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Kawasaki Ki-61-1-Tei "Hien" Tamiya 1/48th scale


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Afternoon!  Well the painting and decals on this fought me all the way. Despite a very high gloss finish, my decal tricks, and the sacrifice of 3 goats; the Tamiya decals, especially the wing red stripes and lettering over the flap areas showed up really badly, with the carrier film being amazingly obvious.  My solution was to brush on several layers of Quickshine into these areas to level it all out, then wet sand it back using ultra fine polishing pads: It worked "just". I then had a nightmare with the Tamiya flat clear which did weird cracking-spidery-fissure things in some areas as it dried, I tried to wet sand this out but in the process other areas were damaged ( I left some of the natural metal areas untouched as it looked good in places - always turn a disaster into a success say I!!).  In the end, I pretty much semi-stripped the model, made good the camo, repainted the hinomaru on top wings and fuselage, and hid :)

 

Anyway - it's turned out OK. The model represents a Tei of the 56th Sentai flown by Major Yaruyoshi Furukawa, at Itami, December 1944. The scheme is the late war factory applied #7 Yellow-green over natural metal undersides. Paint was Tamiya mixed by eye 'till I had an olive drab that wasn't olive drab!  Decals are from the kit ( the wing ID yellow leading edge strips go on really well ironically), painted and from MYK design for the fin crest.  Rudder number is from spares plus hand painted.

The eagle eyed will note a few errors, but I'm not telling.

It's a beautiful kit, fits like a glove, and is full of great detail. I just wish Tamiya had done those top wing decals in 1 bit instead of two L shapes for the edging strip with a rectangle for the "no step or you will be beheaded" (LOL)  Japanese characters that sit in the middle.

All comments welcome as usual.  To my eye the overall olive green /brown really shows off the shape of this sleek fighter.

Jonners

 

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Jon,

 

Had you not said, I for one would not have been any the wiser.   Your model (and finish) looks top notch to me!

 

Regards

 

Dave

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