Zero Cockpit: Primed, Painted, Finished

Here is the second installment of the Zero build. We'll be handling the priming and painting of the cockpit for this go around. Without further ado, here it is.

Primed with AK Interactive's Grey Primer.

Primed up. It's best to let this primer cure for 24 hours before painting.

Tamiya's Metallic Blue for the wheel wells.

More Metallic Blue for the inside of the wheel well doors.

The Tamiya instructions state to use Metallic Blue for the cockpit. I haven't really seen any reference photos with Metallic Blue on the interior of Zeros, but a lot of them are in black and white anyway. I probably should have went with cockpit green, but I'm not changing now.

Here's that Metallic Blue decision I made. I'm just following the directions man!

I painted the areas with Semi-gloss Black and the silver is Tamiya Flat Chrome. I was concerned with brush painting Tamiya paint as I have read a lot of people complained about it. I just took a little bit, added a drop of Flow-Aid and a few drops of thinner and I didn't have a problem.

I lightly dabbed the Chrome to simulate the chipping...or was it flat aluminum?

Instrument panel decal on, then I put the control stick in.

It was then given a slight treatment of Mig's Dark Wash.

Interiors done and dry brushed.

Cockpit glued in place...for now. (More on this later.)

The fuselage glued, taped and clamped.

Now we are moving along...the posts at least. I'm much further ahead at the moment, or not. It depends, I scheduled this to auto-post a little while ago. Got to spread out the content! Thanks for looking in.