That belongs in a museum! - 1/32 Ho-229 Zoukei Mura museum restoration

[BorisAlexandrov]

Hello fellow friends from britmodeller!

 

It's my first time ever posting here and I'm planning on building a Ho-229 by Zoukei Mura as a start. These late ww2 doomsday wunderwaffes wielded by the axis never cease to fascinate me. Maybe it's true that they were rushed by the desperate engineers who attempted a last ditch effort at turning the tide of the war, that they either came too late to do anything useful or cost questionable amount of resources, but the concepts behind them are still quite imaginative even in today's standards.

 

I'm planning on making this post as episode one of my wunderwaffe series including stuff like V2, Ho-229, Me-163, Me-262, Mammut tank, Kikka and more, starting from Ho-229 for its appearance in Wolfenstein: The New Order. Now that the kit has finally been restocked thanks to Volks USA, I grabbed two of them as soon as I can while they're still there. My plan is to build a heavily weathered Ho-229 like the one being restored in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum because... I love chipping paint with hair gel.

 

So here we are, admiring the box art of a Ho-229 that just scored a Lancaster kill in an interception: (Let's just ignore my messy workbench for once)

 

Interestingly enough, the box is a hybrid of top opener and side opener. Something I've only seen in Zvezda kits.

 

Instruction manuals from Zoukei Mura are really something else. Having this Bauanleitung laid on my workbench really makes me feel like a German aviation engineer in late April 1945, wondering how to get my job done while being bombarded by both B-17s during the day and Lancasters at night.

 

It's by far the most comprehensive, detailed, unambiguous instruction I've ever seen in my short model life... Or am I not supposed to disclose this STRENG GEHEIM Nur Für den Dienstgebrauch material here? Maybe I should remove this post before any Gestapos show up?

 

Since it's easy to find out-of-the-box sprue reviews and build reviews for this kit pretty much everywhere now, I won't be posting photos of all the sprues in the box. I'll show them when this build unfolds, of course.

[KingTiger435]

This should be intriguing, heard great things about this kit, following.

[BorisAlexandrov]

First off... the clear parts.

 

It's a quasi-full interior kit that has a lot of details on the inside, and Zoukei Mura is kind enough to provide these outer panels as clear parts. They're quite delicate and brittle, and given their enormous sizes the sprue gates are too wide for comfort. So instead of a sprue nipper I turned to my faithful Tamiya craft saw for helping me remove these parts from the sprue and clean the residues. To apply an even pressure on the clear parts to prevent shattering I sawed on both sides and worked bit by bit all the way to the center until the remaining gate residue can be safely removed with a blade.

Thankfully these parts survived this violent process. After a few sanding passes with the sanding sponges by Meng and DSpiae, this is what I ended up with.

 

One issue that I have with these clear parts though - They are smooth on the inside but quite frosty and bumpy on the outside. If you want a perfect, clear like glass frame to show off the interior details you're out of luck. I tried multiple polishing compounds on these parts for curiosity and concluded that, you'll need to sand the outside surfaces real hard multiple times and risk losing all the panel lines and rivets detail, or else you'll need to stare closely at the blurry interior through this frosty clear parts once you've done. And if you are planning on painting both sides of the clear parts like me, there's no backup regular grey parts. So... do tread carefully when dealing with these clear parts because there's no fallback option this time.

 

Oh and by the way, for the aircraft that appeared on the box art as the victim of this Ho-229, I do have the kit stashed recently as well...

Not quite certain if I can do the kit justice though. Guess I need a bit more motivation to make it the subject of my future posts.

Edited July 16, 2022 by BorisAlexandrov

[mick]

will follow your build

[Mottlemaster]

Your project looks fascinating. I Will be following progress.  I have this kit in my stash and didn't realise it comes with so many clear parts.

 

Cheers Alistair

[SafetyDad]

Be careful with your weathering and chipping when you get there - much of the 229 was made of wood!

 

SD

[BorisAlexandrov]

10 hours ago, SafetyDad said:

Be careful with your weathering and chipping when you get there - much of the 229 was made of wood!

 

SD

Yup I'm aware of it. Thanks for the reminder!

 

Still kinda wondering how I can replicate the plywood texture though.

[SafetyDad]

17 hours ago, BorisAlexandrov said:

Still kinda wondering how I can replicate the plywood texture though.

 

Try Uschi van der Rosten decals - he has a set tailored for the 229. It's about half way down this page

 

https://www.uschivdr.com/shopping-categories/shop-wood-grain-decals/

 

SD

[Biggles87]

Now there’s something we don’t see every day on BM. 

Something like that would take me about 18 month ( at least ) to build, how long do you reckon it’ll be?

 

John. 🇺🇦

[NMS Models]

I'll be watching this one with great interest. I've seen a couple Zoukei-Mura kits before and the detail they offer is staggeringly good. Having you build the entire engine including the internals is something else!

Edited July 17, 2022 by NMS Models
spelling

[BorisAlexandrov]

Getting the frames together is surprisingly easy. The fit is so ludicrously good that I can simply leave the upper half here tied with tooth floss without applying cement.

 

One beautiful(?) thing about building a poorly maintained artifact in the museum is that you don't need to worry too much about painting corresponding colors for each part anymore. The German engineers rushed this prototype by welding steel pipes together into a frame, so vast majority of these would be painted and weathered as a whole, into rusty, dusty steel with a little bit of original RLM62 paint slowly biding its time.

 

Next up... the Jumo 004 engines!

[BorisAlexandrov]

1 hour ago, Biggles87 said:

Now there’s something we don’t see every day on BM. 

Something like that would take me about 18 month ( at least ) to build, how long do you reckon it’ll be?

 

John. 🇺🇦

Hi John,

 

I'm kinda wondering about it as well as this build unfolds. Given that I'm not quite a patient modeller, I doubt I'll take that long for this project haha.

[Walter]

On 17/07/2022 at 03:47, BorisAlexandrov said:

Yup I'm aware of it. Thanks for the reminder!

 

Still kinda wondering how I can replicate the plywood texture though.

There are a few youtube videos on this subject that will add a few more hours to your project. 

[BorisAlexandrov]

They sure have gone the extra mile by making you build the compressor blades.

 

 

Drilled out the missing instruments on the instrument panel, like the one before restoration in the museum.

 

The blades, as well as the compressor housing.

 

Applied a layer of matt black primer from AK to each outer panels, and a thicc layer of AK burnt metal on the fuselage frames for a base coat before painting and weathering.

[BorisAlexandrov]

Just to show off how ludicrously well this kit fits. Almost all these parts are dry fits, not a single drop of cement is used, and everything is basically just stuck in place perfectly.

 

[Pete in Lincs]

On 7/17/2022 at 9:26 PM, BorisAlexandrov said:

I can simply leave the upper half here tied with tooth floss

Now there's a neat idea. It's coming along nicely.

[BorisAlexandrov]

5 minutes ago, Pete in Lincs said:

Now there's a neat idea. It's coming along nicely.

I actually don't know why I left a box of Oral B floss on my workbench. Just grabbed whatever's the nearest that resembles a string and tied it up.

[BorisAlexandrov]

I really should have developed the habit of taking more photos while I build, but chipping with hair gel is a really delicate process and quite time sensitive.

 

So all I have for now are these two photos:

 

 

 

To replicate the texture of worn plywood, I did multiple layers of airbrushing hair gel chipping in following order:

 

Primer: Black (AK interactive primer)

Base: XF-9 hull red + XF-7 flat red 1:1, to replicate the reddish under layer of plywood.

Hair gel: Heavy chipping effects from AK interactive. It's really frigging hard to find anything that can be a decent spray can substitute these days so I went lazy and used this instead.

Surface 1: XF-78 wooden deck tan + drops of XF-3 flat yellow, to replicate the yellowish, fresh, worn layer of the plywood, and chipped with brush and water.

Give it an abbbbuuuuundant amount of time to cure and set, at least 3 days. With the hair gel layer still present the grip of the paint is really bad. If you proceed without letting the paint to cure you'll risk chipping both surface layers off in the next steps.

Hair gel: Worn effects from AK interactive. We want our pattern to be a bit more subtle this time so I'm not using heavy chipping for this layer.

Surface 2: XF-24 dark grey + XF-2 white + XF-27 3:7:1, for the worn, faded RLM-75 Grauviolett paint, and chipped with water as well.

 

The metal panels (the ones that covers the engines) are painted with burnt iron color from Mig acrylic.

 

Another find: Andy ain't lying about Lysol in his latest video. This disinfectant is uncannily good at cleaning airbrushes from tamiya acrylic paint residues. Simply spray it into the cup and give it some rub with paper towels and your airbrush would be as good as new.

[BorisAlexandrov]

Hi all,

 

I think I'm done with this project for now. The result was posted here, in the ready for inspection section: