Hello all. I just finished working on a hasegawa 1/48 frank.
I used parts of the eduard pe zoom set, but not a lot of the tiny little handles, etc. I really like the seat and instrument panels which I think are an improvement over the kit ones. However, this being said the kit cockpit is excellent! I am really impressed with all of the detail they put in.
I really struggled with what color to do the cockpit in (aotake, green, or natural metal) and reviewed j-aircraft.com many times as well as my book reference, but finally decided to go with a natural metal look. For this I used the cheap testors silver like you can find at Walmart and gave it a ‘sludge wash’ of polyscale grimy black.
Cockpit:
To the engine, I added solder and eduard pe wiring. Sorry the pictures aren’t great.
I stole the pilot figure from the tamiya ki-84 kit which is where I got the decal numbers and rabbit for the cowling. It was my first time painting a figure, so I can definitely improve, but overall I am quite happy (eyes excused…).
And finally finished…
Major painting was done with tamiya paints. Most markings were painted on with the exception of the numbers and the ‘bunny?’ on the cowling. The base is a cheap piece of pine from Michaels (local craft store) with dirt and railroad flocking white glued on. Overall a very fun build - quite a few struggles due to user error, but a fun build that I am happy with.
Leon: I’ve been wondering what you’ve been up to lately and now a know. Let me be “frank”: Simply amazing job on the Ki-84. You’ve taken a rather ordinary airplane and made it come alive through an awesome job painting and weathering. Very nice colorful, scheme, too. And the figure is just as good. Don’t be too hard on yourself…he came out great.
Thanks Scott and Marc, I really appreciate the kind comments.
Marc, the grass is Woodland Scenics ‘Stack Grass Flock’ I don’t remember what color I used (medium green I think) and then once the glue had set, I took to it with the airbrush to lightly spray some various greens to add a little variety. The stuff worked great and was very easy to work with. Here is a link to the woodland scenics page on it…
Hey Leon, Nice work. You did a bang-up job on the pilot. Did you try to paint the eyes? If so, I’d recommend that you dont even worry about it. In that scale you can’t really see the eyes too much.
What brand of paints did you you use on the exterior and what were the colors you used on the upper and lower surfaces? It really looks very realistic!
RadMax, I really, really considered not painting the eyes because like you said it wasn’t all that noticeable that they weren’t done, but in the end I decided to swallow my fears and at least give it a shot. Who knows on the next 1/48 one I might leave them unpainted…
Wulf, the antennae wire was a huge frustration to me. I used the smoke colored monofilament but couldn’t really get it to shrink the way I wanted with a hot needle, so it makes me very happy that you had a positive comment about it - thanks.
Steven, I used tamiya acrylics. If I remember correctly (at work) the colors were IJN green and gray.
“Frankly” speaking - I think it looks great! I would love for my pilot figures to look that good when finished! One of the best looking KI-84’s I’ve seen.
I just got that one out yesterday to wash and get ready to start. You can bet I’ll be refering back to these photos for help - Thanks!
