I
saw this kit and thought it would be a great model to try out some weathering
techniques read here in the “tools and tips” section…namely David
Rapasi’s article on “Weathering with Dullcoat.” The kit was pretty cheap
and no great loss if I completely screwed it up! I thought the parts fit very
well although I did incur a couple self inflicted errors.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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First,
I glued the step stairs in the horizontal position as that made sense to
me…wrong. They are supposed to hang straight down from the fuselage. Secondly,
I had already cemented the fuselage halves together when I realized the wing was
supposed to be inserted first. Oh well, the wing went in just fine, thankfully,
after removing the alignment pin. The rest went together in short order and was
painted the standard three tone N.S.blue, intermediate blue and white scheme.
This was built OOB including kit decals. I did however use old roundels from an
old P-40 Warhawk for the sides and under the wings as I thought they looked much
better than the huge stars and bars in the kit. I cut out the top wing decals
from the kit and did use those after a coat of Model Master Glosscoat. I painted
the squares on the tail as well. This is NOT an accurate depiction of a real
Kingfisher but looks good to me. After decals dried, I tried the weathering with
dullcoat with a few…and I do mean just a few, drops of MM flat white. I was
very pleased as this technique seems to work great. It is done after decals are
applied and panel lines washed to weather the whole plane and to give what I
think is a very convincing look. After a coat of Testors Dullcoat the plane was
rigged with Easyline, which I am now a huge fan.