Airfix 1:72 Curtiss P-40E Kittyhawk

[Tomathee]

I started this a while ago when I had breaks in my first build or only had a couple of bits to do leaving most of my session free. I've had an issue with varnishing that one so whilst giving it some days to cure and decide what to do I'll catch this thread up.

Second build of adulthood, again £2 or £3 from ebay as a practice run. A couple of new things I'll have to learn for this include painting a pilot and a camouflage scheme. Hopefully it will be a lot quicker than my first build (5 months and counting ).

Onwards, box shot, I did some googling and have added to the included colours which I'll mention as I go, included are two for the camo, one for the underside and matt black.

Fairly straightforward looking (he says), parts washed and rinsed

As it's a part time build until my first one is finished I started with some of the simpler parts, such as wings. I've just seen on the photo an ejector mark which I hadn't noticed, will have to sand it. The panel lines aren't recessed(?) which I think might cause a problem if I have to sand much during building.

There's also a gap in the wheel well that I might need to fill, photo also shows a bit of a poor effort at the guns.

On to the pilot, no assembly, maybe due to scale. Followed just the basic step for my first go - work from light to dark colour. Started with the face in Vallejo skintone, then the lifejacket in Xtracrylix RAF Trainer Yellow, originally bought for the propellor. For the main uniform parts the guide I found online said Khaki, but to keep this practice from getting out of control with buying of new paint pots I went with the included Dark Earth. Apologies for the pic quality

Bit of a clearer pic to finish the pilot on. Matt black boots, gloves and goggles, along with a scarf to cover a mishap in the neck area. Obviously it's very amateur looking, I did think about attempting a dot of something for an eye but the chances of making an even bigger mess were a bit too great for me to risk it. I don't think figure painting will ever be something that greatly appeals but at least it's a part you can live without if it goes completely wrong.

Finally the propellor, I primed, then overpainted the tips with Trainer Yellow, then masked and did the rest Matt Black. Had a bit of a problem with it bleeding along the tape.

I think it was because I masked like this;

When perhaps I should have wrapped it around instead.

Brings me almost up to date, guidance always welcome

[Martian]

Unless you are going to have a go at re-scribing and that's quite a big ask with only your second model, I would just sand the model smooth and concentrate on getting a nice clean pait finish.

Martin

[Tomathee]

Cheers Martin, think I will just go with sanding it back as you said.

[Tomathee]

More progress, much happier at the pace of this one than the other one I'm working on.

Halves together, test fitting found that I can leave the seat and pilot out for now so one less thing to worry about during painting. Seemed to line up ok apart from the back of the cockpit, will have to sand it level.

Following above advice I sanded the model smooth, there would have been issue with the raised lines not going all the way to the edges before any filling and sanding began, so for the best. Rightly or wrongly I made an exception for the (ailerons or elevators, depending on which picture I look to for help) and didn't sand them back all the way, to leave a bit of detail behind.

Wings and stabilisers on, wings were easy enough to line up with the size of the flat edges but the stabilisers were thinner and less obvious, followed pics where they seem horizontal which hopefully looks close enough, found it harder getting them to line up with each other which I guess is more important.

Gaps along the joins, nothing too cavernous. Have some milliput superfine to try this time, been youtubing up on that for the next step.

[Tomathee]

Work has been progressing although I've not had time to update this while I pushed through completion of my other build. I filled the gaps around the wing and stabiliser joins. First time using Milliput and as you'll see I probably used too much and created extra sanding work for myself. I found it a little hard to work with so I'll pick up some Perfect Plastic Putty to try next.

And here it is after sanding back using a bit of everything to see which worked well - sticks, needles, sponges etc...

For some reason, the area behind the cockpit has clear parts over the fuselage. I decided to paint these, then add the clear parts and mask them off for the main painting job. The other option would have been to mask off the cockpit interior and include those parts in the main painting. I guess I'll find out at the end if I went the right way. Also shown is the pilot and some part of the cockpit (instrument or aiming related, it's all in black so hard to pick out anyway).

On to masking the canopy, I had come across the basic idea of fresh blade around the edge but that sounds like exactly the sort of thing I'd lose a finger to, or gouge the part. So I tried a method I read/watched recently, with cutting the tape into thin strips to use as a line/border.

This is the piece, I taped it to a glass tablemat as my cutting mat is getting a little dirty and might have picked up something that stuck on the clear part. I used a ruler to cut strips approx 0.5mm but as you can see they vary in width. Then just ran the knife along the end as the tape went over the edge. It was quite easy to use as the tape remained stuck down through the cutting and one strip at a time could be picked up by using the knife to lift the edge then tweezers to pull it up ready to go on the model.

As this was my first try I decide to make it a little easier on myself and do two stages - the vertical lines and then horizontal/awkward curves after. Here is the first stage - masked>painted>masking removed

Next the horizontal lines, again masked>painted>masking tape removed. The last photo below shows some paint getting under the tape along the top part. I was able to take this off with a knife, maybe helped that I dipped it in clear before painting.

That's as far as the photos take me. I've since masked the clear parts for the main painting job and glued them on. Rightly or wrongly I did the masking before gluing, as it was the whole part I thought it might be easier to stick the tape on and run a knife around it on the cutting mat, rather than try to do it after I glued the part. Now I'm thinking I might have issue with the tape and glue crossing paths, and it's made it harder to see/do any filling between the canopy and fuselage if required. Once I've checked that I can move on to priming, which I have a Halfords spray can to try out.

[Tomathee]

Priming stage. As mentioned I glued the canopy on first and masked it off. Priming went surprisingly smoothly, first time using Halfords spray cans, really noticed the difference over the brush priming I did last time and left it at two coats. Couple of issues encountered, the blutac/paperclip holder I tried in the first picture didn't work. Either the paperclip couldn't go far enough into the hole left for the propeller or it was just a bad plan to begin with. Ended up spraying the top and sides and then picking it up by the canopy to do the bottom, so perhaps a good thing I put it on first. I put blu tac into the wheel wells with cocktail sticks for legs, for some reason these collapsed some time into it being left to dry, doesn't seem to have caused any problems fortunately.

Next is painting the underside and camoflage, I get the basics but I'm looking for a decent guide or build on here for some more specifics on this sort of painting job, none of the magazines I have include photos to match the step by step.

Thanks for reading

[Levin]

Next is painting the underside and camoflage, I get the basics but I'm looking for a decent guide or build on here for some more specifics on this sort of painting job, none of the magazines I have include photos to match the step by step.

Thanks for reading

Depends on if you use a spray can or brush

For the can i would use blutac to mask the camo and I woul stat with the underside so you can mask it with some big pieces of cheap masking tape

For brushing I would start with the upper side and either way paint it freehand ir make masks on the glass plate (maybe with plans in the right scale under it as template?)

Then i would paint the underside either way freehand again or masked on the edge

Btw: nice way of painting the canopy

Hope I can help

Levin

Edited August 3, 2016 by Levin

[Bonehammer]

Hi Tomathee, your P-40 is getting along nicely. The clear parts over the fuselage allowed the pilot to see behind him and to the side. The fuselage colour behind them has long been the subject of debate: the general consensus now is that it was painted the same as the camo.

If you brush paint the camouflage, i fine it easier to use a flat brush. Paint the edges First, then fill in the middle. You can trace the edges very lightly with a pencil - very lightly - before you start.

Hth,

Bone

[Tomathee]

Thanks for the replies. Re. painting I'll be brushing on the main colours. At the moment my plan is to do the wheel wells in cockpit green, mask them, paint the bottom freehand, over running to be covered by the top colours. Then mask the bottom and paint the whole top in mid stone, then mask off the areas I don't want mid stone and paint on the dark earth last. For the camo masking I think I'll try rolled blutac. The main part I'm not sure on is masking the bottom off, at the back of the wing for example there's nothing to stick masking tape to.

[Tomathee]

Good progress, would like to do smaller updates more often but usually the time I'd come on here is also time I could be doing something to the model, so this gets a little neglected.

I painted the wheel bays, then filled them with white tac to paint the bottom. Not sure white tac is best for that job, there was areas that it didn't go high enough to stop paint getting over the inside area and when trying to press it to the edge it sometimes goes over and covers a part of the underside which needs painting. Anyway I brushed around them carefully and think I got away with it, used the included RAF blue matt although people attempting more realism should consider something else, according to threads I looked at. I've not taken them out yet until the rest has been touched up. Forgot/lost other photos of the during, this is after it had dried and I masked it off to begin painting the top.

Next I did desert yellow all over the top side, again included in the kit although middle stone is the shade recommended in other threads. I'm doing this to learn/practice techniques so I'm not expecting a showstopper and haven't given much thought to buying extra paint when it's not needed.

7 coats later it was at a stage I could live with. The first two or three were at least 50/50 thinned down but they left quite a few bubbles, or bubble like marks in the finish. I (rightly or wrongly) went over it with a polishing stick and then put a couple more coats on, annoyingly the level of brush marks seemed to vary, hence leaving it at 7. It's way more than I'd have liked to do and for models with more surface detail it will probably have an impact on that. I tried various tips such as not going over the same spot, the paint had flow improver in the pot and thinned with water in the palette, I used a decent flat brush. Definitely makes me more interested in looking at an airbrush but the practical side of dining table modelling will probably keep that on hold for now.

Next up was masking for the dark earth, went with the white tac sausage option, wasn't too difficult, the main thing seemed to be remembering to offset it to allow for the thickness of it and doing that on the correct side so that the area didn't end up too small.

Proceeded to paint, I used my best round brush that I'd been saving for the edges and a flat brush for the wider areas, not sure if that was a good decision or not, I did one area at a time but still seemed to have issues with paint dragging. Again plenty of flow improver in the pot and around 50/50 with water in the palette. The masking tape on the camo is just to keep me away from painting dark earth in the wrong sections.

This took four coats, not sure if my technique improved a little, or some part of the paint/thinner/paint mix was better, or if darker colours are more forgiving but I got it looking someway presentable.

This bought me to tonight and removing the white tac and masking. Now I'd read in some place about getting a step when painting a camo pattern but I had a cliff in some places....

Around the nose here

And here, are a couple of examples

I'm not sure if the cause is to many coats, not thinned enough, brushed to close to the white tac, or some other reason. I'll probably head off to do a separate cry for help thread in modelling tips and to look at the best way(s) to fix it.

Apart from the step problem, I'm pretty happy with how it came out, there's a few patches where paint bled through or I was sloppy and caught an area I shouldn't. I'll touch those up dependant on what happens next with fixing the above issue. I've left on the masking for the cockpit and underside as a result, and finally in other news I did the loose bits such as the fuel tank(?) and wheel doors as I painted those colours on the main body, and the landing gear/wheels are ready to go, pics to follow. To close, some pics to compare the box art with the model in its current state.

Thanks for taking the time to read/add your comments

[malpaso]

Good call on the tape to make sure you paint the right sections with the second camouflage colour. Been there, done that, got the tee shirt!

I will be using that canopy masking method, I've gone mad before cutting out panes of tape, and my hand's too shakey for good quality free handing.

I don't use masking for brush painting camouflage, I lightly pencil on or just drybrush the demarcation. I think the blu-tac method only works with air-brushing, otherwise the paint can build up against the masking like a dam. I do use tape for straight lines, if a step results a bit of gentle sanding with wet wet & dry usually sorts it - very fine grade and slow and gentle.

Hope this helps, I feel like I'm still not back up to the standard of modelling I could achieve when I was 14 or so!

Cheers

Will

[dogsbody]

That's coming along nicely, considering the age of the molds. It was my first P-40 kit, way back in the late 60's.

Chris

[Tomathee]

Good call on the tape to make sure you paint the right sections with the second camouflage colour. Been there, done that, got the tee shirt!

I will be using that canopy masking method, I've gone mad before cutting out panes of tape, and my hand's too shakey for good quality free handing.

I don't use masking for brush painting camouflage, I lightly pencil on or just drybrush the demarcation. I think the blu-tac method only works with air-brushing, otherwise the paint can build up against the masking like a dam. I do use tape for straight lines, if a step results a bit of gentle sanding with wet wet & dry usually sorts it - very fine grade and slow and gentle.

Hope this helps, I feel like I'm still not back up to the standard of modelling I could achieve when I was 14 or so!

Cheers

Will

Cheers Will & Chris, I was aware of the 'white tac dam' issue beforehand but I had hoped to avoid or reduce it, doesn't seem to have happened though. I left the tac overnight as well rather than took it off straight after painting, could have contributed to the size of the problem. I used tape for straight edges such as the cockpit masking but didn't feel like attempting to cut out a camo mask from tape so I went for this. If I brush paint the next model with a camo finish I'll probably go with some form of masking tape, although I can see there are definite benefits to white tac for airbrushing. I've also bought some wet & dry paper from Halfords today to attempt tidying up, will have had a few days drying by the time I get to it so hopefully I'll have good news next time.

[Greenshirt]

I second malpaso's method of brushing a camo pattern. I do it the same way, and thin my paint quite a bit so I do many thin coats.

Using very fine sand paper, wet/dry will help knock down the cliffs you got. Work slowly and be patient. I've also used an old cotton t-shirt with a bit of spittle to get a really smooth finish without over rubbing. Gives me something to do in front of a football match besides drink beer.

Tim

[alxzinbox]

Great results so far. That's plenty lot of effort you're putting into the kit. Your little tip of the masking tape over areas not to be painted was pretty creative. Stashed that away for later use. Great work on the figure painting too.

This was my second model as well, although my results were a fraction of what you've achieved so far.

Cheers,

Alex.

[vppelt68]

Nice to see a classic being built! V-P

[Tomathee]

Bugger thought I had done an update since last time and only had a bit on varnishing to add, quite a while to go back and remember now doh!

 

I'll get the loose parts out the way first as it's pretty basic. Wheel doors inside and outside, fuel tank (?), and wheels. Painted in the pics and since varnished, although hardly any difference worth adding more pics for. First missing part casualty, the aerial/sticky out thing at the front of the left wing has disappeared. I'm sure near the beginning I put it in a small drawer set with the decals and waste sprue parts however it either never made it there past me thinking of the idea or somehow made it's own way. Maybe something I can replace with a brass rod or something? Even the straight bit from a paperclip, suggestions on a postcard welcome.

 

 

In the meantime I began sanding back the step mentioned previously. With the halfords pack (600/800/1200) I wet the areas and went over as (I thought) gently as I could. Unfortunately in some areas this took the paint back too far which opened up a new problem. At this point I probably should have figured out a way to remask with tape and repeat the paint job properly. However due to reasons unknown (hurrying to finish and move on, lack of brain power that time of night, etc), I elected to freehand over the affected areas. In some areas this worked first time and was a great quick fix but in others it took quite a few attempts, either from painting into the other camo colour, not covering close enough to the mark and having a messy patch between the camo colours, and differently to the first paint run I had a couple of patches where the paint pooled and needed it's own sanding back and re-doing. 

 

Some of the areas that were sanded back too far;

 

Part way through tidying up, the yellow semi-circle on the left wing shows some of the issues I had with getting the colours blended back together when tidying up my previous mistake;

 

Looking a bit better here apart from the pic quality, also the exhaust masked ready for paint.

 

Few of the final job, first time all the masking tape has been off in ages, ready for varnish....

 

On to varnishing, with my last model I had issues using Humbrol Clear Gloss, I bought a rattle can varnish but thought I would take a bit of a gamble and give it another chance and save the can for something else, or for the post decal or final coat on this. Given this is a 'warm up' model what better time, there's bound to be plenty more things which test me so I figured I should try and work with it rather than just give up. I decided to go in with flow improver and do a few coats, true to form I did start to notice the same effect as before, although not bad enough to require sanding back as with that one. I did a few more coats, adding more flow improver each time, seemed a lot but given how few ml a pipette holds it's not massive in the decent size bottle the Clear comes in. Eventually the coats started looking a lot more presentable and at the point I could leave it happy with the result. It could be better and I've since also bought some AK gloss varnish but I think I'll persevere with Clear for my next planned build which is also a bit of a test subject for me. Also given the issue with the paint job it's definitely come out better than my other effort so I'm happy with the progress.

 

The 'problem effect', I've also put a photo of my first build to show the improvement from that.

 

A few of the model as it currently stands, ready for decals;

 

Decals I'll get on with in a day or two, still not sure how long the different coats and stages need leaving for so I've erred on the side of caution which has probably extended this build unnecessarily in some parts. I'll do some digging so I can turn around the next one a bit quicker.

 

Comments/feedback/questions welcome, thanks for reading!

 

[Tomathee]

Two updates in a week, not sure what's gotten into me!

 

Decals on, few problem areas along the way, partly the decals - didn't want to come off the backing paper, didn't want to stick to the area I wanted to put them, did want to stick to anything else I used trying to re-position them. This caused one or two cases of folding over and a couple of splits. The other part was user error with Humbrol Decalfix. I believed I was following the same process as with my other model, maybe it worked fine with that and not this time, or maybe (more likely) I remembered incorrectly. Anyway I went with soak decal in small pot of decalfix, paint decalfix onto area of model, place decal, paint more decalfix over, wipe off excess. The first session of doing these was a bit of a disaster and was where the majority of issues occurred. So for the second night I went with warm water to soak and lay on the area, place decal, paint decalfix over, remove excess. This seemed to work a lot better in both getting the decal off the backing and re-positioning it. Lesson learned, and I think I'll keep a notepad handy when building for stuff like that and also for the questions I think of during but forget by the time I visit the forum. Third evening needed due to the first taking so long, would have given myself two in any case as the red spot on the roundels(?) was separate to the rest of it, and the mouth came as four decals and even doing two in one go resulted in much knocking and re-positioning.

 

So on to the pics, bottom first, straight forward although one side looks a little wrinkled, pretty happy with where I managed to get the red spots to stick.

 

The decalfix has gone over some of the gloss, obvious on the right edge. Hopefully will clear up once I go over it with some more gloss to seal them.

 

The main decal here split when trying to get it off the backing, could have been a bit more to the right and been worse I guess (left side of the yellow ring). Might have been down to using decalfix the first night to soften the backing paper for removal, thinking about it I guess it would do the complete opposite? Also it didn't show up in any of the pics I took but the flag on the tail came as one decal which folded over the edge. I knew with the struggles I'd already had and my skill level in general that I'd never get it right without a lot of trouble so decided to cut it in half and do the left and right side of the tail separately. There's a small gap along the edge where the camo shows between the red corner. Since this I've just painted over the edge in red so will see how that turns out.

 

Straight away I knew the mouth decals would be the hardest part. It came in four parts, the two sides and two smaller decals for just below the propeller. Between the instructions and the box art it looks like these should fill the whole area over all the camoflage, but I could find no way of achieving that. I figured the side panels would be a lot more visible so getting them right should take priority. I got them lined up as best I could but as you will see it could have been better. Maybe I should have trimmed the clear film a bit closer to get the decal nearer the edge of the intake(?). They also overlap at the bottom a bit and one split again coming off the backing, have tidied as best I could and there is a small gap, I didn't want to pull them up and lay them down too much for fear of ripping them and making it worse than it would be if they were just a little off perfect placement. The smaller parts I just fit in the gap in the most lined up way I could, I'm hoping the propeller will cover most of it. Along the bottom where the decals overlap I've since touched up with some black to try and make a smoother line, will get a pic of the difference for next time.

 

Currently touching up those two areas, then onto another gloss coat, not sure if I'll use the rattle can or brush on more Clear. After that I think it's just a matt coat and add on the last bits, need to check out EZ line as there might be some sort of aerial or cable thing from the tail to the end of each wing.

 

Thanks as always for reading.

 

[Tomathee]

Final update, decided against EZ line for now due to the cost of it, and I tried stretching sprue but couldn't get it anywhere near thin enough. Went with some 'invisible' thread instead. Also trialled the thing of holding a warm match close by to make it tighten up but I either couldn't get it right or had the wrong material (might be for fishing line?!?). In the end I figured it out without the magic of google for a change. Cutting thread longer than needed I used a dab of superglue to attach the ends to the wings. Once dried plenty I wrapped some white tac around the other end, then pulling it tight past the point on the tail I wanted to glue down and stuck it to hold whilst the glue set. Messed up a bit in not making one thread long enough, it reached but I couldn't get the glue to set while holding it taut with tweezers, maybe need some quicker drying glue for next time. Gluing more than once has made a bit of mess on the wing but I'll have to live with it, seems to have worked so far though. I also solved my missing part (pitot?), among the stretched sprue from the above was a bit around close enough to replace the part I lost some time ago. To get the thicker end (when trying to find out what it was called photos looked like it was a tube but on the original part and instructions it's thicker at the outside end) I dabbed a bit of PVA glue on with a cocktail stick, took a couple of attempts before it matched close enough to the original. Gluing on the last parts - propellor, wheels & wheel bay doors, drop tank went without issue. I decided to have a go with a wash, although there was little in the way of panel lines for it to make use of, way back in the beginning I discovered raised panel lines are better off sanded back and I wasn't ready to try re-scribing so it's been left mostly smooth. UMP dark dirt was used, seemed to work ok where it could - wheel wells and other such areas. Maybe a filter would be better in this sort of situation in future, especially in this case being based in North Africa. Think that is all, have done some photos without the junk in the background for the RFI. 

 

 

Thanks for reading and inputting/supporting/answering questions etc, see you for the next one!

[johnd]

Looks good, hope mine turns out that well.

 

I'm slightly behind you, having had the same trouble with the shark mouth but also managing to wreck one of the 'Y's on the codes.

 

John.

[Tomathee]

Thanks John, I managed to split one of the G's once or twice even, not sure if it shows in the pics I put here or the other thread but my some lucky mishap there's some wash in the area to distract the eye! Don't think there's much to be done for the shark mouth I could tell before I put it in the water that it I'd have to pick which areas to get right.

 

Good luck with your build

 

Tom