**** DONE: 1/48 P-51D "Wild Will" - Allied Manufactured Aircraft

[Crimea_River]

Thanks all. It's odd what happened with that paint. Initial coat of Tamiya black, then oversprayed with a mix of Tamiya paints to achieve interior green. The stuff, after a day of curing, stuck to my fingers like it was just sprayed on.

Nice going there Andy.

One question though. Wasn't the fuel tank painted black in the P-51?

Instructions say either colour Dave and trolling the net showed some pretty good modelers going with interior green. Most probably black in hindsight though so I might brush over the visible surfaces.

 

[Aaron Brooks Wolters]

Looking real good Andy! Your work is always amazing.

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks Brooks. Tomorrow will see the fuselage halves come together. On the Hasegawa kit, I need to get the exhausts in first and will need to decide if I'll drill out the stubs on the shrouded exhausts.

 

[Wurger]

 

[Crimea_River]

Decided to drill out the exhausts which was quite tricky as they are pretty small. The few slips you see have been repaired and the other one turned out well.

The exhausts were then glued into the fuselage halves and set aside. Attention turned to filling in the panel lines in the wing. For this I used CA glue which was filed then sanded and polished. Below is the port upper wing partly done. The lines on the inboard side have been filled and sanded and those on the outer portion have the CA applied which can just be seen in the pic.

More needs to be done on the wings before I post again but in the meantime, the fuselage halves were glued together and the upper seams leaned up. The seam behind the cockpit has a bit of primer applied to fill some minor indents but the front one came out well. However, I'll need to add the cowl seam and fasteners here anyway.

Hope to show you the completed wings tomorrow for this one and for Lambie II on Sunday.

 

[Airframes]

Nice work Andy, especially on those shrouded exhausts. I know how small, and how tricky they are, with that shape, to handle and drill !

 

[Wayne Little]

 

[Wurger]

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks guys.

Another bit of work will be to cut out the flaps which Hasegawa chose to mold in the up position. The Tamiya kit is much better in this regard and has much more realistic wheel wells. I won't be touching those though.

 

[Gnomey]

Looks good so far Andy!

 

[Crimea_River]

Thank-you Hugh.

The panel line filling has been completed enough for checking with primer so I moved on to the next steps. I had a little trouble rescribing the gun bay doors and had to fix a couple of points.

To prepare for cutting out the flaps, I dry fit the wings to the fuselage to confirm the fit and then added these spacers in to keep the shape with the flaps removed.

The flaps were then cut out and a piece of plastic rod that I had sliced in half was then glued to the open end of the flap. The upper edge on the wing was also filed to a sharp edge so that the flap will fit nicely with a minimal step. Another piece of rod was glued in to maintain the proper gap in the wing.

That's it for today guys. Thanks for checking in.

 

[fubar57]

Very nice Andy. I like the addition to the front of the flap, but how, pray tell, did you cute the tube?

Geo

 

[Crimea_River]

Very carefully.

Actually, this particular rod is hollow and fairly soft so I just carefully ran a scalpel along the top until it penetrated and then did the same to the bottom.

 

[Wayne Little]

Done good Andy!

 

[Airframes]

Nicely done Andy, and a lot more tricky than it looks, as I found out on a 1/32nd scale Mustang and, more recently, on the 'Fennec' (which I must return to and finish !).
Are you going to cut out the oval hinge access slots ?

 

[JKim]

Awesome flap surgery Andy! You are inspiring me to do some cutting of my own in the future.

 

[Catch22]

Nice!

 

[Crimea_River]

Thanks all.

Are you going to cut out the oval hinge access slots ?

Dat be da plan Terry, but after I glue it all to the wing so it's stable.

 

[Airframes]

Yep, best way. I tried doing it before fitting, on the old Revell 1/32nd scale 'B', and made a right b@lls of it, so had to start all over again. Did the slots after fitting to the wing second time around !

 

[Crimea_River]

Moving on, the next step to making these dropped flaps look authentic is to deal with what's exposed at the wing root area. The pic below shows what this area looks like before modifying it.

On the actual plane, the flaps extended underneath the wing root fairing rather than being flush with the edge. This meant that the vertical wall under the fairing had to be cut out and the edge of the fairing filed to a knife edge. This left a large opening that needed to be filled and I glued in some plastic card to hide the hole. Below is how this area turned out when I was done.

The upper surface of the flap also needed to be extended from the break line with the fairing and this was accomplished by gluing on some more sheet styrene. Below shows the flap dry fitted in place.

Next will be the other side and then the flap upper surfaces will need to have the additions blended in so there are no visible seams. Thanks for stopping by guys and for your valued feedback.