Part I | Part II | PART III | Part IV

The 262’s turn at the airbrush came at a frustrating time for me. On the one hand, I’ve been increasingly falling in love with Gunze paints and their excellent spraying characteristics. On the other hand, issues with paint peeling have massively undermined my trust in Gunze Mr. Surfacer 1200 as a primer medium.

But the 262 moved toward paint just far enough ahead of ModelFiesta that I knew, if I really moved, I could probably have it ready to go for the show. That meant no waiting for my other primer of choice, Model Master enamel, to cure. So…Mr. Surfacer it was.

As per usual, Mr. Surfacer 1200 yielded a wondrously smooth finish with a slight amount of wet sanding and a few passes of the Dremel buffing wheel. I then moved on to the black base coat, using my ample restock of Gunze C2 black.

The underside of the 262 called for RLM 76. My first attempt, using the Gunze color, was less than successful. I don’t know if it’s a bad pot of paint or what, but it did a weird sort of vanishing act, so that after a few minutes sitting it looked like ass, with bits of black showing through.

So I pulled out my Tamiya paints and made a bastard RLM 76 mix which went down MUCH better. You can see the difference in the picture below. The starboard wing (the one on the right) is the Tamiya RLM 76, and the port wing, main fuselage underside aft of the landing gear bays, and a few other areas are still in Gunze RLM 76.

Suffice to say, I finished out the underside in the Tamiya mix.

After the snafu with the RLM 76, the upper surfaces went by fairly quickly. For these I used Gunze RLM 81 and RLM 83, freehanded using my recently-acquired Iwata Custom Micron CM-B (which is flat-out amazing). The 81 and 83 displayed none of the bizarre behavior I got from the 76, and before I knew it, I was out the other side of the main paint scheme.

Next up, decals, weathering, and angst over gloss coats.

Part I | Part II | PART III | Part IV