Tamiya Do-335

OOB cockpit. Didn't bother with rudder pedal straps since the pilot's feet are going to cover them anyway... 

I forget sometimes what a pleasure it is build Tamiya's well-engineered kits. No glue at all and no gaps or steps. This is a nice change! 

I thought the kit cockpit was OK. The decal wouldn't add to it, so I just punched out the dial faces and applied them. Little bit of Future for "glass" and it turned out well. 

Good fit continues. Will be closing the bomb bay to preserve the sleek looks. 

The pilot figure was fairly disappointing. Tamiya stepped up their game on later kits, but the figure in this one is pretty poorly molded. 

Poor demarcation lines between components of the pilot, but I did what I could. 

Still working on the face but should look fine behind a closed canopy. 

Not much interesting, ready for primer coat. Canopy masking was tedious and time-consuming, but it fit perfectly with no steps, nice! 

Minimal fuss on the bottom side. 

Gear and bays are finished except for some weathering of course and a brake line or two. 

I usually enjoy the painting/weathering more than the building stage, so I wanted to get the gear as close to done as possible before moving on to painting because I have found that if I still have all the fiddly bits to do after paint/decals, then it's more of a chore to finish. This way, I just just add a few details, weather a bit and it'll be done. 

Shading/undercoat done. 

The arrow has spots. Should have used a template! 

Minor chipping done but went a little too heavy on the blend coats and wiped out a lot of the variation but the preshading needed it or it looked too stark. Still, a little tonal variation shows through in real life vs. the pictures. 

Some weathering should bring a little of the variation out and will be adding some oils to further improve the panel contrast. 

Better on the underside as far as variation goes. 

On to decals. Can use some of the kit's decals, but they're 1) old and 2) Tamiya decals, so they're not all that great. The rest are being robbed from an Eduard Bf-109E7 and it's my first time using the "new" style decals and it's a bit of a learning curve. 

Close to the finish line with the usual bits and bobs to add. 

Experiments with oils and smoke stains came off pretty well. Still regretting going a little heavy on the blend coat but lesson learned. The Bf109 Trop filters worked out well too. 

Calling this one done. Few things I would have done different, but like any landing you can walk away from is a good one, so too any build you learn from is a success. 

The Trop filters are Eduard bits. Only had one from a spare kit, the other helpfully supplied by a fellow scalemate. Other than that, it was OOB, with more decals robbed from an Eduard 109E7.