Tamiya 1/32 A6M5 Zeke
By Karim Bibi
The kit is Tamiya's fabulous 1/32 A6M5 Zeke.
I was planning on doing a work in progress during my leave time from work, so I thought id dig this kit out of the stash. I hadn't worked on styrene for the past 6 months or so so I am really pleased at how she turned out.
In addition to the kit in itself I used the Eduard BigEd set for the kit (which was to be honest not really necessary as the kit comes with metal barrels for the cannons, photoetch, a metallic antenna wire and all the bells and whistles you could imagine...this kit is COMPLETE in itself).
Well to tell you about the kit, its one of, if not, the best kit I have built up to now...the quality of the moulding and the fit is really fantastic. The instructions are the standard Tamiya type which I find to be really good and informative, plus you get two pages of reference pictures for your build taken on museum aircraft, unfortunately in black and white but we can't really complain.
This kit has landing gear that you can retract and extend even after having assembled to the wing spar...the engineering is really really good and I was very pleasantly surprised to find they really do work as I was a bit skeptical due to bad experiences with other kit manufacturers. I mainly followed the painting instructions laid out by Tamiya as my iPad with all the modeling references was left behind at home so I had to trawl the net a bit for very minor 'additions' to the build.
It depicts a Zeke on carrier Junyo in the Marianas Sea in 1944. I have used lacquer paints for the engine and for the metalizers, and all the rest of the paints were Tamiya acrylics. For weathering the aircraft, I used the hairspray technique for the chipping, oils for fading and grime, and all sorts of washes enamel and acrylic, enamel filters and pigments.
It is also the first time I have a go at painting a 1/32 figure, usually I avoid those from back in the day of building AFVs...this one turned out okay I am going to post the link to the work in progress thread where you have all the breakdown on the paints used, where and how, and the weathering process I have applied if anyone wants to pick on some techniques or ideas.
© Karim Bibi 2015
This article was published on Wednesday, June 24 2015; Last modified on Friday, February 03 2017