For the pigment application, I mixed up a dry powder combination using Mig Rubble Dust, Dark Mud, and Europe Dust in an old prescription bottle lid I keep around for just this type of thing. After playing around with the color ratios a bit, I had the mixture I wanted and I added tap water that I had added a drop of dish-washing liquid to in order to break the surface tension. The consistency of the wet mixture is watery since I didn't want to apply the pigments as a paste, I was just using the water as a carrier. This was applied using a round 0 sable brush where desired and allowed to air dry. This took about an hour or so and looked like this...
It's rough but that's ok because the next steps are designed to remove the excess and smooth things out to get it the way I wanted it. I first used a series of stiff bristled brushes to gently remove the excess powder. I wear a sanding/dust mask while doing this to avoid inhaling the very fine particles that go airborne and hang around in the air. Then I used a combination of wet and dry q-tip ends to remove more pigment and adjust things, working carefully a section at a time.
At this point it of course becomes much more difficult to handle the model to avoid disturbing the pigments so I always leave that step to the very end or as close as possible. The last remaining thing was to install the tow cable on the rear deck as well as the radio antennas. The antennas were installed using RB models brass 2m antennas and CA gel. These were painted with MM Non-Buffing Metalizer Gunmetal to complete their look.
The tow cable is something the instructions handle in Step 7 and it's very very important that you take into consideration that the length they quote, 150mm, is for the entire tow cable including the styrene ends and not the length of the cable between the ends. I've never liked the braided steel wire that DML provides since it's very stiff and springy, so I replaced the wire with similar diameter crochet rope thread. I cut the rope to the required length and glued the ends into the styrene cable ends with CA gel. To prevent the thread from going hairy once painted, I dipped the whole cable in Future and let it air dry. This has the added benefit of hardening the thread but not to the point that it isn't still flexible enough to bend into the required shape. The cable was then painted with Non-Buffing Metalizer Gunmetal and the same mix I used for the hull color earlier for the collars. The cable was installed onto the hooks and I had the length just right that it will stay on the hooks without any gluing, so it worked out perfectly.
With that out of the way, it was time to reset the white balance in the camera and take the final walk-around shots.
