 version as per EagleCals, this version seemed logical to me as this aircraft was built early in the mid production run at FW Marienburg according to various references which also stated that the colour schemes changed from 83/75 to 83/82 during this production batch, ok, it's a guess! The paints used were Mr Paint (from Slovakia) over their grey primer. I wanted a really worn looking effect as the photos showed it to be far from pristine so I sprayed some of the AK Interactive aluminium over the leading edges, along the wing roots and up to the cockpit and then used the salt technique to mask it off before commencing the top coats. I also painted the hatch on the port side of the fuselage with RLM75 as some photos appear to show it darker than the RLM76, it adds visual interest even if it might not be factual. The National and unit markings were sprayed on using Montex Masks, very fiddly and a bit nerve wracking but worth the effort, the red 18 was left slightly 'chipped' intentionally to fit in with the other 'chipping'. I didn't use their serial number mask on the fin though as it appeared to be too big compared to the photos. The stencils and serial numbers came from the EagleCals decal sheet. I didn't add the wing walkways as none of the profiles showed them and I couldn't see them on the photos (and also because they are a PITA to do). An oil wash was applied using various shades of AK Interactive and MIG washes and has been left to dry which is where I am at now. The next stage will be to seal all that in with a clear coat then do the detailed painting and weathering followed by the final assembly. So I'm hopeful that I'll have this finished before the Aberdeen Modeller's Society club meeting next week. Duncan B

Hi Folks, here is my Zvezda Ju 87 painted up as an R2 White H from 1/StG1 based in Krainici in Bulgaria during the Balkans campaign of 1941. This is a snap together type of kit but don't let that fool you as the engineering and fit of this kit is excellent. The only detail missed that I could spot were the lack of aileron mass balances. My only concern was that the clear plastic didn't like being polished and was a bit awkward to fit together but other than that this was an enjoyable, stress-free build. i wanted something a bit different from the kit supplied options so used some Tally Ho decals from the "Achtung Stuka!" decal sheet. This was my first time I have tried the 'Mr Paint' range of acrylic paints and I have to say that I am very impressed both with the way they sprayed and the colour match too, I will definitely be using them again and can recommend them highly. Duncan B