Aoshima 1/32 Hino Dutro Truck
By Jacob Russell
I was more excited than usual to attend IPMS/Seattle’s February meeting when it was announced that Aoshima was donating some of their snap-together kits to the club. In return for the free kits the club members would commit to either finish the kits during the meeting or have them built by next month’s meeting. I chose the 1/32nd scale Hino Dutro 2 ton light flatbed truck. It’s a straightforward and simple yet highly detailed kit, consisting of 35 parts molded in cream, silver, black and clear plastic.
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The kit also included 2 sheets of stickers for the window frames, truck body bed sides and floor, various lights, etc. Several members managed to build their models during the meeting, but I wasn’t one of them. While looking the kit over it occurred to me that there were some subtle upgrades that I could make to the kit that would increase its realism, and which I would have to do at home:
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1) I gave the tires, truck bed and sides, frame, bumpers and mirrors a satin coat to reduce their shine and make them appear less toy-like.
2) I applied a clear coat to the wheels and air tank cover (?), followed by an oil wash to heighten the detail followed by a satin coat. I used a mixture of burnt umber and black oil paints thinned with lighter fluid for the wash. The satin coat was GSI Creos (Gunze) Mr. Color GX 114 Super Smooth Clear thinned with “plain” (i.e., non self-leveling) Mr. Color Thinner.
3) I masked off the turn signals and gave them 2 coats of AK Real Colors Clear Orange.
The stickers include the front faces of the windshield wipers, but the wipers themselves are integrally molded in cream as part of the cab. I used Gunze semigloss black to paint the rest of the wipers. I feel that these subtle touches enhanced the finished model. Building the kit was a piece of cake. Aoshima’s instructions were well illustrated with a simple and logical build sequence. The only issue I had in building it was that some of the stickers were so small and difficult to remove from the sticker sheets (like the lights in the bumper and some tiny bump strips on each corner of the truck body) that I opted to paint them instead.
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I had a lot of fun building Aoshima’s Hino Dutro snap kit. It’s accurate and looks great right out of the box. It would be fun to sit down and build it with your children. It’s the kind of kit that would get them excited about building one by themselves. There is no real need to paint any of the parts; in my case it was just AMS (Advanced Modeler’s Syndrome) rearing its head again…
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I recommend Aoshima’s snap automotive kits and I would like to thank Aoshima for the review sample.
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