P-51D Daddy's Girl (Or how to ruin a perfectly good Tamiya Mustang kit)

[giemme]

Looking good  Have you been de-saturating the decals, or is it just a photo/light effect? TIA

 

Ciao

[Squibby]

@giemme I think that's just the diffuse lighting in the photos coupled with the general dimness. I need to sort my photo rig out to make things a bit brighter.

 

The decals are quite shiny still, but so is the plane is so it's harder to differentiate. I've yet to give everything an overall gloss, weather with oils and flatten everything down. Once all that's done everything should be nicely toned down.

[Kitchen Modeller]

Decals look great ! I’ve used lifelike decals before and they’re nice - and very thin - I think I remember tearing a couple but they behave well so it’s easy to correct any issues. I did wonder about the black anti glare / the olive drab looks much better! Looking forward to seeing some weathering on this beast. 

[Squibby]

Time to crack out the oils to dirty things up a bit more.

I managed to spill half a pot of panel liner and some white spirit during this process, not my best work... 😄. Luckily it all fell on a paper towel and came nowhere near the plane.

Disasters aside I tried to add some restrained oil weathering / panel lining to the model. I concentrated on a few areas which generally show wear and dirt buildup + staining from oil / fuel etc. 

 

I used a mixture of Mig oil brushers (starship filth), Some manner of AK dark brown panel liner and some black oil paint. I applied filters of heavily thinned solutions, pin washed the odd panel line junction and painted in streaks here and there. I kept things toned down as best I could this was an ace's aircraft after all and it wouldn't have been filthy.

To dirty up the wing roots and areas where grubby feet would have trampled all over the wing, I dappled on some starship filth and dabbed it off after a few minutes with a dampened paper towel, this created a nice stippled effect simulating boot prints. 

 

A little bit of cleanup and touchup here and there to do, I think I need to sort out the wash around the ammo access panels as the panel lined extents are a bit too discrete as seen in these photos. Since I 'weathered' the surface during the painting stage a little bit of oil work goes a long way here.

 

 

Before I started oil weathering I went through with some aluminium paint (an old bottle of Vallejo model air aluminium, brush paints easier) and carefully brushed in some paint chipping, I concentrated on the painted sections only (obviously 🙄) pin washing the rivet / fasteners and carefully lining the edges of the odd access panel. I then used a water dampened cotton bud to take most of it off to create a very fine chipping effect. 

 

I intend to airbrush on the exhaust staining + highlight it with some pigment. I'll add some slight staining around the gun barrels and ejector ports this way as well.

Edited November 19, 2019 by Squibby

[Kitchen Modeller]

Excellent work on the weathering - I really like the brownish staining around the wing roots - looks very convincing- and the chipping on the painted areas is spot on. Those black stripes scream out for a little chipping! This is looking first rate Squibby 

 

[Squibby]

@Kitchen Modeller I was going to chip up those strips a bit more but I decided I'd leave them somewhat intact as my attempts at painting chipping larger areas always end up looking a bit rough.

 

I went back and added that little hole where oil streams forth (damned if I know what it's really for...) near the manual crank hole. I started to paint in the streak using AK engine oil (glossy brown translucent enamel paint) and some black oil paint to darken it up, before disaster struck.

 

The engine oil is apparently quite sticky and when cleaning up an area with white spirit I inadvertently pulled off the metal coats back to primer 😥.

After some mild expletives. I started the process of sorting it out. I first cleaned up the messed up paint by sanding it down and polishing it up. I then went through the whole painting process again laying down aluminium, black shading and chrome over the top. Thankfully the end result looked good.

Though the eagle eye'd amongst you may notice a small omission in the second picture...

 

 

Yes my horrible luck with masking over decals continues. The little red bar thing (presumably some sort of emergency latch?) got pulled off. I managed to fashion a replacement by carefully cutting up one of the unused Tamiya decals (one of the red L's on the flaps).

 

After a bit more work (super carefully 😬) with the AK engine oil and my various enamel / oil washes and paints I ended up with a level of weathering I liked. It's a little more pronounced in certain areas compared to previous photos. But the plane is still generally quite clean. I even managed to paint in that streak from the oil streak hole without wrecking the paintwork again.. To prevent the oils rubbing off I laid down a light flat coating over the whole model.

 

Weathering around the fuel fill cap and spilled fuel / exhaust stain / grime around the radiator duct area.

 

The infamous oil hole with it's cursed streak...

 

More oil streaking from the leaky merlin engine. I've seen a photo with quite pronounced streaks, but since I only found one example I kept it a bit lighter.

 

 

Apologies for the inconsistency of the photos, my phone seems to be exploring it's range...

 

Edited November 20, 2019 by Squibby

[giemme]

Tasteful weathering, Squibby  And great save!

 

Ciao

[Thom216]

She's looking like a well-cared for workhorse!

[72modeler]

15 hours ago, Squibby said:

I went back and added that little hole where oil streams forth (damned if I know what it's really for...)

That hole on the RH side of the cowling is the vent for the oil breather; when the aircraft had been engaged in serious maneuvering, especially inverted or negative 'g' flight, you would see a long oil stain from the breather; crew chiefs would know when they saw this stain on their charges upon return that their pilot had really "mixed it up!" Oil is forced from the valve covers during these maneuvers and exits via the breather vent on the RH side of the engine cowling.  Scroll down the attached link to see what the stain would look like on a wartime Mustang that had been thrown around- it's the oft-photographed E9-O.

Mike

 

http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/mustang/mustangtest.html 

Edited November 21, 2019 by 72modeler
corrected spelling

[antonio argudo]

looking great that Mustang, one thing I noticed, the national insignia on the wing is not where it should be,  the tip of the star is aligned with that small fin, looking super this build, cheers

 

[Squibby]

Yeah I noticed that...In my defense I was following the decal sheet instructions.  In any case it's far too late to do anything about it now. 😕

 

I went through and painted on scratches and texture onto the wings using a fine brush and some Aquagloss thinned with water. I'm pleased that it worked out nicely. It's hard to see in photos though as it's only visible when the light plays across the surface.

 

I also sprayed on the exhaust stains using an eclectic mix of Tire black (XF-58), flat earth (XF-52) and metal colour 'Exhaust Manifold'. The thinking being that the metallic would prevent the trails from going overly matte. Not sure it worked but it imparted a nice colour to the mix I guess.

From what I've seen the trails are quite brownish. I also noticed the panels around the exhaust went a bit iridescent when heated up in more modern photos. Not sure if this happened with wartime planes, but I added a very faint mottling of heavily thinned clear blue to somewhat replicate this. It's a very subtle effect and again may not come out in the photos.

 

I found airbrushing these trails onto metal colours quite tricky because they were very faint and hard to see, I think I may have gone a bit heavy in some areas due to this. Also the area is quite awkward to spray into, I held the plane upside down to so I could sweep my airbrush over the path without hitting the wing.

 

 

 

After these photos were taken I touched up the trails again, they're still not perfect but at least a bit more even now though the left side went down a little heavier than desired. Can't take them off and start again so I think I'll just stop now before I go overboard.

 

I think I'll tackle some of the little bits like the various lights and gun barrels next and then I'll move onto the remaining parts.

Also I got my Falcon vac replacement canopies since I'm not too happy with the kit one. I'll have to attempt to cut these out at some point, it's my first time with Vacform parts so it'll be interesting. 

 

 

[TimT]

All your experiments with weathering look very subtle and cohesive. This is going to be a strong model!

[antonio argudo]

great job on those exhausts, they could be quite long, also the national insignia got quite weather after a 6 hour mission...  not white anymore, especially the one near the fuselage fuel tank  that leaked direct on it 😂 cheers 

[Crimea River]

The model is looking great. Weathering is spot on.

[Squibby]

Progress has been slow over the last couple of days.

I touched up the exhaust stains again dragging the further out towards the rear of the plane and blending them better (I dropped the metal colour from the mix, it didn't really add much to the effect). I also evened them up, or attempted to, hopefully better now. 🤔

 

After procrastinating for a bit I painted in the gun barrels and am considering how I can add a bit of soot around them without overdoing it, maybe he had an uneventful mission 😄

 

I also tackled the formation lights under the wing. I drilled out a small hole in each light then countersunk it with large bit to form a small concave bowl. I stuck in a punched disk of aluminium foil into each bowl and burnished it down to form a reflector (or some approximation of it).

Then it was in with slightly thinned Tamiya clear red, green and yellow to form the lenses. I'm thinking I could have used a drop of clear epoxy to form the lenses first but they may have stood a bit proud of the surface. I'm going to reform the wing lights and tail light with epoxy drops but I'll wait until everything else is finished first to prevent damaging them.

 

 

Now that the bulk of the paintwork is done I unmasked the canopy, unfortunately the front windshield had some paint lift. Easy enough to fix though. 

 

Lastly I got my Vac canopy and I dived right in and cut it out.

I went nice and slow with a sharp blade, scoring the plastic till it came loose as per the instructions. Everything went well enough until the blade finally cut through and started to get jammed 😓. I managed to get it out fairly intact however except for the corners which got rounded out a bit. I restored the corners using some CA and baking soda filler and cleaned it up with some sandpaper. It's odd working with the material though since it's so thin and flexible. I half expected it to be a bit more rigid for some reason.

 

In any case I can see I need to do a lot of work to build all the missing internal structure with plastic card. I'm intending to cover the outside of the canopy frame with aluminum tape so I can run the rivet wheel over it and scribe in some detail. First though I had to mask it and spray the internal colour (XF-58 tire black in this case)

 

[giemme]

43 minutes ago, Squibby said:

I'm intending to cover the outside of the canopy frame with aluminum tape so I can run the rivet wheel over it and scribe in some detail.

That sounds very interesting, looking forward to it  Excellent progress, BTW  

 

Ciao

[Goatdriver]

Squibby,

 

Have you considered Deluxe Materials Glue "n" Glaze for the formation light lenses?  Model railway hobbyists use it for making windows and light lenses.  I'm in the process of using it to make position light lenses for my Czech Models T-34C--I've done some practice on sprue and it seems to work quite nicely.

 

Robert

[woody37]

Stunning paintwork. If there's a matt finish on the fuselage stars n bars, a bit of soft pastel dabbed in to the white areas might replicate the dirty effect shown on Antonio's photo's. Using a narrow stubby brush is a great way to do this type of thing.

 

Looking forwards to seeing the finished article

 

[Squibby]

@woody37I might try that, I've got some brown pigment lying around somewhere... or else failing that some thinned brown paint through the airbrush might do the trick.

 

@Goatdriver surprisingly that stuff is available in NZ. I might try it out. I use this crystal clear 2 part epoxy I picked up from a hardware store primarily because it doesn't shrink, therefore it's useful for building up the bulge of the lights.

[Squibby]

The brown pigment worked well to dirty up the edge of the stars 'n' bars under the fuel cap, cheers for the suggestion. Though I'd caution anyone doing this that be careful and deliberate with your application because you can't really get it off if you go overboard. 

 

I then turned my attention to the internal structure of the canopy.

I glued in a thin strip of plastic card around the rim of the canopy to stiffen it up and thicken it a bit. I added 2 little gussets to each side so the canopy would sit nicely on the rails. All this was glued in with some PVA wood glue.

 

The curved brace took a bit more effort to put together, after a couple of failed attempts to wing it 🙄 I used a paper template to get the fit right on the sloped canopy sides. The template was then transferred to plastic card and after a lot of filing, test fitting and drilling I ended up with a fair approximation of the brace.

I used a similar process to create the rear 'shelf' as well. 

 

 

I decided to spray the inside frame to remove the glossy effect of the bare plastic. I also had to paint up the new rim I added so would be masking up anyway...

I masked it up, sprayed it tire black, unmasked it and fitted the bits in with PVA glue to end up with this.

 

 

Now I can (carefully) proceed onto 'paneling' the outside with aluminium tape.

[giemme]

That's some clever modelling, great job!  

 

Ciao

[Squibby]

Spent today finishing off the canopy.

 

First up was to plate the outside with aluminium tape. This took a few attempts, I used a template made out of masking tape to get the shape of half the side (join at the pointy end) and transferred it to the self adhesive aluminium tape. I then stuck in on and very carefully burnished it down with my metal scalpel handle. I added the plate around the pointy end in a similar fashion. It was quite difficult to burnish it nice and smooth due to how flexible vac canopies are. There were some bumps that came through despite my best efforts.

 

Then on with the paint following the same shading NMF layering process. In the end it turned out pretty nice. The clarity difference between it and the kit part is night and day, and most importantly there are no ugly seams and locating pins in sight 😃. 

 

It's not quite as smooth as the photos would suggest, under direct light there are a few rough patches where the tape isn't quite burnished down well enough....luckily it doesn't bother me enough to go through that whole rigmarole again 🙄.

 

Next up will be the flaps and radiator door I think. Then it's just the prop and landing gear left to sort out.

 

 

Edited November 29, 2019 by Squibby

[giemme]

That

is

impressive

    

 

Ciao

[Biggles87]

Looks good to me too.

 

John

[Squibby]

More minor progress.

 

I drilled out the exhaust stacks,

 

...and fashioned up some sway braces for the pylons. I made these out a bit of bent wire with punched out disks of really thin plastic card stuck to the ends. 

 

The observant amongst you may notice the mounting holes for the pylons on the wing undersides are missing... that's because I was originally intending to keep them off... however looking at photos these were always fitted at wartime.

I'm not intending to stick on the drop tanks, assuming this is after a mission and they've been jettisoned.

 

In any case I'll need to glue them on with a suitably slow setting glue. without the mounting holes it's going to be interesting aligning them right.