While waiting for drying the extra coat of black as advised by Walter, I started to prepare the copper paint.
And oh dear... I found two of my four pots being "dead".

I think two pots are coming from the full paint set which was available to buy from DeAgostini shop, especially for this kit. The other two pots were supplied for two of the magazine issues, I guess around Issue 60-65.

When I was stirring the pots I found that two of them has blueish coloured big chunks in it and also its colour doesn't look a nice shiny copper. (See pictures below)
These chunks don't seem to dissolve even after 10 minutes of stirring.

The other two pots looks OK.
I also noted that even if the type number of the paints are the same (AP9126W) they have slightly different label.
In the picture the two on the left are the good ones, the two on the right are the "dead" ones.

Anyhow... I hope that the two pots will be enough to paint the hull with double coating.

Nice start on the hull painting

Third layer of copper paint applied.

Overall it looks good but with the brush I still couldn't create a uniform shading.
I still got one critical milliput filled area which looks worse and worse with each layer.
The next layer removed the previously dried layer(s). after the third layer I anded up with a nearly white patch.
I applied another, fairly thick coat on this area to get the white area disappear.
Unfortunately it still has a noticeable shade difference.
On the positive note, this side won't be visible when displayed.

I won't apply a fourth layer, I believe it won't make the overall look better and might make the milliput area even worse.

Nice job if the copper paint. In many ways painting the hull is harder than adding copper tiles as the paint will show every defect, you should be rightly proud if that finish

Jase

After few days laziness I carried on working.

First, I painted the hinges black... this was a bit of pain due to my usual problem.
The paint didn't want to stick on the brass parts, not even with primer.
Anyhow, still managed to do it.

And there came the drum roll.... removing the masking tape from the waterline.
HUGE SUCCESS... no bleeding at all, the worst thing was that the masking tape itself removed the black paint in few spots.
That was easily corrected with fine brush, also some correction was required where the waterline steps from the hull to the lower whale, but it wasn't difficult at all.

I'm very pleased with the result, the "bend" on the waterline (see my previous posts) can't be noticed at all.

Issue 74 continued...

As the primer dried on the parts, first I made a little jig for the wriggles.
This is to ensure that all 26 is located at the exact same position (relative to the gun port), also make the fitting quicker. I used superglue to fix the die-cast parts and I wanted to avoid that it bonds quicker than I positioned the wriggles correctly.

- Once the jig is made all 26 wriggles fitted
- entry port parts painted black, left to dry till tomorrow.

Looking excellent, very neat work.

Mark