Zero 1/100 scale

An Airfix minikit Zero in 1/100 (15mm) scale for just £2.99 from Model Zone in Birmingham to provide air support for my Japanese forces, its a great little kit which went together very easily. It comes pre painted, but I've added some weathering to the panel lines and gun smoke to the wings.

It comes with a choice of two propellers. I decided to have a go at replacing the blades of the propeller with a disc of clear plastic to give a better impression of the plane in flight. The clear plastic came from my bits box, I cut the blades from the propeller and got my circle cutter out, a great tool well worth investing in. Now this next bit might be common knowledge among aircraft modelers, but I did come up with this just off the top of my head. After cutting out a test disc of plastic. I thought how do I get that comic book effect of the turning propeller, and the idea occurred to use sand paper to scuff the plastic to give the blurred effect. So next I cut a disc of sand paper the same size as the clear plastic disc. Then a disc of masking tap which I used to mask of the parts of the clear plastic to protect it from the sandpaper. Hopefully the pictures above give most of the information you will need to have a go at doing this.

Turn the disc of sandpaper to create the scuffing, one tip would be to make the sandpaper disc bigger than the propeller disc so it's easier to get hold of and turn by hand. I painted the inside of the clear plastic canopy light blue, to get that old school wargames Illustrated Rapid Fire rules articles from the late 80's - 90's look.

A useful exercise for me as I have a lot of helicopters waiting in the wings for this kind of treatment. Next up the zero mounted on its free standing flight base. TTFN