Instructions say to paint inside of landing gear doors metallic blue. Does this sound right?
Some Japanese a/c of WW II used a clear blue protective coating over the natural aluminum. I first tried to use Tamiya’s acrylic metalic blue to duplicate this the first time I tried it on a Hasegawa Ki.27 and it was a disaster. Later, when building early Zero’s like yours, I found it best to use a silvery undercoat with a clear blue overcoat. Works great. Much later, modelers had to come up with a similar solution with a greenish-blue clear overcoat for F-15s. Whatever happened to that once common old metalizer shade “F-15 interior green”?
What sharkskin said is basically right, but I like to use Metallic blue with a little clear green added. Sprayed over a silver base coat this looks good. Or you could use a silver under coat oversprayed with clear blue mixed with clear green (I’m not sure of the ratio , try experimenting). The actual colour had a green tinge to it.
hope this helps
Xtra Colour make the colours of IJN/A aircraft, there about the only model paint manufacturer who does. The blue is X355 I can’t remember the number for the green.
Rob.
Both Lifecolour & Gunze produce Aotake blue, which is the finish you are talking about.
Haven’t used them so don’t know how they look, but then I’ve always had good results with both manufacturers paints in the past.
Karl
Hope this helps.
You want to get a real early type Zero color discussion going? What color should the fuselage be?
You are safe with a semi-gloss light gray that leans slightly toward a caramel color. The skin area under the canopy sections is black, wheel wells, gear doors and flap wells aotake. And you have a lot of leeway with aotake, from blue to green, but always transparent and quite subtle, almost to the point that you must look at it obliquely to see the tint.