1/48 Zaku II - Part 8

Only these small sections to go now.

The side skirt armour was primed & painted with the lighter UK Azure Blue to match the front & rear armour.

 

The hands for the Zaku come in various designs to use with or without the rifle.  At this stage, I had not decided which to have, so cleaned up & primed all the parts for the hand & the protective armour.

The hand armour were painted in the darker blue to blend with the arm armour & the actual fingers sprayed with Gun Metal.

The rifle comes in various sections, so these were glued & sanded, but not put together at this stage.   To give some subtle shading effects for the rifle instead of doing all the priming in Gloss Black I did the handle, magazine & targeting sight in grey.

 

The handle, magazine & targeting sight were sprayed with Exhaust Manifold & the body & barrel in Gun Metal Grey.

 

The lens for the sight was given some Ammo Of Mig clear Orange on the inside & when dry pushed into place.

 

The gun now just fits together & the 2-tone shading now comes into its own.

The 2 parts for the right hand clip over the trigger & grip, then the back armour clip on the outside. The rifle is now ready to go on the Zaku.

 

All that is now left to do is to push the pre made arms, legs & head onto the torso & connect up the gun & there you have it, one vary large & blue Zaku II.

 

 

  

   

1/48 Zaku II - Part 7

Need to do some work on the upper legs. The top leg armour & the covers for the side of the knee joint followed the usual process & were primed like the rest of the kit, but I did glue in the front piece the fittings joint for the energy cables ready.

 

Instead of doing it like in the instructions, the hip joints were made as a normal model making & they are just 2 pieces with a poly cap in the centre. These were primed & painted in Duraluminium.

 

I know on the finished model it won’t be seen, but I like to try to give some detail to the kit, so on the knee joints I painted the inner sections in Burnt Iron & what is meant to be bolt heads in Brass.  The knee covers were given light coats of UK Azure Blue & then dry some highlights of Steel in the recesses.

 

The covers for the top of the leg were painted with the darker UK Mediterranean Blue & with Steel for highlights where I thought it was needed. These & the knee covers just push into place.

 

To add some contrast the knee cover was primed & painted in the same Light Grey as the torso with some of the darker blue just to blend them in a bit.  All these bits now push into the already made lower legs & they are nearly done.

 

All the pieces for the side energy cables were sanded & primed as before & went through the same painting process to produce the very shiny metallic blue effect.  When it comes to fitting, the cables to the legs please take great care when pushing the poly caps onto the pieces & then gently push the pieces together before putting on the model.

I tried to be smart at first by putting the large parts on the kit & then fit the small single pieces; well I pushed to hard & caught the metallic paint so had to sand & re spray one side.

The hip joints pushed into the top of the legs & now there are finished.

 

The arms need to be finished now & the top armour was primed & these & the shoulder joints sprayed in the darker blue & some steel accents added to the recesses. The elbow joints had some detail work added like the knees just for my personal enjoyment.

 

The covers for the elbow were done in light grey top follow the theme for the legs & all the pieces & the earlier lower arm parts fitted together.

Just the hands, gun & side armour to do & it's finished!!

1/48 Zaku II - Part 6

Most of the major parts have now been done or part assembled, so let us get some of the smaller pieces done ready for final assembly.

The backpack is one large moulded piece with two exhaust verniers at the bottom. The usual grey primer method for the base & some Vallejo Plate Mail primer (VAL 70.628) for the verniers got them started.

 

The backpack was sprayed in Steel & some highlights of Duraluminium, Burnt Iron & Brass on the vents, recesses & small exhausts brought out the detail.  The larger verniers were sprayed Duraluminium then the inner section in Burnt Iron. The cover for the back panel was primed & sprayed in Light grey.

 

The armoured shoulder section & shield were fitted with the polycaps, glued, sanded & primed with the standard grey & allowed to dry.

 

Matching the two tone blue scheme on the rest of the Zaku these were sprayed with light coats of UK Mediterranean Blue.

 

The torso now needed to be finished & with looking at the flow of the colours the upper & lower torso were sprayed with Light Grey & a few highlights with Steel on the connections & head collar that might be seen on the finished kit, but I wanted to do it for my own delight J.

The earlier primed side armour for the torso was painted in the paler U.K. Azure Blue & some highlights in Steel & Brass where required. The energy cables & the torso connectors did, like for the head, take a lot of time to get right & I followed the same method of Chrome base & light spray of Metallic blue (A.MIG-0196) that are just enough to provide a light blue tint. The front cover for the energy cables was primed & painted U.K. Azure Blue & highlights in Steel.

 

The front cable connector goes on first, and then the two sidepieces, the back cable connector & finally the front cable cover just push into place with no need for glue.

 

The inner part of the backpack goes over the rear cable connectors & then the two exhaust verniers pushed in to the bottom of the backpack.

 

With care not to scratch the painted surface of the energy cables gently, push them into place. All you then need to do is put the cover on the backpack & the main torso is finished.

 

1/48 Zaku II - Part 5

Time to do some work on the hip joints & lower skirt. The main section is just two pieces with two poly caps to fit the side skirts to.  This was filled, sanded & primed with Duraluminium.

 

The front & back armour & skirts were primed in grey

& allowed to dry fully followed by fine coats of U.K. Azure Blue (71.108) as the second blue shade I’m using.
 

 While the armour dried I went back to the hips & using “Metal Color” Steel, Burnt Iron, copper   (77.710) & Ammo Of Mig Brass on some of the fixing points & recesses to bring out the details. 

Two more poly caps went in the front of the unit & the painted front armour.

 The rear armour just pushed into place & following the same detailing as the legs used small amounts of Gun Metal Grey in the recesses.

 

1/48 Zaku II - Part 4

 I want to do some detail work on the head & as part of the colour scheme there is going to be a fair amount of metallic paint on show, so the finish will have to be smooth.

The lower head & neck area is made of 3 pieces & a large polycap where the eye sits. This was primed & painted with Vallejo Plate Mail primer (VAL 70.628).   The 2 head side pieces were primed as normal.

To follow the blue/grey colours I am using UK Mediterranean Blue the same as the legs.

Zaku’s eye is a simple 2 part unit & the main section was done the same as the neck with the clear eye painted inside with 3 thin coats of Ammo Of Mig Crystal Red (A.MIG-0093) that will just push into place.

I used a small amount of glue on the front & back of the head just to help seal the joint lines that may need filling & sanding later.

To say I was unhappy with the seam line on the head was an understatement, would ruin the look & would make me grumble every time I saw the finished kit. A quick 2 stage fill & sand resolved this, then masked off most of the head & touched up the primer/blue top coat. To add a bit of detail to the inner part of the head I used some  “Metal Color” Steel & Ammo Of Mig Brass just to lift some of the mouldings out.

The top of the head was painted in the same blue after fitting his crest. Now for some “bling” on the energy cables. These may be small pieces but they did need a lot of gentle sanding & filling to get the desired smoothness of each of the bands, but I can assure you it is well worth the effort. The cables were undercoated & sprayed with gloss black.

The reason for the gloss is the next coats I am going to put on are light covering of Vallejo Chrome (77.707) to provide a nice shine & then a couple of light oversprays of Ammo Of Mig metallic blue (A.MIG-0196) that are just enough to provide a light blue tint.

When put together this has made the head come alive in my view & the rest of the Zaku’s not far off now.

1/48 Zaku II - Part 3

Time to do a bit of work on the torso, but with the way the kit is made there are very few parts for such a big kit & again only some painting will enhance the model.  The main upper torso is only 2 parts with polycaps & the shoulder joints added.  All that was needed was a bit of filler & sanding before my standard priming routine. All the waist torso consists of is 2 parts & a polycap.

 

I made an error with the side armour for the torso so it was given a sanding due to me getting a bit too vigorous with the scalpel blade when trimming off the nubs & then primed for later painting.

 

The shoulder joints are very basic with an inner piece fitted with polycap that sits inside 2 more polycaps.  To give a bit of detailing the inner pieces were primed then sprayed in Aluminium., when dry I put some masking tape over them, fitted them in place & then glued the 2 shoulder joints together. These were sanded filled & primed ready for the top coat.

 

To make the elbow joint I used, like the knee, a normal way of modelling & not the way they show. Please check the way the poly caps fit at the bottom as I forgot & wondered why it would not go together at first. Like with knee part F10 was primed, painted in Dulaluminium before fitting then the finished unit primed & painted in the same colour.

 

Not much work needed to make the lower arm as it’s just 2 pieces with polycaps, so it was glued, sanded then primed as usual.

 

1/48 Zaku II - Part 2

I gave the sanded upper feet a touch up of primer, then masked off the inner ankle joint finally sprayed the foot with Vallejo Light grey ( 71.050). To add a bit of detail to the upper foot I used some Gun Metal Grey to represent bolts. For the foot base I did some detailing with Dulaluminium, Magnesium & Brass.

When dry the 2 parts of the feet snapped into place with no glue.

The lower leg is mainly 2 large pieces with some back detailing on, so I am going to do this as a complete unit to ease in painting.  The 2 side pieces have poly caps fitted in them & then I glued them to make sure they will hold the weight of this large kit. The 2 detail parts for the rear were glued in place. The seam lines were sanded & filled as normal, then primed in my usual manner.

Now comes the part where I can begin to give the legs some colour & detail as with this being a kit without an inner frame & a lot of moulded in detail the paint job needs to bring a lot of this out.

The legs were sprayed in the darker of the 2 blue colours I’m using which is UK Mediterranean Blue (71.111) & 3 good light airbrush coats did the trick. To bring out the detail of the rocket verniers I  hand painted the recessed areas in “Metal Color” Steel (77.712), did the verniers in Dulaluminium then the inner section of the Vernier in Burnt Iron (77.721).

Using a cocktail stick I put very small amounts of Gun Metal Grey in the bolt holes & recesses on the leg, then as a final touch used Aluminium on the small vanes on the side of the legs.

The whole unit was put safe wrapped up for final fitting later on.

For making the knee joint I will not be following how the instructions say, but making each one like a standard model kit.  Part (F9) was primed & then painted in Dulaluminium, poly caps were fitted inside this & the inner part of one of the knee joints (F2) then the unit goes together with the other side of the knee joint. The completed section was primed & painted & allowed to dry.

Hardly any of this will be seen in the finished kit, but when I come to the final assembly there will be some detailing added.