While working on the troublesome interior, I also did a bit of work on the body. I masked the windshield with Tamiya masking tape, starting from a narrow one to cover the raised lines and filled the rest with wider tape, then I also completely masked the outside and sprayed Tamiya flat black.
Since I have one of each 575 and 550 kit to build in the future, I'm saving the masking tape, so I can cut out another set of masking tape by using the old ones as templates.
After I glued the window, a part of the glue leaked out! I don't remember when was the last time I made a blunder like this, but what has happened can't be reversed, can I?
Repair work was simple. I used a chisel to get rid of nearly (but not completely) hardened excess glue, then I used a series of sand papers from 600 to 2000 grit, as well as polishing abrasives up to 12000, as I normally do on clear-coated bodies.
After that, I used Tamiya's polishing compound coarse, medium and fine to completely eliminate scratches the sand papers and abrasives. I also had to touch up a part of the black window trim.
Now, back to the interior. I cut out pieces of styrene and glued them together. In order to create a crease, I first glued a pattern on the back side (top right), then I rubbed the front side (bottom left).
The arm rest was made the same way (laminating patterned styrene), so was the handle. Here, the surface is a bit rough because primer was hand-brushed only to fill scratches and to check the surface imperfections, but it's good enough to see how it's coming along.
