I have just completed the main assembly of the 21st Century Zero. It is a nice kit, but the painting instructions leave something to be desired. I looked online, but there must be a million sites about Zeros. Does anyone have a good painting guide for these? I think I will paint it dark green, but cannot figure out what the paint scheme is telling me about the underside. Is is Gray-Green? I am assuming the nose is flat black?
Thanks for the help!
Lance
Hi Lance, I have several books on the Zero and from what I see all photos of A6M2 appear to be light grey to a light greyish green color most early war Zeros upto the A6M2a were painted IJN grey subsequent Zeros A6Ms 22-63 started painting the IJN or Nakajima Greens here is one link that may help you out
You may want to check out one or more of the attached sites.
Good luck on your project.
And the cowling is actually a very dark gunmetal type blue/black - not really flat black. Tamiya makes an acrylic color for it.
J-aircraft is a REALLY good one!
Back when I did one, I used Tamiya Japanese Navy Dark Green with an underside of Japanese Navy Grey. These are a different shade than the Japanese Army colors. I;m sorry, I don't remember the bottle color numbers. After I was finished, I gave the bottles to a former brother- in-law. He painted his models with a base coat of silver and a couple of days later, rubbed the pieces down for a nice weathered effect on the wingwalks and fuselage areas.
Checked the Tamiya site and Squadron.. no Blue-Black metalic colors... Lance
Dang...sorry about that - it was actually an Aeromaster Warbird color, and is now out of production...I just happen to have a bottle - Mitsubishi Cowl Blue/Black #1087.
You may be able to find a mixing reference for the color on j-aircraft.com
Probably pretty close - but should be a semi-gloss, I think.
You can also probably get there by mixing a few drops of gloss blue in with some flat black.
Where did you find it? I thought they were pulled from WallyWorld by 21st, who were going to retail them differently.
I am assuming
A buddy of mine used a large black "Marks a Lot" and goes over the black cowl with it. He got a blue-black sheen to the cowling that looked really effective.
~Rick~
in article snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, Bluepen at snipped-for-privacy@kpunet.net wrote on 6/10/07 12:00 AM:
As other have said, J-aircraft.com is hands down the best current reference for JNAF colors. Based on reading most of what's there, I've come to the conclusion that any one of the three possibilities below will give something in the ballpark for the gray-ish overall color for early war Zeros:
Testors Model Master RLM Gray 02, possibly lightened a bit with white.
Testors Model Master paints mixed: 20 parts SAC Bomber Tan, 11 parts White,
0.9 parts Zinc Chromate GreenPolly Scale (acrylic) Concrete (Railroad colors line). This is different from the Floquil (enamel) Concrete. I have read, but cannot confirm, that the Floquil color lightened with white is close to the Polly Scale color.
Pip Moss
in article snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, Bluepen at snipped-for-privacy@kpunet.net wrote on 6/10/07 12:58 PM:
You could just add a bit of blue to some black. I don't think it needs to be exact -- from what I've read the factory fresh color was basically black; the bluish tint increased with weathering. White Ensign makes a pre-mixed shade, but it's really hard to tell it from straight black.
Pip Moss
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