Sino-Japanese War A6M2a | Hasegawa

Daniel Klink
promising start count me in 👍

Speglord
Thank you Daniel!

Rui
I'm in 👍

Speglord
Good to have you on board Rui 🙂

Rui
Wow that crack must be so disheartening. Call it battle damage and have some oil stains around it or something. 🙂

Greg Baker
That's what cement is for! You can fix it!

Robin (WhiteGlint)
That's a setback. But it looks like you can fix it with putty and a lot of sanding.

Neil
I agree. All these old kits I build are crap (usually!) in fit. I think it would be such a shame not to finish this. Your efforts so far look outstanding. It's shaping up to be a very fine build indeed! 🙂 Keep going! 👍

Speglord
Thank you all. I'm still weighing the pros and cons of masking everything off, going in with putty, and doing my best; or, on the other hand, just marching on. I'll make a decision within the next few days, hopefully.

Gary Victory
Justin, shame about the cowling damage. Would it be better to remove it and see if anything is causing a fit issue? Also the repair would potentially be easier with gluing the cowling back together and have a smaller clean up job rather than lots of filler. Im sure either way you will find a way to make good the repair.
Keep up the good work. 👍

Speglord
Thanks for the encouraging comments Gary (and everyone else)! Unfortunately I only discovered it was cracked *after* it was glued on. A very unfortunate mistake. I think I've come to the decision to simply let it go; I'm still a new modeler and it can be something of an interesting little story to tell. I'm also simply just not confident enough in some of my puttying/re-scribing abilities to do this without making a serious mistake this late in the build. Luckily enough, the crack also isn't really that noticeable in person. I'll see about maybe covering it up somehow with some oils or pigments during the weathering part of the build. In any event, I have begun varnishing and will look to start the decal process sometime today or tomorrow.

Gary Victory
No worries Justin 👍.
One potential simple solution is to cut some thin plastic card (if you have it..? if not it is worth investing in some which can be found on amazon/e-bay or your local hobby shop) into the shape and glue it on. It will cut done on the amount of filler required and sanding.
Has modellers we all have our cock-ups....and we are always learning.😉

Jim J
Nice work! Sorry about the crack in the cowling at this stage of the game. Every build is a learning experience for me.

Speglord
Thanks Jim! And yeah you can say that twice lmao

Robin (WhiteGlint)
I think she came out real nice! 👍

AndreasK
I would suggest to do some chipping effects around the crack and claim this is due to some hard action in battle. 🙂

Otherwise, the model looks great!