I am soooooo so so so so sorry folks.
I have barely had time to build and at the end of those non-existent time periods I scraped seconds in to update my threads.... but forgot about this one.
So yeah, there has been a lot of progress.... Here's the latest installment.
Well, we have some progress!
And look at this little guy!
Many, MANY thanks to Mal at Miracle Masks. He made these markings custom from a profile I sent him. I was having a dumb moment and just couldn't understand how the markings for the tail were supposed to be done. He was immeasurable help. He even re-wrote and drew out instructions for me
First though - I needed to tack the rudder in place and straight. I couldn't glue it because the rudder pedals aren't straight so the rudder won't be straight.
I used a clothes peg to keep the rudder straight for masking and painting, and used masking tape to keep the rudder in place.
Sometimes jigs aren't used for alignment so much as they are for handling large assemblies. Attaching the wing floats is coming back to haunt me, but I don't know that this would be any easier with just the main float in place.
The first mask has been applied, painted and removed. You can see the placement box still on the tail. This is the second mask which fits directly in the PB to align the masks. The new mask is a little bit smaller and will leave a white border of 1mm around the letters and stripe.
In the end, I was thrilled with how well this came out. I did touch up the white. Now that I've used Miracle Masks, I will use them as often as I can.
Post touch up on the letters, before the band was fixed.
The Zeke still needs legs. I originally planned on simply displaying the A6M5 on its stand with the wheels up.
The gear does articulate, and I don't consider this a 'toy like feature' as others do, because they look the part and the oleo elbow flexes with the gear. They elbow is made of two pieces and snapped together perfectly. I wish everything was this well made
I realized last week that the kit has rubber main tires. So I ordered a set of resin replacements which just came in. They're nothing pretty, but they're not the cheap rubber ones that never manage to look scale.
I think that's it for now. I have to touch up a bunch of the green paint where it came off. This is not a fault of the miracle masks, but rather the Vallejo gray primer - this seems to be an ongoing issue right now for a lot of people, it's simply coming up no matter how well the surfaces are cleaned.