Revell 1/32 Ki-61 Hein (Tony)
By Jay Laverty
This was my second attempt at a 32nd aeroplane and I couldn't have chosen a better model with which to do so. Revell's Tony is a beautifully detailed kit, and taking its age into consideration it is awesome. It does, however have its pitfalls, a sparsely detailed cockpit, along with the odd poor fit, but these in no way detract from the overall quality of the kit.
I decided I would detail the cockpit using some fuse wire and instrument bezels from Waldron along with the odd bit of lead foil. The only other parts of the model that really cried out for detail and/or correction were the machine guns, (drilling out) the machine gun troughs in the cowling (enlarging), and some brake cables for the struts.
The rest of the model was simply built as is. There was one major assembly that proved troublesome and that was the fuselage halves. They were a tad bit misaligned and required some forcing to fit, but in the end came right and as you can see the model turned out OK.
I painted the model in Alclad polished Aluminium over gloss black primer then followed with Tamiya IJA green for the mottling. I used salt to get the chipping effect and accentuated this over the decals using Model Master Chrome Silver.
This model is an oldie but a goodie, and if you see one buy it right away as rumour has it the mould lies at the bottom of the sea and who knows when Hasegawa is going to do one.
© Jay Laverty 2004
This article was published on Wednesday, July 20 2011; Last modified on Saturday, May 14 2016