Blue Jug (P-47M, 63rd FS 1945)

[amblypygid]

The Thunderbolt has always, just, been my favourite of the US piston engined fighters, though it faced tough competition from the Corsair. I used to drool over the colour profiles in Bill Gunston's Aircraft of WW2, and wonder how it was that the biggest and heaviest could also have been the fastest. But there are no P-47s in my display case, and it's about time that oversight was rectified.

 

I shouldn't really be building this. I promised myself that I'd finish off some of the half-built models first, and there's a bottleneck of models awaiting paint (I can only airbrush at weekends, and only if we have no household guests, since the spare bedroom is the designated spraying area. But after a two week modelling hiatus (thanks, Aussie 'flu!), I really wanted to start something new. I have only one P-47 model in the stash, and it's the Special Hobby reboxing (with added bits) of the Academy 1/72 P-47 bubbletop. The SH parts are intended to soup the base plastic up into a P-47M, with improved engine parts and airscrew, resin wheels and tanks, and a couple of PE parts. In the box it all looks rather neat:

 

 

 

I've not photographed the Academy plastic - that's the SH sprue, resin, and decal sheet.

 

All the P-47Ms served with the 56th Fighter Group, so the five decal options cover the three, wildly varied and unusual, schemes sported by the three constituent squadrons. My preference is for the blue/light blue markings of the 63rd FS, and Cpt Flagg's Darling Dottie, UN-F. The belly and leading edges are natural metal, which will be a first for me.

 

 

Captain Flagg went on to serve in Korea, and then worked with NASA on the Gemini missions (and apparently also the early work on the Shuttle). 

I found some gun camera footage on Youtube that is apparently from Darling Dottie:

 

 

Hopefully this won't be a taxing build, though I do need to double check my paint stocks. Thanks for looking in!

[amblypygid]

Conventional construction commences with cockpit. As far as I can tell, the exact colour is one of those topics, but the most likely candidate is the wonderfully named Dark Dull Green. To my eyes, this looks like a dark grey with a hint of green, and I thought I'd get a reasonable facsimile from Vallejo's Dark Sea Green. Once dry, it looks more grey than I'd hoped.

 

 

Other than some sidewall detail and the IP, that is all there is to the cockpit. Spartan, eh? 

[amblypygid]

Once the fuselage is together, the cockpit disappears. Even in a big bird like this, not much light gets in.

 

 

No filler required on the fuselage halves; a good tight fit with a little bit of a seam to sand back. Looks pretty rough in that photo, I think I might deploy the Micromesh to smooth it out a bit more. The wings go on very well, just a smidgeon of filler at the root. 

SH suggest a few adjustments to the base plastic: remove three lumps under the starboard wing (which I think are supposed to represent the ID lights), drill out the landing light under the port wing, and move the aerial hole visible in the above photo towards the rear, which is all in accordance with the plans that I have in the MMP book.

 

The SH moulded engine comes out very nicely, I think.

 

And then ... all the main parts are together! This feels like a Ced B build!

 

 

 

Hmm. That reminds me, I forgot to drill out the gun barrels.

[amblypygid]

Got home a bit early yesterday and seized the opportunity to lay down some primer. I'd bought Vallejo's black primer a while back but not used it in anger yet. 

 

Topsides:

 

The primer went on a bit rough underneath, which is where it needs to be smoothest, so I whipped out the Micromesh to polish it up.

 

 

Ah, that wasn't meant to happen. Then I realised that I had missed the two PE parts, so I'll need to re-prime anyway. I've never had the Vallejo peel before (and this was definitely peeling away), though I've never used their primers either. I wonder whether I was just too quick to pick up the Micromesh.

Anyway, while I digested that, I also broke out a new tin of Colourcoats Zinc Chromate Primer, and (as you can see) used a hairy stick on the wheel wells. Took two coats and the photo shows that it's still not quite opaque, but to the naked eye it's much better.

 

It'll probably be a while before I can get back onto the airbrush (though maybe Saturday morning), but I want to test out some of the blues that I have to see which looks best on the black primer.

[tonyh]

1 hour ago, amblypygid said:

Got home a bit early yesterday and seized the opportunity to lay down some primer. I'd bought Vallejo's black primer a while back but not used it in anger yet. 

 

Topsides:

The primer went on a bit rough underneath, which is where it needs to be smoothest, so I whipped out the Micromesh to polish it up.

 

 

 

Ah, that wasn't meant to happen. Then I realised that I had missed the two PE parts, so I'll need to re-prime anyway. I've never had the Vallejo peel before (and this was definitely peeling away), though I've never used their primers either. I wonder whether I was just too quick to pick up the Micromesh.

 

The same thing happened to me when I used their primer on a 1/32 Revell Spitfire.

I had to strip it all off with oven cleaner and start all over again. I’d left it over a week to harden off - ample time I thought.

I wasn’t happy...’used in anger’? There’s the clue. 

Back to enamels for me.

Tony

[amblypygid]

Yeah, I'm not going to rely on it. I still suspect it's my error more than product quality, but Stynylrez seems a bit more forgiving of my errors.

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

I dont prime models myself. But i use vallejo about 90% of the time. I find after 18-24 hours if you clear coat it its durable. If you dont clear coat, it never adheres well. Thats my two cents. 

[Tempestwulf]

Solid kit the Academy P-47 & married to the SH update it's a real gem. MPM have re-released the Hasegawa Beaufighter & Academy P-39 in the same respect.

[amblypygid]

7 hours ago, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

I dont prime models myself. But i use vallejo about 90% of the time. I find after 18-24 hours if you clear coat it its durable. If you dont clear coat, it never adheres well. Thats my two cents.

 

I only prime sometimes; in this case only because of the NMF. I've never had problems with Vallejo's paint (either Model Color or Model Air) peeling, though I know plenty of others have. Because I only really model in the evening, I do usually give it a good long drying time.

 

3 hours ago, Tempestwulf said:

Solid kit the Academy P-47 & married to the SH update it's a real gem. MPM have re-released the Hasegawa Beaufighter & Academy P-39 in the same respect.

 

Interesting; I finished an Airfix Beau last month and would quite like to build another. That said, Hannants have the MPM Beau listed at £35, and I'm definitely not that keen!

[amblypygid]

Well, social engagements plus the rather chilly weather have really slowed progress. Instead of modelling, I've been painting up some Warhammer figures for a mate's son, which has actually been a refreshing change of pace. I did get to put down another coat of primer over the affected areas, and then this afternoon I sprayed some Vallejo Duraluminium over the undersides (and onto the wing leading edges, though by that time the cup runneth dry and it'll need touching up as the coverage is very thin). Lesson 1: metal finishes show up fingerprints on the primer, must remember to clean before painting!

 

 

Masking around the wheel wells left a little to be desired, but otherwise I don't think that's a bad finish. Certainly better than I've ever achieved on a large area by brush painting.

[amblypygid]

Alright. I had an expensive painting session on Sunday. I bought a second hand Iwata airbrush a while back, but hadn't used it much. I decided to paint the upper surfaces in light blue, then mask and paint the darker blue parts. But the paint was emerging in a wide splatter pattern, even though no signs of clogging. Frustrated, I gave up after painting half the light blue. The finish was OK, but something was wrong. Couldn't figure it out, and got so annoyed that I went and bought a H&S Ultra 2-in-1 to make me feel better.

 

That arrived from the wilds of west Scotland yesterday, despite the weather affecting their deliveries, and I had a go with it this afternoon. Much better, and it's clear to me how much difference a 0.2mm needle can make as at times I was able to apply paint very precisely in small quantities. Taking another look at the Iwata, it seems to me that the needle is sitting right over to one side of the nozzle. It's not bent as it's the same when the needle's rotated, so I wonder if the needle bearing or something is damaged.

The H&S is also beautifully set up to clean, with the way the nozzle is designed. I like it ... so far.

 

Here's the light blue coat that I laid down:

[amblypygid]

And today, the darker blue. I was a bit hurried and didn't push the masking putty down sufficiently, so some of the edges will need touching up. Also some overspray around the cockpit and perhaps some paint lifting on the spine. All fixable easily enough, I think.

 

 

Other than the tidying, next step is to paint the red nose on the cowling.

[amblypygid]

OK, I thought I should take advantage of a grey Sunday spring morning and give the Jug a once-over in sunlight. Last night I hand-brushed the touch-ups and also applied the mid-blue shade to the rudder, and demasked to see how the NMF leading edges are looking. Under natural light, it looks like they need work!

 

[amblypygid]

This week has seen progression to the sticker stage. I've not found these decals particularly forgiving; in fact they display that disappointing quality of being at once both fragile and yet determined to stick to the first thing they touch. They're also thin, sometimes in a rather patchy way, and that's visible on the stars but also the nose art. The resolution of the stencils is not up to the standards of Cartograf, Airfix, or Eduard, all of which are legible in 1/72 scale, in my experience. Even with a magnifying glass, these aren't: many letters are only part-printed. However, no one's going to be scrutinising this build so closely, so I've opted to place only the largest stencils, which give a perfectly decent result at normal viewing range. 

 

Here's the port side, one of those that has decent coverage over the dark blue:

 

 

Oh, yeah, some nice silvering on the codes, too. Hadn't seen that until now, though I guess that shows that it's only noticeable in certain conditions.

 

But here's the other side, where the yellow is clearly variable. This decal also refused to be budged but I'm damn sure (without having checked yet) that it'll sit under the forward edge of the canopy. When I moved it, it started to tear in a couple of places and so I did what I could to repair it, not really then thinking through the canopy issue. Watta mistaka to maka.

 

 

I find it frustrating and mojo-sapping when the decals aren't quite up to scratch. Ah, well...

 

[amblypygid]

OK, mojo partly restored by working on some other projects, I returned to this 'un and added most of the more delicate parts: prop, undercarriage, canopy. The prop concerned me as SH supply it as four separate blades to be sandwiched into a two part hub, and I thought it would be hard to get the blades lined up in the right plane without a jig. But actually it was pretty straightforward and required very little effort. The Academy canopy also fits pretty nicely, though it includes a hole for a rear-view mirror, and the reference photos I have from the MMP Thunderbolt book don't show any P-47Ms sporting that. I also added the two resin drop tanks that SH supply, mainly because they were there in the box and add another point of interest to distract from my woeful decalling. Here's how it looks this morning:

 

 

I'm in two minds whether to weather. In my head I've moved on and I'd probably do a half-bottomed job of it.