Need Color of Inside Main Landing Gear Covers for P-47D

herman1rg · Jan 3, 2023

Skyediamonds said:
LoL…. I don't know about Tungsten tips but the ball pointed pens served my purpose. You should've seen the facial expression on the cashier's face as I purchased dozens of bags of ball point pens.

I lied & said I was a teacher buying pens for my students. It seemed to work.

If they were BIC crystal then In 1961, the stainless steel ball was replaced with much harder Tungsten Carbide

Snautzer01 · Jan 3, 2023

They look very good.

SaparotRob · Jan 3, 2023

Remember the Bic ballpoint pen commercials from the '60's? They would fire one from a long gun into a block of wood. The tip of the pen would stick out from the other side. Then someone would write with it. The Bic "textured dyamite", or something, ball. Your build trick reminded me of that. In fact pen tips have been used as bullets.
I wonder how many takes it took to get one that worked.

DarrenW · Jan 4, 2023

Skyediamonds said:
DarrenW:

I kqnow exactly how you feel about having a factory-fresh warbird out the door. I built & super-detailed a Guillow's P-51D-25 Mustang. I posted several build threads how I detailed from total scratch: the cockpit, machine gun bay & of course the wheel well interiors.

As my research turned out, there were conflicting data on just about everything including cockpit interiors (about six different seats alone), wheel well interiors, machine gun bays & the all-aluminum finish versus the zinc. I decided to arbitrarily choose an all zinc main landing gear covers but the zinc wheel well covers were left with a wide strip of natural metal.

This model was covered in an aluminum foil system with a peel off sticky backing which resulted a true factory finish but with the caveat that the wings were not puttied with bondo & painted aluminum paint -as they left the factory- but rather the entire set of wings were highly polished as if the plane was lovingly restored by its modern-day owner.

The last two photos shows how the inner wheel well doors were zinced & left with all natural metal - just the opposite of each other. So I just mentally closed my eyes & went with the all natural metal in the center.

I've enclosed a photo to illustrate my model.

Yes, this is a Guillow's model that is usually built up in a skeletal balsa frame wrapped in tissue. I just took it to another level.
Cheers,

Gary

That's a beautiful aircraft you have there Gary! Thanks for your insight. I guess there are so many conflicting examples in existence that trying to be 100 percent correct with colors could eventually make one go stir crazy (found this same thing to be true while building models of the F6F and F4U).

On a side note, I mentioned earlier in this thread that I was going to build a D-25 T-bolt but after noticing that the kit prop was a Curtiss and not Hamilton Standard I guess I'll actually be building a D-26 variant instead.

Maxrobot1 · Jan 19, 2023

Here's a color photo.

Another shot.

herman1rg · Jan 19, 2023

FINALLY color(colour) pics for a model he's building...................................................

fubar57 · Jan 19, 2023

That bottom photo, the landing gear looks like YZG but I'm on my phone

DarrenW · Feb 2, 2023

Maxrobot1 said:
Here's a color photo.

View attachment 703077

Another shot.

View attachment 703078

Thank you for the great photos Sir.

I have another question however. I've seen indications that there was a darker strip of metal leading from the waste gate all the way back to the front of the turbocharger exhaust. In the second photo I can see this and it doesn't appear to be staining from the waste gate because the outline seems too straight and defined.

Here is a modern flying example with this same dark strip. Can someone confirm that this was standard on production machines during the war?

Geedee · Feb 2, 2023

DarrenW said:
Thank you for the great photos Sir.

I have another question however. I've seen indications that there was a darker strip of metal leading from the waste gate all the way back to the front of the turbocharger exhaust. In the second photo I can see this and it doesn't appear to be staining from the waste gate because the outline seems too straight and defined.

Here is a modern flying example with this same dark strip. Can someone confirm that this was standard on production machines during the war?

That dark strip is Stainless Steel paneling and is reflecting the color from the floor. SS was used to behind exhaust's to counteract the sheer heat produced by the motors. Also used on the P-51 were the phrase ' The Money Stripe' comes from when you see the 'blueing' on the SS

greatgonzo · Feb 2, 2023

You can find examples of D-25 with CE props. The screws were interchangeable with minor additional changes involved and these changes did happen in the service.

The stainless steel protection included the turbine outlet.

tomo pauk · Feb 2, 2023

FWIW, this is what I have:

DarrenW · Feb 2, 2023

Geedee said:
That dark strip is Stainless Steel paneling and is reflecting the color from the floor. SS was used to behind exhaust's to counteract the sheer heat produced by the motors. Also used on the P-51 were the phrase ' The Money Stripe' comes from when you see the 'blueing' on the SS

So how would be the best way to recreate this strip of metal on a model airplane, would steel paint do the trick or would that not look authentic? Was it that noticeable in most situations and should I even bother?

Need Color of Inside Main Landing Gear Covers for P-47D

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