Tamiya Ki-84 Frank

Cockpit is spartan at best, but I plan to have the pilot in there. The included decal was used for the instrument panel for simplicity and to test if the 50+ year old decals work. They do! 

Minor fitting and filling required, the worst being the port wing gap but fortunately it was even all the way fore and aft so some sheet plastic did nicely. Some semi-dry Tamiya Primer G is taking care of the rest. 

Goes together quite well for a Tamiya of this vintage. The front of the wing where it meets the fuselage requires some filling as always seems the case with the old Tamiyas. Other than that, it's falling together well. Very basic engine, but added some plug wires, base coat of LP-11, some Alclad magnesium followed by a wash and silver drybrush and cowling attached. 

Normally I go for a black base, but since this Frank is going to be subject to some heavy chipping, went with some preshading instead. The Revlon Extra-Hold has already been applied! 

LP-11 makes for a good primer. Not as good as Mr. Surfacer, but it'll do. Had a lot of trouble with the paint drying in the airbrush and clogging, which is why the preshading is pretty iffy. Need to add some retarder to it. 

Bit of a Cubist thing going on here, but the blend coat should help.  

Still need to add some underlying lighter color to represent the fabric control surfaces, then on to topcoat. 

Cubism extends to the underside. It's going to be gear down, but the included gear covers to "construct in a state of flying in the air" make for handy masks for the wheel wells. 

Just need to keep the overcoat thin enough to see the shading and so that the hairspray can do its job! 

Blending with XF-13 turned out pretty well, I just hope any clear coats don't darken it so much the panel shading disappears! 

The coat thickness was pretty good so subsequent chipping should go well. A few tiny picks with a blade pulled up the paint but not the underlying LP-11 silver color 👍 

Underside may need another blend with really thin XF-14 as I think the lines are a little heavy, but I'm going to see how a flat coat changes the color. 

You can just get a hint of the silver underneath, so that's good. On to painting the home defense bands and the hinomarus. Decals are not gonna work with the chipping I have in mind. Only decals should be buzz numbers, tail flashes and the yellow leaping rabbit on the cowl. 

A Frank with a side of meatballs. 😄 

Home defense bands were of course XF-2 with just a smidge of XF-57 Buff. Should have made it more than a smidge because it's a little stark even so. Will try to tone it down with washes. The yellow bands are leftover from a Raiden. Can't remember the mix but it's three+ years old and still worked. 

Had to repair the portside underwing band and it's not the same opacity. Maybe some light sanding along with washes, we'll see how it goes. 

The red is XF-7 with a little XF-52 in it. No good agreement on hinomaru colors, but it looks good to me if a little stark. Also a little mask trouble on the port 'ball so it's not perfect. Oh well. 

Chipping commenced. It's a lot more work than anticipated but it's looking pretty good so far. Especially pleased with the cowling/wing walking area. Other places, not so much. 

Since this is a learning process, I have learned that hairspray is somewhat fickle. Some places it loosens the paint beautifully and randomly while in others you have to get really aggressive. 

The result being that in more than a few places, the silver paint underneath also gets removed, so there's going to be some very careful touching up required. 

Tools are nothing more than a stiff old airbrush cleaner brush, a toothpick and more patience than I usually possess. 

It actually looks better IRL than on a phone camera but lessons so far: use two medium coats of silver instead of one, use two coats of hairspray instead of one and keep your overcoats thin as you can. Also be careful with the toothpick as it can remove a large chunk of paint before you know it.  

Gloss coated and decals applied. Lost a bit of the number when masking the exhausts. Can repair or maybe it's just more "chipping!" 

The washes toned the white down nicely. 

Decal damage and still working on the exhausts, they're way too bright. 

Finished Frank (mostly, still need to add the gunsight). 

Decent kit. Pilot wasn't great, but then I'm pretty bad at figures. Only other fly in the ointment was the portside wing light lens. Just did not fit well at all. Did a little work on it with some scrap plastic but the gap was still there.
 

The Frank has a really obnoxious antenna setup that's hard to tension. 

A few touchups on the underside needed. The drop tank color is just a guess, as are most IJA WWII colors. I did a two layer chipping on them just to see how it would turn out before I scale it up. Also, if you ever run out of clear red or green for nav lights, just take some clear gloss (X-22 in this case) and mix it with just a bit of the proper food coloring. Works great. 

The tonal variation of the undercoats came through even after multiple washes, clear coats, etc. so that's nice. 

Exhaust stains are a mixture of chalks/pastels as I am really bad at doing them with an airbrush. 

Now on to 1/32 scale with the lessons learned from this one.