Joe and
Gary, your builds are starting out looking great. Hope to see more progress pictures soon.
Marc, I can't wait to see your finished bird! Your paint job looks super. In regards to your question about leaving masking on a canopy, I've left both the precut masks and Tamiya tape on for several weeks and have had no problems in their removal. I also do like Jerry said, in that I paint the canopy the same time as fuselage so that the colors match. This is especially important if I plan on fading the paint. However, I usually don't have the canopy on the fuselage while painting, just off to the side.
I have my P-40N pretty much assembled, but am still working on fixing the seams. Most of them are probably due to "operator error," but for a couple there was just no easy way around. Of course, this means the resultant rescribing of lines lost in sanding, which I detest (because I'm so poor at it).
Mark