The P-51"mustang" Group Build. 2008

Thunderbolt - pretty darn spectacular. Paint job is super sharp, markings are sweet...definitely earns the coveted "three thumbs up"!

Alright T-bolt thanks for the pics! Really nice to see. Updated the list. Good work with your other stang going to FSM!

Vetteman42  -   No worries friend people can put the badge on anytime they like here.

Ruhrow........... was I not supose to take a badge untill i completed my build ??

Hey Thunderbolt your Salvadorean 51 is going to be in FSM?????? Congradulations !!!!!!!!!

Thanks arki and vetteman --

She was sure a fun build and I look forward to cranking out many more. The exhaust stain was done with MiG pigment, "Black Smoke," applied with a size-0 round-end brush. I used a TINY amount and worked it in with the greatest care. (This stuff acts like fingerprinting dust too, you may think the model is clean but you'll find your prints no matter what!) This is my fourth build using pigments for finishing and they're now part of my standard arsenal of techniques -- I should think I'll use them to dust the feet of dinosaurs when the day comes I have the storage and display space to indulge myself in those long-out-of-production 20th scale Kaiyodo vinyls...

For now, this has been a real fun build and I look forward to the next chance to indulge my Mustangaholism!

Clear to take my badge now, guys?

Cheers,

Mike/TB379

PS: Raptordriver -- FSM have solicited the Salvadorean bird as a feature for the mag, so I need to withdraw it from the GB, I remember when a forum model ended up in the mag they asked the builder (Doog, over at Armor, IIRC) to remove it from the forum.

Thunderbolt

What can I say ? Your P-51 is magnificent !! The paint scheme I really like alot and it came out beautifully. A job well done. But tell me how you did the exhaust stains ?? Oh and yes the pics were worth waiting for.

Hi Raptordriver and all -- many thanks! I must say I'm a believer in the less-is-more approach, in aircraft as in armor. The graphite is a trick as old as FX miniatures and it sure seems to work. You can also get round the weathering process surprisingly quickly with pigments. The dust and carbon took ten minutes to do, and that was feeling my way carefully.

Here are the gallery shots, fresh out of the camera. As the model stands, she's short two bombs, and three or four tiny stencil decals simply vanished due to handling (not as sticky as the Invisaclears). There's not much I'll do differently in my next one, maybe drill out the guns, possibly fill and sand the leading edge for a better finish. I might take a shot at adding brake lines from detailing wire. But on the whole I'm very happy with this horse!

She depicts the personal aircraft of Col. W. Clarke, CO of the 18th FBG. She's a weathered, hard-flown bird seen between missions, re-armed for the next sortie but on the ground long enough for hydraulic pressure to have fallen after engine-stop and the flaps and center bay doors to have bled down as a result. The wings are discolored top and bottom, and from the ejector ports, from heavy firing. The AG panel, originally a bright satin finish, has dulled due to weather, and service crews have chipped the paint where the panels fit. The landing gear and bays show dust from the rough operational strips.

Cheers,

Mike

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Mike, beautiful work! Never seen a weathered NMF mustang before. Thanks for being in this build.

NPS sorry to hear about that!

navypitsnipe The cats name is Merlin ????? I feel your pain, I really do, but thats just too funny. Hey maybe you could enter it in the "What If BG" with a story about what happened. Oh like the 50 foot cat that ate a Mustang.

PS     Thank you raptordriver. I hope to have more pictures tomorrow.

NPS What a bummer was looking forward to seeing it finished. But now you have no excuse but to build another improved version <grin>.

Thunderbolt Looking great my friend, looks like you could climb into her and take her for a check ride. Your exhaust and gun staining came out great !!!!!!!!! As did the rest of the P-51. I cant wait to see more pictures, so please don't make us wait long.

I hope to have more WIP pictures tomorrow for the group, made lots of progress this weekend. Wings and tailfeathers are on and filled. Oh and I discovered Tamiya liquid cement! Made my life so much easier, and I blame it for faster progress as the amount of filling I would have had to do on the wings went to almost none and I like that <grin>.

NPS -- sorry to hear of your mis-hap, what a tragedy it is to see your workmanship bite the dust like that. I feel ya, guy.

I'm happy to report that my Tamiya -D is FINISHED!

Here she is:

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It's nearly midnight here and I have a mild infection to take to bed... Proper gallery photos of this wild horse will be coming in the next day or two, I'm looking forward to seeing how she looks under front-lighting and from low camera angles. This is my first time applying gun carbon and exhaust stains with pigments, I'm a bit apprehensive about how they came out!

All comments, tips and feedback welcome!

Cheers,

Mike

Hi Dupes, Jmart and Raptordriver --

Thanks for the positive feedback, guys, it means a lot coming from modelers of skills like yours!

I hope to be pronouncing her finished in a very short while, I'm mounting the landing gear and rockets at this time, then there's the landing light, radio mast and pitot tube to add, some MiG pigments and a last touch up or two. I was going to add some bombs but I still haven't got them done, I think I'll production-line them with bombs for my Corsair and add them later. Do you reckon she'll count as finished in the absence of the 500-pounders?

Cheers,

Mike

EDIT: Nearly finished, gear's now drying and when I can turn it over I'll add the prop and antenna mast. Then a few wash and touchup details and this wild horse is ready for the display case:

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Randy- Good work!  I have enjoyed seeing your progress.

Mike- It looks like you been doing NMF paint jobs for 40 years. Really nice.

Jmart- Alrighty I'll change it.

Ok, finally catching up in here... had to close my ship yard/factory/hangar (aka basement man cave) due to a leaking water tank. Always fun!  New (tankless) water heater in place, some minor repair work in progress, builds will resume in a week or so...  Some great stuff going on in here!

On my "to buy sometime soon" list is some Ott bulbs at Michaels at 50% off.

vetteman42 - Doing a great job on the Revell bird. I like your work on the exhausts, will shamelessly copy your technique on my bird ;) Good fixing of the bird..

Mike - looks good so far!   From my very limited knowledge base, I think pacific P51s were in s much worse condition as their European cousins due to the tropical conditions.  And OH what a nice mustang you have... lol I love mustangs..

IL2-  Nice job on the paint.

Once my basement dries up and I uncover my workbench (under a tarp at the moment), I can start my P-51s. I decided to scratch the Tamiya 8AF kit and dig into my two oldies, the revell P-51 and the testors kit, which I will build in "fly" configuration for fun (and hide the lack of cockpit and wheel bay details! Lol)

Thunderbolt379 wrote:

Wow T-Bolt...that is HOT!!!

Hi vetteman42 --

At last count there were about 25 small jobs to do, and some of them are now finished, I'm aiming for about eight jobs a day and to have her finished by the end of the month to score my badge over at Forgotten War (she's a crossover build).

I'm glad the finish is looking good, NMF has scared the willies out of me for years as I've learned the procedures for working with the fragility of regular metallics. Nevertheless there's a spot which needs a pass with some fresh mix in the AB as masking for the graphite technique lifted some paint. Getting close to the end there are always small accidents that you need to go back and fix -- I fixed the USAF marking earlier with a piece from the same decal in another kit.

Landing gear now underway, warload next.

Cheers,

Mike/TB379

Your NMF is really good and the shading looks very very good to me. You have one sweet looking 51 there my friend. I am going to have to check out that graphite thing you did it might be something that will work on my build. So keep goin I gotta see it finished and on her proud feet.

Hi all,

Here's the state of the build:

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I'm not sure how well the fine stuff will come across in the pictures. The panel wash is complete, the graphite panel variation is on, all masking is away with the exception of the Eduard canopy elements, and the exhausts are drilled out, painted and mounted. The prop is painted, decaled and assembled. Next come the paint touch-ups (quite a few), underwing load and landing gear, antenna and pitot tube, plus some pigment weathering. Note the 'F' in 'USAF' is damaged: the adhesion of the Tamiya decals is not great at all, and masking the graphite had its casualties. Two others were repairable with a deft repositioning of lifted fragments, but this one is not so easy. I'll take the letter from the equivalent decal in the kit I picked up for the Salvadorean bird and drop it over this one.

The tailband was the decal I tackled last, it seemed a perfect length and went on easier than I expected. There are a few small wrinkles that MicroSol has mostly eliminated.

This is my first NMF in many years and it's come out not too bad, especially as the whole process has been quite experimental.

Cheers,

Mike/TB379

Hi Raptordriver and all,

With your positive feedback on the paintjob I decided to forge ahead. I sprayed a contrasting metallic shade for the stainless steel (?) panel around the exhausts (acryclic, XF-16 darkened with XF-1), it doesn't show up too well even though I darkened the shade three times, but you can see it in different lighting conditions. This looked so effective that I was tempted to do that contrasting panel job all over the plane, but there's no time for that kind of ambitious stuff at the moment. I'll go with graphite and take it real easy.

The masking is mostly away and the decals are going down nicely, there are seven major decals to go plus twenty-four more stencil items, then I'm onto touch-ups and panel wash. Here she is:

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The only difficult decal so far has been the top wing insignia, it's taken lots of MicroSol to get it to conform over the aileron jack, and it'll need to be touched up also. I'll see how the tail band goes on, I'm guessing that'll be a fun experience too...

Cheers,

Mike/TB379

IL2windhawk I gotta tell ya those stripes really look sweet, and the weathering looks good to me. Did you airbrush that on or did you use a wash. Looks like you are very very close to being finished with a fine looking Mustang, cant wait to see it.

I made a little progress this morning, did some work on the wing root where the flaps fit under it, hopefully it won't look too funny with the flaps lowered. I still have more fitting to do on it but that will have to be done after the wings are attached. I am wandering though didn't the leading edge of the flaps have a hinge notch about half way down its length ? I do recall seeing a parked D model with a notch there but am not sure. Well herea a couple of WIP pictures so you can see what I have been up too.

As always comments are welcomed

Looks great Mike,Randy and IL2. I am liking this progress. Mike thats a really nice NMF.

Thanks IL2 I still am having trouble with my canopy joints, and I am trying a vacuformed canopy on this build. Will be another first for me.

Thunderbolt I am in agreement with IL2 she is looking great so hurry up and finish that paint job I wanna she her.

Hi all,

Thanks for the positive feedback on the paintjob. I'm still torn two ways -- sometimes I feel it looks too dull to pass muster as a Mustang, at others I think it has a good feel of weathered aluminum. I'm thinking I might do a secondary panel shade -- I'll test it and see if the flat aluminum has hardened the finish so it'll take masking. If it has, I can spray an extra coat of either a lighter or darker mix. Lighter I think, to bring up the reflectivity. We'll see how I go for time, there's only a week left!

My other build, the one with which I actually came aboard, was to be a Salvadorean AF Mustang of the 100 Hours War in 1969. However FSM have just solicited that project for the mag, so I'm thinking the correct etiquette is to pull the project from the forum, right?

I'll have the Korea F-51D done this week and photos all the way along.

Cheers,

Mike/TB379

TBolt your paint looks great!  I want to reach in and pull the masking off!  LOL - can't wait to see how she looks in the end.

vetteman42 wrote:

Is that Mr Surfacer you are using around the canopy  ?

Sorry for the late response, vetteman.
It is actually Tamiya fine primer.  I wasn't ready to prime the entire body yet, but I did need primer to help me visualize the seam around the vac canopy.

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I always try something new on each build.  This time: it's post shading.
I've been using Tamiya smoke to accentuate the panel lines.  It's not the best weathering job ever, but I'm pretty pleased with my first try.  Post shading is a bit difficult for me, but it was fun.  Sorry dont have a finished pic.  This one shows the difference between wings that do/don't have shading applied.

Wow Thunderbolt I think I can't...infact I know I can't wait to see your finished paint job, love this lines you have choosen. I like the idea of a flat black antiglare panel over the normal OD panel too.

I haven't had much chance to work on my 51 this week so lastnight while waiting for BSG to come on the tube, I decided to do a bit of trimming and fitting on the wing, you know the usual get it ready to glue sort of thing. One of the things that drives me nuts are the flat wings these old Revell kits have, even so I said " Self ? We aren't gonna do it this time, and we will build a flat wing for Momma because she likes em that way." So with that declariation I took up my excato knife and file and started trimming. With the tv show being a half hour away figured I had planty of time to mess with it. So with that in mind and having already told self how things were gonna be, I set to work. Well it didn't take long for self to forget what I had told him and the next thing I know I am scribing the flaps from the wing and filling the gaps with evergreen strips and sanding and shaping away. Morale of the story "SELF" dont listen so good at times <grin>. So now I offer up a WIP picture for you.

Now about the rivet detail on those flaps.................

Hi guys,

Here's the Mustang with the AG areas sprayed into Tamiya XF-1:

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And with the areas outlined in thin strips of low-tack tape:

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And finally with the black areas fully masked:

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I went on and finished masking the wheelwells (always so fiddly!) and made sure every hole and such had its blob of Maskol. The rudder trim tab was also blown into black and masked, and the lights under the starboard wingtip were masked with the items from the Eduard set. I opted for an emamel spray job, and agonised for a long time over the mix.

I looked at my references over and over and it definitely seems the Mustangs were weather-worn. Dozens were in Japan awaiting scrapping when the war broke out, and were hurreidly returened to duty. 150 were recovered from ANG units, mothballed and shipped out to Korea aboard USS Boxer, and all had seen heavy duty since they were built, not more than six years earlier.

Maybe it's the filmstocks of the time, or the generally appalling weather conditions, or the lighting on the day, but those planes looked drab compared to their appearance in WWII. Even new F-80s were taking a beating at the hands of the weather. I knew I didn't want a bright, shiny finish, so I mixed Humbrol Silver Fox 11 with Humbrol Flat Aluminum 56 at a ratio of 7:3, then thinned by 50%. The paint went on readily enough, here's the result:

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And:

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Okay, it's not Alclad or SnJ or Metallizer, but what do you all think? Is she too weather-beaten? Is the finish too dull? My plans are to apply the decals, then Promodeller panel wash, and finish with graphite for panel variation. The use of the Flat Aluminum both pulled back the shine and toughened the surface to I'm expecting it to withstand Post-a-note masking for the graphite treatment. I found to my disgust that even Tamiya tape will lift Humbrol or Testor Chrome Silver in its pure state, or at least de-surface it.

Comments and impressions most welcome,

Cheers,

Mike/TB379