Costa Rica in February has become a regular thing for us. We go to Tamarindo on the Pacific coast and have friends here who now own property in town, and we've become good friends with a lot of the locals, so it's become our "We have to go somewhere NOW" spot.
Back into the build. I asked elsewhere on the board about whether to rig before or after the gloss and dull coats. The answer was overwhelmingly to rig very last -- which is the way I've always done it, but just wanted some different opinions -- so Benson has now been Futured (I'm not sure that's a proper verb, but I like using it).
Not much to see in the photos except an overall shot with some equipment, and close-ups. I use Grex airbrushes now, and really like them. The Genesis is the button trigger model, small top feed color cup. I use this for the majority of my work, as I like to work in close with low air pressure. The top-feed color cup means you can work with very low pressure and very thinned paint (I'm not exactly sure what pressures I'm working at, but they have to be less than 5psi most of the time). The Tritium is for bigger work, the pistol trigger and the large side-feed color cup make larger surfaces and longer working sessions much easier to handle. The great thing about these airbrushes is that all of the interior parts, caps, needles, washers, etc. are all totally interchangeable between the two models. The only draw back to this setup is that sometimes I like to work REALLY fine, and when you get to a certain low pressure on these you get a little pulsating and the paint tends to dry too fast on the tips (I mostly use acrylics). I have a Badger Sotar 20/20 that I LOVE for those times I really need that fine control, but that airbrush has been broken for over a year now and I can't seem to get it resolved through Badger; so much so that they're sick of hearing from me and won't even answer my emails anymore!
The Future will cure today, tomorrow I can start with the washes. I'm going very light on the weathering on her because she's a full hull display. Just a wash to pick out details, a light drybrushing, and maybe some very very light vertical streaks on the hull to break it up a bit.