P-51 Precious Metal Racer - High Planes 1:48 - finished

[Caerbannog]

Having a moment of cockiness I decided to throw another in, when I stumbled above my more than just part build Precious Metal kit.

I started this years ago and forgot what I did or did not. This kit is typical for High Planes (well compared to the other kits I have from them). It is a short run with thick light blue soft plastic and reasonalbe flesh. So there is more work needed than on the majority of IP kits. Other than IP there is some white metal (landing gear) and a vac canopy plus nice decals included. I also used some spare parts form ICM and Tamiya kits (cockpit and other stuff). The project came to a halt when my first attempt on the NMF finish failed and I started this over. Having rearranged my workspace last year I had dismantled my spray booth and the kit was shelfed, ready to receive a layer of Alclad:

 

One thing I was very unhappy with is the wheel well. Should I ever build another Precious Metal (can happen) I will use the Aires wheel well. This is a hell of work but well worth it (see my other P-51 build here "part riveted"):

 

So I took a few minutes to give it a coat of Alclad Chrome:

 

As mentinoned in the pic there is a little thing calling for my attention: I closed the fuselage including spinner and canopy but still need to do some cutting - which certainly causes some dust... I guess I will work with a vac cleaner so this dust will not get into the fuselage and under the canopy... We will see.

 

Rene

[Grandboof]

Something different Will be watching Looking forward to more 

Martin H

[CliffB]

As you say Rene, a typical High Planes kit.  They can turn out nicely though, as this one seems be

 

Cliff

[greggles.w]

Air racer, great!  Watching with interest..

[Caerbannog]

Mini update without pictures. I sent little time on this but managed to cut open both sides for the exhaust stacks. The left side is done with cutting and sanding to shape, the right side needs some more cutting and sanding. Then I need to touch up the paint job in the nose area. Hope to get this done over the weekend, so then there will be some new pics here.

[Caerbannog]

Well - I got it done. And how.

 

First two pics on the tail assembly. I thought painting will be easier when the pieces are still seperated but should have checked the fit before (I thought I did...):

 

 

 

So next I installed the exhausts...

 

Surely not one of my rare bright moments.

 

 

 

So thanks to my cleverness there is more work ahead now and what could have been a simple build (now that it was already painted) will be more demanding again.

 

René

[Caerbannog]

So ... the damage was repaired over the weekend:

 

 

 

 

 

Now I obviously need to paint it again... I should rescribe the panel lines and rivet the fuselage but will not be able to finish it befoe the KUTA GB dead line. Life is so hard.

 

René

[Caerbannog]

Back in black:

 

I want to get this done at last so will not do the black and grey panels again. The pic above still shows the typical surface structure after spraying paint. This needs to be sanded/polised down or the final Alclad coat will not look like metal. I am affraid it will not be the super finish I had hoped for when I began this build long ago.

René

[CliffB]

Nice to see that this back on course again

 

Cliff

[Caerbannog]

I am eager to really actually and finaly finish it ;-)

René

[Caerbannog]

After finishing my other P-51 KUTA on Firday evening (pics to follow in the gallery), I did some more work on the Precious Metal. I decided to try AlClad Polished Aluminium once more. Last time I was so unimpressed that I decided to use a dark grey basecoat and spray this with AlClad Chrome to achieve a polished aluminium look. Don't know what I did wrong the first time but this time the effect was quite OK apart from a strange glimmer effect. But this could be polished away:

 

 

 

Next came decaling. The decals look very nice but the fin number is too skinny so it needs replacement. I will either use the decals I printed long ago or will try to make better ones this week. The carrier film turned out to be thin but durable and the decals lay down nicely with setting solution. To avoid freaking out I tested the decals on a scrap part with good results:

 

 

 

Before decaling I sprayed a layer of AlClad gloss cote (waterbased), which reduced the polished effect as usual :-(

Decaling was done quickly thanks to the low parts number of the sheet:

 

 

 

Apart from the missing fin numbers and the clear cote I need to give the prop blades another coat of AlClad and paint the wheels. The rest is sticking together. So it should be done over the coming weekend.

 

René

[greggles.w]

Looking good!

 

Your first image really shows the over-scale prop spinner & undersized canopy which together make Precious Metal such a thunderous machine!!

 

looking forward to its imminent completion..

[SleeperService]

It seems to be fighting you hard Rene but it looks like it's coming together well.

 

Those wing colours offer an interesting contrast to the fuselage...

 

[Caerbannog]

Very true Sleeper Service. I just logged in to say it will not meet the dead line as I had to respray parts of the under wing area, while something new to me occured: The same paint I used to paint the wings some hundret years ago has changed from a lime green to a darker green.

 

 

 

In fact I thought today is the end of the KUTA GB but I learned I have another week. So I will see if I can mix a better green the next days. Everything else is done so all I need to do is attach the landing gear and remove the mask from the canopy.

Keep thumbs pressed.

 

René

[SleeperService]

Hi Rene

 

I'm looking at my entry as a kick-start towards completion rather than finish by the GB end now as well. I will get as much done as I can but I need to wait for plastic sheet as I have run out

 

Thumbs pressed

 

Cheers

Nick

[Caerbannog]

Just did some quick bad pics on our dining table for the gallery. I will post an update on the last steps here later. Maybe tomorrow. Puh. Happy that this build is over at last...

 

René

[CliffB]

It looks stunning in the Gallery photos.  Congratulations!

 

Cliff

[greggles.w]

Yes, congratulations on bringing it home Rene, gallery pics show a lovely finish.  Not sure which I would find more challenging- the polished metal finish or that lime green.  Both look great.

 

Such a fearsome machine.  Somehow it looks more menacing that the combat versions!

[Caerbannog]

Thanks Cliff! Very kind.

Well here is my final post on this build. Actually nothing really happend the whole last week till Friday when I printed new decals including new better tail numbers (see below) for this here and masked the lower wing panels which now had the strange cloudy dark green so this would be ready to paint over the next day.

Saturday morning I got up early to drive to the only proper hobby shop left in about 40 km distance. I can be pretty happy that it is just in a neighbouring town. The best about this shop which is focused on railways is their Tamiya and Humbrol range (they used to have Gunze but stopped). They have a nice range of kits from Revell, Airfix, Heller, Italeri and others but at mostly high prices. Anyway - I fetched a jar of Tamiya X-15 Lime Green which is a very close match to Kawasaki green - which in turn was the colour I once applied to the Precious Metal wings. When I got home I loaded the airbrush with X-15 and sprayed the masked area. I notcied soon that the resuld would be soso:

 

 

 

When I spray a new paint shade I always spray on a square piece of ink jet glossy photo paper for reference. On the white background this X-15 is a close match to the Kawasaki colour. But on the darker green background the addition of the X-15 was less convincing. If Sunday was not the dead line I may have decided to strip the lower wind and do it al over again - including a new printed decal for the already applied race number here (another reason why I did not repaint the whole wing). But I just had printed a sheet with new decals and really did not want to waste a sheet for just one race number. So I decided to ignore the lousy paint job as I already decided to ignore the awful wheel wells and to apply the tail numers and to stick everything together:

 

 

 

Epilogue:

 

As mentioned at the beginning this was started several years ago and I seem to remember that I stopped the build after a first failed attempt on the Alclad finish. I remember that it turned out too dull and painted looking. So I polished the Alclad back to the primer coats and ... stashed it.

What is not shown here is the cockpit which was salvaged from a Tamiya P-51D kit (yes - the one I build in this KUTA in another topic - this got a True Details resin pit). The kits cockpit is of rather poor shape:

 

 

If I would build this kit again (which can happen) I would do the following changes:

1. Get a Tamiya P-51D for cockpit, wings, flaps plus some small parts which are missing (wheel well push rods or whatever these are called).

2. Get the Aires wheel well sets (front and back)

3. Rescribe the fuselage (it has finely recessed panel lines and might be OK but maybe they are a bit inconsistant - I do not really remember).

4. Rivet the fuselage.

5. Assemble the prop blades before I attach the prop. I should be a lot easier to align everything.

 

The Tamiya flaps have the big advantage that they can be positioned fully up. Precious Metal has the flaps in the up position on almost all pictures.

As the High Planes kit seems to be refering to the Tamiya kit it sould be quite easy to mix match both.

Do not get me wrong - the High Planes kits are very nice for short run kits but they deserve a bit more care from the builder. The white metal parts and decals are really nice and the main parts are OK too - only the small IP parts are not so good. In fact when closing the canopy like I did you could even use the High Planes cockpit...

 

That said I have some more High Planes Racers in stash and look forward to build theses soon.

 

Thanks for looking,

René

 

 

Edit: Because of the Photobucket thing I moved my pics to Flickr. So the  GB gallery does not show my PM anymore - new old pics of the finished kit can be found here:

http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235016829-p-51-precious-metal-mustang-griffon-racer-148-high-planes/

 

[Bozothenutter]

Apologies for the epic thread resurrection,  but having just bought the 'World Jet' version of this, I'm impressed with your work!

Looking for decals to do the 'bare' version though. Only the 'Precious Metal' script and not much else.