1/48 P-47N Part 3

Its done!  Paints slapped on, all the bare metal areas where painted with Aclad. I used two shades, Aluminium and steel to give a bit of interest to the bare metal areas. 

Decals went on no problems using the microset/microsol system which almost never happens.

To finish the model was given a grey oil wash and weather with pastels to give it a kind of dusty feel .

All in all this was a fun build and for a change went almost to plan there were a few panic moments, one being the wing joint breaking as I was applying the wash! The one thing I have taken away from this model is that bare metal finishes are not for me, to much like hard work! 

1/48 P-47N Part 2

Lots of progress over the past few days.......

With the base I had originally planned just to just do the end of the runway but then I had an idea. The P-47N's only came into service at the end of the war and were used in the Pacific theatre. So to give the base more interest I thought why not place the end of the runway on a beach as if it was a Pacific atoll. Well heres the result........

It was fairly simple to do, the base is a cheap chopping board which I then covered in household DIY filler. To define the three areas all I used was a pallet knife to smooth out the runway, and lightly pressed into the filler and lifted off to create the waves. A 1/48 scale figure was pressed into the wet filler to create the footprints. All the colours were sprayed on starting with the runway and working my way to the water. The crests of the waves were drybushed white and once dry Johnsons Klear with a drop of bright blue was brushed several times over the sea to give a wet look.

One of the hardest parts of building a propeller aircraft in flight is the spinning propeller. There a many ways of doing this second to actually motorise the propeller my favourite method is using Propblur. these are very effective and simple to use photo etch spinning props.......

All that needs to be done with these is to cut off the kits props and replace with the photo ecth replacements....

The final result.....

Most off the the major construction is completed, the fuselage is together tailplanes and wing are on and flaps have been lowered. I have heard horror stories about the fit on this model but so far the i have only had two fit issues, one being the fit of the upper wing surface to the fuselage and the gun ports.

The flaps were easier to reposition than I first thought. I had intended to cut them off entirely, but as I was scribing the underside around the hinges it became apparent that I could just bend the lower half down into position therefore not loosing the hinge detail! The top half was not as simple, this I did need to cut out. I cut out along the panel line that was for the flaps but once done I realised that panel line was to far back so I had to cut more off and glue the two halves of the upper flap back together. This was then all smoothed in using filler as was the rounded portion at the top the the flap using the upper wing halves as a guide.

just a little bit more work on the wings and she will be ready for the paintshop........

1/48 P-47N Part 1

Whats wrong with me! So many kits to finish and I could not help but start another model. It was just sitting on the shelf starring at me as I sat there working at my desk. I couldn't resist.

The kit is the Revell P-47N in 1/48 which was a limited edition for Modelzone. The plan for this model is to build it out of the box and pose it in flight just coming in to land.

There are two main jobs that need to be done to make the landing pose for the model, the flaps need to positions down and the kits bulged wheels need to un-bulged but more on this later.......

As with most kits the construction begins with the cockpit....

Gunze Sanyo zinc chromate was used as the main colour in the cockpit and and Vallejo paints were used to pick out the detail colours.

As the model will be posed in flight the cockpit needed to be filled with the supplied pilot. The way I like to do my figures is to first paint all the base colours and then add highlights and shadows.....