1/48 Tamiya F4U-1 Bird Cage Corsair

[Grant Barr]

Now I've called the Bf-109B as finished I have started on the next kit - Tamiya's Bird Cage Corsair. I won't go into too much about the kit - it is quite well represented by other members. I have decided to bling it up a little bit with a QuickBoost engine and some selected bits from the Eduard cockpit PE set.

Still undecided about paint scheme, I have a number of HGW decal sets I could use or even stick to the kit paint scheme. I do prefer the tri-colour schemes (blue/light blue/white) so it will probably markings that go with this scheme.

I have made a start on the engine and the cockpit. I have just the one snapshot of the engine as of tonight.

Sorry that it is a really crappy photo - not sure what has happened with the light levels. Will have to take another shot tomorrow perhaps. Anyway, I did take to the basic QuickBoost moulding and added the centre and outer rings which appear to provide the routing/guide for the plug leads, which I added from lead wire. It's really hard to see it in this shot but I thought the wires turned out really well. I have a couple of additional doo-dads to add to the front of the engine and some additional oil wash to apply and it should be done.

For the cockpit I have cleaned up and assembled the core components ready for paint. Once I get a bit further along on this segment I'll post some shots of progress.

I'm really hoping to complete this one in a much shorter time than the 109 - two years is a tad too long to work on a single kit (admittedly it was an intermittent 2 years...). Fingers crossed it will be months rather than years!

As always, thanks for looking in my project. Cheers!

 

[Wurger]

 

[Airframes]

Good stuff Grant.
I've taken the liberty of adjusting the brightness and contrast of your engine pic, might save you taking another shot.

 

[Wurger]

Well done Terry.

 

[Crimea_River]

Great looking power plant Grant. All cameras compensate lighting levels to a neutral grey so if the subject you are capturing has a mostly light or white background, the camera will darken it to make the light background more grey. If there is a dark object in that white field, then it will become even darker after compensation. Avoiding very light or white backgrounds will help.

 

[fubar57]

Good start

 

[Gnomey]

Good work so far!

 

[Grant Barr]

Good stuff Grant.
I've taken the liberty of adjusting the brightness and contrast of your engine pic, might save you taking another shot.

Thanks very much for that Terry. I did think about doing that last night, but by the time I posted it I really didn't feel like fluffing about with it. Nice work with the pic and thanks again for taking the time to brighten it.

 

[Grant Barr]

Great looking power plant Grant. All cameras compensate lighting levels to a neutral grey so if the subject you are capturing has a mostly light or white background, the camera will darken it to make the light background more grey. If there is a dark object in that white field, then it will become even darker after compensation. Avoiding very light or white backgrounds will help.

You are dead on Andy. It was the first time I used a white background on any of my shots and did not even think about the consequences. I took some more photos earlier today on the cutting mat and "presto" - no problems. I think I have to get some of that blue cardboard that Geo fubar57 uses as background in a lot of his shots.

 

[Crimea_River]

Yeah that's a popular one.

 

[Grant Barr]

So, first thing this morning and before I realised that Terry Airframes had very kindly fixed my photography blunder, I had taken a couple of new shots of the engine. Added them below - time now to go and add the missing bits and dirty it all up a bit more!

Thanks again to everyone for the positive feedback. Cheers

 

[Wurger]

 

[Gnomey]

Nicely done so far!

 

[Grant Barr]

Some minor progress to report - but better than none at all. A base coat of silver and then clear enamel applied to the interior surfaces.

There is a method I am following here. The next coat will be a light spray of black - applied directionally so that it creates some shadows/highlights. Once the final interior yellow/green is applied my hope is that the shadows will be apparent underneath. Then, once the final coat is on I want to see if I can put scratches and worn areas down to the silver base coat to make it look a bit scuffed and used. That's the theory - let's hope it works in practice.

Thanks again for looking in - cheers!

 

[Wurger]

 

[Crimea_River]

I used the "scratch to silver" technique several years ago on a Spitfire wingroot and was only partly happy with the result. It's hard not to scratch the silver off as well in the process so it's tricky. In order to give you a fighting chance, the silver would ideally be a durable lacquer based paint and the topcoat some kind of acrylic. Or, you could try the "hairspray technique" (Google it - there are lots of demos).

Note that the early Corsairs used a salmon coloured primer, details of which can be found here: Early war F4U-1 Birdcage Corsair salmon primer questions

D Dana Bell would know what to use here.

 

[Dana Bell]

Hi Grant,

Crimea River is right about the Birdcage's interior colors - you're not going to find much Interior Green.

For the earliest production aircraft there was a coat of untinted zinc chromate (yellow) on most surfaces. A second primer coat would have been tinted with Indian Red (iron oxide) to give what Larry Webster labeled Salmon. The cockpit would have been Dull Dark Green.

All this began to change toward the end of birdcage production. The Navy proscribed further use of Salmon; Vought was permitted to used two coats of untinted zinc chromate (yellow). About the same time the Navy called for an end of Dull Dark Green, with Interior Green to be used instead. Vought discovered an unused stock of aluminized zinc chromate (candy apple green) and received permission to use that up before switching to Interior Green cockpits, Either way, many cockpit components continued (such as rudder pedals, seats, some fixture) to be painted Dull Dark Green for over a year.

Main gear wheel wells and doors were usually painted with the adjacent camouflage lacquer, though there were exceptions. Tail wheel door interiors were left with two primer coats (Salmon or zinc chromatte yellow).

One other thing on wear - the leading edges of birdcage Corsair wings were puttied and smoothed, similar to Mustang wings. Since most maintainance crews stood on the forward part of the wing to access the engine bay and refueling port, you're more likely to see white putty than aluminum skin under the chipped camouflage.

Cheers,



Dana

 

[Grant Barr]

I used the "scratch to silver" technique several years ago on a Spitfire wingroot and was only partly happy with the result. It's hard not to scratch the silver off as well in the process so it's tricky. In order to give you a fighting chance, the silver would ideally be a durable lacquer based paint and the topcoat some kind of acrylic. Or, you could try the "hairspray technique" (Google it - there are lots of demos).

Thanks for the tips Andy. I was hoping that the clear coat of enamel would be strong enough to resist the scratches I put in the top coat. Maybe not. I have to think about that a bit more.
Thanks also for the tip re: interior colour - this was all new information to me as I was going off some photos I had which were obviously of much later aircraft. No stress just yet as I don't have the paint I need for zinc chromate anyway.

 

[Grant Barr]

Crimea River is right about the Birdcage's interior colors - you're not going to find much Interior Green.

For the earliest production aircraft there was a coat of untinted zinc chromate (yellow) on most surfaces. A second primer coat would have been tinted with Indian Red (iron oxide) to give what Larry Webster labeled Salmon. The cockpit would have been Dull Dark Green.

Hi Dana, thanks so much for your very comprehensive reply. My knowledge on Corsair colours and pretty much Corsairs in general has just grown exponentially! Your information confirms that I really need to settle on the final markings to help set the timeframe, which in turn will help resolve the interior colour issues. So much for an easy and quick build!! I don't think that every detail I add will be historically accurate, but I should/will try to build a reasonable approximation. Looks like I need to do a bit more reading on Salmon and Dull Dark Green.

Thanks again for sharing your knowledge.

 

[Grant Barr]

Ok - slight delay in proceedings. Had some home repairs & maintenance tasks that took up way too much time!!!

Following on from the kind advice from both Andy and Dana, I did some reading on the interweb with respect to cockpit colours and primer colours for early Corsairs. It turns out that Dull Dark Green is a very elusive colour - with many theories on what it actually looked like and which manufacturer makes the best match. So, with my head hurting, I decided that I would acquire Dull Dark Green from AK Interactive (turns out this was an enamel and not acrylic - which is another sad tale to be told another time). In trying to see if this matched any references I could find it seemed not quite "dull" enough so I mixed in a small quantity of Mr Color Dark Iron which seemed to work ok.

On the subject of the Salmon primer I am still reading and researching, but think I will end up mixing a colour that I hope will be a good match based on some photos of a recovered early Corsair I stumbled on. I know it will not be a great reference - but given all the uncertainty on colours who knows if I am wrong or right????

Some photos of the completed cockpit tub are below. I am reasonably happy with the colour - possibly still not dull enough, but I will claim its a bit lighter to allow for the effect of "scale"...

I am really happy with all the photo etched details added via the Eduard details set. I have finally mastered handing these tiny pieces, having recognised that going slower and being more patient gives much better results. Where I do need to experiment more is in the use of washes to dirty up the surfaces. You can see the "tide" marks in some shots - I can't easily remove them because I forgot to gloss clear coat before hand - doh!

In terms of scratching the green back to reveal the silver underneath - Andy was correct . In some areas scratching the green back worked really well in revealing the silver underneath, in others I couldn't get through the green for love nor money, and in other areas it went straight back to plastic. All up a pretty patchy result - not to worry as it's all part of the learning experience!

The next step will be to seal all this with a semi-gloss clear coat ready for installation into the fuselage.

Thanks to everyone again for the advice/guidance and for looking in on my project.