I’m not a great fan of photo-etch. This is not a reflection on the photo-etch, originating in model railway circles (?) and now offering exceptional scale details for model aircraft, but on my own inability to master it to a degree of comfort and confidence.
Marabu Design is a Czech Republic based company that was unfamiliar to me until their photo-etch detail set M72055 for the 1/72 scale
Sword Mitsubishi G4M1 ‘Betty’ came to my attention. That kit itself had impressed but the Marabu Design photo-etch set for it is superlative and has tempted me to give it another go. The last time I had attempted to detail a G4M1 interior was with the 1969 vintage
Hasegawa kit using plastic card, wet & dry and an engraving tool many moons ago and long before photo-etch was even a thing. Now I’ll need the 20 x lenses and the tweezer extensions for each finger.
These images from Marabu Design show the prototype set as installed in the Sword G4M1. The sheet is beautifully sharply etched on metal that would itself make an excellent finish for the anodised aluminium of the A5M, a very subtle gold tinted silver (please someone make a ‘Bare Metal’ type foil with this finish!). And the level of detail in the parts offered is astonishing.
The instructions which come with this set are very comprehensive, covering no less than 24 stages of construction and the whole presentation is to an exceptionally consistent care and quality, not always the case with photo-etch sets. The ‘Betty’ set includes film sheets for the instrument panel with differences specific to different aircraft variants.
This image doesn’t do justice to the gilded silver ‘A5M’ finish of the sheets
Marabu Design offer other equally impressive sets for Japanese subjects which will be fully covered in a further blog. The sets can be purchased direct from Marabu in addition to being stocked by mail order houses such as
Hannants in UK and
Hobby Search in Japan.
With special thanks to Radek of Marabu Design for providing these images of the photo-etch set and for permission to show them here.
Image credit: All © 2024 Marabu Design
