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Honey I’m home - My interpretation of a F4U Corsair


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This is a build I finished a while ago, but I thought I would bring you along in the building process. And share the final result.

 

I started with the interior, nothing fancy only some green paint.

AL2qWG2i_t.jpeg

 

Then the two halves was sealed together and some panel lines rescribed, 

5fvpQf1h_t.jpeg

 

Until this point everything was going as normal. But then my twisted imagination started working 🙂 more of this later

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While I was browsing the net for inspiration I soon discovered that there are awful many great builds of Corsairs. Somehow I lost direction for a while but then a friend at work posted a video with a flying Corsair on his wife’s Facebook. And then I decided to make it to a diorama and give it to them.

 

Now I had found the purpose and all parts of the puzzle fell together. So here are some things I wanted to be found in the final result.

My friend & wife have a soft spot for vintage car and music, think 50’s Chevy and rockabilly. He has 10+ cars and none of them are new or in best condition, one day at work he came with anoher old car just because it was a good price 😉  They live close to Teckamotorp, a Swedish town locally known for a factory that made weedkiller in the 70’s. The weedkiller leaked out in the local river and many people suffered. A sad story, but it added element.  All this together helped me to make the background story for the diorama. 

 

Before I glued the wings to the body I detailed the engine and installed a small motor in the body, that is why the propeller shaft is blue. I made the shaft from a q-tip so it fitted the motor. 

gHkne9Ss_t.jpeg

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To give the bird the look I wanted I started with a mottled surface 

bYrlHPYD_t.jpeg 

 

Then I covered different panels with various colors to make an impression of an aircraft made up from different donors. No matching numbers here ;) 

 

Pale blue from the sun bleached original:

yg3YhzzY_t.jpeg 

 

The pale blue was heavily weathered to give the impression of much use:

OyggY7hD_t.jpeg nlgGspMe_t.jpeg

 

After this I covered some parts with tape and started to make room for the donor parts. How about darker blue panels from the spare parts shelf?

7BtcKc5C_t.jpeg

 

And the grey panels are most probably home made or was there grey Corsairs? Who knows, it adds detail matching my intention :)  All finished we have something like this:

 RZaSJTpX_t.jpeg

 

 

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5 minutes ago, Azgaron said:

Looks very nice so far! :)

 

Håkan

 

Thank you Håkan,
as I wrote this was finished a while ago so right now I’m trying to remember how I thought while building. I guess there is a lesson to be learned for me somewhere in this ;) 

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Next step in the build was making the diorama. I bought a picture frame that gave me the general size of the size of the ground to be built. The ground was made from some grout I had on the shelf and that was sprayed with water to give it an uneven surfaceand painted brown after it had dried.

 

I made a sewer from a piece of pipe and started to give the bottom of the drain a poisonous look. Some green color was added to give the impression of algea and such.

GHnyLbN8_t.jpeg

 

I added some brown color to resin and poured it ...and there all work was lost. The resin covered it all... well you live and learn they say.

nvchCi7r_t.jpeg 

 

To give the diorama some direction of motion I had made the road go diagonally across. The road was made from dark pebbles from the local model train shop. (an ok product I guess, but next time I’d use plain sand and paint it black. )  

Then I painted the road in different shades of black and dark grey to give the impression of an old road. I took different dried herbs from the kitchen, made smaller pieces of it and glued it with diluted PVA along the road. The grass was made from ordinary model grass.
9naYMckX_t.jpeg 

 

I made some deathcaps from needles + PVA and paint, I thought they suited the theme ;)  And some more detail was made on the poisonous drain water. I took. Some more herbs and put it randomly to make the grass look less even.

bnVkSZXy_t.jpeg

 

A small bridge was made from matches glued together and weathered with different shades of grey color. And a bone from something was buried beneath it.

IjieArfZ_t.jpeg 

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 15/07/2018 at 17:42, Thom216 said:

Like the idea for a patchwork Corsair, and the water effects look great.

Thank you, for being my first time I like it too.

On 15/07/2018 at 17:48, billn53 said:

Very interesting! I can't wait to see where this is going. 

Thank you, sorry for keeping you waiting. I made my vacation as disconnected as possible, but now I’m back.

 

Next step was to make the pilot, with the base from the kit some modifications was made to him. The uniform was painted with other colors to look more like a shirt and jeans and the face was remodeled to look more like my coworker. (But my love tells me I made a copy of myself!?) Anyhow this is what we got:
nzP2UIOm_t.jpeg

The right hand was chopped of because a rockabilly rebel never lands with both hands on stick. Oh no, one hand on the stick and one holds a...
LuP6jduI_t.jpeg
...bottle of beer. (Non-alcoholic beer of course if you swedish law enforcers are following this thread 😉 )  
Clear round sprue was heated and stretched as a bottle and then painted with green food coloring mixed with clear varnish.

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Next step was to add decals and weather the bird.

 

I bought someone's old car decals and added these to give it the right feeling. After that I gave almost all of the decals a rough experience to add age and feeling of a plane that had been living in a backyard for many years. I'm not sure if it will be visible. But there is oil leaks, fuel stain, faded paint and different greens from algae.


zqJmpVCq_t.jpeg

 

Then I connected the aircraft to the base, connected all wires and here it is, the finished product.

Z7hcBHEZ_t.jpeg

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