Thunderbolt GB 2016

Quick WIP update: Got the fuselage stripes painted, attached the intercooler exit doors and the tail wheel assembly.

Cheers, Mark

That she will be. 

I'm looking forward to doing the weathering on this, to make it look a bit less like a flying paint store.  lol 

Cheers, Mark

Painting the strips is definitely the way to go, great job. This is going to be one colorful bird! lol

My Latest WIP pictures of my Thunderbolt, the Tamiya 1/48 Bubbletop.

Arghhhh...  a few real-life issues kind of ruined my bench time over the weekend, but I still managed to make a bit of progress on the old Jug.

Shot some AK Xtreme (Dark Aluminum) onto the gun-bay panels and to some other panels on the underside, to break up the look a bit.

Finally got the engine wired up (still have to do some final painting and weathering), and put the final paint to the cowling... the little bare metal ring on the inner lip at the front.

Tonight I got the wingtip stripes masked and painted.  Tomorrow I'll do the same with the two black fuselage stripes.  These stripe markings were included in the decals, but I decided it would be better to paint them instead.  Happy I've gone this route.

That's it for now.  More to come soon... ish.

Cheers, Mark

rocker286

Well folks, I've done quite a bit of work on my Thunderbolt so far, I just haven't had a chance to share my work yet! Until now, that is. So far, so good. The fit of this kit could be better, but it's nothing a bit of sanding won't fix. There are also a few gaps in the fuselage, so I'll have to fill those. Tonight I cemented the engine mount onto the fuselage, and I'll be putting together the engine some point this week.

 

Lookin' good Rocker.  Can't wait to see more. 

Cheers, Mark

Hi All,

Working on the Testors Jug. It's a really bad kit. It's not at all like the P-51 I finished earlier, which just fit together perfectly. I had a bad experience with the resin cocpit. I've not worked with resin and it's really brittle stuff! There were no instructions and I couldn't figure most of it out. Turns out you can't see it once you put the part on for the bubble top, and so I didn't go all out on it. I glued the fuselage together in stages to get it to line up. That worked out well.

Nice start rocker!

Nice job on the pit rocker, good to see itcoming together.

Mark, thats going to be one colourful cowling. Going to look very decorative with the nose art on.

Well folks, I've done quite a bit of work on my Thunderbolt so far, I just haven't had a chance to share my work yet! Until now, that is. So far, so good. The fit of this kit could be better, but it's nothing a bit of sanding won't fix. There are also a few gaps in the fuselage, so I'll have to fill those. Tonight I cemented the engine mount onto the fuselage, and I'll be putting together the engine some point this week.

You're doing a great job with this Mark! That sure is one colorful cowling!

Latest WIP pictures of Passionate Patsy

Not a lot of  progress the last few days.  Been too exhausted after work to focus on modeling.  But managed to get a few small things done last night.

Started weathering on the engine.  Still need to wire it up and finish the weathering.  And finished painting the prop, the wheels and the main gear.

Forgot to post these pics from Monday night... finished the orange/yellow panel on the cowl where the nose art will be.  Now you can see five of the six colors sprayed on this cowling.  (the sixth being the AK Black Base coat)

The other side:

Hopefully get some serious bench time this weekend, and make a big leap in the build. 

Cheers, Mark

Thanks Johnny and Brandon.  Hopefully get some time in this evening to finish off the final paint for the cowling.

Cheers, Mark

Bish

Looking really nice mark and great recovery on the cowl, thats impresive how you managed to mask off the red.

 

I agree the paint work looks great.

Bish

Looking really nice mark and great recovery on the cowl, thats impresive how you managed to mask off the red.

 

Looking really nice mark and great recovery on the cowl, thats impresive how you managed to mask off the red.

Quick Update:  I was able to correct my blunder of putting down paint in the wrong order on the cowling.  I made a mask of the star point on the top of the cowling, and then masked off everthing but the area on top for the olive drab.  I think it came out good.  Now I only have one more color to shoot onto the cowling, for the orange/yellow panel that acts as a background for the Passionate Patsy artwork.

Cheers, Mark

Thanks Andy.  Feels like the finish line is finally starting to become visible in the distance.

Cheers, Mark 

Mark, all the masking and paint work came out awesome! Glad to hear you didn't have any masking issues.

Thanks Brandon.  No, all the tape came off clean.  Not even any silvering on the tape.  I was pretty concerned about it, so I took some of the tackiness off before applying.  Also I was super gentle peeling it off.  Thankfully, no issues.

Cheers, Mark

Well your paint work looks great, Mark. Did you have any issues with the paint lifting on the NMF from masking? Often Alclad will lift when masked so I'm curious if the AK holds better.

BK

My Latest WIP pictures of my Thunderbolt, the Tamiya 1/48 Bubbletop.

Made a lot of progress yesterday.  First I masked and painted the tail section white, and of course I couldn't resist sticking the (almost) finished rudder into position to see how the whole tail is looking.

Then came some work on the cowl.  Wow, masking these star points was tedious.

But the result was worth the work.

This was where I made a mistake, because the olive drab anti-glare paint on the top of the cowl should be underneath the red star point.  D'oh!  So now I'll have to cut some reversed masks for that area and fiddle with getting it set up correctely.

But I went ahead and shot the olive drab on the fuselage, and was quite happy with how it turned out.

Finally here's a pic of the many bits and pieces, in various stages of paint/finish, yet to be stuck on the aircraft. 

Tonight I hope to get the cowl masked to correct my mistake and get the OD down on it.  And try to get the canopy masked.  Rats! I still haven't done the engine detailing yet either!   

Cheers, Mark

Thanks Andy.  I was so nervous about spraying it, with all sorts of nightmarish outcomes filling my brain.  I'm glad it came out as good as it did.  Slept well last night.

That came out really beautiful Mark!

My Latest WIP pictures of my Thunderbolt, the Tamiya 1/48 Bubbletop.  Ow, my eyes!

Alright, finally got some metal down on the Jug.  Tuesday night I shot it with AK's Black Base, at 18 psi.  It sprayed great and went down smooth.  I was very impressed by one thing.  About 10 minutes after spraying, I managed to drop the plane on the floor!  D'oh!  Thankfully nothing broke or even got loose.  Whew!  But, there were several marks left on the black base by the carpet.  I was depressed by this, so I left it for the night to have a think on the best way of fixing.  In the morning when I looked at it, all the marks were gone.  The paint had leveled out perfectly!  Woo Hoo!

Here are a couple pics of the AK Black Base:

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Last night I shot the metal (AK Xtreme Metal-Poslished Aluminum), again at 18 psi, and it went down great.  This time I managed to avoid dropping the plane.  Everything turned out great, except for some small blemishes (see third image) on the rear top of the fuselage.  Not sure what happened there, and it's possible that it might still level out.  The rear anti-glare paint will cover some of that, so I'm not really too bothered by it.

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So far I am super pleased with the AK Xtreme Metal.  It looks beautiful.  But I don't have any experience with any other NMF paints, so I don't have anything to reference it against.  I think I will try a different product on my next build (another jug, but in 1/32) and see how that goes.

Cheers, Mark

Hey Rocker, that's looking great!  I am hugely impressed by you guys that work in 1/72 scale.  I no longer have the finger dexterity or eyes for that scale, and at some point I will probably have to stop making 1/48 and focus (pun intended) only on 1/32.

Great start, on what I'm sure will be a great build.

Cheers, Mark

Brandon & Mr Stecks - Great work so far!

Well I finally found some bench time tonight and built the cockpit for my Thunderbolt. There was some flash to sand off but other than that no complaints!

lol...  no problem, questions are good.

Yeah, this is the AK Xtreme, and it's the Polished Aluminum.  I put down a coat of the AK Black Base first, then several light coats of the metal.  It sprayed beautifully.  I think people usually shoot metals (like Alclad) at 12 - 15 psi, but I read somewhere that the AK doesn't perform well at those lower pressures.  And in my tests last week 18 - 20 worked well.  This was shot at 18 psi. 

I also have the Dark Aluminum and regular Aluminum, which I will use for various panels on the plane.

Cheers, Mark

Now that looks really good Mark! That was the AK Xtreme Metals paint right, which shade of Aluminum? How did it spray for you? It looks like it went down beautifully but did you have any difficulty? Am I asking too many question? LOL