Hasegawa Eggplane P-47 Thunderbolt

Hello guys, I used this eggplane as a test build for the Tamiya Retarder, as I've said before I still get mixed results with my AB whenever I use Tamiya acrylics. A few colors, specially the lighter ones and the metallics tends to have a pebbly texture when sprayed..I know that you have to thin lighter colors and metallic colors more than darker colors, but still I get the pebbly texture. I think the paint particles coming out of my AB is drying in mid flight, thus when it hits the surface of the kit it produces a pebbly or sandy texture.

Anyways, the Tamiya retarder is ideally mixed with a 1:10 ratio,

however I accidentally poured 10% more ( 1:5 ) in my mixture...thus it took a lot longer to dry...roughly, the main silver color and the red orange color dried in an hour. The experiment went well I guess, aside from the long drying time, the Tamiya aluminum mixture sprayed perfectly well. The red highlight color also went as smoothly as lacquer paints. BTW, I used Tamiya flat aluminun ( 75 % )and Tamiya clear blue ( 25 % ) for the main body color. I used Tamiya clear red ( 20 % ), Tamiya flat white ( 20 % ) and Tamiya flat red ( 60 % ) on the highlight colors.

I made a lot of booboos with this build, being a test build...I did not sand the seam lines well, during painting a few speckles of dust stuck with the surface, I broke the pointy thingee behind the cockpit, scratched a couple of areas and did not gloss coat the black parts enough. Again, the sandy texture of the black ( specially the propeller ) parts is mainly due to the future coat. I did not coat the black parts enough. Anyways, the booboos are just normal mistakes due to rushing the build.

The main point is that the Tamiya Retarder worked like a charm, thus I will no longer shift to Lacquer paints, which are very very toxic. Heck, cleaning with water is a TON better than cleaning with thinner.

Last thing, the waterslide decals that came with this kit is a TON better than the Bandai waterslide decals. One, the Hasegawa decals are thinner and levels to the surface of the kit well...second, the Hasegaw being thinner is a blessing, coz I did not have to use softeners to level it down to the surface. As most of you know, decal softener reacts to future when applied too much.

 Even if the build was rushed, I really like how it turned out...maybe it's because this is my first non-mecha build or the eggplane is just so fast to do. The eggplane is so cute and easy to build ( lots of sanding though ), I highly recommend this kit to other gunpla modelers as a refresher build away from our usual mecha builds. Anyways here are some pics...

Thanks for dropping by! :)