1/48 Tamiya A6M2 & A6M2-N

by Alfredo Garcia

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Hi everyone!  It has been a while since my last submission, but here I'm here again.

Here's one of my last finished models, A6M2 and A6M2-N both are old Tamiya kits, and since they are quite similar, both kits were built almost at same time. The only problem I meet when I build old Tamiya kits, and this Zero and Rufe were no exception, are this BIG BIG BIG gap at the cockpit floor and some inaccurate interior parts, so I had to scratchbuild the whole cockpit floor and some interior parts, but that's the fun part of modeling, huh?  Besides that, I had to rescribe some panel lines. Fortunately new Tamiya kits have much more accurate interiors and no raised lines.

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Both planes were painted also at same time with same color.  I made a mix of colors using Japanese Sky Gray, Interior Panzer Buff and just a little bit of light brown all in Testors enamels, don't ask me the proportions of each paint :-P, I was just testing and mixing until I was happy with my new "Ame-Iro" color.

 For the weathering, my favorite part of modeling, I used artist's oil painting and a lot of pastels to fade out the paint and shade panel lines, and aluminium color to simulate chipped paint. The decals used in the Zero came from the kit and represents the plane flown by Saburo Sakai based at Bali island, Feb 1942.  And the Rufe decals were taken from another kits, and this scheme represents one Rufe used at Aleutians 1942-1943.

Finally and taking advantage of this submission I'd like to thank to some people that helped me by sending the instructions for my Classic Airframes' Supermarine Walrus, which didn't came with my kit.

Thanks Ron, Barney, my friend Charles King and Mr. Steve Bamford.  Thank you guys, you saved my Walrus from being built as anything else, but a Supermarine Walrus.

Greetings from Monterrey, Mexico.

Alfredo

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Photos and text © by Alfredo Garcia