Build Review Airfix P-40B Warhawk 1:48

[Mike]

As soon as I got this kit from Martin @ T7 Models, and after the review (here) I was tempted to build it, as I've not built one of Airfix's new kits, but I also remembered that we'd reviewed a bunch of Eduard Photo-Etch (PE) and resin upgrades for it, in the shape of the cockpit set, seatbelts (STEEL), flaps, exhaust stubs and of course the wheels, the latter being in resin from their Brassin range.  Putting aside the little Bren Gun Carrier I've been pottering with for my own amusement, I started cutting parts off the sprues.

 

 

 

 

While the surface detail isn't going to blow your socks off for innovation, the kit has been designed from an engineering stand-point, and quality as well as certainty of fit has been a high priority.  Use of lugs, keyed tabs and suchlike have been used to ensure that the parts fit where they are supposed to go, like one big jigsaw, each part supporting the next in terms of fit and strength.  The cockpit is built up on a section of the wing panel, so is curved, and has the front and rear bulkheads slot in, supported by little buttresses to ensure the correct angle.  The seat also fits into holes on the floor and rear frame, and although I elected to remove the kit seat to replace it with another, that also fits into a keyed slot for security.  I tried out some chipping on the floor, seat, rudder pedals and control column, using a base of Gunze Zinc Chromate, with some AK Chipping fluid in between that and some Xtracrylix interior green.  A quick scrub around the masked off aluminium and in places of wear gave a pleasant look to the floor, which was enhanced when the washes went on later.  The cockpit sidewalls were upgraded with a lot of parts from the main set, most of which were pre-painted.  Where the ejector-pin marks would be covered, I left those, but filled any that would be visible later for good measure.  The set went together very well, and with a little care, I was done in no-time, using a little AMMO Dark Brown wash (A.MIG-1005) to show up some areas of detail.

 

I spotted the grey fleck & wash overrun while I was processing these photos, so those have been fixed now.

 

 

The seat was replaced initially with the PE seat from the main set, but I made a hash of that, so I dragged out an old Reheat one and folded that up for painting.  The STEEL belts were easy to use, folding nicely around details and sitting quite well on the seat pan, and although they aren't quite as good as the HGW fabric belts, they are less of a faff, so it's swings and roundabouts, as well as a case of availability.  The instrument panel was scoured of detail with a sanding stick, the pre-painted back sheet glued to the plastic with CA, and the front with the bezels and cut-outs for the instruments was then floated into place on a couple of drops of AK Gauzy.  Once dry and matt varnished, I added drops of the thicker Gauzy to the dials to give them a shiny look, reminiscent of glass.  Assembly of the finished cockpit cage was a piece of cake, and as I had remembered to smooth off and paint the insides of the fuselage with interior green, the ribbed look works when the 'pit is inserted inside.

 

 

The chin intake/exhaust for the radiator needs assembling before you can close up the fuselage, so I added the more detailed mesh panels from the PE set, and painted the backdrop Zinc Chromate, the meshes aluminium, and gave them a wash of AMMO Cockpit wash before masking them over so that I could spray the underside colour into their ducting.  Once Unmasked they fitted well, using keyed lugs to ensure they fit exactly 50% inside the centre of the port fuselage half, improving the fit of the finished assembly.  I'll pop some Blutak into the ducting later to protect them from paint overspray.

 

 

There are a few sink marks on the wing parts where the plastic is at its thickest, which I hid with a thin coat of Tamiya Basic Putty, rescribing any panel lines lost in the process.  There were also a pair of large ejector pin marks inconveniently sited in the centre of the main wheel bay area, which is moulded with creases to simulate fabric, making it a bit tricky to get to with normal sanding materials.  I filled the marks with a couple of layers of CA, accelerated and then sanded with a small piece of coarse sandpaper glued to the end of a flattened coffee stirrer gifted to me in bundles by a friend.  As I got closer to the final finish I removed the coarse grit with a blade and glued a medium grit piece in its place, rubbing in small movements until it was flat enough, and being careful not to flatten off the moulded-in creases.  A quick squirt of primer established that the job was done, but showed up a pair of deep sink-marks in the sidewall of the bays where the linking section shrank during cooling.  Another layer of Tamiya Basic applied with a metal sculpting tool gave a good basis for the fill, which was tidied up with surprisingly small amount of sanding after it had dried.  I also put in the bay skins where the struts would lie in the retracted position, the holes in which corresponded nicely with those in the underlying plastic.

 

 

With the fuselage taped together I tested the fit of the wing root fairings, which again have a keyed format to ensure a good fit.  The port side fits beautifully after scraping some moulding flash from the front of the fuselage cut-out, but the starboard one took a little more scraping and test-fitting before the rear section would stop veering toward the centreline of the fuselage, creating a negative step at the rear, and probably screwing up the fit of the wings completely.  The rudder has a well-known goof with only one side having the trim-tab moulded in, which I fixed with a razor saw and scribing tool, giving it a quick squirt of primer to verify that a swirl in the plastic wouldn't show up under paint.  It did not, which is useful, as there is ribbed fabric texture there, which would make replicating it fun.

 

 

Whilst all this was going on I was trying to decide whether to fit the flaps set that I had, as it would slow the build down somewhat while I fettled the fit and butchered the wing parts to accommodate the parts.  I did a test run of one flap last night to see whether it was doable, as they differ slightly from sets I have used before, in that the flap and bay are in one large single part.  The piece is quite delicate and unwieldy once cut from the fret, but with the correct tools and a bit of patience I managed to build it up over the course of an hour, and even though I had my doubts whether the small PE stringers would fit through the holes provided for them, they didn't let me down.  The instructions advise using a rod of 0.5mm styrene for a suspended section of the flap bay, but my Evergreen rod of that size wouldn't fit, so I resorted to a length of 0.3mm brass rod I had in stock.  That probably made the job easier in the end, as the brass has better structural rigidity than styrene, and would be less likely to deflect as you push it through.  Based on the fact that half of the folding work is now done, I'm erring toward using the set, as it might help to distract from the rather thick trailing edge of the wing, which will be more difficult to thin out in the old-fashioned way by scraping, due to the way in which the wing halves have been engineered with thicker sections interlocking around the ailerons that are moulded into the wing lower.  I think I've talked myself into it now.  Bugger.

 

The resin wheels have been constructed after a few seconds with a razor saw to cut off the pouring blocks, and although it seems a shame to hide away those lovely crisp wheel spokes, the early Warhawks wore the hubcaps, so on went the PE parts.  A word to the wise here.  Lightly sand the edges of the parts to ensure that they sit within the hub's flange, as the tiny mismatch between the two sides of the PE photo-resist can lead to a slight step that, due to the tight tolerances, may leave you with a slightly off-centre hubcap, or stands proud at one side.  The exhaust stubs were simplicity themselves to remove, and fit perfectly into their recesses on the side of the fuselage, so following a coat of primer, I'll be looking to see how they look after use, so I can try to replicate their patina something like realistically.

 

Speaking of realism, I did some research on the most likely colours for the AVG bird that I'm planning on portraying – who cares if it's been done to death? The instructions give the DuPont codes for the airframe under the Airfix codes, so using a couple of websites I found on the subject, some information here on Britmodeller, plus my favourite paint conversion website, I decided on an all-Xtracrylix team for the painting.  The underside will use XA1140 Light Grey (FS16622), which looks about right from the bottle, while the upper camo will be XA1111 Olive Drab (FS14087) and XA1114 Medium Green (FS14092), both of which seem a little dark from a scale-effect point of view, so they will end up a bit lighter once I've finished modulating the tones here and there.  Probably wrong, or at least misguided, but I have those paints in stock, and they look close enough to an unrestored airframe I saw during my search, allowing for the ravages of age and any colour distortions picked up along the way.  I'm not into Munsell values or arguing about what colour is displayed in a B&W photo, and having seen how dusty some of those aircraft got, I'm not going to stress about it either, so there!

 

 

 

 

 

[Crossofiron1971]

Beautiful Detailing!

Going to be a stunner....

[Mike]

Eduard did all the hard work, I just filled in the grey bits

[John_W]

1 minute ago, Mike said:

Eduard did all the hard work, I just filled in the grey bits

Pah!

Like we believe your feeble excuses...

[DannyB]

Woohoo! Mike's building things with wings again! 

 

Those PE flaps look fantastic, I'd love to be able to fold and glue PE that cleanly, they are going to look great under a coat of primer.

 

[Mike]

It's not too hard, and TBH there's not a lot of glue there.  The ribs were all glued down by applying a bit of CA with the edge of an old #10 blade, and the stringers were all inserted dry, then a little glue was added here & there to tack them in place.  I'm relying on the primer and subsequent coats of paint to finish the job

[Val]

Great work so far Mike, good to see one of these come together

[Mike]

Thanks chap   I'm a bit late to the party, as both Jonners and Steve have done one already, although I'm not sure whether either of them have finished.

 

I'm just finishing off the PE for the other flap, and as usual it took half the time it did last time.  I managed to pull off 4 of the ribs during folding though, but it didn't seem to slow me down for some reason

[Blitz23]

Wow what a beautiful looking kit, you're making good progress.

[Mike]

Thanks for the kind comments

 

It looks like it's been snowing in BM towers today, as well as on the forum, mainly because I've been scraping out the underside of the upper wings to receive those sexy-looking flap bays, of which I now have two!   I took the plunge after completing the other one, and cut out the lower wing, using the panel lines as a guide.  As it happens I had to ease the aperture a bit wider, so took a sliver off the end nearest the centreline bulge to avoid encroaching on the gap between the flaps and ailerons.  I discovered that the upper wings needed quite a bit of thinning, so scraped the line in the plastic using the flaps as a template, and scraped the edges out with a #10 blade, breaking one during the process.  Then the rest was brought down to match, thinning the trailing edge as I went.  The tipmost end of the cut-out needs almost 1mm of material removing, reducing as you head inboard, and it's easy to test fit.  Just assemble the wing and push the flap bay into the aperture until you reach the dotted line where the flaps begin.  If you can still see brass between it and the wing surface, you're not there yet.  You can probably just about see this on the leftmost wing in the pic, and the rightmost hasn't been started yet.  I also need to cut out the other flap bay from the underwing part, so I'd better crack on

 

 

Scrapers out, I'm going in!

[Jon Kunac-Tabinor]

Evening Boss, mine's finished and loitering in RFI.

 

One thing to note is the trailing edge of the flap has a small cut out ( you can see it in the pic directly above - it's opposite the more complex looking area) so you need a corresponding little bit of fill-in strip on the underside of the top wing.

Nice job so far, Im looking forward to seeing this one in all its glory -  The PE in the 'pit really sharpens it up… and just to annoy you - the AVG machines had the square back seat 

 

All the best 

 

Jonners

 

[Mike]

Thanks Jonners - I'm not gonna lose any sleep over the seat, especially as I've just closed up the fuselage.  Where were you a couple of days ago?

 

4 hours ago, Jon Kunac-Tabinor said:

One thing to note is the trailing edge of the flap has a small cut out ( you can see it in the pic directly above - it's opposite the more complex looking area) so you need a corresponding little bit of fill-in strip on the underside of the top wing.

 

I think that's portrayed by the complex cut-out piece that sits on top of the trailing edge of the bay, although it's a bit vague.  True story - I'd got that bit at the wrong end of the flap bay until this avo.  Check the earlier photo.  My excuse?  It was late

[Mike]

The fuselage set up and I have done most of the work on the various seams.  The nose needed a little bit of work, as the panels hadn't settled to the same level, but that was easy enough.  A bit of CA was used on the chin scoop and the spine joint, and I've put a little bit of Tamiya Basic on the corners of the intake to hide the seams that shouldn't be there.  The wings and tail are just dry-fitted for now, as is the prop, but it won't be long before they get glued in too, and then it's a case of finishing off the small parts, and painting.  Oh, and I found another rather substantial sink-mark on the other side of the rudder, which has been filled and is in the process of being sanded back to the scalloped shape of the fabric ribbing.

 

 

 

Both the flaps are now built, and they fit nicely within the cut-outs, so I'll paint and finish them external to the rest of the airframe and glue them in later, suitably masked off.

[Caerbannog]

Wow - impressive for a bit over 24 hours... Would take me a month at least and the outcome would be not half as nice.

René

 

 

[Tim T]

Loving your work Boss.

 

I'm getting a bit confused over Eduard's approach to seatbelts.  Have they stopped their fabric range and replaced it with STEEL (I assume that is their capitalisation).  It seems that all their new cockpit PE is devoid of belts, which seem to be a separate item.  More money for Eduard I guess!

[Mike]

Something like that Tim, yes.  I preferred the true fabric belts, but these STEEL ones (their capitalisation, as you say) aren't bad.  A lot better than the old rigid PE ones that were prone to lying odd on the seat, or in extreme circumstances, the paint might peel off at a sharp bend.  These guys are highly flexible

 

Also, they're made of a different material... really thin steel (STEEL), so they couldn't be included on the same sheet.

 

5 hours ago, Caerbannog said:

Wow - impressive for a bit over 24 hours... Would take me a month at least and the outcome would be not half as nice.

René

 

 

 

My mistake René.  I forgot to mention that the first post was the product of a couple of sessions.  I can't make glue and paint dry on command, sadly!

[Julien]

4 hours ago, Tim T said:

Loving your work Boss.

 

I'm getting a bit confused over Eduard's approach to seatbelts.  Have they stopped their fabric range and replaced it with STEEL (I assume that is their capitalisation).  It seems that all their new cockpit PE is devoid of belts, which seem to be a separate item.  More money for Eduard I guess!

Yes it does seem they have moved away from including belts in cockpit sets and now do them as "extras".

 

The P-40 is looking good Mike.

 

Julien

[Mike]

Cheers chap The wings & elevators are now glued on, and I noticed that the little tabs on the elevators are keyed so even I can't get them the wrong way round.  Kewl!   There's a sink mark on each MG fairing though, so out comes the putty again.  That should be dry by the time the wings set up

[Newbie(kinda)]

I honestly expected to find this build in 'Ready for Inspection' this evening; fantastic work! Those flaps look terrifying to someone who curses his way through a set of photoetch Suttons. A question, if I may. I'm aware (as I'm sure we all are) of the enlightened debate concerning this kit in another place but the thing that struck me on seeing the various sprue shots posted by those that have actually built the kit, wasn't the size of the 'wimple' but rather the amount of flash I think I can see? Which is a bit of a surprise given how new the moulds are...  

[Mike]

The PE is fiddly - and you need the correct tools.  It looks a lot less impressive close up, but the more you handle it, the more you learn how to use it and the tools that are a must have to really do it justice.  It's just a case of not giving up - I've been putting some of the last parts on the airframe tonight, curving the landing gear bay doors, and preparing the clear parts for a dip in some Klear.  All the PE parts are now prepared for priming too.  The landing gear legs have been constructed too, and I found those a little flashy in places.  I'm not going to bother myself with even thinking about the Wimple, but I've not been over-concerned with the amount of flash, but I have been aware of there being some around the smaller, finer parts such as the cockpit, landing gear etc.  No worse than any other kit really, and sometimes with a new mould it's a case of fine-tuning the pressure to get the maximum fill without too much flash.  I'd rather be trimming flash off than making good on short-shots, that's for certain!

 

I'm quite impressed with the clear parts, both in terms of clarity, fit and their thickness.  A nice job - I just have to work out how best to hold the rear-view panels while I'm dipping them.  Might have to tack a cocktail stick on an unobtrusive frame, or similar.

[Thom216]

Wow, that model looks great. You're making me want to get one myself!

[Mike]

That's the idea   Martin @T7 Models gave us the kit for review, so if you get tempted, please consider that

[Caerbannog]

On 8.12.2016 at 10:29 PM, Mike said:

(...)

My mistake René.  I forgot to mention that the first post was the product of a couple of sessions.  I can't make glue and paint dry on command, sadly!

 

Glue is easy. Paint... Well I thought I must try my Rustins Dryer at last :-) Apart from that hair dries can help ;-)

Still not one of my brighter moments   but still impressive work from you.

René

[Mike]

Thanks René 

 

A bit more progress on this.  Things have slowed down a little, as I'm treating each assembly as a little model in its own right, so the details are taking a bit of time.  Here's where we're at now:

 

Gear bays painted and shaded to accentuate the cloth contours.

 

The starboard wing-root fairing's rivets had been damaged by a little liquid plastic oozing from the joint, so I sliced 'em all off & added some Archer 3D rivets from stock.

 

The flaps have been primed, painted and weathered with some AMMO Brown Wash for Green Vehicles (A.MIG-1005), with a light dry-brush of sky over the rivets & ribs.

 

I fixed the windscreen this morning, which had cracked off the fuselage at the front due to my heavy handling, and the gear bays have been masked off with some Blutak pennies.  I'm running out of excuses to paint her now

 

Speaking of paint, I checked some of the Top Notch masks I have, and the P-40C in British camo set has the same demarcations as the B, so I'll be using those to cut the lines, which is nice

[SimonL]

Looking very nice. Seriously tempted (although not by that much photoetch, I'll leave that to the experts).