[yet another] 1:48 Tamiya F4U-1a

[corsaircorp]

On ‎16‎/‎03‎/‎2018 at 3:58 AM, Johnny1000 said:

Whoa. Really? I can't find anything on this. You don't mean the enameled brass logo plaque? That's maybe about the size of a silver half dollar from the '40s. Send the pic!

Hello John

Allow me some days, I just have to find back the pic ! In almost 6000 photos taken over a 10 years span

I heard the story from an old French Air Force mechanic, he specialized in PW 2800 on P-47 and the he has to work on the F4U-7 engines !

He told me that, it was done as a proof from PW of the reliability of the engine "dependable engines" as they say !

Then it was regarded as a sort of horseshoe ! A way to bear luck or so.

Really, I never tried to know more about the fact !

So, I'll look for the pic !

Sincerely.

CC

[David H]

I was hoping i'd be able to get this suggestion in before the fuselage went on the wing, but it may still be relevant.

 

It does depend on the antenna configuration of your finished model (there were several), but i'd like to suggest re-building the forward antenna post from a material like brass rod, and drilling out the rectangular notch that the mast is supposed to rest in so that the mast can be made maybe a third over length and solidly "buried" in the upper fuselage.

 

The Tamiya installation in all three scales is ridiculously weak, and the antenna mast is tall enough and brittle enough in plastic that it will easily break away. Interestingly enough, Vought engineers had similar troubles with the real antenna post breaking off and the problem was never completely cured until the -4 and -5 versions came out.

 

-d-

[Johnny1000]

 

@corsaircorp interesting! I've never seen, heard, nor been able to dig up anything about this. Super interested!

 

@David H Thanks so much. I actually did something similar on my last build after calamity struck in the form of my six year old son, and have been considering something similar for this, but a healthy reminder helps make sure it stays in the que.

 

In the previous case, it was a Tamiya F4F-4, and I rebuilt the antenna with brass rod after an errant tennis ball revealed the engineering weaknesses of the kit overall. 

 

My thought was to gauge the depth of the fuselage interior at the position of the forward antenna with a length of styrene or thinner brass rod, over drill the hole a little, and then plant an appropriate length brass bit. 

 

-J

[Johnny1000]

One of the things that the Tamiya kit gets wrong, but in the ‘right’ way, is how they handled the flaps.  Dropping the flaps does lend a nice sense of animation to the F4U, and the way they engineered the details looks really good. The only problem is that land based Corsairs didn’t really ever seem to be parked with the flaps down during WW2. 

 

Check out the weathering on the rudder!

 

 

 

Even the shot Tamiya based the box art for both the 1/48 and 1/32 F4U-1a has the flaps up. Ultracast makes a resin drop in replacement, but it isn’t really that hard to modify the kit flaps.
 

Here they are as they come. Note I’ve filled in the hole on the starboard inboard flap, as that wasn’t added until the 1D. I just cut .040 styrene strip to size and then cemented in place. Later I’ll fill in any gaps with Mr Surfacer 500.

 

The first operation is to trim off the locating pegs. (What are they actually called?) Sprue cutters are super useful for nibbling.
 

File and sand down. You also have to trim off a panel from the smallest flap, and a hinge in the wing itself.
 

I worked my way in from the outbound most flap on the logic that fit issues would be more noticeable out on the wing than in the root. I did need to close a gap between the middle and inboard flaps. I cemented a bit of .010 styrene to the end, then trimmed and filed to shape.
 

Once all the flaps were installed and aligned, I daubed some 5 minute epoxy in the cavity for additional strength, since there weren’t any engineering features, such as the trimmed off locating pegs, left to reinforce them.
 

Finally, I cut strips of .005 styrene to represent the panels that cover the gaping openings between the leading edge of the flap and the trailing edge of the wing itself on the actual plane. I’m not really sure how these work, perhaps they slide into the wing prior to the flaps actually dropping?

 

[Note the smear on the inboard port wing. That’s the remains of a sloppy glue fingerprint. Ooops.]

 

On the inboard starboard wing, the hole got a lavish application of Mr Surfacer 500, which was allowed to dry overnight, and then sanded. 

 

I’m so close, yet still so far, from getting some paint on this...Thanks for looking

-J
 

Edited March 26, 2018 by Johnny1000
Historical accuracy

[Biggles87]

Nice job on the flaps, but resist the temptation to rush it now to get some paint on.

 

John

[DMC]

Nice work on the flaps, Johnny.  Coincidentally, I was pondering the flaps up or down question a few days ago.  I have an oil painting of a Corsair I did some years ago hanging over my bench.  The Corsair is parked, flaps up, having just landed.  I was wondering if I should have painted it with the flaps dropped.  But after looking through Richard Abrams F4U Corsair at War, I noted that all the parked Pacific Corsairs had their flaps up.  A couple, landing or taxiing, had them down but I would expect that the coral dust would have played hell with the flap mechanisms so, you are right, it was mostly flaps up and I won’t have to wonder anymore whether or not I should have painted it with the flaps dropped.

 

I have cut out the flaps on the dash 4 but the wings were a bit too narrow so doing so widened them just enough.  Photos of the Korean Corsairs depict many with the flaps dropped so I’ll drop them on my build.

 

In Osprey’s Modelling the F4U Corsair  there are a couple of good pictures of the flaps deployed showing the gap.  The caption reads  that the flaps drop down and back when deployed.  So when the flaps are up the gap is closed up without the need for any sort of flap  to close up the gap.  At least that’s the way I read it.  Perhaps one of the Corsair cognoscenti on BM would care to comment  on this.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis 

[Johnny1000]

@Biggles87 Thanks John. And yes, sensible advice.

 

@DMC Thanks Dennis. I'm sure you're right that they kept them up in the South Pacific to keep coral dust and whatnot out. There's clearly an 'out and down' mechanism, but there's also some sort of fairing when they're up that isn't there when they're dropped. Or at least, it isn't represented in the Tamiya kit. It's hard to find belly images, but this reference gets the idea across:

 

These are also modeled on the UltraCast AM parts:

http://www.ultracast.ca/products/48/203/default.htm

 

These isn't a Corsair handy in New York (a glaring omission in the Intrepid collection!) or I'd go inspect for myself, but also most restorations are parked with flaps down so not sure how helpful it would be for this, unless I could talk someone into cranking them up. I wish I had a close up shot of the actuator fairings (the nubs sticking out at each link) to better visualize how they connect, or don't.

 

Regardless, I'm sure you're right that they kept the flaps up while parked in the South Pacific to keep coral dust and whatnot out.

 

-J

[David H]

8 hours ago, DMC said:

 

In Osprey’s Modelling the F4U Corsair  there are a couple of good pictures of the flaps deployed showing the gap.  The caption reads  that the flaps drop down and back when deployed.  So when the flaps are up the gap is closed up without the need for any sort of flap  to close up the gap.  At least that’s the way I read it.  Perhaps one of the Corsair cognoscenti on BM would care to comment  on this.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis 

The *Production* Corsairs had what is called a single-slotted flap.

 

When the flaps extended, hinges below the underside allowed them to translate down and *slightly* aft. As the flaps came down, the flat rectangular panels, called "Cove doors" hinged upwards. This created a defined "Slot" or airway, allowing air to flow from the wing underside, thru the slot, and then over the extended flap. This re-attached the airflow that tends to go turbulent and de-laminate towards the wing trailing edge.

 

This is a very efficient design, also seen on the F6F Hellcat....and even the F-14 and F-18! It has many of the lift-enhancing attributes of Fowler flaps, but is far less mechanically complicated, which is very important in the far more abusive carrier based environment.

 

-d-

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

16 minutes ago, Johnny1000 said:

@Biggles87 Thanks John. And yes, sensible advice.

 

@DMC Thanks Dennis. I'm sure you're right that they kept them up in the South Pacific to keep coral dust and whatnot out. There's clearly an 'out and down' mechanism, but there's also some sort of fairing when they're up that isn't there when they're dropped. Or at least, it isn't represented in the Tamiya kit. It's hard to find belly images, but this reference gets the idea across:

 

These are also modeled on the UltraCast AM parts:

http://www.ultracast.ca/products/48/203/default.htm

 

These isn't a Corsair handy in New York (a glaring omission in the Intrepid collection!) or I'd go inspect for myself, but also most restorations are parked with flaps down so not sure how helpful it would be for this, unless I could talk someone into cranking them up. I wish I had a close up shot of the actuator fairings (the nubs sticking out at each link) to better visualize how they connect, or don't.

 

Regardless, I'm sure you're right that they kept the flaps up while parked in the South Pacific to keep coral dust and whatnot out.

 

-J

Hello Johnny from the list of surviving flying Corsair examples both are listed as FG-1D’s.

 

• 67089 – American Airpower Museumin Farmingdale, New York.^[42][43]
• 92095 – Proair Holding Co LLC in Latham, New York.^[46]

Hope that helps ? 

 

Dennis

Edited March 26, 2018 by Corsairfoxfouruncle

[DMC]

Thanks Johnny and David, never too late to learn something.  I’ve looked at countless Corsair photos but have never seen any that depicted that particular feature of the flaps, nor had it explained before.  

 

Cheers 

 

Dennis 

[Johnny1000]

@David H Cove doors. Ingenious. That also explains why the aren't represented in the flaps down position, since they basically are the surface of the trailing edge of the actual wing. Thanks so much.

 

@Corsairfoxfouruncle I didn't know the American Airpower Museum, and I thought I had researched just about everything nearby. Just goes to show... I will have to round up the kids and make the trek out to Long Island. Thanks! 

 

@DMC I feel like every time I focus on solving a particular problem of how to represent some aspect, I see completely new things. You'd think that eventually you see (and internalize) everything there is to see, but apparently not. 

 

-J

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

If you call ahead you might be able to get permission to get close and personal to photograph the corsair. I volunteered at a museum for a few years in the mid 1990’s and we would usually allow it, if the person was respectful and didn't touch. 

 

Dennis

[Bugle07]

Hi Johnny, you're showing some superb skill in this build, great stuff!

 

There's a couple of Corsair's in the walk around part of the forum. The FAA one kind of shows the Cove doors, not sure if it would help you?

 

Again, amazing work! Really enjoying seei g this come together.

 

Geoff

[DMC]

Missed this before but get it now.  About 2/3 of the way down the photo section there is a clear photo of a cove door.  Appears to have a piano hinge. 

 

https://www.agapemodels.com/2009/01/09/walk-around-f4u-5-corsair/

 

Very helpful all this cove door information. If it hadn’t come up I would have no doubt left them out.

 

Dennis

[Johnny1000]

@Corsairfoxfouruncle Thanks for the tip. I will definitely do that.

 

@Bugle07 Thanks! And thanks for pointing out the walk around section of the site. I feel like I'm learning a lot today. 

 

@DMC Brilliant! That is a piano hinge, and also it's a clear shot of the flap actuators. And yes, I'm delighted to have the term "cove door" at the ready, in case it comes up in conversation. Perhaps at the above mentioned air museum. 

 

-J

 

 

[David H]

On 3/26/2018 at 4:12 PM, Johnny1000 said:

@Corsairfoxfouruncle Thanks for the tip. I will definitely do that.

 

@Bugle07 Thanks! And thanks for pointing out the walk around section of the site. I feel like I'm learning a lot today. 

 

@DMC Brilliant! That is a piano hinge, and also it's a clear shot of the flap actuators. And yes, I'm delighted to have the term "cove door" at the ready, in case it comes up in conversation. Perhaps at the above mentioned air museum. 

 

-J

 

 

And chicks will dig it.

Maybe.

-d-

[Johnny1000]

According to current Hollywood cinematic narrative structural theory, there’s a dark place towards the end of the second act, where the protagonist experiences a kind of reckoning, facing death (literal or symbolic) and emerges with the insight and vision s/he needs to vanquishing the forces of opposition and carry the day, propelling us into Act 3, where it all goes down.  The weirdly influential screenwriter and codifier of this theory, the late Blake Snyder (“Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot”, “Blank Check”) called this beat “The Dark Night of the Soul.” While the merits of Snyder’s theory are debatable, it really is influential, and has become a big driver of the Hollywood formula. (Happy to debate this elsewhere.)

 

That’s where I am in this build—the dark night of the soul. I’ve actually had a lot of time  over the past week to work on it, and have made some progress, but it mostly felt like nothing was coming together. Since bench time is rare for me, and extended time happens almost never, it’s a little frustrating, but what can you do? 

Enough philosophizing and sad sacking… since this is a procedural, let’s procedure a bit, shall we?

 

First up is the navigation lights, which come molded into the wing. On the real thing, they’re clear with a colored bulb, so faking it out won’t really work. Snip, snip.

 

I first tried taking a length of clear sprue, filing flat on two sides at 90 degrees, drilling a hole, which I filled with Tamiya X-25 or 27 clear. That worked, kind of. Clear sprue looks okay but is so brittle that it’s hard to work with. 

 

To affix, I tried UV glue. It’s basically like 5 minute epoxy, drying completely clear, except that it cures from ultraviolet light. It’s strong, but brittle. Every time I tried to clip off the excess sprue, I’d break it off. 

 

Eventually I got smarter and used shorter bits, but I kept cracking the part as I filed to shape. After two full sessions of this, I got even smarter and remembered that I had .030 clear poly, which is not brittle and turned out to be way easier to work with. The problem was that it was a little thinner than the wing, but UV glue came to the rescue, because you can build it up like gap filling CA, except that it won’t fog the plastic. 

 

Here we are, filed to shape, It looks miserable now, but hang on a second.

 

Here it is, polished and nice. It still needs another pass before it's completely shiney, but you can see where this is headed.

 

Now we’re ready to prime. I’m giving Mr Surfacer 1500 a try.

 

Naturally, after working on the navigation lights for four or five hours, I forgot all about them, and only remembered when I had to clean up an airbrush “burp.” The only way I could think of to do it was to mask around, then paint on micro mask. 

 

Then I remembered that I forgot to attach the spoiler. In cleaning it up, it flew off into the alternate universe where small styrene and metal parts go to be free. I took a bit of styrene L bar, and trimmed/filed to shape, getting the interior profile with a round jewelers file. I have references that show these in slightly different places—somewhere between 8 inches to a foot and a half outboard of the guns. I reckon they were probably just unscientifically riveted on wherever in that area.

 

Finally, and at long last, primed. Mr Surfacer 1500 is really lovely, if a bit unforgiving. But that’s a good trait in a primer. If you can get the finish looking tolerable, it will probably be okay. 

 

But this is just the beginning in a way. I’m just about 6 months into a build that seems to take most people a couple of weeks. Part of that is that I don’t get much bench time, and part of that is that I’ll let myself get distracted by things like scratch building barely visible oxygen bottles. 

 

Next up: adventures in chipped camo.

 

As always, thanks for looking, and comments/critique welcome.

-J

[Grey Beema]

Navy lights look good.  I did similar with an FAA Corsair I completed recently.  It certainly makes a difference..

[Johnny1000]

Howdy, all

 

In addition to faded camo, land based Corsairs in the South Pacific were notorious for heavily chipped paint, mostly due to the runways being surfaced with crushed coral, which would literally sandblast the leading edges. 

 

I wanted to try multilayer hairspray chipping, and also black basing, because why keep it simple when you can overcomplicate it? 

 

Start off with a layer of Alclad aluminum cover the areas I want to expose. Then decant a bit of Tresemme 3 hairspray (some people spray it right out of the can, but that freaks me out) and spray 3-4 light coats.

 

As soon as that’s dry to the touch, a thin coat of XF-4 for the zinc chromate. This is going to pretty much all be covered or stripped, so don’t get too fussy about it. 

 

Chips! Rubbing a wet brush on the areas you want to chip soaks through the paint and reactivates the hairspray, loosening chips of paint. If you’re super fussy, getting very specific effects take practice, but here I was just trying to get a general effect. 

That gets sealed with a varnish, in this case MRP matte, and then when that’s dry, another layer of black (for the black basing) under the camo color. I used X-18, semi gloss black because, and then remembered why I avoid it. (What’s wrong with that shade?)

 

A quick detour to the belly to show the black basing. Basically, the idea is to slowly build up random patterns of the camo color (in this case MRP Insignia White), along with other colors to create a modulated surface. You can avoid the panels lines to get a kind of pre-shading effect. I sort of tried, but pre-shading doesn’t ever look right to me, so I gave up.

 

This gets a blend layer. I’ll be honest, by the time I had enough density to get the camo color looking right, I lost most of the modulation. I might try it again, and I’m a convert to the idea of a more nuanced finish, but I think other ways to achieve modulation might be more my speed.

 

Back to the top. MRP Sea Blue. MRP is more like a lacquer than an acrylic, so you have to get in quick to get chipping before it cures. The wing root area looks pretty good here. It’s hard to see in the glare, but the leading edge isn’t so great.

 

But the root on this side is just bad. You can see where I tried gently sanding down to get through the finish, which mostly just exposed the black layer. On the other hand, the leading edge on this side is pretty respectable. 

 

So, a little 91% IA and I get the inner wing back down to the Alclad. On the second round, I didn’t bother with the ZC layer. 

 

And here’s where we are. The wing root is looking a lot better. The starboard leading edge is better, but could probably be better still. And then the main thing is I’ve faded the Sea Blue and Intermediate blue a lot, getting a nicely modulated surface. I’ll go back and touch up a bit here and there, and this will get a bit more homogeneous overall with downstream weathering, but I’m basically happy with where it’s headed.

 

That’s alls I got. Thanks for looking.

-J

[Basilisk]

Just discovered your build. Stunning. I love your attention to detail and how you document your progress. Looks like a labor of love!

 

Cheers, Peter

[Johnny1000]

Thanks Peter! It’s certainly a labor of something...

-J

[DMC]

Hi Johnny

 

They did get scratched up a bit didn’t they.  Have a look at Julien’s Corsair walk around, if you haven’t already done so.

 

Cheers

 

Dennis

 

[Johnny1000]

@DMC Thanks Dennis. Yes, that walk around is great. It's been in my references since @Bugle07 pointed it out a few weeks ago.

 

I didn't go quite that far with chips and scratching in areas where it's more from daily wear than coral blasting, on the basis that the plane would have only been in service for a few months. But maybe I'll push it a little further, especially along panel lines, etc. on the basis that non specular sea blue wasn't nearly as durable as the glossy variant. I do need to get more wear into the service panels for the guns.

 

Something of note that's clearly portrayed here are the anti-skid strips. A lot of modeler makers show them wearing away, along with the paint, which I've been kind of suspicious of. Here, it shows a lot of wear, especially along the edges, but it's more wearing flat than through, and the paint scratches run right up to the strips. 

 

 

This got me motivated to do a little research. Aviation anti skid tape is a thing:

https://www.brownaircraft.com/wing-walk-s/135.htm

 

Thanks all

-J

 

[Johnny1000]

Quick update… 

 

Not much to report, due to not much time at the bench, and what I do have to show is basically a rework of stuff I’ve already done. 

 

I decided that the camo coat needed some work, and that a lot of the paint chipping was a bit over scale. When I went in to clean up and rechip, I accidentally bombed the hair spray, melting a bunch of paint underneath. This necessitated much sanding and clean up over a good chunk of the upper wings and fuselage. I re-primed the key areas with Mr Surfacer 1500, and laid down Alcald Aluminum over, with a light hair spray layer over that to give me a base to chip with.

 

As long as I was going back in, I wanted to try to get a more finally modulated finish, so I built up layers of slightly lighter and darker blue tones, using MRP sea blue mixed with more or less MRP light grey. The nice thing about MRP being lacquers is that if you get into trouble, it’s not a big deal to sand back and get back in to fix.

 

Here’s where I’m at with it. I need to fix the blend in the intermediate blue on the fuselage, and I might tone down the difference on the fabric portion of wings, but otherwise I’m pretty happy with how it’s starting to take shape. The chipping is at scale, and the variation of tones over the surface looks close to my references. 

 

Thanks for looking

-J

 

[MeneMene]

Wonderful work. Could you review again your method for working the hairspray chipping with MRP? The exact steps and materials? I've been trying it and can never get it to work, it dries too hard/impermeable and I can't get the water to activate it.

 

Another thing; I can see how you did the paintwork on the wings, but what about the fading on the forward/upper fuselage? Is that chipping with two different shades of blue?