With the two fuselage halves joined work on the Phantom progressed to a new stage. Next up was the painting of the metallic surfaces and the exhausts. I chose to start work in this area because I knew that I wanted to polish the plastic surface in preparation for paint, leaving this step later on in the painting process would have made this difficult.
With the bare plastic giving off a nice shine, I then hit the area with a coat of GX2 Ueno Black, my go to option for gloss black.
With this step complete, I then got to work on the actual metallic shades, selecting a mix of Mr. Color Super Metallics and Tamiya Lacquers. After playing around with the shades I had available, I was feeling pretty confident in the result I had achieved.
After the exhaust work was completed, I was able to move on to preparing the fuselage for paint. This consisted of attaching the wings and completing work around the canopy. This also included attaching the intakes which required a significant amount of sanding and putty work to ensure that they followed the contours of the main fuselage. This also meant completing work on the cockpit area, namely the sunshield and rear bulkheads To add detail in this area, I opted to apply some aftermarket rivet decals.
Nomad Models 