Written by 10:42 pm On the Bench

WIP : Italeri 1/48 A-36 Apache Pt. 4 – Finishing

Once all the paint has cured, I gave the whole kit a once over with gloss coat.

For the scheme I’m doing, there are yellow wing bands which cut across the dive brakes. The decals for these don’t account for the openings on the dive brakes so to make my life easier, I decided to mask and spray the bands.

The decals for the bands are 1cm in width but the instructions show they are narrower. I decided to follow the instructions. These were a custom mix of yellow with some orange mixed in. These were sprayed over a base of some white marble coat which helps with opacity.

The decals are quite robust and went on quite easily and reacted well to Mark Softer. While looking at the marking callouts I noticed that a small part of the tailfin is supposed to be white color. This was quickly masked off and sprayed.

As usual with WWII subjects, there are a general lack of stencils. Not that I’m complaining.

The shark mouth decal took a fair bit of adjusting. I really should have cut it into 2 and re-align them.

I did the best I can with the placement and fixed the gaps with paint. However, if you looked closely, there are 2 wrinkles on the decal that I couldn’t get rid off.

Shark mouths are always cool.

Once the decals have cured and wiped down with a wet cloth, they were given a gloss coat. Next I added chipping using silver, olive drab and medium gray paint. These were added with a sponge.

I chipped random spots all over the fuselage simulating wear and tear. Heavier chipping was done for the leading edges of the wings and where I assume there’s more foot traffic.

While I used a silver color for the topside chips, I went with a black color for the bottom which shows up more on the gray. As you can see, 1 of the nose gun barrels have broken off. As usual, there’s always some sort of last minute disasters to fix.

Next is panel washing with Mig AMMO Dark Brown Wash. This fills the panel lines which add ‘depth’ and ‘weight’ to the kit. It’s subtle on the olive drab side.

It’s more obvious on the gray side.

To tone down the contrast I filtered with white, dark gray and dark brown oil paints. The filters also toned down the chipping I did.

The filters were done in the direction of air flow so it’s front to back on the wings and up and down on the fuselage.

I added more brown filters behind the main gear.

The wheel well were given a simple wash to pop the details.

To show that there are ‘new’ and ‘old’ chips I went back in and added more. Tamiya Weathering Masters was used for the soot on the gun barrels and exhaust stains. The exhaust stains were enhanced with some light spraying of Model Air Dark Panzer Grey.

The masking tape is finally removed from the canopy and… it’s OK. There are some dust spots inside the canopy that I’ll have to live with. I’m quite happy how visible the scratchbuilt harnesses are.

The bombs are finally attached. I also weathered them and figuring that operationally no one will really bother with being neat with an expendable weapon, I handpainted the yellow rings that indicated that the bombs were ‘live’.

Then the antennas are attached and the wing lights were painted. I decided skip the aerials this time and I’m finally done!

Build Log
Part 1 – Construction | Part 2 – Cockpit | Part 3 – Painting | Part 4 – Finishing

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