The Atom Furnace: Betty!

As you might have noticed a few days back, I pulled from my stash a Mitsubishi G4M that I had begun years back and stalled due to some assembly and paint decisions. No longer stymied by much of anything, I decided to dive back in.

In retrospect, the flight crew was probably one of the areas that had me paused. I've done a lot of miniatures since then. Pilot, Co-Pilot, and Tailgunner are provided. Once these guys are done and in, I can begin to close up the fuselage which was otherwise essentially complete.

Tailgunner in his "bubble"

Glazing in the nose.

Test fit. Need to fit the nose gun.

The wings fir very well, are supported by two spars and have a "pin" to lock them in place underneath the wing. Great design.

With guns in place, the fuselage "blisters" can go on.

There we go. Gun in a ball mount in the nose. Starting to think about how to mask all of this glass....

Engines finished and installed. Nicely detailed, close up you can see the cylinder fins and push rods very clearly. Then I'll hide them with large spinners ;-)

Canopy fit test. I have heard it can be finicky, so we'll measure, file, measure, file, as needed.

She sits on her gear as a test. One of the "Stall" points keeping me from finishing this years ago had been the breaking of two arms on the landing gear. As I recall, I either obtained it this way or broke it when removing from the sprue. Either way, I had the pieces, figure out their orientation, and glued them back on. This was a test to see if they could support weight, as they are a main load bearing portion if the gear....

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Given the amount of masking required, I will be experimenting with an Eduard mask set for my windows, as the though of hours of scotch tape application and trimming does not entice me.

I'll write up a chapter on that process once it arrives from the Czech republic. Stay Tuned!

I like the Eduard masks. It goes on slowly on a model with so much glazing, but I was impressed with the accuracy of the cuts and fit. Once I lay down the paint and pull the mask, we'll see how it did.

First, a silver undercoat.

Both sides

I'd lime to try some hairspray chipping on this kit and give it a well-used appearance. For practice, I'll use this old corsair wing:

some quickie scribed lines and a few raised ones for contrast. Now, for some hairspray....

The Test Wing in Modelmaster Dark Sea Blue. Tomorrow, we see how well it comes off...

Here's some test chipping. I need to work on getting it where I want it, but I think this will work.

In the mean time. I have "hairsprayed" the high wear areas over the silver undercoat. Once dry, i shot the panel lines with Modelmaster Semi gloss black in two sessions, top and bottom.

That's a lot of breath control for a plethora of panel lines.
Now I wanted a more faded look, not factory fresh, so a mix of 5 parts IJN Dark Green to two parts Classic White ( Modelmaster enamels) looked about right by eye, so it was thinned and sprayed.

Boy she takes a lot of paint. Now to mix a second batch and spray coat #2...

That'll do. Now for drying, and underside light gray.

Underside IJN Light Gray

On gear

For comparison, the factory new Jack alongside the faded Betty

Old decals are always a risk. I've had some that, other than requiring an inordinate amount of time to come loose, worked fine. Not so these...

So, aftermarket decals it is. More delays.

Decal Day! Techmod 1/48. Let's see how they do.

I am planning on a Betty from Rabaul, so we'll use the white-backed hinomaru on the fuselage. Let's start there (in case I don'tike it and have to paint instead).

The film is thick, and colors are printed over white, so none of the green shows through. They are also sturdy and tolerated being pushed and pulled some for positioning. The downside is a difficulty in getting them to fall into all of those beautiful recessed panel lines. To get the crew door to show, I used a fresh xacto and slit the decal after it dried, and reapplied solvaset.

It looks better in person ;-)

The only challenging application was the wing edge recognition panels. Wrapping over the wing and getting it down over bumps and ridges required patience and persistence.

The Techmod sheet also had propeller decals, so on they went.

In order to avoid failure later, I needed to apply some gloss to the matt underside to give the insignia a smooth surface to adhere to. But, I had a choice. Spray the outboard wing panels gloss and accept that it won't blend completely after decals and flat spray; Spray the entire underside gloss before decals; or take door number 3, make a mask just a tiny bit bigger than the roundel and hand paint it in gloss. Then apply decals. Quick and economical. If it works.

Grab some parafilm, and using a circle template, trace a hole just larger than the roundel. Cut it out, apply the mask to the wing, brush on gloss.

Dry, apply decal.

So far, so good.

Try my hand at some chipping? Why not. Engine nacelles get more wear than most surfacez, do we'll start there. Wet, wait, and begin brushing, in this case using an old school ink-eraser-pencil brush, and...