China-Burma-India Theater GB 2006-2007

Looks good Scott.

Regards,  Rick

I'm not gonna give anyone a hard time for not finishing.

In progress news cockpit painting is pretty much finished. It just needs a wash and a dry brush.

The AM kit is quite good but it seems to have a few quirks.  

I took a little break from model building this weekend.  My daughter turned 16 so we did a lot of fun family stuff and I spent most of the weekend hanging out with her. 

I'm going to finish up the camo tonight.  I've been looking at photos and profiles of the P-40E in service with the Flying Tigers (23rd Fighter group) after the AVG was disbanded and I'm trying to determine if the camo was hard edged (i.e. painted with a template) or semi-hard/soft edged.  It's hard to tell from some of the photographs, and the profiles seem to show it both ways.  I always hesitate to use a profile as "gospel" as it's someone else's interpretation of how it looked.  If it's semi soft edged, I may try to free hand spray the green. 

Anyone have any info that might be helpful regarding the hard/soft edge camo for a P-40E, specifically Ed Rector's with the 23rd Fighter Group? 

Happy birthday to your daughter.

I can't wait until I turn 17 so I can get my driver's license... 3 more months... yup, I'm still a young un.

In more progress, High school tennis started today so that means no time to do anything whatsoever, except complain about how they make us play outside when it's 25 degrees and snowing... 

I look forward to trying out some new techniques on this plane, like salt chipping.

Thanks for the birthday wishes for my daughter.  She's going to take her drivers test next week to get her drivers license. 

Well, I ran into a minor snag on the P-40 which I discovered while masking to spray the green camo pattern over the brown.  I tried something different this time and decided to spray the tail plane parts detached from the fuselage to make masking on those nasty complex curves of the fuselage and rudder a little easier.  Well....... I guess I wasn't paying attention when I painted the gray on the bottom and the brown on top as I have both tail plane surfaces keyed such that they'd both go on the right side.  Doh!  No worries, I'll just soak the left one in some windex and re-spray the gray and brown, this time making sure it's keyed to go on the left. 

Just a few minor details to wrap up, just need to fix the tailplane paint snafu, seal it up, decal, seal, weather and flatcoat.  Each job should take a day so as to allow drying between jobs.  So lets see..... if all goes well I should have this done no later than next Friday. 

Again, thanks for you patience and sorry about being late.  At least my GB plate is starting to get whittled down a bit... 

Don't feel bad about the tail planes Scott, I've done the same thing a couple of times & it's irritating but an easy fix.

Regards,  Rick

rjkplasticmod wrote:

Don't feel bad about the tail planes Scott, I've done the same thing a couple of times & it's irritating but an easy fix. Regards,  Rick

aye, that's the beauty of using Acrylics.... Windex, lots and lots of Windex. 

espins1 wrote:

rjkplasticmod wrote: Don't feel bad about the tail planes Scott, I've done the same thing a couple of times & it's irritating but an easy fix. Regards,  Rick aye, that's the beauty of using Acrylics.... Windex, lots and lots of Windex.

I meant to post these the other day.   

I sprayed the green using a combination of paper masks for the wings and tail surfaces (enlarged copies of the kit instructions paint diagram to scale, cut out the masks and used Tamiya tape to secure them) and silly putty for the complex curves on the fuselage.  I'm in the process of fixing just a tiny bit of overspray in 2 spots (just need to lightly spray some of the brown on those areas, really close in with low air pressure) and fix a spot on the lower left end of the tail where I accidently sprayed green where it should be brown.  Oh, and I need to add the round green circle on the left side of the aft fuselage.

This was the first time I had tried using silly putty as a masking material and I must say it worked pretty well once I figured out the trick to handling it propertly.  I rolled it into long thin strips about the size of thick spaghetti noodles and then laid them out along the areas outlining the sections that needed to stay brown.  I then sprayed very close to the surface barely pulling back on the trigger so as to control as best I could where the green was going on the surface.  It worked nicely, with just two small areas where there is just a little bit of overspray.  Next time I should be able to use the silly putty trick with no issues.... another new trick to add to my skill set. 

Looks very good Scott.  An alternative to Silly Putty, that I prefer for this type of masking, is Blu-Tac or Handi-Tac.

Regards,  Rick

bobbaily wrote:

Very nice work Scott.  Looking forward to seeing the finished plane.

Me too, and thanks Bob. 

I tell you, the silly putty was a little tricky at first.  Now that I've gotten the hang of it I'm sure I'll use that trick every time I have curvy lines to mask as it's a thousand times faster and less tedious than cutting tape and paper masks. 

I'm at the point now where there's not much work left to do, it's more about drying and curing times now...... just a few more days worth of work.  Thanks again for letting me slide across the finish line after the due date. 

Here are a couple of photos after I finished the camouflage.  I noticed a small blemish on the topside of the nose, I'll fix that in a jiffy.  I also need to fix the drape of the shoulder belts and attach the tail planes.

Looking good Scott.

Regards,  Rick

Thanks Rick. 

I touched up the nose last night right after those photos.  I was hoping to seal this baby up with some Future tonight, however I just realized I need to paint a little bit of white on the front scoop area in preparation for the shark mouth decal.  I'll have to do that tonight, and seal it all up tomorrow.  

The camo looks really sharp.

I finished the cockpit painting. Now I just need to fit it all together. I hate the way Acc. Min. has the cockpit install into the fuselage.  

I was just getting ready to spray on the Future, but I wanted to give the P-40 one last looking over to make sure I didn't miss anything.  I noticed that I had gotten a little carried away with the radiator intake area on the chin of the P-40 and painted the white a little too far beyond where it was supposed to go.  I was only supposed to paint the inside area with the 3 openings and I thought to myself "hey, I know, I'll paint some of the rest of this chin white so there won't be any color bleed through on the white parts of the sharkmouth decal".  Whoops.... took it a little bit too far.

No worries though, I just got done a little bit ago carefully wiping the excess off with a tiny bit of Windex and some Q-tips.  I've already repaired the damage on the earth and green spots, and will patch up the grey a little later tonight. 

Those little niggling things are really annoying aren't they?

I posted progress pictures of my build up in the AC forum. I'll link to them here shortly.  

Whew!  I FINALLY managed to get everything in order on the paint finish and was able to spray on a coat of Future.  I tried really hard not to let myself get frustrated and kept slogging through all the touch up and little fix it's bit by bit. 

All the hard work is over now, so I just need to spend an hour here and an hour there to finish this P-40E.  Most of the time now will be just waiting for things to dry and cure. 

I think I'm ready for a cocktail now.... 

mmmm... Red Hook ESB 

Good stuff!