Painting cockpits after fuselage assembly?

In the case of the magazine articles, the fuselage might have been glued together with white glue or some equivalent simply to illustrate some point. How do you paint such cockpits? Very carefully! To hazard a guess, work from the bottom to the top, get the best possible fine brushes, work under the influence of neither caffeine nor alcohol, don't paint for more than a couple of minutes at a time, and close the canopy, in the hopes of obscuring somer of the detail.

Mark Schynert

From: Mark Schynert snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.net

My question is...why would someone WANT to wait until the fuselage was glued together before painting the cockpit? Seems like that is just imposing unnecessary grief upon oneself but, that's just my opinion ;~)

-- -- " In walks the village idiot and his face is all aglow; he's been up all night listening to Mohammad's radio" W. Zevon

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Inserting a pilot figure will save you a bit of trouble. If there's an instrument panel decal that can be easily inserted. In this scale there's not much use in overdoing it.

Yeah, you're right--I gathered the thrust of the problem was that he got this model in that condition and was trying to paint the interior anyway.

Mark Schynert

MY POINT EXACTLY!!! I'm totally baffled as to why anyone would assemble a model in this way but apparently some people do.

Martin

After examining an unassembled Ki-44 it's become apparent that the original cockpit is merely a "bucket with seat" that glues into the fuselage. Whether you use a brush or airbrush it's about a 60 second job to cover the bucket, exposed fuselage sills, etc. Give it brown wash and you're done.

Now if by some chance you've got an aftermarket cockpit with sidewall and floor detail you can also use the above direction or refer to Mark's instructions. Either way, once you put the canopy on you're not going to see much so don't agonize too long. hth

The Keeper (of too much crap!)