Painting a Chessboard pattern on a P-47D

You could use a few different methods. You could mask each square seperately and paint them that way (very tedious). You could cut small squares of masking tape and paint them all at the same time (also tedious). Or you could use small pieces of black decal cut into squares and applied seperately. Some kits even come with a decal for the checkerboard scheme in the box (or aftermarket decals could be used). Whatever method you use is going to be slow and tedious so just choose one that you're comfortable with.

I've never tried painting them. It can be done with small squares of masking tape, but I find it much easier to use strips of black decal cut into squares & applied individually.

Regards, Rick

After covering the base color with future, you can actually draw with pencil the chessboard pattern on the white base then with an ink pen you just fill the appropriate squares, the trick is to keep track of the black and white squares.

Hope it helps

Thanks Guys, I was going to use the supplied decals but I ripped one of them

I'll let you know how it turned out

I think I'd buy more decals. that's just me though.

check this out, one of the members here is doing the same thing on his Corsair. Looks pretty frsutrating to me but you might like it. You can get the checkerboard cowl decals on squadron.com or greatmodels.com if you decide against masking. Just do a search for 'P-47 decals'

---edit---

forgot to post the link to the topic

http://www.finescale.com/fsm/community/forum/topic.asp?page=1&TOPIC_ID=30227

see if you can't find a copy of FSM special issue "modelling the second world war" from 1994. it had an article on how to do a checkerboard cowling. if you can't find it i could photocopy it and mail it to you if you live in north america.