Tamiya 1/48 P-47D Thunderbolt x 2

Looking forward to this.  These are great kits - any thoughts to livery?

That's a nice pair, O!  OO 

(I'll let myself out)

Gary

HA! I see what you did there, Gary...

John, In honor of my late father, one will be built as an airframe from the 201st FS of the Mexican Air Force that fought as part of the Mexican Expeditionary Air Force alongside the Americans in the PTO. The other will be Major R. Hendricks' "Kwitcherbitchin," in honor of my wife. (Don't tell her I said that. Actually, it doesn't matter. She already knows...)

-O

I've had some time to work on my Thunderbolts, and I made a little progress.

I got the cockpit parts, minus the seats, painted up. I also used the kit's decals for the instrument panel. It worked out OK. It's not great, but it's better than I could have done with paint.





I ordered a pair of resin seats, but they won't be arriving for a few days. Once they're here, I'll get everything assembled. 

I was able to get the engines built up. I decided to add some details using fine wire. If you don't mind, I'd like to share how I wired up my radial engines.

I started by drilling some holes in the cylinders and at the base of the cylinder housing.





I took a length of fine copper wire and folded it in half, effectively making two wires.





Using a blob of CA, I glued the wires into the hole drilled into the bases of the cylinders.





After that, it was a simple as threading the wire ends through the cylinders. In the photo below, the engine on the left has both rows of cylinders "wired," while the one on the right only has the forward set of cylinders done.





And I ended up with these:





So, that's all for now. I'll share photos of the completed cockpit once the seats have been installed. I think I'll turn my attention to the wings and landing gear next. As usual, comments, questions and criticisms are welcome. Feel free to drop your two cents into the bucket on your way out.

Thanks for stopping by!
-O

I like your wiring there, Omar! Clever, simple, and it really dresses up the kit parts. Nicely done!

"O"! Looks great.

Stay safe.

Jim 

SON OF A...!

More on that in a minute.

So, let me start by saying that all the great things people have said about the Tamiya Jug are true. I found myself grinning while putting these birds together. I've always been leary of inserts included in plastic kits, but I was delighted by how well the Tamiya parts went together. I had been waiting to get some resin seats to finish my cockpit, and while I did, I got the wings built up. They look worse in the photos than they really are. All in all, the assemblies went together beautifully.





While I was working on the wings, the barrels I bought arrived. A nice little surprise was that the barrels' set comes with a ring and bead sight. So, I built up gunsights after the wings.










I'll install them toward the end of the build in order to protect them when I mask the cockpit for painting. They're not perfect, but they'll look good enough from 3-feet.

I also noticed that one of the airframes I'm going to build is a later -D with the tail fillet installed. The Tamiya -D does not include the parts to add the fillet. It turns out that I built a couple of Hasegawa Jugs as gifts some time ago. I usually keep all the parts from a build that I don't use, and I kept the Hase parts for the fillet and pulled 'em out to use.





With a little fiddling, the parts fit well enough to pass muster.





Finally, the seats I had been waiting for arrived. They're from a company called RESIN2detail and found them on...that auction site. They're beautifully printed and detailed. Unfortunately, they're not a direct drop-in replacement for the Tamiya parts.


The resin seats have the top cross-member printed as part of the piece...





...whereas the Tamiya parts have the crossmember molded onto the armor plate.





If I was going to use the resin seat, I'd either have to alter the resin seats or the kits' parts because the resin seat wouldn't sit well if I left the kit parts alone.





I went with the latter. I used some Tamiya Extra Thin to soften their joints, then carefully removed the headrests to avoid damaging them.





Then using a hobby knife and some needle files, I carefully removed the kit detail.





After a repaint, things looked pretty good.





But I found that the seats still needed more attention in order to work. The resin seats didn't have any mounting supports, so I had to cut the "feet" off of the kits' parts...





...and install them onto the bottom of the resin seats.





After some tweaking, I was able to get the seats to work with the kit plastic.





So, here's where the @#$%&! moment happened...

I was excited to finally get the cockpit completed so that I could close up the fuselage. I must've had target fixation and mad a very significant mistake. Can you see it?





If it's not readily obvious to you, let me tell you what I did. I closed up the fuselages without installing the wing spar assemblies!

ARE YOU FREAKIN' KIDDING ME!?

Luckily I noticed while the joint's plastic was still soft. Using some more Extra Thin and a lot of curse words, I was able to melt and soften the joint enough to pry the fuselage halves apart...





...install the spars, and close up the fuselages. Again.





I have no idea if I will be able to save these builds. I noticed that when I rejoined the halves, the plastic was very soft and easily squeezed through the seam lines. I'm hoping that the extra soft plastic will harden up and help fill the seams. I'm sure it'll be a few days before things set up enough for me to check. I'll keep working on the subassemblies in hopes that the fuselages can be used and the builds can be saved. I'll let you know. Do me a favor and keep you fingers crossed. I can use all the good modeling juju I can get. In the meantime, I'll work on the Blackbirds.

Anyway, as usual, comments, questions and criticisms are welcome. Feel free to drop your two cents into the bucket on your way out.


Cheers!
-O

My . Good modeling juju on it's way to you "O".

Stay safe.

Jim 

If THAT's the worst mistake you make in these builds, you're living a charmed life, O!  They'll turn out fine due to your attention to detail.

Gary

As it turns out, after three days of sanding, filling, scribing, riveting, cursing, crying, drinking, sighing, meditating, venting, stressing, rinsing, repeating...did I mention cursing and drinking...I was able to get the airframes and my ham-fistedness repaired. 





Jim, I'm giving you all the credit. If it wasn't for your juju, I don't think I would've been able to pull it off.

There was one issue with a ventral seam on the airframe that will be Kwitcherbitchin that caused the most stress. The seam, no matter how much I filled and sanded, kept coming back. Even after three days! It was one of those eerie ghost seams. I eventually just used a razor saw and reopened the seam. I scraped out enough material to accept a strip of styrene. I used that and a fair amount of CA to replace the affected plastic. That finally did the trick.

Here are the two airframes finally primed. 





Still a ways to go, but I'm happy to report that I was able to save the project. I appreciate all the feedback, and as I always say, comments, questions and criticisms are welcome. Feel free to drop your two cents into the bucket on your way out.

Cheers!
-O

Glad I could be of help "O". If there's any left, feel free to send it to someone else that needs some.

Good work. Coming along nicely.

Stay safe.

Jim 

OK gang, I have a little progress to show. The past few days have been spent working on the NMF.

I got both airframes painted up in Alclad Aluminum.





I picked out a few panels in different shades of Alclad. The variations will be more obvious when things start to go together. Speaking of which, I got some paint splattered on the Escuadron 201 airframe. 

I call this, "Stripes - Part 1."








Next I'll do the chevron on the nose. After than, I'll be doing more stripes. Kwitcherbitchin has invasion stripes on the underside of the wings and fuselage. I'm not really looking forward to that.

Anyway, here's where I'm at. Anyway, as usual, comments, questions and criticisms are welcome. Feel free to drop your two cents into the bucket on your way out. Thanks for stopping by!

Cheers,
-O

Those look really good, O!  Those Tamiya P-47s are the best!

Gary

I'm calling this one, "Stripes - The Return"

So, I got more stripes done. No, I haven't tackled the invasion stripes yet. I just got a few details stripes applied. Most were paint, some were decals.

I got the QIM and unit stripes painted on Kwitcher's nose and tail. I also got the chevron painted onto the Escuadron 201 plane's nose, and added its rudder markings and the chevron's piping.








So far, I have to say that I'm not impressed with Aztec's decals. They are thick and brittle. The rudder stripe broke up on my during application, specifically the white stripe. I was able to get it applied, but it had multiple cracks and fissures in it. I had to go back to mask and paint the white stripe. Luckily, Testors little square bottles of red and green are almost a perfect match. Despite multiple efforts, I couldn't get them to settle down into the rudder's details. The white chevron on the nose is painted, but the piping is Aztec's decal. It, too, broke up into various pieces. With the help of a few cuss words, I was able to (mostly) salvage it. Also, the plane's number on the nose, 18, is not included on the sheet. I had to dig up some numbers from my decal spares.

I'm sure you can also see that I have Kwitcher's OD anti-glare sprayed on, too. Next are her invasion stripes...which I'm not looking forward to.

You all know the drill. Comments, questions and criticisms are welcome. Feel free to drop your two cents into the bucket on your way out.

Stay tuned!
-O

"Stripes - The Vengence"

OK, so I started on the invasion stripes under Kwitcher's wings. I thought I had things dialed in...until I removed the masking. Let me preface with saying, I always hate masking over NMF.

Up until this point, I had good luck avoiding any NMF pulling up with the tape. The spots that did were small and easily fixed. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case with the wings. I had multiple sizeable spots lift off multiple times. After all the sanding, re-masking, and repainting, things were not looking good. Not only did I continue to have paint pull off, but my stripes were no longer parallel...or rectangles, for that matter. I had a couple of trapezoids in there!





But, I persevered. I ended up stripping the flap down to bare plastic and starting over. The wing, I sanded and resprayed most of the underside. It all paid off in the end. I ended up with, what I consider, a satisfactory result. For the record, the decal instructions for Kwitcherbitchin state that the invasion stripes do not extend all the way to the leading edge.





Much better! I can live with that. 

Oh, just because I couldn't resist, here are the pylons dry-fitted to the wings, and the wings dry-fitted to the fuselage:





Next, I have to do the partial invasion stripes on Kwitcher's belly. Of, comments, questions and criticisms are welcome. Feel free to drop your two cents into the bucket on your way out.

Wish me luck!
-O

"Stripes - O's Conquest"

OK gang, I am done with the primary painting, including all the stripes.








Time to move on to the fiddly bits and decals before final assembly. I'll post more when there's more to post.

Comments, questions and criticisms are welcome. Feel free to drop your two cents into the bucket on your way out.

Thanks for stopping by!
-O

Great progress, Omar! The metal finish came out nice.

Nice work "O"!   

Stay safe.

Jim 

Nice set of twins you got going there

I never really thought about doing a P-47 for my shelf, but then I was lucky enough to see TWO of them at Oshkosh last week and the gears started turning. Now I see this thread with your quality work and dogged attention to detail. 

By the way, and I suppose it depends on the airframe and the airfield it was based out of, but were the invasion stripes applied last-minute and haphazardly on these like they were on the C-47s? Maybe the squarely and perfectly measured stripes are something of an anachronism. In any case yours look great, and I sympathyze with your efforts there. They paid off.  

Off to the local hobby shop I guess...

Great job! I'll be watching with interest. 

Those are really nice kits.

I built this Gabby Gabreski version years ago and it was a joy to build.