For a bare metal finish, painting begins with a base color of black. Normally, they say it should be a gloss black base, but I’ve found that it doesn’t make that much of a difference. In this case I used Aqueous Black Surfacer which went thinned with IPA, dries to a satin finish.
After the first coat of Aqueous Super Fine Silver, I checked my work for problem areas that I missed out on fixing. Of course I found some and these were dealt with.
After a few coats of Aqueous Fine Silver I’m well on my way to the next step.
To add some interest to the all silver finish, I masked off the ailerons and various panels. There’s nothing accurate about this though. The panels I masked off are the same as the ones on my old P-51D build from back in 2016.
I then sprayed Metal Color Dull Aluminium.
As I simply coated the Dull Aluminium over the silver without another coat of black base, the difference in hue is subtle.
The markings for this build, Maverick’s P-51 from the Top Gun: Maverick film, will come from DEF Model. The set also comes with a ‘Maverick’ figure to pose with the kit.
I then masked for the red areas.
The red used was straight Tamiya Red. I noted that I didn’t get how the red wrapped around the exhaust area correctly.
So I went masked and repainted it. Much better now.
The D-Day Invasion stripes were next. Based on some googling, the stripes should be 6.39mm thick in 1/72 scale. I went with 6.5mm stripes cut from 10mm masking tape.
The decal sheet comes with a masking template for the roundel which I copied out onto Tamiya Tape.
First I painted the white stripes, in this case using Tamiya White.
I then masked off the white stripe to prepare for the black stripes. I used Tamiya Black instead of the usual Rubber Black as I figured this being a show bird, the blacks should really be black instead of a very dark gray.
Some minor corrections are needed but it’s not a bad result from my first attempt.
Build Log
Pt.1 – Construction | Pt.2 – Painting & Finishing | Pt.3 – Painting & Finishing
