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.