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Ki-46 III Dinah by Roy Long
This is Tamiya's Ki-46 III in 1/48 scale. I added a True Details resin cockpit and used Aeromaster paints. The decals are from Aeromaster as well.
I encountered a few problems during the construction of the kit. The True Details cockpit added some realistic looking detail, but was a bear to install due to some warping and twisting. A small omission on Tamiya's part were reinforcement strips which wrapped around the wing, they're on the bottom, but not the top. This was corrected by adding plastic strip to the wing roots to replace the reinforcement strips.
The most aggravating problem was the sliding portion of the forward canopy, which was molded in such a way that it was too narrow to place it in the open position. The outside dimensions were just right to display it closed. In order to display it in the open position I sanded the inside surface of the canopy until it almost fit. I didn't want to remove too much material because I did want it to crack. After a lot of polishing, re-polishing and a nice coat of Future I finally was satisfied with the result. I then forced it over the fuselage at the proper angle and superglued it into place. I added copper wire brake lines and invisible thread antennas. The wing tip lights are pieces of colored sprue glued in place, sanded and polished.
Paint chipping was replicated by spraying a base of silver, then using a toothpick to apply small drops of MicroMask. Hint: stick small pieces of stretched sprue in the wet MicroMask so you can find them later. When they were dry, I applied the camouflage colors. After the plane was mostly finished and flat-coated I went through with an Exacto knife and tweezers and pulled off the small dabs of MicroMask.
Text and Images Copyright © 2000 by
Roy Long
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