Thanks for all of the positive vibes and comments guys! This build is approaching completion and I'm curious to see how the big bird looks when all of the sub-assemblies are attached.
I've applied a coat of Alclad Aqua Gloss to serve as a base for the decals. It's funny how much a gloss coat can change the appearance (much darker and the pre-shading really stands out). Tamiya has a full complement of stencils for the P-47D and I spent a full evening on those alone. Unfortunately, Tamiya decals are THICK and no amount of solution will make them thinner. Hopefully, subsequent clear coats will knock down the edges. The big wing insignias were next and thankfully the Rising Decal set is much thinner. Still, some portions of the decals did not want to settle into the panel lines and I may have to use a sharp xacto to get satisfactory results.
The bottom wing insignias went right over the lights so I had to cut out little pieces of decals to reveal the lights and touch the area up with white and blue paint.
Before moving onto the rest of the decals, I decided to address the canopy frames. Pictures from the 57th FG website seem to indicate that many of the P-47D's had their canopy frames painted yellow. It looks like most of the yellow got worn off on the Wog so I decided to use the hairspray technique once again to depict the remnants of yellow paint. Clear coat has already been applied to preserve the olive drab so the next step is mask off the canopy using Tamiya tape and small Post-Its.
Hairspray is decanted into a small container and sprayed through an airbrush. Once that dries, yellow paint is applied. It doesn't look like much, if any, yellow paint remained on the front windscreen so I elected to concentrate on the rear of the canopy.
Using a small brush dampened with water, the yellow parts of the canopy is brushed over and over until the yellow starts lifting away. Again, I got inconsistent results and I'm not sure why. I don't quite understand the relationship between the amount of hairspray applied, how long is supposed to dry and how long the chipped layer is supposed to dry. Unlike the fuselage where I allowed the OD to dry for a complete day before chipping, I did all of the canopy chipping in one session. I assumed the less time I gave the yellow paint, the easier it would be to get it off. But it seemed the opposite was happening. The barely dry yellow took lots of effort to get off, often resorting to a sharp toothpick to get it going. Hence, the pattern of the chipping is much "coarser" than I intended. Ah well... still lots to figure out when it comes to this method.
After the canopy work was finished, I resumed applying decals for The Wog. Does anyone know what a "wog" is? At any rate, this is one heavily decorated warbird.
The port side still needs to be decaled.
Another view of the undersides with the decaling finished.
After I complete the decaling, I still have some detail painting that I want to do. I'll take a fresh look and fix any discernable painting glitches, add some light chipping with silver paint, do some detail painting on the undersides at the exhaust port areas and then give it another gloss coat so seal prior to weathering.