Landlubber Mike

Wow, I could feel the stress levels rise as I was reading your post. What a brave approach, but it worked out fantastic in the end. Well done! That's so odd that only those portions of the decals reacted that way.

Wow, that's looking fantastic Rob! Glad those decals laid down nicely - I think I have the same ones. I'm just about done building a Revell VW Flower Power Samba bus for my daughter, and the thick Revell decals were incredibly frustrating to work with. Came close to making me rethink buying any kits where you need extensive use of decals.

Fantastic subject Rob, nice! I picked up the older JPS kit a while back. The seller had included a lot of the same AM you have, with the exception of EJan parts for the DFV distributor, etc. instead of the MFH kit. They look pretty similar. In researching the kit, I heard people had some problems with the nose which doesn't seem to ever fit correctly. Maybe they fixed it on your version. Do you know what you are going to use for the black paint? I saw that Zero does a Lotus Black, but saw that Plasmo on Youtube just used Mr Color GX2. Looking forward to your work on it!

Wow what a great diorama! You do such amazing work, a big inspiration!

Great start! Sometimes I feel like the reward for the time spent on detailing a cockpit that will never be seen is minimal at best.

Great subject Chris! Another big one for the shelf!

Amazing job my friend! I’m sure very satisfying with the extra work you had to put into it. Congrats on a great model!

I have this kit with full boat AM in the stash with the various Pontos, Veteran, deck and other upgrade sets. If anyone might be interested, send me a PM. With the upgrades, it's a really stellar kit. I just don't know where I would put it. Looking forward to your build Kevin!

I have to try Tamiya's LP line. I got their gloss black for undercoating metallics. Seems easier to find than the Mr. Color Ueno Black that I've used. I feel like the longer in the hobby you are, the more you realize there is to learn. Thanks for sharing!

Welcome back Chris! That model must be massive! Cool that you are building it for a friend.

Would you take the same approach for paints and clears other than from Zero paints - i.e., like colors and clears from Tamiya and Mr. Color? Those definitely don't run as hot, but I do like the idea of the multiple coats that help level things out. I've been working on trying to build a "flower power" VW Samba Bus T1 for one of my daughters, and had a bit of a time trying to paint a decanted Tamiya blue color for the body. A big part of it was that the plastic parts didn't have a clean edge to be able to mask properly, so there was a lot of touch ups required. Other problem was it seemed I would get a different shade of blue between sessions, but after multiple thinner coats, the panels seem to all have hit the proper shade. I finally got it straightened out, but I might try the multiple layered coats in the future. It's nice with planes and other subjects where you can hide paint defects with weathering, etc. Much harder with cars where you generally want a pristine finish!

Just catching up with your log Rob. Nice job! Coming along quickly and excellently per your usual! Thank you for sharing your painting process. Just to confirm, you do the multiple coats with added thinner percentages for both colors and clear coats? I haven't quite figured that out yet, but seems like a good approach versus trying to get the color down in one coat. This is probably especially helpful with colors like reds, yellows and blues that may not reach the full color on a single coat.

Looks like something out of Mad Max. Really cool subject Rob, nice work!

The Roma is a really interesting ship color wise. In case you haven't seen it, Plasmo did one in 1/700 that is spectacular as per his usual:

Cool little project. Ugly looking thing, but in an interesting way with some cool details. Nice job!