Rookie mistakes e.06 – Chipping flood

Tips and tricks

It’s not a typo, I wanted to type “flood” and not “fluid” because I’m afraid I flooded the paintwork with chipping fluid (hairspray in this case).

I was looking forward to starting the “Zero” build in order to try the paint chipping technique with chipping fluid or hairspray for the first time. Zero was the best choice because they were prone to paint chipping due to environmental conditions and bad paint during the WW2.

Mistake

And… like every rookie, I overdid it.
Too much hairspray and I couldn’t control the chipping effect. Too much paint chipped away.

Solution

Be very gentle with the chipping fluid (any) and test various amounts on some “crash test dummy” before trying it on the kit. As usual, the “less is more” rule applies here.

Silver lining

Like I already said, Zeroes were notorious for heavy paint chipping, so not much harm done here – it will look good on the shelf 🙂

Photo downloaded from Wikimedia commons

One more (unrelated) mistake

I like to think that I know much about the WW2 aircrafts but I made a mistake – even on the worst examples of chipped aircraft, Hinomaru or “circle of the sun” has to be whole, without damage, so they repainted them many times… even after every flight if needed. As you can see my Hinomarus are chipped too.