¹⁄350

Building The Fujimi 1/350 IJN Kongo, Part 1

Part 7: The Paint…

The hull is primed and I spray some lines on at edges, weld lines, etc. to do some pre-shading. This adds more depth to the color. The color I use is a mixture of red brown and black.

There are two points of note here:
1. My airbrush can spray much smaller lines, but it doesn't really matter in an application like this. Messy chaos is preferred and realistic.
2. The pre-shading is kind of hard to see in "work photography" and without washes to help draw the eye. It'll be more visible in the completion photos.

The gray is Gunze H83 Dark Gray 2, the anti-fouling is Gunze H17 Cocoa Brown. These are the colors listed in the instructions. I prefer Gunze because most of their colors are gloss or semi gloss and the paint is very tough. This makes decal and wash application go much more smoothly.

And with the deck dry fit... The deck still has to be sealed and a wash added, but it looks pretty nice already.

One of the nice things about this kit is the fact that Fujimi didn't simply mold all of the vents, etc. on to the deck. This makes it much easier to paint and prepare the deck because all of those things don't have to be masked off (even easier with a wood deck). The downside to this is that all of those little doo-dads have to be prepared and painted separately...

My personal way of doing things is to clean up as much as I can on the sprue, paint, remove, clean and paint the sprue attachment point, mount to model. Sometimes I remove and clean the parts, and put them on two-sided tape, then paint. But with this kit, there's just so much stuff (that's a good thing!) that I was afraid I'd lose something.

A closeup of stuff like ammo boxes, binoculars, 25mm singles, etc. With Part 18 (top parts), I should have removed the plastic nub between the parts, but this thought completely escaped me until after I painted them (I was in the "Clean Up Zone" and working mechanically). The 25's will receive their gun metal finish after removal (their pedestals are painted gray).