[Episode 2] Proper Planning Part 2 – Colour Me Prepared

In my last post I described creating a database of every part used in the kit, connected to an anotated set of instructions. The next step is to research the real Mazda 787B and decide on paints and/or other treatments for every part.

The most useful references I found are two books: Photograph Collection Volume 6: MAZDA 787B in Detail, published by Model Factory Hiro, and Super Detail File: Mazda 787B published by San-Ei Shobo Publishing (thakyou eBay). There is also Never Stop Challenging: Mazda’s Conquest of Le Mans by Pierre Dieudonné, published by Apach, which provides the story of Mazda’s campaign on Le Mans, but has only a few useful photos of the 787B itself.

The treatment(s) for every part are, of course, listed in The Big Spreadsheet, along with the reference information (page number, URL, etc). The information I actually annotate onto my instructions in Visio is the part number and its treatment(s), like this:

But wait – I have been upgrading my approach to these annotated instrucitons. Now I can add notes (with red text), and I have more control over the formatting of the annotation. I colour code the annotations to give a sense of the colour that a part will be painted.

If we take all the ‘treatments’ – a mix of acrylic, enamel and lacquer paint, some parts without paint, some parts covered in carbon fibre decals, and others – we get the full Colour Table, which is a whopper. I’ll say more about paints in my next post, but that’s it for now – I’ll let you scroll through (below) at your convenience.

This embedded spreadsheet (thankyou, OneDrive) is the actual live database I am using for my build. Some treatments have been updated for my do over, in particular I have chosen a new supplier for some of the carbon fiber decals. At time of writing, I am still testing paints for the body colours.