And then there were two | Gamera Baenre's Mindless Ramblings

Look, two F4U Corsairs!

I was fairly close to finishing the 48th scale Corsair about mid September but never really got around to posting anything since I moved right into working on the 72nd scale kit; or rather, finishing what I started on the 72nd. I did drag my feet for about a week or so since I really did not want to take the time to work on the seams and redo details. But I ended up finishing both kits so here’s the final processes done for the 48th first.

Getting right into the work we got the decals for the kit. They are pretty thin and delicate and I ended up breaking a few, but nothing a little pushing and pulling won’t fix. And in some cases, some paint and weathering to hide things.

Continued after the jump.

Decals are done and left to completely cure/dry for about a day, then another gloss coat to seal everything, Another 12 or so hours pass and the panel line wash. Such a messy process, but that’s my fault for using a brush entirely too big for job. But it gets things done quickly, albeit really messy. However, since I’m weathering the thing, this isn’t too big a deal as it’ll work towards the weathering effects. After the wash dries, a quick clean up with several q-tips and fire water (napatha lighter fluid) I find this less harsh than the model paint branded enamel thinner.

The plane is sprayed again with clear gloss to seal in the panel lines and once that cures another 12 hours later; the filter using enamel white, brown, and rust. Since this is a carrier based plane, I went with these colors. Dotted up all the parts and let them dry a bit.

Then a rough fan brush loaded with lighter fluid is used to scrub the dots away blending everything into a somewhat weathered look.

While things are drying, I get some diamond plate plastic and put together a base for the laser cut 48th scale laser cut aircraft carrier deck I picked up off Etsy shop AccuscaleModels. The F4U fits perfectly. but the deck does need some work.

A quick wash with some different shades of paint, some masking to paint the steel bits, then gluing the whole base together. The deck is made of balsa wood so it’s soaks up liquid and expands.

The filter is dry and the whole kit gets the clear flat treatment. Once that is dry, some pastels and weathering details are done to add some paint chips, rust streaks, soot from the wing cannons and exhausts.

And that’s all there is to the 48th scale kit. The build processes reminded me of the planes I built when I was a kit way before I ever learned about gunpla. We’re taking close to 40 years ago. Skills and tools have improved a decent amount; but the same enjoyment was there.

Now on to finishing up the 72nd. I really had to drag myself over to the bench to start sanding and fixing the seams. Landing gear pieces were sanded and primed. The wings were glued to the fuselage. A quick picture of the 48th next to the 72nd. Aside from scale, they’re also different variants, the 48th is th 1D while the 72nd is the 1 (birdcage canopy). So a few slight body differences too. Sanding is done so the painted wheel wells were masked off as well as the cockpit and belly window area.

The gun ports were rescribed and cleaned up. This was a pain in the ass for the 48th scale, made twice as painful for the 72nd. but it’s all ready for primer. The primer shows up a few missed glue spots and areas that need to be fixed, so that’s not too big a deal. Easily done in another sand and prime session.

Masking work starts along side of the body work. While things are drying on one end, the other bits can get work. Painting and masking the prop as well as masking and painting the canopy. This sucked, quarter is in the picture for size comparison. The finished product came out fairly well; at least without full camera zoom.

Landing gear bits are painted an the body gets a final primer before getting sprayed with a base dark grey.

The base navy white (Tamiya AS 20 insignia white) was decanted years ago along with the other Tamiya AS Corsair paints when I first thought about building these kits. I use a preshading technique to get some very stark shading before feathering in the rest of the white areas.

Once that was dry, the scheme for Pappy Boyington’s F4U is chosen and I mask off the bottom white areas. Liquid mask is used over the tape to get the wavy edges. The next paint layer is the Tamiya AS 19 intermediate blue. Cured, and another layer of masking tape and liquid mask.

Tamiya AS 8 Navy Blue is sprayed. The 48th is a solid AS 8. I do like the color design on this kit and I think if I do the 32nd, I may go with the Jolly Rodger scheme which is similar. Once everything is cured, the masking tape comes off and everything looks pretty good.

It’s 1AM and I just pulled the masking tape off. A little tired, but what the hell, lets get to gluing on the landing gear doors. Yeah, miserable failure and a nice glue finger print. This will need to be fixed after a decent nights sleep.

While nothing getting it completely straight, I did use a little sticky tack helper to hold things in place while I glued. I’m ok with this mistake, I’m sure there will be more, I just need to move and get this done.

Almost everything is glued together so I can spray a clear gloss to prepare for the next step, the decals. And yeah, I make another mistake here too. The decals for the flag insignia come in two parts overlaying one another. I didn’t think there was a directionality to it, but I did notice some hash marks on the first layer decal. I laid them all down, and only when I started laying down the second decal layer that I noticed there was directionality. Which for some stoke of dumb luck, all the decals are in the same direction, albeit upside down. At least they’re uniformly wrong. Not going to worry about this and just push though. It’s too much work to fix and not worth it; I’ll pay attention on the 32nd scale…

Once the decals completely dry, a clear gloss is sprayed and left to cure. While things are curing, I look for options for the panel line wash. Tamiya makes a prethinned bottle with applicator brush that I’ve seen people use and I basically created my own using an empty old extra thin cement bottle and brush. The brush has since gotten pretty ratty and in the 48th scale kit, while quick, it was pretty damn messy. I came across some dip pens out of China that advertise as panel lining tools and bonus, it’ll arrive the next day. So I ordered one. It’s pretty interesting and works just like the brush, but a lot more slower and maybe some level of precision since the tip is metal very fine. A very fine tipped brush works just as well. Two sides of the same coin I guess and it’ll just come down to preference. I liked it and for me it has some uses.

The kit gets panel lined, dried, cleaned up, then left to fully dry.

A clear flat is sprayed over everything and the small canopy parts are unmasked and ready to be glued once the clear flat completely dries. Final assembly sees the canopy parts glued, the belly window, and cowl and prop piece.