SPA Modeler

The Hasegawa 1/48 Zeros have that option and I paint up both so I can show them either way. The riveting looks great, you have a steady hand.

Thanks John!

I've not yet glued the cockpit together but it is such a tight fit that dry-fitting is conveniently easy.

Beautiful cockpit John. The wood grain on the headrest looks very good.

Man that pit friggin' ROCKS John!!! Oh my gosh man!!

Oh wow!! Makes me wanna sit in the cockpit! Incredible work!!

Thanks for checking in! Finally have an update to post. The cockpit has been glued together...


And the cockpit has been glued into the fuselage. The rear cockpit sill is a photoetch part from the Brengun set.



Playing around with the engine placed on the fuselage. I've glued the cowl flaps onto the engine cowling and have painted the interior of the cowling black.




Finally worked up the nerve to tackle the wing bottom rivet job.


The Shiden Kai has a LOT of rivets so just drawing the rivet guide lines takes time.



As with the fuselage, the amount of drawn lines caused smudging so I decided to do the center of the fuselage in a separate step.



After the rivets were applied, the entire wing bottom was sanded to remove the excess plastic around the rivet holes. A brown pastel wash was placed over the wing bottom to check the work. After any necessary corrections, I'll clean off the wash as much as possible to prepare for the painting stage.

That is a lot of rivets but the bit of extra work really pays off in the end.

I really like all this attention to detail that you put into your builds. Really going to all add up when it's all finished.

That's a lot of rivets! I couldn't do that even if I tried. You are a master and I bow down to you.

The rivet work is coming along beautifully, and that cockpit and engine.... wow!