Hasegawa's 1/32 scale
Nakajima Ki-84 Frank

by Chuck Zellmer

Hasegawa's 1/32 scale Ki-84 is available online from Squadron.com

Here is Hasegawa's 1/32 scale Ki-84 Hayate.

This aircraft represents a patched-up K-84 Hayate formerly from the 25th Sentai in Korea, sent back to bolster home defense units, and integrated into the 3rd Chutai, 47th Sentai circa late Spring 1945. The Japanese Army Aircraft deployed in China and Korea often had interesting camouflage arrangements.

The Hasegawa 1/32nd scale kit was built straight from the box. The only decals employed were for the kill markings. Two extra "engines" were added to a decal from Eagle-Strike to emulate a B-29 kill.

Montex masks were used for the "Meat Balls", and for the canopy (which was dunked in Future Floor-Wax prior to painting).

After initial construction was completed, Alclad II Aluminum was painted on all surfaces.

I thought long a hard about just keeping the overall Aluminum finish, as it came out better than I had expected. But alas, I wanted to do something different!! Liquid Magic Masker was applied with a sharpened tooth-pick onto areas of the aircraft that I wanted to remain bare aluminum, representing severe chipping and un-painted replaced/repaired panels. Silver pencil was also used to emulate chipping in certain areas.

Model-Master enamels were used for all exterior colors, while Tamiya Acrylics were used for the cockpit and other interior surfaces. This is done because I like to employ an oil wash on the interiors, and a water-based wash on the exteriors. I used an IWATA HP-SB airbrush for all painting.

Interior surfaces were painted with a "home-brew" color representing something close to metallic-aqua. There's a lot of controversy surrounding Ki-84 interior colors, no doubt some will not agree with what I've done. Bare Aluminum and Yellow-green were other options.

The yellow & red "47" on the tail was painted in about 10 different stages utilizing simple scotch tape. The well-worn 25th Sentai markings are on the forward part of the tail.

The 20mm cannon barrels and all exhausts were drilled out.

Kit decals were used for the cockpit instruments. Some decal pieces were employed to emulate slots for knob movement etc. It was fun trying to "dress up" the relatively basic supplied 1/32nd scale cockpit.

The most challenging part of the build were the aerials. There are 4 attachment points: to the mast, the tail, the starboard fuselage and the starboard horizontal stabilizer. This generated an inevitable pull to the main wire connecting the tail and the mast towards starboard. It was tricky, with several failed attempts. The wires are all straight and taunt. "Dai-Riki" .002" diameter fishing line was used….great stuff: very resistant to breaking. Slow-cure Cyanoacrylate worked well for me for the attachment points.

I hope you enjoyed it! Comments are always welcome. On to building Tamiya's F-16 :-)

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Model, Images and Text Copyright © 2006 by Chuck Zellmer
Page Created 24 February, 2006
Last Updated 21 February, 2007

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