Continuing with the assembly of the Aires instrument panel, the major pieces are spray painted RLM 66 Dark Grey. This is also the appropriate time to do some detail painting. I've chosen to highlight the bezels around each instrument primarily in black but also one in yellow and couple in blue.
The clear acetate is stuck face-down onto the sticky side of a Post-It and the gauge areas are sprayed in white.
When you flip the acetate over, you'll see that the white provides necessary contrast with the black print to create finely detailed instrument faces. And the shiny side of the acetate replicates the glass instrument dials nicely.
A quick check of the center instrument cluster to see how the acetate lines up with the painted photoetch. You want to finish the photoetch parts at this stage, including the flat coat, in order to preserve the shiny acetate faces of the dials.
The acetate instrument clusters are carefully cut out using scissors and glued onto their corresponding photoetch panels, making sure that all of the the instruments are centered. I used white glue for this step.
I haven't glued the photoetch panels to the resin instrument panel since there is some detail painting that I still need to do on that resin piece.