1/32 Tamiya F4U-1 Corsair "Tojo Eats S***!" - COMPLETED

[Leon]

Your experimentation is paying off Doogs.Chipping looks great.

[TRM]

Agreeing with Leon here...Chipping is looking great and the effort is earning its keep for certain!!

[doogsatx/]

Last night at the bench before another $@(%@!#$* business trip.


Got a lot of the blue gray down. Still missing the stabs, mid-fuselage, fabric portions of the wings, the underside of the outer wings, blah blah, but the areas I'm planning on chipping have been painted and chipped.





Back to it on Thursday!

[doogsatx/]

Back at the bench tonight! Finished off (mostly) the aft fuselage, as well as the lightened fabric portions of the wings and control surfaces. They're a bit much now, but that's intentional. After the "tonal crush" of the insignias on the wings and the weathering, I'm imagining they won't be as stark.

[venom1]

Man, that is looking so good already! Think I see a MoM winner coming on.....

Cheers,

Sam

[doogsatx/]

Blue-grey is done. I have some minor touch-ups to do on the light gray, then it's time for paint masks and insignias!

I opted to make one of the ailerons a recent replacement, not yet faded out by the South Pacific elements.

[wbill76]

Now it's really coming together Doogs! Some really nice variations in the colors and fading at work here.

[doogsatx/]

Tail repainted in blue gray.

Final light gray added just ahead of the wingroot.

Prop painted and chipped. But I may strip it and do over. Not entirely happy with it.

Starting to agonize over markings.

[johnt]

Hi Doogs, you are doing an outstanding job of this!! Superb model and photography!!

Cheers
JT

[doogsatx/]

Back at the Corsair last night. On to masking for the insignias!

I'm a fan of using mask-and-paint markings on 1/32 aircraft when feasible, so with the Corsair I snagged Maketar's F4U-1 mask set, which is generally a paint mask reproduction of Tamiya's decal sheet. I'll have to use some decals for the smaller stencils and whatnot, and those will come from the Barracuda sheet. But the insignias, fuselage codes and wing non-slip and walk lines will all be painted on.

First thing's first - getting the main circles aligned. This is a pain, but I've found the best way to get things aligned is to use some 6mm Tamiya tape to create a border guide along one side. After that, the masks are a lot easier to apply!



Next, lots of post-it notes and more tape to block any potential overspray, and then a coat of Gunze C69 Offwhite.



Masking for the stars comes next...then the bar extensions, fuselage codes, walk lines and so on.

[dupes]

Looks great, Doogs!

Haven't tried those Maketar masks...have you used them before on anything?

[doogsatx/]

Yep - used them to do the octopus on my PV-1, and for the insignias and tail codes on my HK B-25:

[JimD]

Are the Maketar mask cut similar to Scale Precision or Montex? I've sworn off the Montex I think...too fussy. I grabbed the Barracuda sheet, but I'm still thinking I'd prefer to paint insignia since I have no experience with how they will settle in.

[doogsatx/]

Oct 21, 2014 10:23:13 GMT -5 JimD said:

Are the Maketar mask cut similar to Scale Precision or Montex? I've sworn off the Montex I think...too fussy. I grabbed the Barracuda sheet, but I'm still thinking I'd prefer to paint insignia since I have no experience with how they will settle in.

Yeah they're similar. Better than Montex but not as good as the dearly missed Scale Precision. Joe gave a lot of thought to how the masks would actually be applied, where Montex seems to do the opposite. Maketar falls somewhat in between. But they're good about giving you what you need - insignias and code numbers/letters - and not stuffing you into one or two boring scheme options. They've also been offering some good "general" packs, such as insignias, lettering, and so on.

As for the Barracuda decals. They're excellent, but they suck down a bit fast for my taste. Remind me of Dragon's decals. They suck down EXTREMELY well and are definitely in the very small group of decal makers I'd recommend without hesitation (alongside Wingnut Wings, Kits-World, and Furball).

[JimD]

Thanks! The fact that they do settle in is encouraging with that surface detail....the fact that they do it quickly...with my slow moving self....ehh...

Those mask do appear to give great results...it sure is a shame about Scale Precision though.

[doogsatx/]

Last night was part two of the insignia masks - the stars

Alignment is always so much fun. The wings were actually pretty easy, but the fuselage stars were a pain in the neck! There's very little on the back end of the Corsair's fuselage that runs nice and level to align against. Guess it's not surprising that more than a few Corsairs carried off-level markings.



The other difficulty was getting the wing star masks to settle down over the ribbing of the fabric areas. There are a few places where touch-ups will be needed. Hopefully I can get to those at the same time that I do the bar extensions, but we'll see.

Overall though, happy with the results.

[JimD]

Lovely. I do have a question...sorry...but in your tutorial for the chipping you used hairspray. I did notice in the build here though that you mentioned chipping fluid when you began painting....did you end up using the AK or something similar on the actual build?

[doogsatx/]

I ended up using AK Worn Effects. Mainly because I was having problems with getting hairspray to lay down nicely out of the airbrush, and didn't want to bomb it on out of the can. That's fine for armor, but didn't want to do it with a big pricey Tamiya prop.

[JimD]

Ok great thanks. Looks like it worked well so I'll just grab some. My last attempt at hairspray was less than desirable, so I wasn't looking forward to that anyway.

[TRM]

This looks amazing Doogs!! I love the shading you get on your wings...all of them!! Jumping back, that Octo Art is killer!! If you squeeze some time in, cut the hairspray with a couple drops of alcohol. Depending on the brand it can get gummy. You can cut the alcohol 50/50 before cutting the HS if you think its too strong! ALways a great show with you!! Keep it coming!!

[doogsatx/]

Oct 22, 2014 11:15:13 GMT -5 TRM said:

This looks amazing Doogs!! I love the shading you get on your wings...all of them!! Jumping back, that Octo Art is killer!!

Thanks!

It's funny, looking back, the PV-1 is definitely in that "wow my techniques have really come a long way" camp now. Amazing to think I only built it what, a little over two years ago?

[TomN.]

Smashing work Doogs!

I'll be coming back to this for reference when I do my 1/48 version.

Tom

[modelfreak72]

I'm lovin this build! Chippin experiment worked nicely! I saw on FB that you are getting ready to do the bars, just a heads up, early Navy/ Marine two tone just had the star. The Stars and Bars did show up until the three tone. Looking great Keep her coming!

[JimD]

There's a picture of this particular airplane in the OP and it has bars. So does "Marines Dream" which is also two tone.

That bring said, I was under the impression (and I'm not really an expert) that the bars didn't show up until later too. Now I'm curious.

[imatanker]

Regardless of when the Bars showed up, they do look awesome. They really add to the build, Doogs.

[doogsatx/]

Oct 23, 2014 1:32:56 GMT -5 JimD said:

There's a picture of this particular airplane in the OP and it has bars. So does "Marines Dream" which is also two tone.

That bring said, I was under the impression (and I'm not really an expert) that the bars didn't show up until later too. Now I'm curious.

It wasn't common, but there are reference pics out there (including the one of TES) that show blue gray Corsairs sporting the original round insignias with white bar extensions and no surrounds.

Why? Best answer I can give is "because South Pacific". The orders to go to tricolor and add bars and red surrounds came in January 1943, and the red surrounds were replaced by blue only a few months later. But it appears that units in the field adopted the new standard in varying fashions. Some got full repaints quickly, others got shoddy field-applied updates, slapping dark sea blue on the upper surfaces but leaving everything else in place. A lot of the Marine Corsairs appear to have just ignored the directive. Not surprising given the primitive operating conditions and probably lack of supply.

But some made a nod toward it and added bars to their insignias. Why no red surrounds? Maybe they didn't have enough (or any) red paint. Maybe they were applying it later and had already heard the horror stories of the flash of red driving twitchy AA gunners to mistake them for Japanese fighters. Who knows?

It's funny - give someone access to a time machine and you'd probably have people going back to see King Arthur or something, but us modelers would be like "send me to Munda, mid-1943, I've got to solve this Corsair issue".

[doogsatx/]

Bars went down last night. Not terribly difficult to apply, but the masking was tedious.







Next it's on to fuselage codes and wing walk lines.

[sabre]

Finally catching up on your build here Doogs and I have to say it's looking better
 than your A-4F Skyhawk you did last month if that's possible.
 
You sure know how to lay down that paint mate and thanks for sharing your tips on your chipping method... Brilliant.

[wbill76]

Interesting to see the quirks of 'in the field' vs. 'official orders' extending to the world of aircraft. Happens all the time in the armor world too, especially when it came to German gear. Nice progress there Doogs, can't beat painted-on markings for the realism in this scale for sure.

[doogsatx/]

So last night I got to move on to the wing walk lines and non-slip walkways. Ugh. Tedium defined.

Fortunately, Maketar provides masks for these in their F4U mask set. Unfortunately, the way they're done, I basically had to lay down the lines themselves (each wing needs five such lines, plus two pieces for the non-slips), THEN come back and mask around them, THEN pull up the vinyl over the lines, THEN do the fill masks to avoid overspray.

Alignment took a while to get right. With the other masks, I've been able to place the mask, do all the fill masking, and get to paint all in the course of a single session at the bench. But last night I had to put the Corsair down, not quite ready for paint. So...lines are coming tonight.