Spanjaard
Very interesting. I just faced the same issue, and used same solution. Part is missing and duplicated with bluestaff/milliput. 144 too.

Cosiek Author
Hi Spanjaard - how did that work out for you? As one of the photos show, I broke my copy trying to remove to much flash in one go. Tiny, fragile stuff.

Spanjaard
well, removing the flash is really tricky, i had similar problems. and if the part is thin, it is very easy to break. i made several copies with 2 different putty bland. And eventually got one to work. it broke, but i could still use the pieces since they do not need to support any weight, unlike the one you are duplicating. in your case, i would have may tried to add a piece of wire inside of the putty, to make it more resistant
about the canopies that you are trying, i would make the one with putty, and then cut a piece of thin wood almost to fit completely. then staple the plastic to it, warm it up as much as you can, and then press it against the puty to get the right size. i did that a couple of times ages ago, and for example manage to make a decent canopy for a Mig-29 in 1/72, and a dome for a scratchbuild project. a very very long time ago.

Spanjaard
this reminds me that i need to post an update on the zero where i did duplicate that part.

Cosiek Author
Thanks for advice about canopies. That is pretty much what I did, except I used a piece of cardboard instead of wood. Yes - next time I will use something harder then cardboard, but I think my main mistake was to let to much putty on the outline of the die. This prevented the plastic from sticking closely to the right part of the die.

Spanjaard
nice to see this one back 🙂

Cosiek Author
I could use some advice. I decided on a paint scheme - Its mostly red on top and the rest is aluminum. I read/watched a bunch of tutorials on natural metal finish and every time they claim that key thing is to put a layer of glossy black paint before using metallic paints. I get why it should be glossy, but does it really need to be black? It seems that in my case it would be better to use glossy red as both base for metallic and main paint for non-metallic red.
Has anyone of you tried to use something other then black as a base for natural metal finish?

Robert Podkoński
I used light gray primer, white, and black as well - depending on the primer color you can obtain different 'depth' of metallic surface
Silverbird | Album by podkon (1:72)
but to the best of my knowledge MiG-15 never were shiny - they were covered with some kind of 'aluminum' paint...

Spanjaard
i would suggest to take some plain plastic and try half of it with one primer and half of it with the other, then cover both with same metal color. then you will see the differences between both, and then use the one that looks better to you.

Spanjaard
I got the feeling that metal over red may give a strange tint, but curious about what you get

Cosiek Author
Thanks Robert. You made me look for some reference photos. You're right that most MiG-15 aren't shiny. Some of them seem to be, but even those are nowhere near mirror shinny (like American Sabres). Still - the instruction says the original plane was part of a display team and painted "specifically for the event". I'm assuming they kept it clean and looking good. So I'm aiming at natural metal finish, but as to your comment, I will try not to overdo it. I probably wouldn't be able even if I wanted to.

Thanks Spanjaard. Good point about strange tint. While I won't be to sad about not achieving NMF, it would be tragic if it would end up being pink. Will run some tests.