Tamiya 1:32 Corsair F4U-1A Build

Glad to give you a boost up the learning curve...

Happy Monday! Unlike most mortals, I like Mondays as much if not more than weekends. That's because of my deal with my wife where I do nothing in the basement on weekends. So Mondays are when I can build models and that's fun for me. More fun than watching college football of schools of which I care not.

Picked up the Life Color Sea Blue and Intermediate Blue for the Corsair. And while I was there I was given a present; another Tamiya Corsair. This one was a "Bird Cage" version that was produced by Tamiya a bit earlier. It was not complete and was from an estate. Missing was the cockpit, the lower wing details, and most importantly, the engine. I would have loved to have built another engine to display along side. I did, however, get the wing fold parts (a dollar short and a day late) and the landing gear parts, of which I did use one this afternoon.

My session today was spent assembling those very intricate main landing gear. Many parts are included and there's a steel shaft that is glued into the two halves of the main strut. This stiffens the assembly nicely and I'm sure that it will support the plane as it should. Being a tail-dragger, no nose weight is needed to have it sit correctly. I drilled the jack cylinder to prepare it to receive the hydraulic lines. Which, BTW, I find that it looks like the middle line from the valve didn't go through the wing bulkhead. Instead, it goes through the main spar and enters the gear chamber. This tells me that it's the one that operates the jack. So I prepared the valve by attempting to pull the solder pipe out of the wing bulkhead and re-route it through a hole in the main spar that I drilled. But the line was too short! So I tried to pull the line out of the brass ferrule, but the middle and bottom ferrules broke free of the valve body. So now I'm in the middle of reattaching everything... and then I ran out of time.

The gear will be painted off the model since there's a decal that goes on the strut that will be easier to apply when they're separate. There's very little of the oleo piston showing so using the Chrome Pen or Bare Metal Foil is going to be very challenging. You don't have to rig a break line on this model. It's nicely molded by Tamiya.

We're heading to PA for Thanksgiving so I'll see y'all on the Monday after the holiday. Everyone have a pleasant, happy, satisfying and very safe Thanksgiving!!

Nice looking gear though I'm skeptical that the oleo would be fully depressed like that on an actual aircraft.

Well, from looking at this image, they are pretty compressed. In fact, it looks like Tamiya has nailed it. I suspect, they have a lot of travel for carrier landings.



And here they are fully extended.

You're right. I went back and checked some pics in my photo library and they do seem to be almost bottomed out.

I've been following along, it looks really great!

Looks great so far!

Impressive looking gear

Thanks guys!

Well I'm back after a nice visit with my son and family in State College, PA. He's building a custom home and we were able to see it almost finished (move in is Dec 14). It was a massive undertaking and I helped a bit by providing some detailed SketchUp renderings of rooms before they were complete to help in the decision making.

Got back in the shop this afternoon and finished up piping and building the undercarriage. I was able to attach the wheel door cylinders to the doors and then to the plane and still do the piping. I pre-drilled the cylinders to accept the piping while they were off the parts. I then masked the bottom and sprayed Insignia White (Tamiya Flat White an a touch of Flat Black). With that drying I started building the inboard flap system.

It was good that I took a break from this build since it was not difficult to fix the piping that had come loose, whereas before we left, I was definitely struggling. It's not quite accurate, but it's busy enough that no one will ever see the missing lines. For example, the main gear jack having only a deploy line and not a retract one. I also don't have the right amount of pressure and drain leads going into the airframe.



I then was almost ready to spray the bottom, only to catch myself. I hadn't sealed up the holes to prevent Insignia White from getting into that beautiful engine, those neat exhaust pipes and the inside of the tail wheel housing. I used dampened paper towels to plug up the cowl flaps, the engine front and the inside of the tail wheel housing. I trimmed Tamiya masking tape to plug the exhaust opening.



I then airbrushed the white on the bottom. Since this is the first layer of the three-color scheme, there's no need to mask the separation line. I will go back and do all the detail painting. For example: the flexible hydraulics are black rubber hoses vs. airframe color for the fixed lines. Some of the gear pivot points are bright metal, and I have to chrome the piston rods and oleo piston.



With this drying, I started workingo on the inboard flap sets. These parts have some PE details added to their ends to give even more detail. For dropped flaps you need different parts than retracted flaps, so you have to keep yourself straight that you're looking at the right instruction pages. I've taken a Sharpie and redacted the pages that are not appropriate so I don't accidentally read them.

I test fit the right-side flap and carefully inserted the actuating rod into the notch behind the PE. It looks pretty good. The underside of these flaps too get painted white.



Tomorrow, I'll continue with the flaps and start work on the outer wings.

Looking good

Indeed it is.

Lovely work so far!

Gnomey said:

Lovely work so far!

Click to expand...

Agreed !

Well… thank you all!

Finished building the flaps today and mounted them. There's a little tiny piece that closes off the flap-fuselage junction. The first one flew into the ether, and there wasn't another one on any of the sprues left over from the free Cosair my LHS gave me, so I made a scratch-built one. I didn't spend the time to put rivets on it. I actually think the model may actually have too many rivets. The skin on real plane was mostly spot welded. It was pretty advanced technology for the time. It made for a very smooth skin. Rivets were only used to hold panels in place for the welding process.



With the flaps on it was time to finish off the wheel wells and weather the bottom. I'm not good at this and my detail air brush was not cooperating. First of all I think you need to seal the flat paint before using the Tamiya Panel Liner since it instantly wicked into the flat white and made a much more dirty bottom than I was anticipating. Then I got puddling when spraying Tamiya Smoke for the exhaust stains. I ended up trying it three times and repainting the white each time. The final results work, but I'm not that happy.

I spent time chroming all the piston rods and painting all the hydraulics.



I think the wheel wells are too dirty!

When setting up to take this picture, the broken wing spar broke again!! The plastic actuating rod was not up to the job and the piano wire pin let go. This time, I removed that pin and used some Albion Micro-Brass tubing along with a phosphor bronze pin and rebuilt the junction.

After cutting off the plastic strut, I had to drill the remaining lug with an 0.022" carbide bit held in my fingers. I used and even finer drill to start the hole in the lug's center.



I needed to telescope a smaller tube into the larger to provide the correct diameter for the pin. This time, it's holding very well.



With this done, I jumped the step where the canopys were masked and painted and went on to the outer wing panels. As usual, the engineering is perfect. I used the Chrome Pen to make all the reflectors for all the wing lights shine light true reflectors.



After assembling the wings in the "down Flap" position, and then the beautiful ailerons, I tried the wings on their spars and see how they looked. They just slide right on and look pretty good.



Here are the complete wings minus the outboard flaps (tomorrow). I really like how Tamiya makes you think that there's really working hinges in there and yet they're securely glued into the wing sockets.



The last thing I did was to paint the clear lenses for all the running and landing lights. Letting them dry overnight will ensure they don't get finger-printed. The kit includes a mask for the landing light lens. I'm going to glue the small ones in with Bondic with the color on the inside and then use MicroScale liquid mask before painting the outboard wings. They get painted and decaled off the model or else you'll never be able to decal the folded side of the wing. This complicates finishing up the piping at the wing joint, but I'll manage.



I would love to be able to do the demarcation free-hand and not mask the separation line, and maybe I'll practice on the other fuselage that I do have in the free kit. I really don't understand the work flow of the man to whom this kit belonged. He cut parts off the sprues with their little bit of the sprue attached, but you lose the alphabet i.d. which you need to properly locate the parts. I also don't understand what he actually had completed since the engine and cockpit are missing, but the fuse is still not built. The fuze is built before the engine is built so he must have been going out of order. Also wing and flap parts were missing. Strange.

Looking very good. Fingers crossed on the wing joint.

The wing joint is great! Unfortunately, I had some trouble with one of the gear doors which I'll describe later.

The first thing I did today was build a "test article". The free Corsair, while missing lots of parts, had enough to cobble together a workable fuselage. With this I can practice free-handing the airbrushing of the three-tone early Corsair scheme and, if necessary, develop a masking scheme too. This alone makes that box of miscellaneous parts worth a lot. I don't have to screw up my very valuable model. Instead I can screw up the test article and then screw up my valuable model.

As you can see, the upper wing surfaces are not there. In fact, there are no wing parts, which again leads me to wonder where they are since the lower mid-wing was still in its stapled plastic bag. That part gets completely built before you add the top skins. The regular cowl parts were also missing which tells me the guy built the engine, but the forward fuze bulkhead is also missing and that would have been glued to the un-built fuselage. The kit did have all the transparent parts so I glued them together and put them on. In the kit, the entire engine cowl is supported by the engine itself and it is in real life, but without an engine I simply glued the cowl to the bulkhead with tube cement. It only has to hold on during masking, painting and de-masking.



While this was drying I installed all the wing lights and coated their lenses with MicroScale Liquid Mask.



The wing tip lights also got the Chrome Pen treatment and then the lenses were installed (like all the others) with Bondic. I then carefully masked the transparent part of the lens so the frame with get airbrushed wing colors. Notice the round mask on the center of the landing light lens leaving the frame exposed to get painted. The chrome interior looks very real.



The outer wings have some added details. The first set is a swivel for the hydraulics that connect to the outer wing. I wised up and pre-drilled the #85 holes for the magnet wire. I broke my last #85 when it dropped from the upper work bench to the lower... about 4 inches. I've broken as many of these drills just by putting them down on the bench carelessly as I have in drilling. And since I'm no longer putting them in a pin vise, I find that my breakage is greatly reduced.



Another interesting feature of the model is the level of small details that would never show up in a smaller scale. Observe the gun camera and the transparent window that it views through. That small plastic window was a challenge to glue in place.



Curiously, Tamiya chose not to include any machine guns, gun bays or ammo. Most 1:32 kits do this. But, the kit is so sublime in all the other ways that I forgive them.

It was time to place the wings and cut all the hydraulics so I can install everything after painting. While fussing with them and the plane in the Panavise, I again bumper the left outboard wheel door and broke it off AGAIN! This time I needed to secure it better and attempted to drill and pin the hinges. This worked for a few minutes until I bumped it again and this time it broke down the middle of the tiny hole holding the pin. I re-glued it on AGAIN with thin CA and it's holding. I have to be careful around this. I have a history and knocking of wheel doors.

So here's the piping staged and ready to go after painting. As I mentioned yesterday, you can't glue the wings on and expect to paint and decal anything underneath. All the painting and stenciling needs to be fully complete and THEN the wings get slipped on.



But... I couldn't resist taking some more status pictures will all the flight surfaces in place.



I'm still considering whether to use the transparent cowl or the solid one, so the solid one needs to be in place during the painting. While it snaps in place, it wasn't holding tight enough to block paint from encroaching into the engine compartment so I put some liquid mask on the tabs and am holding it together with a rubber band until in dries. If this doesn't work, I'll wrap the engine underneath with some wet tissue and then put on the cowl. The Corsair has one of the busiest wing fold areas of any naval fighter that I know of complicated by the flaps being split. The model is big and it's a bit delicate. The Fuze is strong and you can grab it behind the cockpit, but what's underneath is very fragile and I have to keep checking myself regarding what I'm putting pressure on when I'm fitting a part in some other area.