**** DONE: 1/48 Curtis P-36C Hawk – From WW1 to WW2 GB (1 Viewer)

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Coming along nicely. Glad you like the gap filling technique - I was hooked as soon as I tried it. Don't overdo the Cutex though as it will eventually melt the plastic.
 
Absolutely Andy. It really cuts down on waiting for the putty to dry, sanding and saving the panel lines. Going to let this dry over night, do a 380km round trip in a snowstorm tomorrow and then paint the panel lines to see if I need more putty.

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Geo
 
What a ride Bill. Lots of snow on the road and when a semi went by...woo woo woo woooo, white out. Only two retards tried to take me out and with my first time ever in 28 yrs snow tires, a steady 105kph down and back. On the model front, some good, some bad. The main body is done and ready for primer. The bad...Hobbycraft wants me to trap the engine inside two cowling halves without the benefit of engine attachment points. Also needed to be attached inside the top of the cowling halves is a 3/4" long intake along the split. I'm guessing you then glue the engine to the front of the fuselage and then glue the cowling to the fuselage.(It's impossible to glue the engine first as there is no room for the intake to be installed afterwards.) Anyhoo, whilst trying to juggle this together with five thumbs and 2 1/2 left hands, I dropped one of the cowling halves on the floor and when I went to move to look "SNAP!!!" for it, I became sad. It's glued together and drying right now. It'll need some filler and I'll try and rescribe some lost panel lines. Photos later.

Geo
 
Wish I could remember how I did that when I built this kit many moons ago...When you mentioned the bizarre instructions, all I could recall is that it was a pain.
You are doing fine, Hobbycraft might be your nitch!
 
I've used this procedure on all three P-36/Hawk 75's I've built and it's worked well

-Join the cowl halves and do any filling and sanding necessary
-Add intake to inside
-Glue engine mount and engine to firewall
-Test fit cowl over engine. You'll have to wiggle it on turning it to the right or left to get the oval shaped rear opening to fit around the engine, its a pretty tight fit.
-When ready to glue, I used Testors tube glue. Put a very small bead of it around the perimeter of the firewall a couple of mm in from the outside so it just catches the inside edge of the cowl (I used a toothpick) and press the cowl in place. This is actually pretty strong, none have ever fallen off on me.

On my last Hawk 75 I used bits of blue tack to hold it in place wile doing the camo painting and only glued it on at the last after all the weathering was done. This made it easy to do the streaking back from under the cowl.
 
Just gone through that same process with the Gladiator Glenn, only thing holding the engine in is touches of glue to the exhaust pipes that come forward within the cowling frame.
 
You know Glenn. I tried your method first and for the life of me I couldn't get the cowl over the engine. I tried it Hobbycrafts way and the engine promptly fell out of the glued together cowling. SIGH! All is good. The model is now primed and waiting for paint. Looking at the way I was going to paint it(the bottom profile on pg.1) I realize it is wrong, the wing tips are the wrong color. The decal sheet mentions orange and lavender, that is not going to happen. The other color profile is close but the real photos show three colors on the cowling. I'm posting the three photos again and would value all of your opinions. I'm thinking that it starts out white on the tail and the photo of the aircraft heading right leads me to believe there are six colors. The profile at the bottom could be modified at the cowling to reflect this.

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Thanks in advance for your help and advice.

Geo
 
Don't know what happened with the cowl George. I know it was a very tight fit for me. A six color camo should be a challenge, the most I've ever done was a four. As for color I'd pick the color you think looks best and follow the lines of the camo from the photos. There's only a couple of color shots of the P-36's at the 1939 air races and the one your doing is so far down the line-up in those pics that you can't even tell which one it is so no one really knows what the colors were. Here's one of then so maybe you can get an idea of the color paints they were using on other planes.
 

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