The P-51"mustang" Group Build. 2008

HEy everyone, sorry I been gone so long. Swimming is over, so I have time to talk, first, hi vetteman42 sure you can join I really like the revell kit. I built it twice.

IL2, the paint job looks outstanding so far, and a good Idea to paint on the "N".

Harv, Yes I would try to change the fins I think that would work.

Mike glad to see you started.

IL2windhawk - thanks for the info! no need to ever apologize for late replies, I also do not check in here every day.. real life and work has a way of intruding into my hobby! I will file away the idea and try it down the road,thanks again!

And nice paint job so far...

vetteman42 - welcome to the build! one of the forums has a sticky on uploading pics.. you need an online picture upload site (free), most use photobucket.

It's hard to believe it, but I've actually laid down some paint on the Mustang Mk.II!  It's going pretty fast now, faster than expected.

I tried to do some pre-shading (still new at this), but it was entirely lost in the gray coat.  I just couldn't help but add 'just a little more' until it was all gone!  Maybe I'll try post-shading when I'm done.

In truth, the camo has just a bit more color contrast than I was shooting for, but in the photo it looks even more contrast.  It seems that everyone has their own interpretations for British camo colors, but I settled on the published Tamiya acrylic paint ratios for mine.  I'm still debating on whether I will top coat one of the colors with a lighter shade, perhaps as part of my post-shading effort.

One interesting part of this paint job is the squadron letter "N".  I was paranoid about the decal and paint colors for the "sky" not matching up, so I actually masked this letter with thin strips of tape.  It came out much better than I anticipated, but I certainly would not try it with any of the more-complex letter shapes.

Still have to paint the canopy frames too.

Very cool idea.

Hi I would like to join your BG if I may. I will be building a Revell 1/48 P-51D with some PE and a vacuformed canopy. This one is being built for my better half and will be foil covered with custom nose art just for her. She does after all allow me the time, space, and encouragement in my building endevers. I do have some work done and will post some pictures as soon as I am allowed to join and I figure out how to upload them.

Thanks

Randy

JMart wrote:

Will the balsa trick work with landing gear? My poor old  mustang's landing gear is leaning over after a year or so.. need to break off the LG, bore a small hole, insert a lenght of paperclip and re-attach. Been thinking how to "anchor" the wire o nthe body of the plane.

Sorry for the late reply, JMart.  I just saw your question.

As for fortifying your landing gear, I think you could work something out.  If the wing was filled with balsa, you could conceviable secure a metal rod into the balsa material, then drill out the center of the landing gear strut and install the rod.  The difficult parts is figuring out how you will get balsa into the completed wing.  Maybe cut out the wheel wells?

looking good! look forward to the rest

Hi all,

Quick update, I have the trim sprayed and masked, and will hopefully be spraying the prop and AG panel shortly. I'm leaning toward an acrylics paintjob, even though they're that bit coarser than enamels they seem to have a very tough finish, and that's attractive, especially if weathering for a really beaten-up look like the Korean weather delivered.

" border="0" />

Sorry about the focus, the camera focussed on the background, not the subject!

Cheers,

Mike/TB379

IL2windhawk wrote:

dupes wrote: Neat trick! How'd you pull this off? Did you have to add extra styrene inside the fuselage to drill through to have more for the rod to "hold" against? Before I assembled the fuselage halves, I filled that area of the fuselage with balsa, then saturated it with thin-CA.  This results in a very hard substrate that you can drill into. Here's a photo of the inside of the B-58 from IMS2

Hey IL thats pretty neat, do you do that to all your planes?

raptordriver , navypitsnipe, hkshooter - Thanks for the tips... I will try super clean, once it gets atad warmer outside, dont want to do the de-chroming inside.

IL2windhawk -very nicely done, canopy loosk awesome!

dupes wrote:

Neat trick! How'd you pull this off? Did you have to add extra styrene inside the fuselage to drill through to have more for the rod to "hold" against?

Before I assembled the fuselage halves, I filled that area of the fuselage with balsa, then saturated it with thin-CA.  This results in a very hard substrate that you can drill into.

Here's a photo of the inside of the B-58 from IMS2

IL2windhawk wrote:

Neat trick! How'd you pull this off? Did you have to add extra styrene inside the fuselage to drill through to have more for the rod to "hold" against?

Thanks Rap,
In this case I think I got very lucky.  In one place of the vac part I sanded it down so much that it feels like bubble wrap when I press on it. 

If it had been even a little bit more out-of-profile, I would have had to cut out that area and fill the hole somehow.  Thank goodness I didn't!  I'm also lucky I didn't sand through by accident.

Ya go UTES! to bad we are outnumbered 3 to 1, in our swim meets.

Thanks for showing how you do your magic tricks. You seem you have mastered filling seams.

Here's one last thing that I just realized has turned out pretty well.  It's a before and after shot of a brass tube that I installed into the model before I closed up the fuselage.  Recall that my build will be mounted "in-flight".  This arrangement has a slight snug-fit with the support rod, which will hopefully make the attachement to the base secure enough to hold the model in place, yet remain non-permanent so i can remove it and fly it around the house when nobody is looking :)

That's how I roll,  LOL   GO UTES!

I am delighted with the current state of my build as it seems that all the hard parts are now completed.  Now I can look forward to finally painting this bird.  Here are some progress photos:

This is a progress photo of blending the vac-form canopy to the kit.
 

And here is the end result: a continuouse seam-free joint.  To acheive this, I performed several putty, blend, and prime iterations (on the canopy section only) until all traces of the seam were gone.  I say this often, but if you guys havent used Tamiya Fine Primer (spray can), do yourselves a favor and get a can.  This stuff is my secret weapon for erasing seams, because it sands so nicely.  It perfect for eliminating those "barely visible if you hold it in the right light" seams.

And now the whole model is primered.  I have just a few straggler nuisance areas to sand or putty, then I will begin painting.
 

Well guys, I'm back in business.

This is THIRD canopy I have glued on to this kit, but I think I've finally accomplished what I'm after.  I rebuilt a lot of the cockpit detail before bonding this canopy, then I puttied and primered this section of the kit to look for imperfections in the bond line.  I found some, LOL.   Fortunately, they should be fairly easy to take care of.  It won't be long now before I'm ready to primer the entire bird.

raptordriver wrote:

Good to see you back Jmart for the chrome on maybe you can wash it in acetone.

Don't use acetone on the kit or you will no longer have a kit. Soak is in Simple Green or Super Clean to remove the chrome.

Lol I have forgotton about my own GB, looks like theres four months to go.

raptordriver wrote:

Good to see you back Jmart for the chrome on maybe you can wash it in acetone.

try spraying it with a good layer of testors dull coat, i use this technique with alot of the chrome rims on the car models i build and it usually looks good, worse comes to worse you can still strip the dull coat and chrome plating off and start from scratch, as for that particular kit i know nothing of how good it is. I've been out of the game for a while on ALL 3 of my group builds due to my deployment and current shipyard period, but i'm slowly getting back into my routine. i changed up from building the tamiya d model in 1/48 with Ridge Runner III markings and have instead opted for revell's big beautiful doll kit (still in Ridge Runner III livery), in order to avoid cutting the nose decals apart for the engine to show through i will instead put a Packard Merlin (super-detailed) on static display next to the completed 'stang. Good to be back

Been awhile since I mustered in this GB, harsh summer/fall for me....

great job on the first page! No such things as too many mustangs...

john - top notch work as usual. I really enjoy your builds and blogs.

IL2windhawk - great work, your pilot came out superb.

Jester75 - great job, love the stripes paint job. Superb photography

tempestjohnny - really nice job in such a small scale.

I will start my Tamiya P-51D 8AF soon... I also have the "Silver Color Plated" version, which means the spues are 'chrome", in some attempt to mimic NMF I guess. Anyone has any experience with that beast? I was thinking of either striping the chrome or Ebaying the kit...

Andrew the kit was decent.  Fit was good but some things about the molding just aren't right.  BTW THere are two different moldings.  The one with DOWN FOR DOUBLE on the box is the one I built.  I also have the other one which looks much worse that has the Korean War Mustang on it.